100 Days of Kindergarten!

Today is the 100th day of school!  It's such a fun day for the kindergarten classes.  Kids Sweet Tees offered these SUPER CUTE iron-ons for $2.50 so I picked up one for Kellie and her sweet teacher.  Kellie had a long sleeve pink tee already so I used it and picked the teacher one up at Target.  I LOVE how they turned out!  I mean how stinking cute?  And easy!  And cheap!

THE COUNTDOWN IS ON!

SO THE COUNTDOWN IS ON!  We leave SOON for Walt Disney World and we are so excited!  Other than our annual summer trip to the beach this is our first TRIP as a family of four.  Packing for the beach is one thing....I mean all you need is a swimsuit and a cute outfit for dinner and you are good to go.  Well, let me just tell you...WDW is NOT.THAT.EASY!  It's a given that I'm a complete over-thinker and get myself worked up over the slightest things but really?!  It's January in Orlando and the weather can do ANYTHING!  We are hoping for highs in the 60s and lows in the 40s but hey we'll be Disney World so that's better than being at home/work, right?  

After contemplating how in the world to pack the girls' clothes, I finally came up with a plan.  The girls wear a lot of the same shirts but Hazel is taller so they can't share pants.  So, the idea of pulling things out of the suitcase each day and deciding whose was whose, well it gave me heart palpitations! So, I decided to be an overachiever!  (Not the usual with me) I put an outfit for each day in a ziploc, along with socks and undies AND a bow for the day!  I labeled them with the girls' names AND even the Day Number (according to what activities we were doing that day) and loaded up their suitcase! When I got finished, I felt SO much better!  I did throw in a ziploc for each girl with extra clothes, along with extra socks and undies so we have plenty!  I'm feeling pretty good about this and I'm hoping this will ease the process of getting ready each morning while we are there!

Since we are driving instead of flying this time, I had to come up with LOTS of things for the girls to do in the car.  Over the last few months I have been picking things up as I see them...coloring books, notebooks, pens, basically anything Disney related.  My plan is to give them something new every little bit to keep them from going crazy!  

 also found these adorable iron-ons from Etsy last week.  Although I LOVE the monogrammed stitched shirts, they are just ridiculously expensive.  These iron-ons are just a few dollars and are SO cute!  Since the girls will only wear them once or twice, to me this is money well spent!  I found these from Fantasyland Printable and they ended up SO cute!  I picked up the shirts from Target so they were inexpensive.  I can't wait to see the girls in these!

I also wanted to get the girls an autograph book but have you seen the WDW ones?  They aren't very cute and they are pricey!  NO. THANKS!  I looked all over for cute notebooks but couldn't find anything that I just loved.  So, thanks to Pinterest, I went to work researching and found this cute printable from The Cards We Drew.  I went to Hobby Lobby and found the sketchbook, ribbon and some stickers.  I ended up spending less than $10 per book and I LOVE how they turned out!

This time next week we will be in the middle of our week in Disney World!  I can't wait to make new memories!  Rob and I have been to Disney World 4 times in our 10 year marriage but this visit will be unlike any other!  Getting to take the girls and see their faces will be priceless and an absolute

DREAM COME TRUE!

Our Week in Review - LOTS of Randomness

We've had a pretty low key week.  School started back in full swing this week so life is back to normal, for the most part.  All of the Christmas stuff is put away and we have moved on to dreaming and planning for our Walt Disney World trip later this month!  We are SO excited!

The girls are familiar with most Disney characters but I'm trying to watch some of the older movies so they'll know everyone.  This week we got in Peter Pan and Mary Poppins.  I'm hoping to get in Bambi and Snow White and I just want them to watch Bedknobs and Broomsticks (I LOVE it)!  

The girls were enjoying their spaghetti while we watched Peter Pan.

I took this picture this week of Kellie after she went to sleep.  How sweet are little kids when they are sleeping (unlike when they are awake...haha)  The teddy bear that she's sleeping with is Leonard.  Leonard was MY bear growing up and he was ALWAYS in my room!  He was in my room even as a teenager. My mom kept him (along with lots of other stuff from my childhood) and gave it to Kellie when she first came to live with us.  She's always kept it in her room but over the last couple of weeks, she has become attached to it.  I cannot even tell you how this picture makes me feel!  It seriously makes my heart swell!  I love that she's FINALLY getting attached to something (because things have been taken from her so much during her little life) and I LOVE that it's Leonard!  I also LOVE her!

Report cards came out this week and who made the A/B HONOR ROLL - this little girl!!!  I could NOT be more proud of her!  She has struggled so much with her schoolwork over the last year.  She is currently repeating first grade because we felt that after the crazy changes she had in her life last year that repeating would be the best thing for her.  She has handled this year like a champ!  She is reading at the level she needs to be and has made HUGE progress in every subject!  She is SUCH.A.HARD.WORKER!  We are just so proud of her!

