Play-doh fun!

A Visit from Elise, Lily, and Emerson

We had so much fun over this past week! Hallie was so sad to see them go. Landon enjoyed having his cousins play here. We are so grateful they were able to come and play. We had the missionaries over to eat twice and we enjoyed good food this week. We are so excited for the fall when we get to see them again!

In front of the Henry Ford Museum.

The fountain was super tempting to Landon.

This is a cupcake as big as an ice cream. Lily could not finish it off.

More trains. They have full sized ones in the museum. So cool!

Flew paper airplanes. Lily did so good it flew under the bulls eye and out of the area.

Here Elise is helping the kids make airplanes. They had a blast.

Here they are pretending to be Barnstormers.

A visit to the Rock Stars, Cars and Guitars 2. Loved the black and white tractor and all the other fun things we saw.

A trip would not be complete without seeing the Weinermobile. Iconic.

We are posing in front of the Temple. The rain passed for just enough time while we took pictures. We are lucky to have a temple so close.

The Heidelberg Project. Pretty fascinating. Read all about it sometime.

One of many installations from the Heidelberg Project.

The place happened to be an ice cream and chocolate shop. So we ALL had a ton of FUN.

Cinderella painted this wonderful rainbow on Lily's face. She wore it for two days, everywhere.

Landon had an orange dog. We think for now it is his favorite color and he can say dog. Some things are simple in this life.

Emerson had a fish.

Snow White made Lily a balloon bunny. In pink, of course.

Thanks to a lady at the GPMC she told us about a fun Princess afternoon at this shop. Oh Lily was impressed. I became the BEST aunt ever.

We were there at 2:00 when the clock tower rang. So fun to watch it.

One of the many cast members from Greenfield Village. Elise was talking on her cell phone and he said I should take her to see the Dr. because she was talking to herself. Really played the part.

Took Landon a bit of time to get used to the idea, but by the end he was very happy.

The kids went on their first carousel ride and the LOVED it. Thanks Elise! We had so much fun.

Emerson loves trains. So the first train we saw we had to get pictures. They are so cute.

We love Greenfield Village and of course we had to bring our family!

A New Phase and A Novel Way to Help

This post is to all the WONDERFUL people who read our crazy family blog.

In June of 2009 we officially received our approval to start "finding" our second child from our adoption agency.

The three of us are very excited to start this new phase in our family building.

Since we started our adoption journey in January 2005 we have learned A LOT!

For our second child we are armed with more education, more friends, and more guts to get the word out that we are trying to build our family through adoption.

The respect and love that we have for the Super Birth Parents out there can't be put into words.

We LOVE our Natalie so, and we are now looking for a second Super Birth Parent.

However, our quest requires YOUR help.

The first and easiest thing you can do is to e-mail your address to us at: lookingtoadoptgmail.com

The second thing you can do is to read the story below so that your SPIRIT will be open to helping us "FIND" our child. (This was reprinted from the http://therhouse.blogspot.com)

* let me first say how much i respect and love birth parents. i hope that this post does not come off like we are "hunting" birth parents or using them or think of them in any way other than heroes. please know that atthe r house, being a birth parent is a badge of honor. we adore you.

consider this a little introduction to the r house's crash course in finding.

why do we need to find?

well, first, there is the the numbers issue. everyone knows that there are more adoptive couples than birth mothers. designated adoptions (where the birth mother and adoptive couple go into an agency already matched) is becoming a larger portion of adoptions in recent years--around 30%.


what's the most important thing when finding?

the most important thing in finding is the Spirit.

let me tell you a hysterical story. it blew me away. i know a couple that had 2 children and were hoping to adopt a third. they were in their car and decided to go out for ice cream. they passed all kinds of famous and delicious ice cream locations only to feel like they should get their ice cream from this sub-par fast food place. they got drinks and ice cream cones and let their kiddies play in the playland.

the husband of this couple goes to refill his drink and sees a young pregnant woman walk in with what looked like her dad or an uncle. without thinking he jokingly said something terrible to the affect of , "how much can i pay you for your child?" (i was horrified when i first heard this! stay with me, it gets better!) the young woman looked at him and started bawling.

he starts thinking, "oh my! what did i just say? that was awful." (truly.)

she then proceeds to tell this husband that she and her dad were just discussing in the car her thought to place the baby for adoption but was looking for a sign. this young woman and her dad sat down with this couple in the play land ...and a couple weeks later, were placed with this young woman's baby.

whoa, right? i share this because the Spirit has an incredible way of glossing over what we feel prompted to say and making it okay.

some of you may be feeling, "i could never promote myself like that. it just doesn't feel right." that's totally okay. i think mr. r had a hard time with that at first (i, on the other hand, love to shamelessly promote myself, hence my addiction to twitter. lol.)

if you don't feel comfortable promoting yourself, then focus on promoting adoption in general.

this goes for those of you who are passionate about adoption and helping the case, but aren't hoping to adopt yourselves. you can help promote adoption even if you aren't directly touched by it.

Remember us in your prayers and know that this child will be loved and cared for to the best of our ability.

We will do all that we can to make sure that this child like Landon will be blessed with the love of the Savior

and will know from the very beginning of the love that his/her Birth Parent has for them.

To Catch a Thief

Someone keeps thinking they are entitled to take the shrubs at our church. On August 9th they took half a dozen.

Then last Saturday we noticed a bunch of the bricks to the retaining wall had also been taken.

I'm not saying I know who did it, but one of our neighbors has made a lot of recent improvements to his front yard with shrubs and bricks that look awfully familiar. . . .

A visit with Mr A-Z

On Friday night we went to see Jason Mraz in concert at the Freedom Hill Amphitheater. It was a warm, somewhat humid summer evening, and the venue was packed. We saw people of all ages there, from babies to the senior set, but most people were in their 20s and 30s. A lot of folks wore fedoras in imitation of Jason Mraz’s signature accessory. The opening act was G. Love and Special Sauce, K’Naan, and Bushwalla. One of the groups sang a song Hallie thought was catchy called “Booty Call.” Too bad the subject matter was R rated.





Jason came out as the sun finally set and the air got cooler, and his back up musicians from Austin, Texas, gave the songs he sang a Latin flair while the backgrounds and stage props evoked a combination of Japanese print art and “Endless Summer” surf vibe. We had pretty good seats considering we were in the middle of the amphitheater and not right up front like we like to be (we were about 150 feet back). There was a large screen behind Jason and the band members that showed them performing, so we were able to see everything really well. The music was loud, but in a good way, and you could feel the bass without it overpowering the melodies. He played for a little over an hour, and then he was gone. We must have spent easily five or ten minutes clapping and clamoring for an encore, but he did not appear on stage.

Then Hallie let out a whoop when she saw that Jason had come up into the crowd right below sound booth, so now the action was happening about 50 feet from where we were standing (everyone was on their feet swaying and singing and carrying on for most of the concert). He did a long encore set that was a combination of older and newer tunes, and we really enjoyed that part.

Getting out of the parking area was a nightmare. It was like trying to untie a pretzel, but we did eventually get out after midnight. Hallie was enough impressed that she thinks she’ll have to see him again the next time he comes out. Mike thought it was hilarious when he realized how much Jason looks like his brother-in-law. Suddenly it made so much more sense why Carly (a big Mraz fan) married Shad (not so much). Here’s a link for you to decide for yourself!

And here's a short video from the concert for you to enjoy: