Thankful Thursday

Hey bloggy friends!  I am back and ready to blog again!  This Thursday I am thankful for:

~The Mother-Daughter retreat that I went on this past weekend with Brianna!  We had an awesome time.  I met some wonderful Christian women but most importantly I connected with my oldest again!  We walked, we talked, we laughed, we ate, we played cards, we hung out in the pool, we hung out on the beach...I think you are getting the idea!  I am so thankful that God made her my daughter!

On the beach!

Brianna wanted to take feet pictures.  I should have had a pedi!

One of my favorite places ever!

Brianna working on our cross.

Our finished cross.  Our theme was Ephesians 2:10.  Look it up, great verse!

The last day of the retreat.

The daughters!

The moms!

~For my dear, sweet husband who took care of the kiddos at home so I could go retreating!  He had absolutely no problems.  Well, except that he didn't know how to do Claire's hair on Sunday morning!  She went to church with the "natural" look.  By natural I mean hair in the face so you can't even see her pretty eyes!  Oh well, she looked pretty in her dress even if you couldn't tell who she was!  However, I must point out that Claire and Caleb slept until 10:30 on Saturday!  Gary is gone this week so I am expecting the same kind of treatment on Saturday!  I'm just saying...a mom can hope right?

My hunk of a man with Claire (hair done by mom!)

~Our small group at church!  They showered us with gifts for Caleb!  They showered us with clothes and jammies!  With Caleb being so small, most of the clothes we had pre-bought for him were way too big.  Therefore, we didn't even have enough jammies to make it a week without doing laundry!  We do now thanks to our wonderful friends.  More important than gifts these friends prayed Caleb home and they prayed for us when the wait got looonnggg!  We just love our church family wherever we live!

This is the cute cake we had the night we were showered!

~For the way Caleb walks around the house saying "Claire".  It is just too cute!  He likes to say "daddy" too.  I am still working on him saying "mommy".  Right now, when I try he just smiles, points to Gary and says "daddy"!

Good buddies in the making!

~Remember the photo shoot I mentioned last week?  I am thankful for this shot that we got of Caleb.  He was a tough cookie to break but we finally got a smile out of him!

His smile was worth the effort!

~I am thankful for the appointment we had at the International Adoption Clinic on Monday.  I will save those details however, for another post!  It was a "wild" time!

~I am thankful that we are having our first post placement visit tomorrow.  The social worker assured me that is was OK if Gary were not here.  She just needs to see one of us and Caleb.  Well, she is going to get 1 of me and 5 other people who will be trying to get her out of the house as soon as possible!  I promised them a trip to the zoo tomorrow after the visit!  I'm sure you will hear all about how it went later plus some priceless zoo pictures!

What are you thankful for this week?