I owe you one more life update post before it’s back to food as usual around here! If you read my last post about Landen, you know that shortly after we brought him home, we found out that he was going to be a big brother. When Landen was 4 weeks old (we had brought him home 1 week earlier) I found out that I was pregnant!

To say that we were shocked would be a little bit of an understatement! We didn’t think we were able to have biological kids, but apparently God had other plans. 🙂

During my whole pregnancy I was in a little bit of denial. I was convinced that something would go wrong, and it was easier to just not think about it. Of course I had an almost 4 year old, almost 2 year old, and a newborn at home, so there wasn’t much time for thinking anyway. 🙂

Things started to become a little more real after our 20 week ultrasound when we found out we were having a girl. After 3 boys, I was pretty excited about having a little pink in our lives!  However I was still refusing to think about the fact that we were about to have 4 kids 4 and under, and the youngest two would only be 9 months apart!

Baby Emma was born on October 7th at 6 lb 7 oz and 20 inches long and life has been a little crazy ever since!

My mom came to stay for awhile and Mike was able to take some time off work so we have been surviving. I’m not sure what I’m going to do when I’m on my own with all these small children!

We are so excited to welcome Emma into our lives, and the kids love having a baby sister. The big kids love looking at her tiny little feet and hands, and I think Landen views her as a fun new (noisy) toy. 🙂 Life sure is crazy, and a little overwhelming, but we couldn’t be happier. 🙂

Hello! I’ve owed you a life update for so long now, and I’m finally sitting down to write this blog post. If you follow me on Facebook, you probably know that in January (almost a year ago now!) we added another new baby to our family!

Here is Landen, then and now. 🙂

When Zeke was 3 and Levi was 1, we decided we wanted to start the adoption process again. We filled out all the paperwork, sat through the home study visits, made a new profile book, and this time we even made an adoption video! And then we settled in for another long wait. It took a year for us to get chosen for Zeke, and a year for us to get chosen for Levi. Based on that we figured it would be another year wait.

Imagine our surprise when less than a month later we got the call that an expectant mother had chosen us! And then we found out that her due date was not too far in the future, and things got a little crazy. 🙂

We met with her a week or so after we got the call and we got along really well. She actually ended up going into labor the day after we met her, and we anxiously waited by the phone for updates on what was happening. She didn’t want us to come visit at the hospital, and in the end she decided she just couldn’t go through with the adoption and made the decision to parent. Of course we were incredibly disappointed, but we were thankful both that we hadn’t met the baby yet, and that he obviously had a mother who loved him.

We heard nothing for a few weeks, and then on a Sunday afternoon, 3 weeks after the baby was born, we got a call from our case worker. Birth mom had changed her mind and decided to pursue adoption after all. And could we come get the baby the next morning? Of course we said YES! Thankfully we already had 2 boys, so we pretty much had everything we needed and didn’t have to do too much at the last minute.

It was definitely an exciting time for us and we couldn’t imagine our life without Landen in it! His adoption was finalized in June, and we’ve been thankful to be able to stay in touch with his birth mother. Landen is seriously the happiest baby you’ll ever meet. He is always smiling and laughing, and it doesn’t hurt that he’s absolutely adorable. 😉 We call him our crazy baby because he is constantly moving and gets into everything. He started walking at 9 months and shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon! 🙂

Which is probably for the best because he didn’t get to be the baby for long! Imagine our surprise when, at 4 weeks old, we found out Landen was going to be a big brother!

To be continued…

I have owed you our Levi story for so long now, and I’m so sorry it took me so long to get it posted! I kept waiting for everything to be official, and then it was Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and now finally that life has calmed down a little I can sit down and write this most important post. 🙂

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Ever since I first shared that we were hoping to adopt, to when I wrote all about bringing Zeke home from the hospital, I have received so many emails, comments, and notes of encouragement. Thank you so much for all of your support over the past year. I’ve gotten quite a few emails asking how we’re doing, where the adoption process is at, etc, so I thought I would write a little follow up post now that the adoption is officially finalized.

