Happy Birthday to Hailey!!!!

You are so precious to us!!! Have a very special day!!!

More fun tea photos from last weekend....

I received more great photos from the tea last weekend. Finally I can show off the wonderful work Mike did on the Arbors. He is so awesome!!! There are a lot more photos of all the creative tables the different hostess' set. We have some creative gals at our church! The tea looked amazing...to bad it is all a blur now;)

Enjoy another tea slideshow!!!!

Memorial Day Tribute

Remembering and honoring all of those who give the ultimate sacrifice.....

Sparks fly for Jordin...but Blake is still our "Bothell Beat Boxin' Boy"!

OK...so we loved Jordin too (and secretly new she would win) but we had to root on our hometown boy. He was so classy through the whole thing...it makes him even more likable. I know coming in second will not hurt him one bit. Look at Chris Daughtry afterall. He was 4th last year and he has the biggest selling album this year.

About 2pm this afternoon the girls and I decided we needed to through an Idol party. Nothing like the last minute but we picked up a few Pizza's and hit the Dollar Tree for some decorations, called up a few friends and by 7pm we were ready to party Idol style!

All I can say after this Idol season......Simon has to eat his words about the bad singers from Seattle:) Way to go Jordin and Blake....you showed him!!!!

GO BLAKE!!!!

We are a little Idol crazy in our house tonight!!! Blake is a fellow alum from my high school in Bothell....Inglemoor Vikings!!!! I love Jordan, she is so cute but tonight the Liptack household has only:

Blaker Girls!!!!

Back to a normal pace.......

Phew....the weekend is gone and the tea went great but I am truly exhausted. I think it will take a week just to catch up on my lack of sleep. The day was absolutely beautiful and both of the speakers were amazing!!! I think the event really blessed a lot of women in our area and that was why we do it! So all the work from everyone involved was well worth it!!! Of course I didn't get a chance to take very many pictures of the decorations because I was so busy decorating but there was someone there to take photos so I hope to receive them very soon. I did get a few though during the tea so those are the ones I will post for now.

My real hero through this whole process was my wonderful husband!!! I am so amazed that I ended up marrying such a loving and supportive man! He put up with so much stress these past few weeks, not to mention he built the beautiful arbors for the event and still worked at Microsoft usually 12 hour days because they were finishing up a Beta for their product. Mike, your are the BEST!

Last weekend Kyla and I attended the Between conference put on by Virtuous Reality and it was also an amazing day. We even made the slide show on their myspace page. The main speaker was girls book author Nancy Rue and she had a lot of great things to share about tween issues. You can check her out at her website www.nancyrue.com . We even made it on the Virtuous Reality myspace slideshow. Hehehe:o) Kyla got a kick out to that.

Here is the picture from that-

Mothers day was wonderful too....I have the best kids in the whole world. They were so patient with me these past few weeks, but I am sure they are ready to have their easy going, well rested mother back. Hailey had a birthday coming up next week though so you know we will be planning another bash. 14, YIKES!

Mother Day 2007

Here are some pics of the Girl Scout mother-daughter 80's party from last week too. It was "like" a "totally" fun night!!! Totally!!!

It will take me a few days to catch up on everyone elses blogs but I can't wait to hear what has been going on in adoption blogger world.

My Busy Life.....

So what have I been up to lately? LOTS! Sometimes too much but like I said in the last post it is helping to pass the time! We hit the 9 month LID mark and I missed it!

Kyla has been busy with softball games, dance, youth group activities and Girl Scouts. This weekend I am helping out with a fundraising event for her troop. The girls are having a mother-daughter event called "80's Ladies"....of course that was right up my alley and I had to be involved. I will post "totally" fun pictures of the event later!

Here she is doing her favorite "tween" activity....of course it is her sister's favorite "teen" activity too!