Friday night we ate dinner at a new pizza buffet in town and ran to Target.  Since the girls had such a great week at school we picked up the Doc McStuffins Operation game and played it when we got home.  The girls absolutely love playing games!

Today we went to my parents to visit my mom since she had knee surgery this week.  While we were there we checked out a new Mexican restaurant and the girls ate chalupas for the first time (they were BIG fans).  I tried to get some cute pics of them but this is what I came up with.  This is how life is about 95% of the time - SILLY!!  Just keeping it real!! :) 

Here's to a great week and may the days go by quickly!  The Akins are READY.FOR.DISNEY.WORLD! :)

We Have a Reader!

Kellie has been reading words and phrases for a while.  This week part of her homework was reading a sheet with 10 or so complete sentences.  She has nailed them!  I'm so proud of how far she's come!  Eighteen months ago she could not recognize any letters of the alphabet!

Please excuse the TERRIBLE hair and the Rapunzel dress! haha!  She had to take time out from playing to work on her homework.  

What a Difference a Year Makes!

One thing that has become a tradition (yup, 2 whole years) is professional Christmas pics!  I have LOVED these pictures both years and I want to continue the tradition.  Not only are they such cute pictures, but having them made at the same time each year makes me see just how far we've come!  The girls have matured so much and look like little ladies! sniff, sniff

Christmas Pics 2012

Christmas Pics 2013

New Year, New Beginnings, New Blog

Wow!  I'm going to try this Blogging thing AGAIN!!  At least now, our adoption is final and I can show the girls' faces so it doesn't have to be private!  I hated doing the private blog!  I thought about going to my old blog and starting back but I've decided to start fresh...it's all about new beginnings!

As most of you know, our girls were adopted this year (August 1, 2013).  Hazel Kate and Kellie Caroline are biological sisters that came to us last year.  It was totally God's work that put us all together!  It all came together through a friend of a friend and it was.a.perfect.fit!  Kellie came to live with us first during June, when she was 4 years old.  We met her on Father's Day of last year and we fell in love with her the moment we saw her.  She was spunky and talkative and SO.MUCH.FUN! She had been through SO MUCH and she didn't show it at all!  In the first few moments of meeting her, she grabbed my hand and called me Mommy!  I knew in that moment that we needed each other!  She is a handful but she's so loving and sweet and she will keep you in stitches!  Everyone that meets her adores her as much as we do! Kellie has gone through more in her 6 years than most adults ever do but I truly believe that God has HUGE plans for her life!  I can't wait to see what her future holds because I believe it will be BIG!

Hazel has had quite a different road than her sister.  Hazel was raised by her paternal great-grandparents and was with them for most of her life.  Hazel did not come and live with us until October of last year (4 months after her sister).  The great-grandparents were not in good health and decided that it would be best for her to live with us and be raised with her sister.  We were TOTALLY ON BOARD!  Hazel is THE MOST AFFECTIONATE CHILD in the world!  No Lie!  She will drive you nuts with the hugs! ha!  She is quiet (sometimes too much so), loving and seriously SO sweet!  She is such a devoted kid and once she loves you, she will love you forever!  She is also one of the bravest kids I've met.  She moved in to our house (from a home she had known her entire life) and handled it like a champ!  I'm not going to lie and say it was rainbows and unicorns for everyone but when I look back on it, she was amazing!  She had SO MUCH to get accustomed to.  Not only did she have a new family in a new city, but she also was living with a sibling again, AND she started a new school!  I could cry just typing all of this because she was SO BRAVE!  At my age, I cannot imagine being put through something like that and the fact that BOTH of my children handled it as they did makes them a heck of a lot tougher than me!

Mommyhood is a crazy place!  It's everything and more than I ever imagined!  It's amazing to love someone the way that I love these 2 girls!  Adopting older children was always scary to me.  I believed that you needed to adopt them as babies so that you could bond with them.  I.WAS.WRONG!  Nothing could be farther from the truth!  I can't imagine being any closer to these girls!  They are my world and have been since day 1.  I'm their mommy and NOTHING will change that!

While mommyhood is great, it's also MUCH harder than I thought it would be.  I was THE perfect mom BEFORE I became a mom!  ha!  I had ALL the answers before these 2 came along!  Now, I just muddle my way through and PRAY that I'm doing the right things!  I mess up daily.... but each day I have ONE goal!  My daily goal is for these girls to know how loved they are!  I want them to know how long their dad and I wanted them and how hard we prayed for them and that they are our dreams come true!  As long as they KNOW AND BELIEVE that, then I feel successful!

I'm going to use this blog as a way to document our lives.  Facebook and Instagram are great but I just think my family deserves more memories than just that!  Whether or not anyone reads this is irrelevant. As long as my girls can look back at it and see their little lives, then I will try my hardest to keep it up to date.  They deserve that!

Wish me luck!

Hazel Kate, 7 years old                                                                      Kellie Caroline, 6 years old