A homecoming and A birthday!

The hubby went to Las Vegas over the past 3 days for a manager conference/awards dinner/company trip. And unfortunately, I didn't get to go  :-(   But, this is the second year he has gone and this year was so much easier than last year! I wasn't anxious near as much; I had fun having the house and bed to myself for 2 nights  ;-)  It was quiet around the house, but had fun with my puppies! Last year, he told the oldest one (& most protective one), Kaylee, to "take care of her" -  She did! She was practically attached to my shin everywhere I went. She would sit right next to me when I made dinner or anything in the kitchen. She took him very literally  ;-)   This year, he told them all the same thing and they were protective of me, but Kaylee didn't take him literally as much this year - thank goodness! They still watched out for me and made sure I knew when people were walking or driving down the street.
I picked him up from the airport this afternoon and when we came home, the dogs were soooo excited. Our dogs love their daddy so much! This is what they did when they came inside to see that he came home:

They are so much fun!!! We are all glad to have him home again. Thank goodness this trip is only once a year!  haha


Today was also my Great-Aunt's birthday! It was bitter-sweet for her as her husband passed away suddenly about 6 weeks ago and this was her first celebration without him. We took her out to dinner and Caleb was able to come too! Yesterday, when I took her out to run some errands, she told me that she wanted some new frames for her glasses soon - as she has had hers for 20+ years now. So, for her birthday we bought her some new frames:

They say Happy Birthday across the top right under the candles. Haha!  She loved them and said she had a great day; that was nice to hear!!  :-)

On another note, we have finished our homestudies, fingerprinting, and paperwork. Waiting on the fingerprints to come back and then waiting on a birth mother. In the meantime, we are praying and loving the time we have together. We are still selling our adoption t-shirts to raise money for our Adoption Fund.

Well, that's all for now. Good night!!

We started a fundraiser!

**Please see our 'Fundraisers' tab to keep up with all our current fundraisers**

Caleb and I have been talking about doing some fundraisers to help raise money for our adoption! We don't want to go into debt trying to adopt.
I've started raffle for a basket of Avon items - tickets are $2 each and all the proceeds go to our Adoption Fund. I will draw names next week. If you want to buy some tickets, please email me at: kt_hurley@gmx.com

Also, as you can see on the right-hand side, there's a link to our fundraiser T-shirt store. It's through AdoptionBug.com and you can buy 6 different styles of t-shirts on our page and we get a portion of those sales which will all go into our Adoption Fund as well!! This will help raise awareness about adoption as well as supporting us! Please help us start the Hurley Family Tree  :-)

Here's the widget and our page link is: www.adoptionbug.com/churley

I'm going to be doing a Thirty-One gifts party fundraiser soon and a Pampered Chef fundraiser party this summer to raise money too.

We want to thank everyone for your prayers for us and support that you've given us as we've started this journey! We are soooo blessed!!!  Thank you Jesus for these amazing friends and family!

Nursery Easter Craft!

So I was going to post this last week, but our schedule was crazy. (see my last post: Thoughts On Life).

Anyway, I got an idea from a couple places online and decided to make my own version of this and included this recipe. So I made my own edible Easter garden with the kids. Since I had nursery kids (ages 0-3) I made a few things ahead of time and had them put it together on Easter morning in the nursery. Here's my step by step directions: 

Items needed:

- Cookie recipe (link to follow)

- Cookie cutters (cross and round)
- Bag of shredded coconut
- Food coloring
- can of Grands biscuits
- large marshmallows
- toothpicks
- Whoppers (or other small round candy - for rocks/stones)

1) Prepare Sugar Cookies. I used this recipe for Brown Sugar cut-out cookies and icing. Then I cut out crosses and circles, baked them and let them cool:

I didn't have a cross cookie cutter so I made a cross out of cardboard and cut out each cross with a butter knife. If you have a cross cookie cutter, this is a lot easier!  :-P

I just used a standard size (~2in) cookie cutter for these (they are for the base of the cross).

2) Prepare Icing. I made the icing and dyed each one a different color. I used blue, pink, yellow and green but you can make any colors. (I had some plastic egg cups for dying eggs, so I separated the icing into 4 parts and then dyed each one in each cup) I also wasn't going to iced the cookies until the next day with the kids, so they are in plastic bags to keep from drying out:

  

      

3) Prepare the coconut:

Green food dye(grass):          Coconut in a ziploc:

        

Add dye to coconut:           Shake until all covered:

     

     

4) Make the He's Risen buns:  

I prepared these ahead of time as well, but showed the kids how they were empty like Jesus' tomb was when he was risen. Make them with your kids though with this recipe. 

Prepare them as the recipe says.

I made these with the small biscuits and bad idea (the marshmallows all busted out of the bottoms). 

Make sure to use the Grands biscuits!  :-)

5) Frost the cookies!

I did this with the kids at church, but I frosted my own to show them first:

 I frosted a circle in green icing too and with a toothpick, poked one end into circle cookie,

leaning to back of the cross standing up. Allow to dry/harden  :-)

6) Put it all together! 

