For Amy

Okay, I got tagged by my sis in law Amy and I thought it might be fun to play along...I have been tagged several times before, but really don't do this sort of thing on my family blog, so Amy, you gotta know I love ya to do this!

What were you doing

20 years ago: Okay, this dates me big time! I was enjoying my senior year in high school, listening to the best ever era of music, thought I was pretty cool for a small town girl, driving a VW rabbit, and working at Party Pals in the town I grew up in.

10 years ago: I had three handsome little boys, I was pregnant with little boy number four, we were remodeling my Root Ave. house due to an unfortunate dishwasher fiasco, life was moving right along at warp speed.

5 years ago: I was being a mom to four very busy little boys which obviously zapped my brain cells cause I can't really remember what I was doing-But I am sure it included Soccer, baseball, basketball, refereeing, disciplining, and lots and lots of laughing!

3 years ago: We had moved to our current home, decided to adopt and was in a full fledged paper chase to bring our baby girl home, We saw Maya's sweet face for the very first time on a computer screen, we were preparing for our trip to Taiwan and we cried many tears during the agonizing wait.

1 year ago: I was adjusting to being the mom of 5 kids, helping Maya adjust to her new life, finding myself after a very brief bout of post adoption depression, enjoying life with a sweet little girl in the house and enjoying the girls department at all my favorite places to shop!

So far this year: I have been trying to organize this house a bit better, I have been working on getting my jewelry business going better, we have enjoyed a quick trip to Monterey, and we are preparing for a trip to Utah soon.

Yesterday: I went walking in the morning with Maya, spent the day trying desperately to figure out why Miss Maya was so out of control ornery and trying to make her happy, worked on my jewelry business, attended a court of honor (boy scouts) for the big boys and got pinned by Tanner who earned his who advanced to a Life Scout, came home and got kids to bed and watched David Archuleta (?) kick some bootie on American Idol--love that kid!

Today: I walked my two miles with Maya, I should not be on this computer, I need to get tonight's jewelry show in order, I need to make a dessert for Dave an Jake to take to Cub Scouts tonight, I will spend the better part of my afternoon pretending like I am in preschool 2nd, 6th, 8th and 10th grade again as I help the crew with homework, and I will not eat chocolate!

Later tonight: Jewelry Show and my DVR-ed episode of American Idol, pick up for tomorrow.

Tomorrow: Another jewelry show, early out day for the boys, more walking with Maya, more not eating chocolate, and the other mundane things that I do everyday like picking up, laundry, sweeping the floor, playing with my girl, getting bossed around by my girl, etc, etc, etc.

This year I hope to: accomplish many goals I have set for myself to help me find a bit more balance, have more fun, keep exercising, take better care of myself, play more with my kids, and be a better mom and wife.

I will post new Maya pics soon!

Did you just say that?

Really, I don't know why these ignorant people seem to find me. Maybe it is because I am ultra sensitive to being watched in public? You see I come from a Ginormous family...12 kids, 2 parents, one marriage, all single births thank you very much! and we all got pretty used to being counted and talked about when went out as a family...and then I moved to California where the norm is to have 2.5 children, and I had 4 boys...now let me tell you, that gets certain people talking too. Oh and lots and lots of "Oh honey, are they all yours?" followed by many "God bless you's" to which I always answer "He DID!"

Anyway, Now we have our beautiful little adopted girl which really only adds fuel to the fire when we are out as a family or instantly makes David and I "the poor couple who could not conceive on their own so they had to go to China to get a child" when we have her alone. And seems to make me a magnet for very rude and obnoxious people to come chat with when its just Maya and me.

What I hear most often:

"Your daughter is beautiful, what is your husband?" (Umm, last time I checked he was a man!)

"If you already had four boys, what on earth made you decide to get another one?"

"How much did she cost?", "What did she set you back?", "I bet she cost you an arm and a leg!", and "What does it take to get something like that over here to the states?" (to which I answer, She did not cost me one penny, I paid for all the legal fees involved to bring her home, she's priceless, or just give them a blank stare and walk away)

"Why would you go and do that when you have kids of your own?"

And " Aren't you glad you signed up for a whole lifetime of that?" (said by a rude woman at the ballpark when my baby girl was throwing a fit because it was 100 plus degrees outside and she had sat through 2 games and did not want to be there anymore.)

