Adoption celebration!

A few months ago I blogged about some friends of ours, the Hyatts, who were adopting from Haiti. With the earthquake, the adoption moved into fast forward and now they have two precious little girls added to their family. Their family of 4 went to a family of 6 in the matter of days! This past weekend we had the priveledge of celebrating with them along with many of our church friends at a picnic. What a blessing it was for us to see them and meet their two new precious little girls!



Here is little Amelia, who was the first to arrive to the Hyatt family. She is about 9 months old now and adorable as ever!

And this is little Naomi with her Dad Jason. They knew for a couple of years they would be adopting Naomi but were prepared to wait a year or two more. With the earthquake, that all changed in the matter of days! What a blessing that she is now a part of their family!

Spring Cleaning!

One nice thing about the second trimester is you get your energy back! Just in time for some good old fashioned spring cleaning! I just so happened to be looking around online recently for some blogs for Christian homemaker/home educators and stumbled across this blog:

http://christianhomekeeper.org/

I was so excited when I saw that they were going to begin a 5 week spring cleaning challenge on April 5th! Each week would be a different room(s) of the house. Week 1 we began in the kitchen!





Here is a "before" shot of my pantry...

...and here is the "after" shot!

Unfortunately I didn't get any other "before shots, but I will show some of my finished product in the kitchen!

My sparkling white fridge!

The inside of my fridge, which by the way is still pretty clean, 2 weeks later! :)

Boy does it feel good to have a clean kitchen! If the kitchen is clean and nothing else is clean, I am happy! That doesn't mean I get a free pass to not continue cleaning... week 2 was the living room. I got a lot done but am a little behind. This week is the bathroom. Today I will be tackling the cabinets and linen closets. Oh yeah, and today is my 34th birthday! Yes I am still cleaning on my birthday and plan to do a little grocery shopping later today... I'm still a Mom and Wife even when it's my birthday! Steve and I will be celebrating tomorrow night for dinner on our own.

Our newest little Westdyk...

"For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them."
Psalm 139:13-16




We went in as a family this week for my routine 18 week check up. We were so blessed to see our little baby on the screen once again! This time there was so much more to see and it was so fun to watch Carter seeing his little brother on the screen and even hear the heartbeat!

We were also surprised to learn that our Doctor's office now offers free 3D images along with the typical ultrasound pictures! How fun it is to see a close up of our newest little Westdyk!

He truly is beautiful already. What a blessing to experience this as a family.

And once again, I have a thumb sucker in the womb. Neither of my children suck their thumbs now, so we will see if this one does. We are still deciding for sure on a name, but will let you know once we make the final decision.

Spring and Easter!

First of all I really need to start posting more than once every couple of months, so I don't have 20 pictures to upload each time I post! Now that I am in my second trimester and have my energy back, I am hoping to be a little more consistent. But who am I kidding? In 5 months, I will be adding a THIRD child to the mix! Who has time any more?! Spring is in the air, and boy have we been enjoying our beautiful Texas weather! We really need to take it when we get it, because before you know it, it will be in the 90's and shortly after that in the 100's, so we are definitely enjoying the 70's and 80's while we can! We kicked off our Spring season by going to the Dallas Arboretum with some of the other Mom's and children from our sunday school class at church.


Carter loved the little petting zoo they had!

Sydney wasn't so sure...

The flowers were gorgeous and so was the day! Perfectly sunny and in the 70's.

My precious little girl is not so much an outdoorsey kind of girl (ahem, just like her Mommy!) I'm lucky I got this shot of her on the concrete in between the grass and the flowers.

Soon enough she was crying for Mommy to come pick her up again!!

I think Carter is trying to convince her here that the outdoors isn't so bad...

.... but then he gave up and just decided to look cute!

Here is Carter with one of his best pals Alex.

Here is looking more adorable than ever...

... and here looking as serious as his Daddy!

And in other news that I somehow forgot to share... I am now 17.5 weeks and starting to look quite pregnant finally. We found out at an early ultrasound that we are having another BOY! Steve was shocked because he was certain it was a girl, and I couldn't have been more excited! We're on a roll with the back and forth genders... We will of course confirm this at my next ultrasound which should be April 13th. We found out at 14 weeks, so it's always possible they could get it wrong, but we found out that early with Sydney too, and our little boy was pretty convincing on the screen!

Our sunday school class had an Easter egg hunt for the kids last weekend. Unfortunately the weather wasn't as great that day! We had unbelievable winds that were up to 40 mph at some points. The eggs were flying all over the place and we were all freezing!

But Sydney really enjoyed picking up the eggs and putting them in the basket. One of her favorite things to do, pick things up and put them in something else...

Oh the love...

And then there was Easter! My little guy is getting so handsome and so big! It's hard to believe he is already 3 1/2. And boy are we having our challenges with the three's... but that's a whole other post in itself! :) Carter got to go to "Big" church with Mommy which was such a treat! Daddy was singing in the choir, so it was just Mommy and Carter. He was SO well behaved!

Sydney was so precious all dolled up in her Easter dress!

Shots of the kids together sure are hard to get!

As you can see!!

They say three's a crowd...

So I realized it's been awhile since I have posted about the family and thought of three things to share with you. Two good, one not so good. Can you guess?

1. SNOW!!

Yes, this was the sight we woke up to one morning! My first real snow since I've lived in Dallas! They had gotten snow once on Christmas day, but since I was in VA with my family, I had missed it. And it didn't just snow...

It snowed....

And snowed... all day and night. In fact, it turned out to be the MOST snow Dallas has EVER gotten! Woohoo!! About a foot total. In Carrollton I think we got about 10 inches, but it was close for us.

This is what we woke up to the following morning.

So we decided it was time to let the kids go outside and play in the snow. After all, when will this ever happen again? When they are teenagers? Sydney was not too happy about being bundled up! We usually can go out in sweaters and a hat and just be fine. But not on a snowy day like today!

Here I am with my two little snow bunnies!

Sydney didn't like the snow when I first put her down in it, so we stayed on the porch area. But she got close and started to think that maybe she would give it a try...

Sydney and I watched on the porch while Daddy and Carter made a snow fort that ended up turning into a snowman.

Carter definitely didn't mind the snow at all!

Yes, my son is wearing two different gloves. We couldn't find the match to either, so we used them together! And here, Sydney actually ventured out into the snow finally!

And here we have the finished product...

The world's weirdest looking snow fort that turned into a snowman!

2. Lice!

Yes you heard it right, the not so good news was that Carter came home with an awful case of head lice! Here I am working hard to get it out of his hair. This was probably the longest night of my life. It took several hours to work on his hair... and then we had to worry about our own! I had a very slight case and lucky Steve had none! Sydney didn't have any until several days later we found a few. So we had to treat her too, which was pure torture! But we are finally lice free, and happy about that...

3. Did you guess right? Well yes, they say that three's a crowd! So I guess in September we are going to find how crowded it is going to be! Presenting... baby Westdyk #3!!

We are very excited about this new addition!

Now that I am almost 12 weeks, we are finally letting the world know! My due date is September 9th. So far this has been the sickest and most tired pregnancy, but I guess that just means that things are going well so far! Now we can't wait to find out in a couple of months if we are having a boy or girl!