Twins. No, really.

And, as of Tuesday, 14-year-old twins! The one on the left is my brother, Jamal. The one on the right is his brother, Jamier. If you're thoroughly confused, see this post or this post for more on their story.

Happy (belated) Birthday to our little big one little/one big boys!

a father's day video

I love my dad. Here is a video of him doing some of the things he does best: loving his kids (or, in this case, his foster kids), making people laugh, and calling the hogs.
Calling the hogs is not one of the things Halle does best, however.






Just so you know, seconds before I started recording that, Halle looked like this. I started filming to capture this, not that. But it ended up being funnier that way.


Also, an embarrassing photo of my dad in really short shorts can be found in this Father's Day post.


Anyway. . .

Happy Father's Day, Dad!

How does your my garden grow?

Well, technically it's not mine, but ours. Every summer, my Paw Paw grows a garden in our backyard. My mom and I are his trusty assistants, and we take great pride in "our" garden. I've learned lots of gardening lessons over the last couple of summers. These lessons learned (along with the many seeds I've found in the dollar aisle at Target - how can I resist when they're only $1?!) have lead me to believe that I can actually grow things; thus, Mom and I have also been growing some other random plants (herbs, mostly), but those aren't as exciting as the big garden. Mom, Paw Paw, and I (as well as Tekia & friends, for a short time) planted the garden back in April. You'll notice it's planted under black plastic to keep the weeds out - it works! We planted yellow squash, zucchini, spaghetti squash, peas, red and green okra, zinnias, cucumbers, eggplant, and a few different kinds of tomatoes. Come see us for all your vegetable needs. Most of them anyway.

Mom and Paw Paw planting

Tekia, Rumi, and me planting

little baby plants

This is what our garden looked like back then. The freshly-tilled dirt at the end is where the peas are planted. Apparently weeds aren't as much of a concern with them?

Oh, and Halle was there, too. She looked cute. Like this.

This is what our garden looked like a month later.

And this is what our garden looks like now! If you're thinking that those humongous zuchinni plants on left look like a jungle that might have wild animals roaming around in it, you are not alone. And you might be right.

And here is some of the produce from our own personal farmer's market. Yummy. If you think "Larry-Boy" when you look at this picture, you've watched too many Veggie Tales movies.

These are what I'm most excited about!

So excited, in fact, that I couldn't wait to pick them. I had to fry a couple for dinner tonight.

And that is the story of how my our garden grows. Just call me MaryMaryQuiteContrary.

One time I held a stingray.

(I was not, however, in the buff while holding this stingray. My swim suit was strapless.)

That's all. Just thought you should know. Carry on.

It's the baby's fault.

Sorry for my lack of blogging lately! Allow me to blame this brief blogging break on the lovely Halle. For the last few weeks, it seems like nearly all of my time (at least the time that I'm not working) has been spent on her photographs. I've been trying to get all of her pictures edited, organized, and printed so that we could have them in albums and give them to her mom at her adoption ceremony. Okay, maybe the blame should actually be placed on me and the fact that I have absolutely zero self-control with my camera when there's a baby in my house. I don't even want to tell you how many pictures I took of that child. So I won't. I actually don't know the exact number, but I do know there were a few hundred printed and given to her mom. There wouldn't have been so many if she'd been just a little less cute or had slightly less captivating eyes or smiled a little less. But, alas, she's cuter than everyone else and has amazing eyes and smiles all the time. So she has been photographed a lot. And I've got the blog posts to prove it. Speaking of photographs, I was so busy trying to get them printed that I neglected to share with you photos from Halle's last photoshoot before she left. I promise to post those soon!

So anyway, last Wednesday was Halle's adoption ceremony. We, along with her adoptive family, many of their friends, and several staff members at Agape, gathered to celebrate Halle and honor all of her families, particularly her forever one. I suppose now would be a good time to tell you that Halle is not her name anymore. Her mother has chosen to change her name to Niva Grace (she'll go by both names). It won't officially be her name for quite a while, but I suppose it's a little closer to official now that her birthparents' rights have been terminated (that finally happened about a week and a half ago!) and her adoption ceremony has taken place. We're trying very hard to remember to call her Niva Grace when we see her in person, but I'll probably still refer to her as Halle on the blog, simply because I've already labeled all posts about her as "Halle" and I think it'll be less confusing that way. Or maybe I'll call her Bugsy. Or Pipsqueak. Oh, in case you're wondering, Niva is pronounced with a long i, as in ivy.

Side note: you may have noticed that I've added labels to many of my posts and a list of them can be seen in the lower right sidebar. I'm slowly working on going back and adding labels to all of my past posts (note to anyone who wants to start a blog: if you're at all interested in labeling your posts, start doing it when you first start your blog, not three years later!).

Back to the adoption ceremony. Thought I would share a picture before I sign off. Believe it or not, I only took a few! Here is one of Halle/Niva Grace after the ceremony with her foster and adoptive families.

300

Guess who we saw last weekend?


Through her research about moving older foster babies, Mom discovered that we should probably wait three to six weeks before seeing Halle. We waited three weeks and one day. We were very glad to see her.



And I think she was quite glad to see us as well.



Good visit.


(And this was my 300th post.)