Tanner Life

Adoption, Parent's Move & End of School...
OH MY!!!

For some of you, this is a huge repeat, you hear me rambling all the time. So feel free to ignore this one, simply an update on things at the Tanner household!! Carry on-

1. Our birth mom letter has been officially approved by our actual coordinator, praise the Lord. It took alot of edits, many photo sessions (thanks to all the participants), tons of emails, my ranting and raving to some of you (God bless you for listening to me), tears and frustration. But, it looks great and we're so happy with it! Now it will go to California with our entire home study for approval. Prayers for this process to go quickly are great appreciated. It's hard when you can't do anything but wait, I guess this is just the beginning. (or the middle since we've been waiting for years, but whatever, who's counting now?) We are craving being officially approved though!!!! We're on hold with the social worker finishing her end to get it all sent and not doing anything is making me a little nuts. All in God's timing.....

2. My parents have spent their first two weeks in their temporary home. They have bought land (1.1 miles from their previous home) and are about to build a new house, complete with pool, how excited am I?? ((The houses are 1.1 miles from each other and in ONE DAY of helping them move, I put 60 miles on my Durango, figure that out?! A LOT of trips!!!)) There was already a smaller and older home on the property. My parents house was under contract, then the closing got moved up and basically we spent 4 days doing what would normally take 2-3 weeks to do! We moved in mass chaos, super fast, throwing things in boxes and running 1.1 miles down the road. It was CRAZY and they're STILL trying to find things we stuck somewhere! They are there though, the house is really great (trying to decide if we're going to move there eventually, but thankfully that's way down the road) and they are about to start grading for their house first thing next week!

3. The school year is coming to an end. It is so bittersweet!! You spend 9 months with a group of kids and they (and their parents) become your family. You laugh together, learn together and even cry together. You see them grow both physically and emotionally. They are SUCH different people from those I met 9 months ago! It's amazing- I wish I could show you pictures I took of them, same spot in front of the calendar the first week of school and then just this week. Wow! We weighed & measured both times too and they grow SO MUCH in 9 months!! They are well prepared though for "big school" We are taking artwork down, sending photos off my photo wall home and sending home various things of theirs around the room. Our room begins to look a little sad. They ask "so, who will be in OUR room when we're in Kindergarten?" It's all such a big change.

Here is what our set up looked like for Mother's Day Tea.
We made those big floppy hats and they were a HUGE hit!
Moms wore them with pride, too cute.
The flower cups had 2 or 3 popsicle stick flowers with their child's photo too, forever flowers.



These were part of our gifts, coffee mugs that we decorated.
They had the word "mom" with the kids picture in the "O"
Then they made finger print ladybugs to add as well.
The "m"s for Mom were in red-
They are laminated so if they get wet they wont ruin.
Oh and the kids painted white lunch bags for a gift bag, too cute!
They put "toilet paper" (you may know it as tissue paper, but
they said toilet paper) in the gift bags!



These butterflies hung from our ceiling

4. Scrapbooks for school- Along with the end of the year at school becomes the big push to finish scrapbooks. Kim, do you read this? I totally blame you on this! I always did a video of our year together until I saw Kim's gorgeous scrapbooks a few years back, now here I am knee deep in scrapbook pages in my living room floor. I had help from my parents, but I still did 22 pages myself. Multiply 22 pages, by 12 kids please. Yeah, it's alot of pages!! I swore I wasn't doing this again next year, but now that I see these almost done and know how much the parents & kids will love them, I may reconsider next year. We'll see.... *I'm now 1 color copy away from being done and they are SO CUTE*

5. My Gizmo is totally deaf. I haven't shared this with anyone because I get emotional, I'm such a big sap. You know that Gizmo is my 11 year old Shih Tzu, given to me by my best friend from childhood/high school/college as a Graduation from UGA gift. (along with a few others) Anyhow, he and our labs ARE OUR FURRY CHILDREN and are insanely spoiled. Gizmo sleeps with us, has a travel bag for when we leave him to be boarded and has my Mom wrapped. She comes to stay here some when we travel so he can stay home, seriously! Anyhow... he's SO STUBBORN and always has been, totally ignoring when you call him. He's also had ear infections on and off for years and we think that might have led to his lack of hearing. It's hard to tell if he's totally lost all hearing or just most of it. We've done a ton of experiments here though and he isn't hearing anything most of the time, only higher pitched sounds. Very sad.... He's still on the go though!! *Let me come back and add again, some days he seems to hear more than others. So odd, we can't figure it out! Maybe part of it is old age, Andy's SCREAMING at him lately. Not mad screaming, just loud so he hears. It's so funny, like living with an old geezer! Andy says "this house is about to get really LOUD.*