The Best and the Worst

Well It's been a crazy month full of good and bad stuff.

The most important of which was our 2 court dates this month. At our First court date we were quite disappointed because even though both of her parents are still in Jail the judge decided to give them till the full 8 months had passed to get out and make progress to get her back. But this last week they finalized termination of parents rights. It was very emotional for me I was extremely excited and happy but I was really sad (to the point of tears) listening to her parents ask for more time. Sad for them and for our little one. It's sad they couldn't get it together for her. My emotions were really confused. I'm excited now though because they said they would file our adoption papers the first week in Jan. and she will be ours. We will take her through the temple sometime in Jan or Feb. I am truly blessed to have her and know it's what was meant to happen. It doesn't often happen this fast or the first time. I feel like Heavenly Father had a hand in it. We have decided to call her Meg from now on. She took to it right away. We had tried calling her other names for a week at a time with no response. So we're glad she liked this one so well. It's all that we call her now.

Many People will think we are crazy for this one but we headed to Disneyland this month as well. This time we went with Nate's Parents and Brother and his family. The bad part of the trip was our car broke down on the way there. It is unrepairable. Well Nate's going to put a new engine in it so we can have 2 vehicles but pretty much unfixable. Luckily or unluckily Andy and Anne were behind us because they had to stop and fix a flat tire. We had just crossed into CA so they picked up a rental in Las Vegas and we found a gas station that would let us park our car there for the week and went on our way.
It was one of my favorite trips to Disneyland. Probably ties with the one when I took my sisters with me.

We had so much fun with all of the cousins playing and riding rides together. It was Nate's moms first time there so it was fun for the kids to show her all their favorite rides. It was so good for me to have a chance to get away from all the chores of daily living too. Andy ran around getting fast passes for all of us and the kids and the rest of us took it easy and went from ride to ride. With 14 of us I was impressed that we only lost 1 of us once. But Bristole found a park employee so it wasn't to bad. We only got like a block down main street before we realized she wasn't there and she was right up front when we came back down the road.
It was a lot of fun and I hope to do it again though I've promised Nate a few years between trips this time. He says 5 I think maybe 3 tops we'll see. I'm going to do a post with just pictures after this one because there were so many I wanted to put on.

Brooks says her head fell off

Catching Birds

We also spent a day at the beach. The beach was very relaxing and a lot of fun to see the kids just spending time relaxing together. We walked along the beach and gathered shells and even swam a little. It was overcast but the water was still warm enough. It was so fun. When we ate Anne told the kids she would give them $5 if they could catch one of the seagulls that were flying all around our food. The kids were setting up traps and bait . It was super funny watching them try to catch the birds. We left an unopened bag of Dorritos down by the blanket at the beach while we went up to the benches to eat. We noticed a bunch of birds swarming at our blankets when we got back over there they were gone bag and all. It was a super fun trip.

We got home and got our van towed back to our house with a lot of help from Nate's Brother and Dad. After making sure we needed a new engine we decided we needed a new more reliable van so we went and got one this weeekend. It's a Silver Nissan Quest. I hope it will last for many years to come. Well that's our month and our vacation. I will upload pics later.