New things Zach has been into.....

Hey guys....another post from Zach here. Thought since my mom has been slacking on the updates I'd better get on here and post one myself! Thought I would share a few of my favorite things and a couple of new things I can do now all by myself! Enjoy....

I absolutely LOVE cabinets! Perfect spot to hang out. I enjoy this cabinet as well as a couple of cabinets in our kitchen.


I've learned to brush my teeth....ok, maybe not brush them but I LOVE to chew on my toothbrush! I may be known to throw a bit of a fit if my mom attempts to actually brush my teeth!

I LOVE diapers and the boxes they come in! One of my all time favorite past times is emptying the bags of diapers into a big pile and then climbing into the box with one of the packages still in it to give me a little height....

Dropped something that's just out of reach....

Dang it.....reached a little too far!

I can now pull the chairs out from the table and there is a perfect leg rest step for me to climb up. Next thing you know I've managed to get myself up to the top of the table where all the stuff is that I've been trying to reach for so long!

I'm not doing anything....honest! I'm not shopping here, just helping dad clean out his wallet!

Thought I'd share dad's debit card with Harley....now he can go buy his own treats since he's been restricted from treats from mom and dad til he loses a little weight! I think he looks GREAT and has tremendous stamina and speed....in our backyard! Then he's got to rest as that's a lot of work for a pug!

Hangin at the top of the stairs with Bailey waiting on my slow parents to get up here....climbed these stairs all by myself!

And lastly....yep...got another new hat! This was in my stocking so I guess Santa is to blame for this one!


That's all for now. Be looking for a VERY exciting update in the next couple of weeks! My adoption will final on February 17th!!!!! Who's ready to celebrate?

Love Zachy

Christmas with the McMullen's

The day after Christmas, we got up and traveled to my parents house. Takes about 4-4 1/2 hours to get there, depending on the number of stops we have to make! Everyone loves going to my mom and dad's....what's funner than visiting a farm when you're a kid? There are 6 kids in our family and 4 of us made it home to celebrate Christmas over the weekend. The other 2 visited the in-laws this year....dang in-laws! Autumn unfortunately didn't get to join us for our trip....apparently her job thought she needed to work!

Here's Zach entertaining himself on the way to Grandma and Grandpa's.....



My dad always does his own shopping for everyone. My mom gets gifts from both of them, then my dad likes to do something special on his own. Well Treyton has been saving money to buy a car, so my dad got him a gift that would encourage him to keep it neat once he gets it! He's explaining the concept of his gift in this photo. By the end of the night, Treyton opened probably 10-15 random gifts from my dad all to go in his car cleaning kit. Was rather comical...felt like every other gift went to Treyton! He was a good sport about it!

Grandma Cindy made Justin a new quilt for his bedroom we are redoing. He's into the camo-thing so he of course loved it! Hasn't slept with any other blankets since!

Zachary had fun wrestling with cousin Dylan! My sister has a GREAT video of the two of them playing chase. She posted it on her blog and it makes me laugh everytime I watch it! I have NO clue how to steal it from her blog, so you are going to have to go check it out at her site. If you click on Cummings Chronicles on the side of my blog, then it will take you to her site. Then it's the post about Zachary and Dylan.


It was nice enough that we got to play outside with everyone! Zach is playing on the swingset with the "big boys."


Fun with Grandpa and Grandma.....Grandpa is known for giving fun rides on the 4-wheeler! Grandma lets kids run the roost and get into things. This wagon was full of frozen water and leaves....I was fussing, Grandma let him play in it! :) Note Zach's crazy hood in the pic with my dad and the 4-wheeler. Grandma bought him a new jacket with a hood that stands so tall it could've poked my dad's eye out!




We had a wonderful holiday and enjoyed spending time with both Donnie and I's families. Donnie and the boys had 2 weeks off from school and then my job blessed us with closing the office from Dec 24th until Jan 5th! So we got plenty of hanging out time in! Now that I've posted all our Christmas fun....I can move on to other things.....like our remodeling/demolition going on at our house, Zach's adoption signing and upcoming court date, and fun things Zach is doing now that he's a whopping 16 months old!!!!! Sounds exciting doesn't it!

Christmas with the Jones'

We celebrated Christmas Eve with Donnie's family. Had a scrumptous meal that I forgot to take pictures of! Spent time hanging out and chit chatting. And of course there were the gifts!

Fun times opening gifts.....








The evening ended with a special gift for Donnie's parents. A generational picture quilt of our family! The top of the quilt was pics of Bob and Nancy as kids and of their wedding. Then pics of Donnie, his brother and sister as they were growing up. Then each of Donnie and his sibs had a row for their family. Then pics of all of us together at the bottom. It was a huge hit! Was a beautiful quilt I must say....of course it was cuz it had pics of us on it!




It was a wonderful evening, which ended with a tissue paper fight. I'm not sure how it really got started, but eventually it was like 8 against 2! Not fair odds if you ask me! The 8 did not include myself or Donnie.....we were the 2! However by the end it felt like he switched sides and was no longer guarding/protecting me as a husband should! :) I don't have photos of this event as I was under attack and couldn't photo graph being savagely pelted with tissue paper wads! Poor me.....

Yes we did have a Christmas!

Ok....so I'm WAY behind the times and haven't posted on our Christmas festivities yet. So I'm catching up! We had 3 Christmas's....Christmas Eve with Donnie's family at his sister's house, Christmas Day at our house with us and the kids, the day after Christmas we traveled to my parents house for Christmas with them and my sibs (minus 2 of them that is as they were with the in-laws!).

Anyhow...here's Christmas at our house......

Merry Christmas my sweet boy! What a great gift to wake up to!


On Christmas Eve, everyone in the house gets a gift from Rudolf. He leaves a pair of Christmas lounge pants/pjs for everyone so they can wake up feeling festive Christmas morning!


On to the gifts.....


Harley and Bailey CLEARLY are asking if there was anything left for them under the tree....but not really under the tree since we didn't have one up due to the remodeling we are doing!


They spotted the stockings! They must smell fun!


And new beds for both! They scored!


Santa brought Zachy a new car to play in! It's GREAT for taking walks around the block and gives him something to do other than just sit in the stroller!


Santa brought Autumn a new TV....spoiled!!!!!


Santa brought our family a Wii game system! Goodness I found muscles I haven't used in years! :)


Treyton was into the spirit of Christmas this year and picked out very nice gifts for everyone. You can do that when you are 18, have a job and live at home with NO bills! :) He posed with each person after they opened their gifts from him. I think he was more excited for people to open what he got them rather than opening gifts himself!

I was VERY surprised with my gift.....new ipod touch screen. Please ignore the bags under the eyes, tired look and the pile of stuff behind me! It was early morning people give me a break! :)




Autumn was surprised by her digital camera....


Justin LOVED his gift....a PSP....he's hardly put it down since Christmas!




Donnie got a GPS system. It's amazing we ever managed to get places without it! He of course insisted on using it the next day to find our way to my parent's house! Good thing we had that cuz I don't think we would've made it otherwise!


Zachy's favorite gift......the left over boxes!!! What a fun toy! Peek-a-boo anyone!


So that was Christmas morning. I'll do a post on each of our celebrations with our families too. Then I'll feel all caught up!

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