My Besties!!!

I have had quite a few close, close friends in school growing up and several of them are coming to mind as I type this. We are all still pretty close and keep in contact and see each other as often as the good Lord lets us, but I have to say that I have the two very best friends a girl could ask for now in my adult life. These two girls have only been my friends for almost five years now and in those five years I have been truly blessed. So I would like to take the time to tell all the things I LOVE about my besties!!

I love that us and our husbands are great friends.
I love that we all share the same love for our Savior.
I love that we have all had tremendous struggles the last several years and we were all there to love each other through it.
I love that we share the same church family.
I love that we hold each other accountable.

 
I love that we all have babies and that they are all friends.
I love that we have date nights with each other. (Shout out for Taco Tuesdays!)
I love that we love each other even with all our quirks and craziness!
I love that we can take vacations together and still be friends at the end of it. LOL!!
I love that when one is hurting, we all are hurting.

I love that when one is happy, we all are happy.
I love that they are inspirations to me everyday.
I love that we can have other friends and still be besties to each other.
I love that our husbands are Magic geeks together.
I love that we can all fit in one car, although an SUV would have been more comfortable :)

I love that in desperate situations, I KNOW that we can count on each other to be there.
I love that we can challenge each other to be better Christians and not feel judged.
I love that my house doesn't have to be perfect when they come over.
I love that I can tell them ANYTHING!
I love that I can have the worst day in the world and they would be there to help me go grocery shopping. I will never for get that, by the way...

I love that there is no jealousy in our friendship.
I love that you can say, "I'm cleaning the house" and that means something completely different to all of us...Ha ha ha!! Love you, Krystole!!
I love that they love me.
I love that we can show up at church and completely color coordinate! :)

I love that I can continue to make this list and know that it will never be complete!!

A HUGE thank you to Krystole Glover and Kara Deal for being my besties and I hope we are besties until our Jesus returns! Love you!

The "Scoop"

We are definitely in a time of transition in our family in ALL areas. For most of you, you already know what is going on with the "Bailee situation". For those that don't, I will give a brief overview....

When Bailee was four years old, an investigation was opened with CPS against Bailee's biological mother, who we will call.....Megan. Bailee was placed with us temporarily while she went through the CPS process to get her back, which did not happen. We ended up getting custody of her and life went on....for a while.

When Bailee was six years old, fixing to have her seventh birthday, she went to "Megan's" house for the month of July, which was part of the agreement in standard visitation. In that month, we get to choose what weekend WE want. We choose the weekend closest to her birthday, obviously...So, she comes over that Friday and things were great. The next day, however, Bailee informs Kyle and I that "Megan" took Bailee to a hotel for the night so that they could hang out, swim, whatever...great!! That sounds fun, we thought. Then she proceeds to tell us that her mom tucked her into bed and left....SHE LEFT!!! Let me say again....SHE LEFT HER DAUGHTER AT THE HOTEL!!!! We weren't sure what we could do, so we called the CPS hotline to make a report...if nothing else, we reported it. We tell them what is going on and because of "Megan's" history with them, they launch another investigation and Bailee does not return for the rest of the month and cannot have any contact with her mom at all until further notice.

Fast forwarding a bit....so for the next year and a half, we have dealt with her lying, drugs, her family (which explains some of her dysfunction), rehabs, CPS, etc.... We finally have to close our case with CPS because she pretty much refused to comply with EVERYTHING they asked her to do....since then, she has spent over a month in jail for burglary of a habitation, she is now on probation for the next three years with a felony conviction and today we were officially informed that she is, in fact, pregnant again.

There is a little back ground and some reasons for why we were trying to pursue adoption. There is A LOT more to the story, but you can see the big picture. We are still doing supervised visitation and the stress of the open court case is wearing on ALL of us. We have had enough!! So, Kyle and I finally talk about how maybe we are being to hard on her...I know it sounds crazy, but I had to step away from my obsession with ....HER! I was constantly trying to figure out what she was doing, where she was going, what she was lying about....I had to finally just STOP! Once I got away from that, I felt like I was just trying to "win". So, back to me and Kyle talking....we talked about giving up the adoption/removal of rights and giving her another shot, her LAST shot. She is on probation and has another baby on the way, if she screws up this time....it's OVER!!

