Zach's 1 year anniversary

Ok......I started this post on December 19th, which is the one year anniversary of when we got our Zachy boy! I spent lots of time looking for my fav picks to put on his one year post, then the holidays hit and we got very busy and now here it is 2 weeks later and I haven't posted our special post of Zach! Sooooo, I'm going to post what I had loaded 2 weekds ago and call it good so I can get on to blogging about our holidays! So here is what I started on December 19th......

One year ago today we got our little boy! Hard to believe a year has already gone by, yet feels like Zach has been a part of our lives forever! I will never forget the excitement and anticipation we had for the whole 24 hours we had to wait to get him. Donnie and I experienced the miscarriage of twins in September and we had been praying about what to do regarding our desire to have babies. On December 16th, I put a prayer request in at church that if adoption was to be the route Donnie and I were to take, then for God to open those doors. The VERY next day, I received an email from our foster care worker asking if we would be interested in taking a 3 month old baby boy with the intent to adopt. It blew me away (althougth I'm not sure why as I asked and I received!) that she emailed me about this as we had not told her to put us an adoption list.

So in the email she asked if we were interested and I of course said we were. Then I talked to Donnie who I think was a bit panicked! I got more info on him and she put our names in with several other families that were interested in him. It was so hard not to get excited while we waited! In the email, she had said it would be a week or so. Then the next morning I got a call from her....we had been chosen and they needed us to take him the next day!!! YIKES! Now remember we have teenagers...so we had not ONE single baby item!!! Thankfully my friend Sheri had an infant carseat we could use! We went and purchased all the basics and then got lots of hand-me-downs from Sheri, my sister and anybody else who had small boys running around that we knew! It was such a blessing as we only had 24 hours to get what most parents have 9 months to get ready!

So off we went on December 19th to pick up our boy....... here he is on our first night at home.....

He used to do this everytime we changed his clothes/diaper. Still does every once in a while. We were blessed with a laid-back baby who seemed to bond immediately! Something I was very concerned about.

The next day he went to work with me. I was very blessed in that I was able to take Zach to work with me 3 days a week for the first 3 months we had him. I am convinced this also helped with our bonding and attachment. Now I can't get him off my hip! :) Here we are at the office....

Sheri brought to work her baby carrier so that I could have use of my hands while still holding him. We had quite a time figuring the dang thing out and I never could've done it on my own. My co-worker Michelle photographed the entire process. I would love to post all the pics as the timeline is so funny, but for the sake of space I'll just post a few of them.....

What the heck......

Here's what Zach thinks of the process........I can read his mind through his tiny little eyes. I'm sure he's wondering who in the heck has been intrusted with his life.

Whew.....safe and sound in the baby carrier! Only took a small army of people to get the contraption on me and get Zach actually into the carrier! Poor kid probably had nightmares about that whole experience! :)

Back at home.....poor daddy is tuckered out and Zach hasn't even been with us a whole week yet!

Christmas came shortly after Zach's arrival. Here he is on Christmas morning......sweet boy isn't he!

Our first family photo with our newest addition! This was Christmas Eve last year....

LOVE that I have a snuggler.......could just eat him up! Soooo adorable.....

Getting big enough to start helping around the house. Thought I would start him out with laundry so that by the time he's on his own with his own wife he can help her out without shrinking or changing the color of anything! :)

First time sitting up.......love that expression! It's like he's shouting "hey look what I can do!"

Zach with some of his cousins.....the 3 girls (Tayia, Trista and Tiffany) belong to my brother Derek and the 2 boys (Dawson and Dylan) belong to my sister Michelle.

Zach at the office........how much work do think I actually got done? This was nearing the end of his time with me at the office as he was too disruptive eventually!

Zach LOVES water.....fun times in the sink!

Apparently a little too much fun........tuckered him completely out!

Fun at Great Wolf Lodge with Autumn, Treyton, Justin and cousin Sylvia.....


PUDDING!!!!!!!! Who doesn't love a good pudding cup????

Such a brave boy out there in the wild......ok or in the backyard! He can't stand for his knees to touch the grass or concrete so crawls on his hands and feet. My little brother crawled like that so I just had to capture Zach doing it to compare the two.

Ok.....so there's a good look at half of Zach's time with us! Thankfully, I started this blog not too long after this pic so the last part of the year you all have seen already! We are just so blessed with our boy and thankful for the year we have had with him. We have found out Zach's birth mom is pregnant and due possibly in April. Please pray for her and the health of the baby! Dannon

HELP, my mom's gone too far this time.....

