Disneyland--Pagel Edition!

From September 18th-21st, the entire Pagel family went to California on a family vacation (minus Jace… he got to stay with his Grammy and Papi!) Barb and Denny rented a 6 room house close to Disneyland that had a pool, so that was a lot of fun! Matt, Mick, and I drove to Cali Thursday morning (Some were already there, and others were coming Thursday night). We went to Disneyland all day Friday, which was awesome. Abbi had never been, and the Pagels hadn't been in 18 years? Kenna was a trooper and went on the rides that her and baby Dakota could handle! We then spent Saturday at the house swimming, and in the afternoon, we went bowling. It wouldn't be a Pagel hang-out without bowling. ;) Ashley got really really sick on Saturday, and she spent the entire day in her room. (It lasted a week!) We were all so thankful that we decided to do Disneyland on Friday since she was feeling fine on Friday and was able to enjoy the day! All in all, it was a great trip!

 The AMAZING pool! I would love this to be my backyard! 

 Disneyland! 

 Lunch time: my failed attempt at a picture.

 <3 Pagel Girls! <3

 Splash mountain!

 Here is the only family picture we got, and I am so glad we got it! 

 Disneyland was decorated for Fall! It was so fun! 

 My mom asked for a picture when we went on Thunder Mountain… so here it was! It has been under construction the last 2 times I have gone. Let's just say it rides SO much smoother AND faster now… which led me to run off the ride looking for a restroom to barf in right after… I've never gotten sick on that ride before, but I'm thinking with all the changes it is just now another ride to add to my list of "Can't go on these" rides.

Bowling! 

There was talk about making this an annual trip, so we will see what next year brings! :)

Blue Horse

I spent some of last week and some of this week working on "Blue Horse" with Jace. It was a really laid back "blue horse" unit with it covering a couple of weeks. Some days we didn't get to it, and that was just fine. With knowing that I would be out of town at the end of this week, I knew I wouldn't be able to fit in a whole section in 3 days, so I spread it out over the last 2 weeks. Many of these activities didn't last long. I found myself getting frustrated with how short they lasted, Jace's lack of attention or desire to do an activity, and I had to remind myself that this is just for him to be exposed to these concepts, not master them. He will have plenty of time to learn that a horse is called a horse and not a "neigh neigh". Until then, we will continue having fun as mom does most of the crafts herself. Haha.

Here is our bin of blue items:

 I left the room for a minute and came back to a very excited Jace exploring the blue bin. On top of the kitchen table.

 We colored with blue crayons, and worked on sticking blue stickers to paper. He is really good with big stickers, but with small ones, he needs some help.

 We made a blue horse using parchment paper and bits of blue streamers.

 Jace played with blue glowsticks in the bathtub. 

 And still no desire to match heads and tails. He just wants to play with the cards.

 We worked on pointing out the correct animal, as well as matching the cartoon animal to the real animal. His attention span for this was non-existent. 

 We used dot markers to color his blue horse!

 He then colored his other picture of a horse with crayons.

We ate lunch out of a blue ice-cube tray!  

 We practiced sorting yellow, red, and blue bears. He knew what to do, but again, after about a minute of this, he was done. But I would hand him a colored bear and he would move it to all the different dots of the same color. 

 We painted with blue paint!

 We made a blue handprint horse. Or I should say, Jace made a blue handprint and mom turned it into a horse. 

 Jace played with blue play-doh!

 We practiced stringing blue beads again this week. We will continue to work on it. :) 

 And this is what he would rather do with the beads...

First meeting scheduled!

So I received a call from our caseworker this morning, and Matt and I have our first meeting with her next Wednesday morning (the 24th) at 9 am! YAY! I am so so so excited to finally feel like we are starting this process! This is step 1 of many, and I'm excited to get more information from her next week! It's all starting to sink in… we are doing this! Ahh! :)

Small Update

So I really don't have much new information to share about our journey to adopt! We still haven't heard from our caseworker yet! We did find out that she is finally back from vacation tomorrow though, so I will hopefully be hearing from her early this next week.

But on another note, my brother-in-law's cousin "B" is going through the adoption process with CFC! She even has our same case worker! She and I have been emailing and she has been able to give me information that I have been looking for. It was all God's grace to be able to email someone with some of my questions. It really is helping me to wait well as we wait to hear from CFC. Her story is just awesome. She started the process with CFC in February and has already been chosen by a family. Her baby will be born in October! It made me realize that maybe this process won't take as long as I thought it would. It doesn't mean that it won't, but it is all in God's hands! We will wait as long as God calls us to wait. 

