Surfer Girl Heaven!!!

These past few months we have been working on redoing Kyla's room from a horse themed room to a surfer girl room. In the summer we sold her loft bed and purchased new bedding from Pottery Barn Kids and we found this really cool banana leaf cabana to go over the top of her bed. We repainted the walls a cool tropical blue and I added a palm tree and surf shack sign. For Christmas Kyla got some other cool accessories like a grass bed skirt, flip-flop lights to go around her cabana, a new Hawaiian themed lamp and lots of other cool accessories, but.....for her birthday she received the best thing of all. Grandpa and Grandma Liptack made the most awesome surfboard headboard. They took the designs from actual surfboards and used colors from her room to match. Now when Kyla sleeps she can practically hear the waves wash in. She can dream of surfing the big one (she actually has never been surfing) and lounge around in a tropical paradise. We still need to do some other finishing touches before the room is complete but it has been a fun transformation. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for such an awesome gift!!!
Kyla loves it!

Before (little girl room)

After (tween room in process)

Happy surfer girl with kitty companion!!!

Back to life.....

The funeral for Granny held Friday the 16th (on Mike's birthday) was beautiful and a, true testament to the way she lived her life. Many of her grandchildren spoke of her positive influence on their lives and of her fun spunk and humor. All of her grandchildren were there too, flying in from New Jersey, Minnesota, Alaska and California. There were lots of tears but lots of laughs also....she was a funny lady! Mike's youngest brother, Len, officiated the funeral and I know that Granny was looking down so proud of him!!!

The whole Mjolsnes family

All of Granny's grandchildren

Mike's mom with her boys

It has been a long 2 weeks since her passing and many of us are emotionally drained and many of us have gotten sick to top it all off. This is mid-winter break week for the kids though and we will use this time to relax, get well and rejuvenate.

In the midst of all the family stuff last week we still had to squeeze in a few other events. Hailey and Kyla both participated in a beautiful ceremony at our church on Wednesday evening. They both were dressed like beautiful princess' and along with others in their youth group they both made a pledge and covenant to live out a life of sexual purity and integrity. It was such a beautiful evening and Mike and I were so extremely proud of them both. I didn't take any pictures (crazy if you know me) but there was an official photographer there taking photos so as soon as I get those I will post them because they looked gorgeous!!!!

Mike also didn't forget all his special girls on Valentine's day. When we came down for breakfast on Wednesday morning there was beautiful breakfast table set with flowers, presents and Valentine chocolates for all of his girls, including little Gracie. He bought us all new Bibles, I got the Bible Experience (mp3 version to load on my Zune), Hailey got a cool small red metal encased Bible which is easy to carry around, Kyla got a Faithgirlz Bible with corresponding journal and Grace got her 1st Bible too! What a special man I am married to. It was such a stressful week for him with all the funeral arranging and with work but he still remembered his girls.

Then on Thursday night Hailey's history class was showcasing projects with the theme "Tragedy to Triumph". Hailey and her friend Alli partnered up to create a project about the survivors of the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz. They even were able to personally interview a woman who survived the ordeal as a little girl. Their presentation was wonderful and they are going to take their project to the regional competition in a couple weeks.

Since Mike's birthday landed on the same day as the funeral, we made sure that when he came home on Friday night there was some fun surprises waiting for him and then we made him a special dinner last night with his favorite apple pie dessert. We will get to do a more formal celebration later in the week with family. Happy birthday honey!!!! One more year until the big one!!!!

Also......My Firefly secret pal rocks!!!! I love all the cute ribbons (especially the cherry one!), the socks and tights! What a wonderful treat in a very hectic week!!! Thank you so much!

Finally, we didn't get to do any Chinese New Year celebrating this year but I hope everyone has a happy "Year of the Pig"!!! Hopefully this will be the year we see a speed up in the referrals and we get to bring our babies home!!!

Goodbye Granny....we will miss you so much!!!!

Last night Mike's granny passed away peacefully in the middle of the night. We are so happy that she is not suffering anymore and she can join her Father in Heaven and be with her sweetheart, Papa Lenny...just in time for Valentines Day, which is when he passed away 15 years ago.

She was such an amazing lady(the stories we can tell at her memorial service) and an inspiration to all of her 4 children, 10 grandchildren and 9 great-grandchildren and many other relatives, adopted family and friends!!!

We are going to miss her so much!

"Lord, I pray that you bring peace and joy to all of us remembering her life this week. I ask that you help us with the arrangements and help to get the family members here safely that need to be here. Thank you Lord for blessing us with Granny! I thank you so much that my children got to know and love her. She was such a blessing in our lives!!! Amen"

Thank you Donna and my baby brother Joe!!!

BEFORE

Yeah!!!! My blog is now fixed! Phew....what a lot of work that was!!! Not really a computer person so fiddling with it was frustrating! But thanks to Donna and my web savvy brother Joe, I think it looks pretty good....and I won't be changing anything for awhile!

AFTER

Now....in other Liptack news....we had our first broken bone in the family. Kyla fell in dance class (funny...not playing basketball or softball) and fractured her right foot. So she is out of active commision for a few weeks but I think she likes the crutches (atleast for the first couple of days anyways). She didn't need a cast but she has a really cool walking boot, which makes her look like a Storm Trooper wanna-be.

After midnight.....yeah for 6 months!!!!

Well it is after midnight and I am still working on this silly template and then I realized it is our 6 months lid-versary!!! Wow...a half a year....not too shabby!!! So I guess the new blog look will help to celebrate this milestone!!! Only problem, I can't get those silly side bars and comment areas to center on the page....could someone tell me what to do????? I need to go to bed now....but I can dream about the next 6 months and then it will be time to go to China.... ok, I said I was dreaming!!!! Nighty night!