Now I am so used to these questions and statements that they really do not phase me much anymore and I can quickly tell if I am going to need to get away from a person or if they are genuinely curious about adoption and not in a malicious way. Besides, most of the time you can redirect a question away from the personal stuff and unless the person is really DENSE, they get that they are being to personal.

But this last one got to me, there we were at our local craft store and after a very brief "Is she adopted?" conversasion with a lady in line--which went really well, she turned to me and said " It's just a shame that you did not get one with whiter skin, then she would look more like you." Okay, really did you just say that to me?

Number one, She is my daughter and we do not even see her skin color until people like you point it out to us, I really do not care what color her skin is, white, black, brown, purple, green, whatever. Number two, I can not believe you just said that in front of my 8 year old son...now I have to explain to him why you said that and he is "colorblind"! Third, I really, really hate that you feel it is a shame for my baby girl not to have whiter skin and that she will have to deal with people like you for the rest of her life!

Okay, sorry, ranting is over. I do want you all to know that I know that simply by adopting we opened ourselves up for each and every question and comment. I am not opposed to answering questions about Maya's adoption at all and even welcome them. I asked tons of questions before we adopted, and I am even drawn to families that I know have adopted. But when simple questions turn to small attacks on my daughter's ethnicity, or my mental state as to why I would choose to adopt when I have four perfectly good boys at home, the momma bear in me comes out!

That being said, I want to thank all of the people who simply say "She's beautiful!", "She's one lucky little girl" (No, I am the luckiest girl because I get to be her momma!), or simply smile and say nothing at all.

So here you have it, a not so brief lesson on what not to say to a family who has been BLESSED by adoption.

Down by the bay...

We spent a couple days in beautiful Monterey Bay this past week and all I can say is I can not believe I have lived in Nor Cal for 13 years and have never been there! It is really my new favorite place to go with the kids...and definetely with out the kids.

We did a lot of this:

The kids were in heaven on the beaches and in the tide pools, the boys quickly climbed to the top of very steep jagged rocks much to the dismay of their very over protective mom... and Maya squealed and scampered up the beach with each wave that came in. She was happiest splashing and throwing rocks and sand...that's my girl! We got some great video of her, so maybe I will try to post that soon.

And we explored some very cool places like Big Sur, Carmel, 17 Mile Drive, Pebble Beach and the world famous Monterey Bay Aquarium. We even saw some Humpback Whales on the ocean, but they were to far out to get a good photo of them.

It was a great couple of days. We can't wait to go back!

The Many Faces Of Maya!



My oh my she was on one tonight, so I grabbed the camera to try to capture some of her many faces that come with her many moods!

This is a face that I love to see and boy I wish I could bottle up the sound of her little girl giggles. I would save them for the days of drama that are sure to come with her teenage years, cause lets face it people, if she is this dramatic now I don't even want to think about the dreaded "change"!!!!

This is the face you get when you tell her to pull a "funny face"!

This is what you get when you tell her NO...and it comes complete with fake sobs and sighs followed by the occasional look up to see if you are watching and if it is working. Oh, and this look can follow you around the house if you try to remove yourself from its presence.

This is the face you get when she decides to put you in your place and don't even think she will hesitate...if you are not bowing to her royal highness, she will give you an earful!

This one and the one above by the title are her "I not talk (to you)" look which means she is pretty darn mad at you and if you try to get her to look at you she just turns the other way- and she is not easily distracted unless you have a bag of Pirates Bootie then she breaks in to her bootie dance and the world is a happy place again.

And this is her "I am so cute you could not possibly get mad at me!" look that gets me every time.

She is drama for sure but we love every single minute of it!

I heart Sarah!
Yay! I have a brand new look for my blog and I LOVE it! My cyber friend Sarah who is the soon to be adoptive mom to the sweet little miss Hannah Claire (what a lucky little girl!) hooked me up with this sweet design. Sarah and Rebecca are the talent behind Blogovers with Love and all donations raised there right now are going to the Chung Yi Orphanage in Taiwan...a place that is so dear to my heart. Maya's first home! It truly is an amazing place and I am so excited to be able to give something back to them. They took such great care of Maya for me until we could bring her home.
Thanks Sarah!

It was bound to happen sometime...

but we made it 15+ years without it happening and that my friends should be some sort of record or miracle or something!