Anyways, it was a MAJOR encouragement to receive the email from "B" and to have so much of the process explained. I find that I have days where I am mentally overwhelmed with the idea of adoption because I don't know what it will look like for our family. I told Matt this past week that we just have to wait. We can't worry about the details. They will all unfold in time. In the meantime, we wait, trusting that this is exactly where God wants us today. We may have more answers tomorrow, in a few days, next week… and we may not. :) 

Oh, and another random thought for today…. there are so many. :) 

I listened to another sermon called "The Gift of Children" by Voddie Bauchum. (Thank you, Kristin, for sending it to me). I cried, and even sobbed, at various points of this sermon. It was challenging, and yet so encouraging at the same time. Many many many of the points that Voddie made in the sermon have been key points that the Holy Spirit has been convicting and challenging me on the last few months already. It is always encouraging to hear a sermon reiterate the very same things that you have been convicted about and are already trying to change. I have been blessed by the Lord to have Jace already. The number of children I am blessed with isn't an indicator of how much I am loved by God, and it isn't something that I can earn. I have really been convicted about rejoicing with those who rejoice when they are pregnant the last month. I've found out about 2 other people being pregnant the last 2 weeks, and I didn't cry! :) I am always happy for those who are blessed with a baby, but in a sense, I become discouraged about my lack of blessing in that area when I see so many others getting pregnant while I continue to try. It's my sin that causes me to be envious. Since trying, I have estimated about 20 friends who have gotten pregnant during this time. But as I really focus on rejoicing with those who rejoice, and reminding myself of ALL that God has done for me, my discontentment is shattered and I can have peace that this is where God wants me, and His plan is good. His plan for my family is perfectly planned out. I can just sit back and see what each month brings. 

Anyways, I'll post if I get more updates! :) 

Yellow Duck!

This week we worked on "Yellow Duck!" It was probably the funnest week yet. It's fun to start seeing some progress! :) We watched some cartoons with ducks in them this week too. Here was our week…

Here is our bin of yellow things! 

Jace and I lined up his yellow items along some tape "tracks" I made for his cars. 

Jace colored with yellow crayons and a yellow marker. We also worked on sticking yellow stickers to his paper. He is definitely getting the hang of that too!

We practiced counting to 10 with the yellow counting bears.

This week we worked on sorting red and yellow. He did pretty well with this. I think he got the concept, but really just wanted to do whatever he wanted with the red and yellow bears. But in the beginning when I asked him to put the red bears in the red cup and the yellow bears in the yellow cup, he did it correctly probably 85% of the time. We will continue to do this each week as we add more colors. It was a great way to review red. 

We used Yellow Dot markers to color two different ducks.

We practiced matching heads and tails. He still wants nothing to do with this. 

 We matched real animals with cartoon animals. He did a decent job with this. We also used this to review ducks and bears, and all the colors. I would ask him to point to different colors and animals. 

We played with our yellow rubber duckies in a bin of water. I fully anticipated him to make a mess, and I wasn't disappointed. Haha. My kitchen floor was a puddle by the time he was done. He loved splashing in the water and really didn't want anything to do with the ducks except to throw them out of the water so that he could climb in. 

We painted with yellow paint and made a duck craft!

Jace played with Yellow pom-poms and his yellow counting bears again. 

We worked on stringing yellow beads again this week. He actually understood the concept right when I  gave them to him, but still has trouble stringing the beads by himself. I still have to help him with the entire process, but he did better than last week. He learned to put the bead on the string when I held it for him, and he learned to grab the string to pull the bead through. 

He then decided he wanted to stack his yellow beads. He loves stacking things at the moment. As soon as he finished stacking them, he was SO excited and threw his hands in the air and said YAY! I was so glad I had my camera ready to capture that moment. 

He was our "duck" dinner!

On Saturday morning, we went to feed the ducks. When we first got there, Jace was very intrigued by the ducks and just watched them gather and quack at him. :) We fed them some bread (Whoops… didn't read the sign about bread being bad for them until AFTER feeding them…). Jace really got into it by the end. It was such a fun family outing. It was still about 95 degrees outside, so we didn't stay long. We plan on going back in a couple months when the weather cools down.

That was our week! On to the next! :)