I thought I would use my mom's blog for a chance to do some venting of my own! My mom is obsessed with dressing me in these hats I feel are ridiculous. I'd like to take a minute to review the last year of my life with my parents, specifically lets look at all the types of hats/hoods/caps my mom has made me wear. Please note these pictures only represent some of my hats....I don't even have pictures of all of them there are just too many to capture on film!

It all started immediately after my mom and dad got me. She has these towels with hoods attached and they cover my head, usually eventually my eyes to the point I can't see anything! I STILL have to use these towels even though I'm 15 months old! In this picture I was only 3 months old....can you tell by my face that I'm alarmed about what may be in my future regarding headwear?

Then we went to Chicago where she started making me wear these types of hats....

Then there was Easter......which to her is a PERFECT hat occasion!

There's hats for swimming.....

There's hats that match outfits that she forces me to wear out in public. This particular one I had to wear to church!

There's the ballcap look......

There's the jackets that come with a hood already attached.....

Sometimes she does a hat/hood combo look for me.....NOT a favorite of mine I might add!

HALLOWEEN.....ugh, another perfect opportunity for a hat. This one is attached to the outfit!

There's the crazy brown hat that matches my heavy coat.....

There's of course the matching sweater and hat my mom posted pics of on her last blog post....

And there's the striped long hat I wear with all kinds of jackets I have....

Ok....so that brings me to what happened last night. I was minding my own business when my mom whipped out these pjs my aunt michelle sent us that used to belong to my older cousins. Not only were there gingerbreadmen on the pj's, but there was a matching night cap!!! Which she thought was adorable.......

Just look at this thing.....

And to make it even worse, there were matching slippers to complete the ensemble.....

So I'm fighting back ! :)

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.....I feel much better! Love, Zachy!

St. Jude 1/2 Marathon Trip

Many of you are aware we traveled to Memphis this past weekend where Donnie and 2 of his friends, Mark and Carol, ran in the St. Jude Marathon. Donnie and Carol ran the 1/2 marathon and Mark ran the full 26.2 miles! Many of you are also aware that childhood cancer is near and dear to my heart, thus my involvement with Camp Hope for the past 13 years. I don't even recall how I came across a family that has touched my heart that has a little boy Jake that spent much of his life at St. Jude. After following his journey and getting inspired by his family, Donnie and I decided that since he loves to run that he would run in the St. Jude Marathon. As he talked about it, Mark and Carol decided to join him. Donnie joined TEAM JAKE a couple weeks before the run and we started his fundraising efforts a little late. Several of you sponsored him and for that we say thank you! For those of you who didn't get to sponsor him and wanted to, it's not too late! You can still sponsor him for the next 4 weeks and it will count towards his amount raised. Email me if you aren't sure how to sponsor him!

Anyhow.....on to the trip! We left bright and early Friday morning! We picked Mark up at 4:45 AM and then picked up Carol. Mark's daughter Julie came along for the trip and Carol's daughter Tarren also joined us. Tarren also happens to be Zachy's babysitter! Carol has two children who live just outside of Memphis, so they joined us for the festivities too! Her son Tyler worked at Mile 19 water station while Kirsten helped us in our cheering efforts!

After checking in and getting their race packets, we went to the hotel and then out to eat. We of course went out for pasta so they could Carb Up! Donnie and I took some time to go out and drive the course so he could prepare himself for how many hills there would be and so I could find good cheering spots and figure out parking! My map reading skills caused some problems in the beginning, but eventually we drove the entire 1/2 marathon course. In my defense....there are A LOT of one way streets in downtown Memphis! And....it was starting to get a little dark! And....not all the streets were on the race course map so I got a little confused! :) We drove past St. Jude Hospital as well as the 3 housing options for the families.....the Ronald McDonald House, Grizzly House and Target House. I'm kicking myself for not getting a picture of any of them to put on here. Next trip I will have to do so as they are so meaningful to the families and the whole reason Donnie was there running!

Since Donnie signed up as a hero (meaning he was on a team).....he got a running singlet to wear. Needless to say his was a bit too snug to go running around amongst others in! :) I thought you looked cute honey! Thanks for being a sport and letting me take your picture in it! :)




Here is Mark, Donnie and Carol just before the start of the race. Look awfully eager don't they. Actually, they were freezing! Good luck guys and see you at the finish.....

Everyone stopped to take care of some business before the run started. Had to photograph the pitstop as I wanted you to get the whole experience of the race! :)

Donnie post-duty......

Carol exiting......

And Mark exiting.......I only photographed 1 of Mark's portapotty stops.....I would have like 5 more pictures if I would've photographed ALL his pitstops! :) I guess if I were running 26.2 miles then I wouldn't want to have to worry about going to the bathroom either!

Here's the starting line........

