February was full of making lots more fun memories with our sweet Emma! February started with us having to renew our Home Study as a part of our adoption process. We have been in this process for almost 2 1/2 years and Emma has been one of the most faithful prayer warriors you could imagine in this quest to adopt her little brother from Ethiopia. Our Home Study went off without a hitch and we are back to collecting more documents to update our dossier. We are praying diligently that 2013 would be the year that we bring our son and Emma’s little brother home from Ethiopia! In order to celebrate, our family spent the whole day together that Saturday enjoying a quick photo shoot at our sweet neighbor’s house, shopping at the East Cobb Avenues in the freezing rain, and dinner at Outback along with more shopping. Tons of quality family time!
February was full of travels for all of us except Emma. Clint got to go to a really cool conference in Florida and came home a day before I had the opportunity to go to a really cool conference at the Creation Museum just outside of Cincinnati. Upon hearing of our travel schedule, Emma proclaimed “I am the only one that is home all week!” As if she had to pay all the bills, scrub all the floors, and that sort of thing! We also enjoyed long meals with several friends at restaurants and at our house. We treasure those moments with those that God has put in our lives to help us grow and become more like Him.
Emma and Clint went to the Daddy-Daughter date night at NCCS and had a blast. After the show was over, Clint and Emma went out with Emma’s good friend Ella and her daddy for dinner. I was home since I didn’t want to crash the date and they stayed out pretty late! That next week was the week that Clint and I both had our trips…while Clint was gone, Emma and I had a lot of fun together and I know she had a blast with Clint while I was gone.
The next week was Winter Break at school and our family had a lot of fun having a couple of lazy days around the house enjoying each others company. We are working hard to revamp our Sunday morning routine at home. It seems that we are always rushed and hurrying each other out the door. We have started making a rule that breakfast is at 8am on Sunday mornings…either at home or at Waffle House. That allows us to get to church a few minutes after 9:00 in plenty of time for the 9:30 service. We can hang out with our friends and not have to be so rushed. 2 weeks in to this…so far so good!
We spent one evening this last week driving to Athens and back to cheer on our NCCS Varsity Boys Basketball team in the state playoffs. We were bummed that the boys lost right at the end and that made it tough not getting home until almost 11pm. But…Emma was a trooper. She was so excited to have gone to the game that she got right up on Thursday morning with no trouble to go to school. We are blessed that she is so easy going!
Emma continues to learn more words and her personality continues to be very laid back and also very particular about things. She is so smart and wants to always be like the big kids. They had the spelling bee at school a few weeks ago and now she wants to work on spelling every morning in the car on the way to school. She is also still working on learning Bible verses and loves to read her Bible. Dress up clothes continue to be her favorite activity the moment she walks in the door. Clint and I worked together to make her a really cool new portable dress up clothes box…she loves it!
March has arrived and we are just about a week away from the birth of my sister’s first child. Emma is SO excited about her new cousin and can’t wait to find out if it’s a boy or a girl. I know that Emma will be great with her cousin and hopefully soon with her little brother too! I have posted several pictures below to give you a glimpse of what’s up with the Stranges these days.