So we call her and invite her to come over and talk about our situation. I was so nervous all morning!!! We all don't just sit down in a room together and expect things to go well...so things started out ok, we all could tell we were all on edge, trying so hard not to piss each other off by choice of wording. The ice was broken and we saw the "sober Megan". We haven't seen her in so long, we forgot how easy it was to get along with her. The talk was pleasant, concerns were voiced without fighting and we were, in fact, able to reach an agreement. We are beyond excited to have ALL of this finally over and some normalcy back in our lives. Please continue to pray for us though. No papers have been drawn up and signed yet, so we are still a little anxious that she may change her mind. Also, continue to pray for "Megan". She has one of the biggest holes to dig out of that I have ever seen. Her life is fixing to change in such a big way and she doesn't have a clue. And pray for Bailee too, "Megan" has not told her about the baby yet. I'm sure she will be excited for a new sister...it's a girl...but, her life on that side of the family is going to change in a big way too.

A lot of things are happening right now and I am just hoping and praying that we are making the right decisions....God's decisions....

Oklahoma Here We Come!!!!

I know. I know. I am writing another blog....sorry! But this is my week off and I have a lot of catching up to do. There is no telling when I will have this kind of time again, so....here we go again :)

I can't go another second without telling you about our family vacation we had this summer. This is something we do not get to do often, so it is always a big deal for us when we do. This year, we wanted to go somewhere where we would ALL be able to enjoy it. The age difference in the kids is pretty big, so it really narrowed our choices. After long deliberation of about a week :) we decided on a trip to Oklahoma City!!!

We didn't have huge plans, just the zoo, some shopping (cause we all know our mall sucks!) and lots of swimming in the hotel pool. The car ride there was actually pleasant and we had zero accidents. Hallelujah!!! Of course we can't do anything the easy way, so naturally we got lost while using a GPS....I know!! How in the world can you screw that up, you ask? Simple. The hotel was pretty much brand new, so the GPS took the address we programed and took us to the address closest to what it knew....which was clear across town, through a million different highways and construction to a crappy little library!!! GREAT!!! Now what!?! So, I went across the street to the nearest gas station. I told them the deal and asked how to get back to where we had come from. Sweet people, by the way....So! We finally got to the hotel and got settled in and never left the rest of the day. What do you do with four kids and a restless husband at a hotel all day?.....SWIM!!!!

Posted that one just for you, Krystole!! I didn't get as many pics as I wanted because Madison refused to let go of me the ENTIRE time we were at the pool...this was pre-swimming lessons :)

So we wake up the next morning feeling pretty refreshed and reading to hit the zoo!!

The kids were beyond excited because, naturally, our zoo sucks! I have to add, we got there without any trouble what so ever, thank you. There was so much to do and see that we decided to start with the sea lion show. A lot of people said it was awesome and it was.

The kids loved it! Then it was time to find our way around the ENORMOUS zoo and it was already starting to get hot. Our mission was to make it ALL the way to the elephant exhibit, which is at the very back of the park. We finally make it there and it was amazing! The exhibit itself was as tall as a three story building. You walked up to the top and looked down at the elephants. It was pretty neat and to top it off, they had a little baby elephant....so cute!!

Then it was lunch time so we headed in doors for some grub and air conditioning. The inside was awesome cause it looked like a jungle :)

After re-energizing and relaxing for a little bit, we walked through as much of the park as we possibly could before the heat was unbearable. Here were some of our favorite exhibits...

Not that you can really tell, but these gorillas are all piled in a corner of a massive field because it is the only little bit of shade they could find...they looked so hot and miserable :(  We finally left hot and miserable ourselves and went back to the hotel to cool off in the pool. We played in the pool the rest of the day.

The next day, we got up, packed up the car and went to the mall....which turned out to be mostly closed down due to tough economic times. Well, crap!! So, we got on our fancy shmancy GPS and went to another mall :) We ate lunch, shopped a while and then started our trip home. And, of course, our trip would not be complete without stopping and visiting their local Cherokee Trading Post...

Your welcome :) All in all, we had an awesome time. We are already planing our next adventure, which hopefully will be this same time next summer.

Here are a few more pics from our Oklahoma City adventure...