This past weekend I was in COLD Detroit, MI. I mean COLD folks, the kind of COLD that knocks you on your can and chaps your cheeks the second you feel it kind of COLD! COLD! Nothing a wimpy CA girl should ever have to deal with for extended periods of time. What a wimp I am.

Anyway, I had been in meetings all day and decided to check my phone after we were done. I got a text message that had the title OUCH! and had a picture of Tanner holding this in the ER....

(This BTW is not a happy text to recieve when you are thousands of miles from home!)

Now, do the math here folks, Tanner +x-rays + ER= our first ever broken bone as parents of 4 active boys and one extremely active climbing fool little girl.

Now, Tanner + injuries are a given at our house, in fact it is quite expected. It does not even phase me that he was the one to break our "no broken bones" record.

Look at these two and don't let their handsome little faces fool you, they drive me to the brink of insanity on a daily basis. They are oil and water, you just can't mix them no matter how hard you try. As a mom I have dreams that one day they will like each other, heck I'll even take tolerate each other, and I am encouraged some days when for very brief moments of time they are civil to each other, but then they collide once again and are sent to opposite corners.

The story:
Matthew picks up a shoe and throws in "the vicinity" that Tanner was in accidentally (YEAH RIGHT!!!) hitting his brother. Tanner turns around and swings at Matthew and hits the back of his hand on Matthew's hip bone breaking it and sending his little brother flying into the closet. Two boys instantly rolling around on the floor in pain.

Ah brotherly love. It's a most embarrassing thing to explain to the ER doctors. And Tanner gets a nice little souvenir to make him brag..um I mean think about what happened for at least the next 4 weeks.

Lesson learned? I doubt that. I untangled them this morning in the bathroom while they were brushing their teeth! SHEESH!

Oh, and for the record, appropriate disciplinary action was taken with both boys. We do not promote this kind of behavior in our home and there are consequences for it. I just don't know how to stop it. They both get along smashingly with every other member of the family except each other. Don't get me wrong, I know they love each other, I just wish they could stand each other!

Have a great week...I am back to refereeing.

Christmas pictures

I am late in getting these posted! I have been entertaining my five kids for the holiday break and that left little to no computer time for me. The holiday break is finally over, the boys went back to school this morning, Maya is wandering around wondering where eveyone is, Dave is is Utah celebrating his sweet grandma's 100th birthday with family and I am enjoying the silence. I love to have my kids home for break, but with our out of control Nor Cal weather the past few days, we have been going a little nuts! My boys are quite active, so being house bound only brings out the naughty in them and the non stop teasing, poking and occasional hitting....oh and lets not forget the thrill it is for them to make Maya scream even higher pitched screams than usual as she runs for her life while they are chasing her down the halls. Just thinking about the noise level the past few days makes my head hurt!

Despite the noise, we did have a jolly good time together during the break, so here is a reacap in pictures.

Our Holiday Celebrations began with Maya's 2nd birthday! She is our Christmas Eve baby.

I loved stopping for a moment in all of the Christmas Eve rush and celebrating our sweet girls big day, but I can tell that I need to be a lot more organized in the future so that I can make her birthday special and not just another thing we do on Christmas Eve. Still, I spent most of the day thinking about a family half a world away and wanting to tell them how wonderful she is and how wonderful it is to watch her grow. There are so many things I would tell them if I could see them again, and the words "Thank you" do not seem big enough at all.

Here is Little Miss M in her Christmas dress - she would not quit twirling and dancing long enough for me to take a posed picture, but oh how much fun it was to see her all dressed up and twirling! I have dreamed of a dress like this for my baby girl for many many years!

Next came our traditional Christmas Eve celebration at our house with the other Smith family. Which brought a not so reverent reinactment of the Nativity, lots of good food and of course new Chrsitmas pj's made with love from Nannie!

Christmas morning came way to early!

And boy did the big guy spoil us this year...The boys got this and there has been some very heavy DDR and Guitar Hero competitions going on around here, even I got in on it and despite the fact that my boys laugh hysterically at my "lack of skills" I have a great time...even if I do STINK at it!

Maya was happy with a new teddy bear and her new baby And mom did not even get mad when she found this:

One brand new tube of Clinique lipstick down the drain...well actually not down the drain, just all over the walls, table, floor and Maya. Sheesh! What to do with this girl and her desire to put "lip" on!

All in all it was a fabulous Christmas and we really enjoyed ourselves. We even got to go to a couple of movies, the boys loved National Treasure Book of Secrets and tolerated Enchanted.

