Christmas Day...

Christmas day...... we woke up early and went over to Ron's parent's house to see all the kids open up their presents. They were so excited and loved everything. We love our family and have loved spending time with them this Christmas season. We are so blessed to have such amazing family members.

Jackson loved his pillow pet

All the grandkids were given a USC shirt. Dominick with his shirt

Our gift to Preston. I love his smile. He is so cute!

Lincoln with his USC shirt

Jackson with his USC shirt

Teyla with her USC shirt/blanket.She will grow into it.

Isla loved her penguin

I love this hat we got her.

Kolby was hilarious. She was so excited to show me her Ariel that she got for Christmas. Then she proceeded to show me 2 other smaller ariels also.

Khloe's new outfit. Isla got a matching outfit as well.

Uncle Casey with Kels & Kai

I was laughing so hard when I say Kolby in this stroller. You have to see this little video clip.

I also put a little clip of our nephews opening up their gifts. It's fun to see how excited they get.

Christmas Eve...

I love Christmas Eve. Ron's mom makes a really nice dinner and then we start a Family Home Evening. We play chimes, sing songs, act out the nativity scene, and read the scriptures. It is a fun spiritual night that helps us to remember our Savior and the meaning of Christmas. Ron and Lincoln, Landon, and Jackson
Ron with Dominick, Landon, & and Jackson

Ron and his siblings.

Chime time!

Our cute wisemen & shepherds

Preston was both a Wiseman & a Shepherd

Our beautiful family acting out the nativity

Here is a clip of us singing Christmas songs. My battery died so the song is cut off.

bows for baby girl...

So I have been making some bows for the baby girl we will adopt in a few months. I should have put them on the beanies and head bands so you can see what they will really look like. Anyway, here are a few.

Here is a little onezie and bow I made for my cute little niece Teyla.

Flowrider

This has become a fun Christmas tradition. All of Ron's brothers and sisters and their spouses go flowriding and it is a blast. We are lucky that our brother in law is a chiropractor because we kind of have a little whip lash afterward, but it's worth it:) I think I finally figured out how to surf after 3 years:)

Ron surfing

Wendy & Spencer on the bodyboards

Here is a video of Dominick on the bodyboard. This was his first time flowriding and he did a great job.

Game night..

With all of Ron's family here this Christmas, we have been able to spend a lot of time together and do a lot of fun stuff. One night we had everyone over for a little game night. The boys loved it.

Christmas cookies...

The other day we made Christmas cookies with the girls and had a lot of fun. They are very creative. A very fun tradition.

These cookies would be Kolby's. She tried to fit every M&M she could possibly fit on those cookies:)

Our Masterpieces

Ken & Kai decorating cookies

more cookies.

This was a separate day, but it was so fun. My dad pulled out his duck calling things and Khloe loved them. Then the girls brought their Michael Jackson dance game on the Wii and my Dad competed against Kennedy. We were laughing so hard. I thought he did a pretty good job.

The seeds are sprouting......

I just have to say how grateful I am for my life! We have been blessed so much lately and I really can't believe it. I am so grateful for such a wonderful husband who I can laugh with through almost anything. After we were married, things definitely did not turn out the way we planned them. I guess nothing really ever turns out the way you plan, well, at least not for us:) I think our life will just turn out better than we planned!!
One of my favorite books is by President Eyring called, "To Draw Closer To God." In the book, he talks about the law of increasing returns. He explains how many times in our lives, we are dealing with the "law of increasing returns" in which we are dealing with late crops. By late crops, I mean planting seeds that take a long time to sprout. For the past little while, I just figured that all of the seeds I had planted are really late crops. Whether late crops or not, I think I just needed to learn to work and wait, even if the crops didn't sprout until the next life. I am used to the working and waiting part, so I feel ecstatic that seeds are actually sprouting! Okay, there is my analogy for the day! I kinda feel like I should knock on wood before writing this post, but anyway.......
We feel so blessed to hopefully be able to adopt a baby girl in April. Again, we have been waiting to start our family for almost 3 years and it is so exciting to realize that I might actually be a mom in a couple of months. How can I not be excited? I am so grateful that everything went so well in California last weekend. I really couldn't imagine things going any better while we were there. I could have done without Sachi's diarrhea, but she is still so cute:) I am so grateful that we are finally going to be able to sell our home and build a new home in the next month or so. Again, we have been trying to sell our home for almost 3 years with no luck. There have been different options that have come up, but we just didn't feel quite right about it. We are so excited to build a home that we can raise our family, live around such amazing people, and hopefully stay in for quite a while. I feel very blessed to have such wonderful friends and family! I have not talked too much about us going to California, but it was amazing to me to have so many of our friends ask us yesterday how everything went in California. It is truly humbling to be surrounded by so many people that sincerely care about us. They tell us how their kids pray for us and pray that we will be able to adopt a baby soon. I know Heavenly Father has definitely heard every prayer and He is blessing us so much. I am so grateful for the power of prayer. I know prayer works and I thank everyone for all of your prayers. I attribute all of our blessings right now to prayers and of course... "the tender mercies of the Lord".

Going Private....

So I am going to set my blog to private in about a week. Please send me your email address if you would like an invite. My email address is darceekiyomi@gmail.com. Thanks!