Hailey has been a little busy teenager too. She went out for track this spring but then injured her knee and had to drop out. That hasn't slowed her down any though...she is still dancing and her and her friends will be performing at the high school lip sync contest this weekend. We also got her all signed up for her high school classes for next year.....YIKES....I said "High School"! I don't think I am ready for that yet but somehow they don't stop growing up. We ordered her Bearcats Class of 2011 sweatshirt and she is ready for her middle school years to come to end next month.

She also decided to get a new haircut....we think she looks way too old now!

Now I have been one busy beaver too!!! Trying to keep up with my kids schedules and finishing up with Kyla's home school work for the year. She will be going back to middle school in the fall and she is excited to be back with all her friends. Her friend Abby, who was at home for school this year too, will be going back with her so that will be great....and they both will ride the same bus too! It has been a great year for us but she is ready to go back to public school. I am taking a youth theater class at night as part of my curriculum and Kyla and I are both going to adapt a book and make it into a play for the kids in our neighborhood. We are going to do a simple story about adoption and bi-racial families to introduce the kids to the idea. I get credit for it for my class and Kyla gets a creative project to do and we get to educate the kids around us. Can't wait to tell you more about that.

I also just took on a new leadership position at our church. I am taking the place of our head of Mother-Daughter Ministries (Just Between Us) from my good friend, Amy, who will be leaving our church this fall to be a part of new church plant. I was very reluctant to say yes when I was asked because of my busy life and the unknowns of the adoption time line but for some reason God really wanted me to step forward in faith because whenever I would think "no" he kept placing things in front of me that said "yes". I wasn't going to argue with God (even though I wanted too). I am still very nervous about it but I know God will provide where I am weak:).

A bunch of moms and daughters will be heading to our mother church this weekend to attend the "Between" conference. It is put on by http://www.virtuousreality.com/ run by a wonderful lady, Vicki Courtney, who has great books and resources for raising our kids. Last year we went to a similar event called Yada Yada and it was awesome!

Vicky Courtney she has a great blog too....http://virtuealert.blogspot.com/

Not that I wasn't busy enough but then I somehow got myself volunteered for decorating for our church's annual Women's Tea. The past two years I have hosted a table but this year I am hosting two tables and decorating the whole event. What was I thinking????? Ok... I love to be creative but I also love to sleep.

Pictures from last year's event....

My sweet husband and parents have been helping me with the building of my decorations though. Mike worked hard this past weekend building a garden arbor (huge) that will be at the front entrance of our church. Now our church meets in an industrial building so I thought an arbor might pretty it up a bit. My poor husband! But he is doing great job! Here is what it looks like so far....

This is a little books of ideas I made for inspiration. The theme is "Singing a New Song" inspired from Psalm 40...

I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and game me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.

I also worked the weekend painting birdhouses and getting things planned out....I have less then two weeks to pace my self in the middle of all this other stuff that is going on....hopefully I will make it through without a nervous breakdown:)

I also have a secret.....here is a clue.....

Have you guessed yet???? Ok...I am taking tap dancing class. I guess when I saw my girls in their performance in december and saw a lot of other mom's my age up on stage dancing their hearts out I got a little jealous. I used to love to dance and now the only time I do my daughter's beg me to stop for fear of extreme embarrassment. So now... I am getting the ultimate revenge... I will be dancing with them in the summer recital....hee hee hee. Of course they don't have to admit they are related to me. Seriously though, tap dancing is hard work and great exercise! A ton of fun but man I hope I get all that foot work down before I have perform. Thank goodness our costumes are all black flowing pants and arms so the little jigglies won't be that noticeable:) We are dancing to one of my favorite singers right now, Michael Buble. It is his rendition of James Tayor's, "How Sweet It Is"...fun, fun, fun!

I also want to thank my sweet secret pal for some wonderful gifts this past month!!! They were just what the doctor ordered in my hectic life. What a fun little treat to come to!

Finally, I wanted to post this cute picture that Mike sent me this morning that he received from his brother in New Jersey of our cute nephew, Aidan. He is surely a Liptack boy! Too funny!!!