Vacation

I will soon post pictures from the week, but wanted to post a quick note about our week at the River. We had a great time! For those of you who do not know about the river...it is a long-standing love of my family. My aunt Phyllis has a cabin there in WV and it is peaceful and beautiful beyond description. Ken and I took the boys and my mom and step dad (Jim) stayed the week with us. My aunts Phyllis, Kathy, Suzanne and uncle Mike came on Sunday to celebrate Taylor's 1st birthday!! It is hard to believe he is one! I'm so glad the boys got to spend some time with my aunts and uncle. Now Kathy is more than just the lady who "gave us the carrot cookies at Easter." Later in the week, aunt Betsy came and spent the night and met the boys fir the first time. They thought Betsy and her dog Angus were great. They are now completely spoiled and getting them back into the 'real world' sans Mimi and PapPap is gonna be tough.

Some adventures of the week: swimming in the river, canoeing (our dog's name is Canoe, and this was the boys' first canoing experience, so they were a little confused!), fishing, taking a bath and washing their hair in the river, walks and a picnic on the river trail, lots of bike rides, frisbee/baseball/soccer/waterbombs in the backyard, long naps, and general river activities. Although amazingly fun, taking the boys to the river was such a hugely different experience from adult only trips. I am used to waking up in the morning at my leisure and drinking coffee in the rocking chairs on the porch and just enjoying the peace and quiet. THIS week, the rocking chairs were all turned sideways to form a choo-choo train...James as the engineer and mommy as the caboose. As a non-parent, I never thought about the dangers of the river either, but we were constantly keeping an eye on each child. I was so scared one would fall off the 2nd story deck. The only real injury was James falling down the full flight of indoor stairs and rug-burning the right hand side of his face. It was a nasty fall, but no blood or broken bones.

The most exciting (I think) thing about the trip was we told the boys their new names...bc of where we are in the adoption process, we can start calling them by what we will change their names too. James and Nathanael will keep their first names - we just couldn't change them (Although James' name was actually Junior when we got the boys). Anyway....here they are:

James Conrad. Conrad is Ken's middle name and his mom's maiden name.
Nathanael Reid. 1. like the name 2. the boys' social worker's name is Ms Reed and if it were not for her we probably wouldn't even have the boys 3. their is a family at our church who has the name Reid running through it and they have been incredibly good to us and the boys.
Taylor is now Cooper Dawson. Yes. We are officially calling him Cooper as of his first birthday. He already responds to it. James and Nathanael were totally fine about us changing his name, although they are having a little trouble remembering. Dawson is my mom's middle name. Cooper is a name we liked, and well...for those of you who know the significance of this name, there's no need to explain, but the name Cooper Dawson just sounds right and feels right. (Robin - I saw Sarah Reem at Wolfcreek and she just laughed hysterically about his name).