Happy New Year to you all!

Sending Christmas Kisses

Merry Christmas from our family to yours.

Christmas 2007 Family update

David and Janalee- Busy, tired parents to five wonderful kids.

David was recently put in as Bishop of our ward, which is basically like the priest or preacher for those of you who are not LDS. It is an unpaid call of service, but our family recieves many blessings for the hours he spends away from home. He is still enjoying work and has begun some new adventures there and he also found the time to coach Tanner's soccer team and Jake's little league team this year. Busy, busy guy, but wonderful husband and father.

Janalee tries to keep up with everyone and everything that needs to be done, but mostly chases the very busy and mischievous Maya around all day. In her spare time--ha ha what's that? she loves to scrapbook and she started up a new adventure selling the fabulous lia sophia jewelry line which is off to a great start. Her favorite thing is to sit on the couch when the kids are in bed and enjoy the silence!

Spencer- Sophomore in high school, involved in student government, great student, responsible teenager, gets up to go to early morning seminary (starts at 6:30 am) everyday without complaining at all, great kid.

Tanner- 8th grade, soccer fanatic, hard working student, still the best story teller around when he's in trouble, involved in scouting, plays piano, great athlete, great kid, recently ran the mile in under 6 minutes, ran 23 miles one day at school for a special project, and just got his top braces off a couple days ago!

Matthew- 6th grade, straight A student, best Maya sitter around, baseball all star, plays piano, tolerates Jake better each day, loves soccer, learning to ride a unicycle, always happy, loves to please his mom, good friend, great kid!

Jake- 2nd grade, youngest boy, great reader and speller, LOVES math, started piano lessons this year, loves soccer and baseball, and basketball, and dodge ball, and tether ball...anything with a ball, is doing much better with Maya and his place in the family, loves to help Maya a little too much, awesome kid!

Maya- almost 2 (Dec. 24th), all girl in pink with a matchbox car in one hand and a doll in the other, thinks she is Queen, sweet, sassy, stinkin cute, LOUD, busy, busy, busy, loves to go to the church nursery class, loves her brothers, has her dad wrapped around her pinky very tightly, mom's little side kick.

That is us in a nutshell, life is crazy busy but for the most part fun.

We want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful 2008. May it be full of referrals and travel dates for all of our adoption friends, and full of health and happiness for all of us.

Tahoe, Thanksgiving, and TERRIBLE TWO'S!!!

I am going to try to be better about posting, it seems there are not enough hours in my day anymore, especially when I spend most of the day chasing, cleaning up after, or playing with Maya!


So, Thanksgiving found us once again at beautiful Lake Tahoe. This time is was not just our little family, but with a big group of great people. The boys were in their element being outside in the freezing cold skateboarding or inside with Nintendo or Guitar Hero to keep them busy. Maya loved all the attention (suprised?) and quickly learned to wrap everyone around her pinky finger to give her what she wanted, if it wasn't her cute little please with a big smile, it was her head hanging down after she was told no that got everyone...not her momma though, I am used to her manipulation skills!



Spencer celebrated his 15th birthday not long after Thanksgiving. I look at him and can still remember holding him for the first time! It seems quite impossible that I have a fifteen YO.





So far we are sailing through his dreaded teenage years without much of a problem. He is a huge help to me and only occasionally rolls his eyes and thinks outloud that he has the meanest mom in the world. He puts up with a lot, rolls with the punches, gets awesome grades at school, and is for the most part very dependable. I remember telling him when he was just a newborn that we would be figuring this mom/son thing out together, and boy was I right! With each new phase of life we go through, I figure it out with Spencer. I try new things and some work and others fail miserably! But through it all he is patient as can be with me, and we get through it together.
Love you Spence!


And at last a Maya update....





Much to my dismay, the terrible two's are here to stay for awhile. I have been told by several who see this child in action that her activity level is a good thing, that I would not want her to sit still for too long because an active, energetic, curious child is a smart child. While I agree with you all, I have one question. Can you babysit?

Halloween fun

I am so glad that blogger will finally let me post picutres again! Here we are in all our halloween glory, sorry it took so long to get these posted!

Here is Miss Maya-cutest witch in the west

Here is Jake the wizard

Matthew the werewolf

Tanner the soliderAnd the scariest of all Spencer dressed as "moody teenager!"