After we left our crew at the starting line, we went to find an appropriate spot to cheer! We had the PERFERCT spot! We were on Beale Street just before the mile 3 water station. There was a cement wall and everything for us to sit on while we cheered! While it was cold, we had a great time watching everyone. The atmosphere really is amazing. There were soooo many runners.....14,000 of them between all the runs that day!

Mark came across first. He was in one of the early running groups cuz he's superfast! So he was easy to spot for the picture! He's the one in the middle with the green shirt and black hat on.

Donnie and Carol came through with a mob of people. I got Donnie's picture and we didn't see Carol with him. We thought they had separated so stayed in our cheering spot watching for her. Well she didn't come and didn't come so we figured we missed her. Well we did. As I was looking back through my pics from the day. We found her in this picture I took of Donnie! She is the blond with the black head band on the opposite side of the street from me. There is a man in a green coat watching everyone from the curb just beside her. Donnie is behind her in the blue shirt and he's wearing a ball cap. He's also across the street from me. They certainly didn't make picture taking very easy on me! Geez guys that's the least you could've done don't ya think!

Carol at mile 10.2. You can hardly see her cuz I snapped the picture too early and I haven't figured out how to zoom in on pics when I post them yet! So you get to see her from a distance. She is the tiny black stick figure next to the person in the white long sleeve shirt with black tights. We didn't even see her coming and she yelled at us to get our attention! She's been told that next time she has to wear a bright colored shirt as lots of people wore black! When we got to this cheering spot, we had just missed Mark running by. Maybe had we not stopped at that gas station to go to the bathroom and get a hot cappacino then maybe we would've gotten his picture too! Sorry Mark! And you can't tell from the photo, but I was standing there with my bag of homemade chex mix....I did end up just holding it cuz I felt bad about eating while people who had been running for over 10 miles came running past! PLUS, I was so busy cheering I didn't have time to eat my snack!

Donnie at around 10.2 miles. He's sooo close to being finished, yet has so far left to go! :) Just behind me is a bit of an incline that I was sooo glad I didn't have to run up! :)

I didn't get back to the finish line in time to get a picture of Carol and Donnie finishing. As we got there, I saw Donnie from behind running down the ramp entrance to the stadium where the finish line was. Donnie's goal was to finish in 2 hours 10 minutes. He did so good.....he finished in 2 hours, 10 minutes and 12 seconds!!!!! Way to go Donnie!!!!!! This is his 3rd or 4th half marathon (he's gonna kill me for not knowing that!) and this was his best time out of all the half marathon's he has run! I'm so proud of him for all the hours he put in to training for this run! Carol finished the run in 2 hours 1 minute and some odd seconds! She cracks me up cuz she was all worried about not being able to run past 8 miles!

Here's Mark as he's rounding the corner to the finish line......can you believe that he just ran 26.2 miles! That's incredible! He finished in 3 hours 4 minutes and some odd seconds! Absolutely incredible! He finished like 11th in his age bracket! And he was all worried he wouldn't finish! You did great Mark!

Here's Donnie and Carol just after they finished. It took us FOREVER to find them. We did not plan well the meeting spot after the race was finished! Now we know for next year that we need to pick a spot to meet! Not immediately after the race, but like the next day all 3 of them said they would come back and run again next year! I'm hoping Donnie and I make this an annual trip! I of course will be cheering and he will be doing the running! :)

Close up of Donnie just after the running.....got enough snacks honey???? :)

Of course one CAN'T go all the way to Memphis and not make an appearance at Graceland!!! :) Carol's son lives outside of Memphis and we were on our way there when we passed this.......we HAD to stop for a photo opportunity! I tried to get pics of his house as it was all lit up for Christmas but they didn't turn out cuz we could only get as close as the wall along the street!

My one regret from the weekend was not running into Jake's family. I was hoping we would be able to find them in the sea of people so I could say hello! I proudly wore my Jake Owen Raborn Foundation shirt while we were in Memphis. For those of you who are looking for a great cause to donate to you....you should go check out his website for more info on him and his family! You can find them at www.jakesfoundation.org.

Well I can't end a post without an adorable picture of my boy! Poor Zach.....I think he looks adorable. Our big boys made fun of him in his matching sweater and hat! I don't care what they say I think he looks adorable!

For those of you who have been keeping up with our adoption journey of Zach. Please keep praying! We signed our intent to adopt paperwork on December 1st and are waiting on our court date to make him legally ours! We were hopeful this would happen before Christmas and the New Year's.....but I am being told it would take a miracle for that to happen! So please keep us in your prayers while we anxiously await our finalization of his adoption! Hugs to you.....Dannon