 I broke open the tombs to show them that it was empty. Next, I put the cross on one side of a paper plate and the tomb on the other side toward the top. Then, I scattered coconut around to look like the grass. Last, I placed 4 Whopper candies leading to the tomb. This is the finished result!

Here's the ones the kiddeos made too:

            

    

Happy Easter everyone! (even though it's a bit late  ;-P)

Thoughts on Life

I've been so busy and have had so many things going on in my head that it's time to write another post! It might be a little scrambled and jumpy but I want to talk about a few things that have gone on this past week  :-)

1) Time with Daddy

The hubby's dad came down for a few days and stayed with us. He drove in from WA on Thursday evening, stayed the night with us. Friday morning he went to see his dad and some other friends in town. Then Friday night we celebrated the hubby's grandpa's 80th bday! Met some awesome relatives and had a great time with everyone  :-)  Daddy left Saturday morning to go home. We had a nice visit (even though it was short) and had so much fun!!

2) Crazy Monday

So we were supposed to have our final homestudy on Monday but change of plans last minute! :-P    Found out that I was needed for babysitting from about noon on Monday til Tuesday evening. Of course I accepted gladly! I love my time with those two little munchkins (thanks Heather!). A couple of our friends were going to be coming through town on their way home to TX and we told them they could crash here for a night. That night just happened to be on Monday. It was so great having them and hanging out with them a bit (thanks for spending some time with us Araenae and Joni!). So needless to say with 2 munchkins ages 2 and 4, and 2 friends in town with the hubby and I, we weren't able to meet with our social worker. God had other plans for us on Monday and it was a great day anyway  :-)

Had some fun taking pics and videos of the kids and the hubby that night and Tuesday. Here are some of them:

The hubby playing with the kids and a ticklish duck.  

Cutie Pie  :)

      

The kiddeos reading books to the dogs through the screen door. The puppies are lying outside watching them   :-)

Oh the pigtails  :-)

Me and Keira  :-)

3) Gardening is just an excuse for grown-ups to play in the mud!  ;-)
I've been gardening the past couple days and I am so sore today! It's such great exercise!! Today as I was planting seeds, watering and pushing around the sand/soil and mud, I couldn't help but giggle at the thought that gardening is an excuse for grownups to play in the mud and water! Gardening is so cool - how God can make sand, water and a seed grow into a plant and then produce things like tomatoes, squash and carrots is so cool to me. I mean, only God can do that! And if He can do make something from nothing essentially, then He can certainly provide us with a child in one way or another!  :-)

4) Adoption is an amazing journey toward God!

Since we decided that we wanted to start this journey toward adoption, I've grown more in love with God. He is teaching us so much! I am more patient as I wait for this child than I was waiting to get pregnant. Caleb and I are spending a lot of quality time together. I'm loving having the kiddeos over here overnight sometimes - I'm learning so much and it's great practice for when we have kids!

5) Infertility (Which ties in with #4)

A lot of people have asked me why we aren't going to have biological children, if we've been tested for infertility and tried infertility treatments yet, etc... I'm going to answer that question now as I've come to figure it out completely. I don't want to know if we can't biologically have children. Firstly, if we did see a doctor and they told us we can't have children, I'm not sure how I would handle that in my mind. Secondly, nothing is too hard for God. He can give us biological children when/if that's His plan. Sarah and Abraham conceived long after they even thought they could have children. Who is to tell us that we CAN'T biologically have children?? Finally, I don't want to take pills or have different treatments that might help us conceive because I don't want to "play God". I'm not saying it's bad. I know some people that have tried different infertility treatments, and that's not a problem. It's just not for us - it's a huge waiting game too of 'if this will help this time.wait for it.nope...let's try this.wait...nope...etc. We are really excited to see where this journey of adoption takes us and maybe in the future we might conceive too. Who knows - only God!

Well, I'm off to celebrate my cousin's 21st birthday with her and my family! Road Trip!  :-)
Have a great weekend everyone!!!

Home Study ~ Part 2 ... and more

Our second home study was this past Monday. It went well. I got kicked out of the living room while Kathi and Caleb talked  :-P  but that's ok. This Monday is my turn to kick Caleb out of the room so Kathi and I can talk! 

We went over a few things before I got kicked out. It's great to know that so many people are behind us and helping us in this process of adoption! Most of our reference letters are already in after only a week! Thanks to everyone who is helping us  :)  We have to get our fingerprinting done and some more paperwork with background checks. But we are moving along quickly which is exciting.

We have started an Adoption Fund and are raising money to cover the costs of adoption. I have a few ideas in mind. I will probably be having a Shop for Adoption day with a few different vendors (Thirty One, Avon, Tupperware, etc) and homemade items by some of my friends. I'll keep you posted on it. If you have anymore ideas or would like to contribute to our Adoption Fund, please email me at: kt_hurley@gmx.com 
I hope to have a PayPal account up soon for donations as well. Please continue to pray for us that we will follow God completely and that our adoption process will continue to move along. Thanks so much!