IT'S A GIRL...

I hope this is not bad luck to post this, but I wanted to post that the baby that we are planning to adopt is a baby GIRL!!!!! We are SO excited! I know I should not do this, but I couldn't help it and I had to go buy some baby clothes. I love love baby gap right now and The Children's Place Vintage collection. I was talking to my mom the other day about failed placements and I used the analogy of break ups when you are dating. You have a bad experience, but that doesn't mean you never move on and enjoy the happiness you can have in marriage. If she changes her mind, we have some experience I guess of how to deal with the emotions that will arise. We love her so much and know that she is doing her best to prepare herself to place her baby.
Last week, we went out to California to meet Jessika and her family and had a really good time.
I have to mention real quick of our series of misfortunate events that about made us miss our flight. The puppy had been sick all week and had diarrhea and vomiting. Not a good mixture and man did it smell! Sorry, too much info. We finally installed a doggie door, but for some reason she couldn't figure it out. Ron's dad was going to take care of the dogs, but I didn't want him to have to clean up our dog's diarrhea (YUCK)! So a boarding place was going to take care of her. After Ron got off work, we were hurrying to take Sachi to the boarding place before it closed and she vomitted all over in the car so we had to stop and would be late to the boarding place, so we turned around and hurried and dropped her off at home and as soon as she went in the house...Yuck again! Ron and I were laughing that we have now become the people we used to make fun of.........those that treat their dogs like children. (well, at least we have an excuse:) Ron and I called Jessika to tell her we might not make our flight. So we are cleaning up puke and yuck and trying to leave instructions for Ron's dad about the dogs and hurrying to make our flight. Anyway, we finally made it out of the house and to the airport and find out our flight is 45 min. delayed! On our way to the airport, Ron said, "Satan really does not want us to make this flight." I know things do not always work that way, but I do know that he will try to stop this placement from happening.
So we finally get on the plane around 9:30pm, when we get to Califorina, we get lost, but finally make it to our hotel at 2:00am. We both crashed and then had to wake-up around 7:00am. Okay, that was my preface for our trip!
Saturday morning we met with Jessika, her mom, and her caseworker and had a really good visit. We didn't understand California adoption laws very well so her caseworker explained to us how the laws work and what to expect when the baby is born. If everything goes as planned, we will be in California for 1-2 weeks. After we met with Jess's caseworker, we went out to breakfast with Jess and just talked. It was nice being out there and just hanging out and getting to know Jessika better. I think she is so cute and funny! A lot of people have asked what she looks like so I will add that she has long dark brown hair and about my length, big brown eyes, and long long eyelashes. I asked her if her eyelashes were real because they were so pretty. Yes, they were. Oh yeah, right before we left the hotel, I burnt my forehead. What am I, 10 again:) After breakfast, we went and picked out some baby clothes. Her parents invited us over to their home and it was so fun. As I was sitting in their home, I just really felt our Heavenly Father's love and knew the Holy Ghost was there helping all of us to feel love, comfort, and guidance concerning the placement of this sweet baby. Her little brother was so cute and is a huge Green Bay Packer fan and so I made him a blanket. It was fun to see him get so excited over the blanket. I made this little onezie for the littlest brother.



Her family was so nice and took us out to dinner! I think the best part of this trip was just hanging out at her house with her family. We both felt very comfortable there and had fun just talking and watching her little brother. He is the most athletic little boy! It was nice to know that we could just talk about anything and not feel awkward. We loved our visit and cannot wait until April to return!! Thank you SO SO much for everyone's prayers!!

Let it snow...

Our dogs love the snow and play around in it all day long. I loved these pics!

Sachi always come in with snow on her nose. It's pretty cute!

I think the dogs are ready to pull a sled, what do you think? Ron is in the process of trying to make one. We just bought a training harness for Sachi, but she doesn't know how to run straight. She thinks it's a game and just tries to get Keiko to chase her around in circles.

Isla's Birthday Party...

Okay, I am playing catch up on my blog, but here it goes.......

Happy Birthday Isla!!!!!

Isla turned 1 and had a "Hello Kitty" party. She got so many fun things and was hilarious eating her cake.

Isla's new ride

She loved these reindeer antlers even though she was born a yankee fan

Isla digging into her Hello Kitty cake. Well done on the cake Bran!

If you saw my post on Thanksgiving, you can understand how Casey can turn anything into something better. Our party hats turned into the statue of liberty.

Ken decided to turn her party hats into a few beaks

I had to post this picture of Isla eating the cake off of her foot

Happy Thanksgiving....

Our Thanksgiving weekend started out with going down to the Conference Center to see "Savior of the World." It is my favorite performance and Ron and I try to go every year. Ron actually proposed to me at Savior of the World so that is another reason why I love this performance. I would highly recommend it to anyone. Happy Thanksgiving!!!!
Thanksgiving was wonderful and I am so grateful for my amazing family and friends!

This picture started out with just Ron and Jackson...

Then Lincoln hurried and hopped in...

Then David hurried and hopped in also. It was a progressive picture and Brandon hopped in on the next one, but that picture didn't turn out so well so I didn't post it. But here is their family down below.

Stacey and Brandon's cute family!