That’s right – we went to court last Tuesday, the 19th, and now we are officially Zeke’s parents! It seems crazy that it took almost 9 months, but we are so glad that it’s finally official. And we have the certificate of adoption to prove it. 🙂

I didn’t think I would be nervous about our court date, but as the day got closer, I started getting some butterflies. Especially once I found out the judge would actually ask us to say something – my worst nightmare haha. I’m pretty sure what I ended up saying sounded like nonsense. Mike did much better getting the point across that we love Zeke and are so happy to have him. 🙂 Plenty of family showed up for support, which was great, and we took a little time afterwards for a mini photo shoot with everyone. Zeke was pretty overwhelmed and serious throughout the whole thing – good thing he’s cute even when he’s not smiling. 🙂

It ended up being really cool to go through the whole court process. It was so fun to hear the judge tell us that we were officially Zeke’s parents. We got to go up and take a picture with the judge and he even gave Zeke a teddy bear, which I’m sure will be special memento of the day. Zeke loved the teddy bear, but didn’t trust the judge or his facial hair one bit. 😉

Everyone came back to our house where we had a big family dinner to celebrate. Unfortunately Zeke went to bed about halfway through the party and missed his celebratory cake.  We all enjoyed it for him though. 😉 All in all it was a very fun day, one I’m sure we’ll look back on happily. And now we finally, officially have a son. 🙂

That’s right – we have a BABY!! It wasn’t too long ago that I wrote about our plans to adopt and how long we had waited. Well, just a few short months later God brought us the most perfect little baby boy. 🙂

I’m so happy to introduce you to Isaac, nicknamed Zeke. He was born on 2/23, weighing 7lb, 5 oz. Believe it or not, he is now 8 weeks old! I felt so bad keeping this a secret from all of you, but we wanted to be extra careful not to make things too public while we were still in the legal risk period.

I know a few of you noticed that the blog dropped off a little, and posting became a little sporadic, and thank you so much for your kind emails! We actually only had two weeks between when we found out about Zeke and when we brought him home, so things were a little frantic there for awhile! I’m finally now starting to feel a little more in control, so hopefully the blog will stop being so neglected. 🙂

Seriously, we are beyond happy, and so thankful that God had the perfect baby planned for us! I know I’m probably leaving out a ton of information, so feel free to ask any questions in the comments. Also, if anyone has any questions about adoption or just wants to chat about it, feel free to email me! (whatmegansmaking[at]gmail[dot]com)

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this post and care about our lives. Next week it’s back to food, but in the meantime I’ll leave you with one last picture, just because he’s so ridiculously cute! 🙂

p.s. It was a bit of an adjustment, but now Scamp loves his little brother!

I just couldn’t wait any longer to share about our recent trip. 🙂 If you follow me on Facebook, you are probably aware that we spent some time recently in Europe. Mike had to travel to Strasbourg, France for work, and we decided to turn it into a mini vacation. He’s actually spent quite a bit of time in Strasbourg (and other places in Europe) over the past year, so I was very thankful to be able to go with him this time.

We had a long weekend before he started work that we could spend somewhere nearby, and after much debate we decided on Switzerland. I am so glad we did, because I’m pretty sure it is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.

We stayed in Muerren, a small village in the Alps. You have to take a cable car and a cute little mountain train to get there, which only added to the charm of the place.

We spent our time there hiking and seeing the beautiful sights. We hiked a few trails in Muerren, and took the cable car down to the valley town of Lauterbrunnen to walk around there as well. I can’t even tell you how pretty it all was. We didn’t want to leave!

We also got to take a cable car up to the top of the Schilthorn to see the gorgeous views.

All too quickly Mike had to start work, so after a few days we were on our way to Strasbourg.

I was basically on my own for the week, so I enjoyed the city on my own for a few days and visited as many Patisseries as I could. I climbed to the top of the cathedral to see the views, took a boat tour, and walked all over the city.

Strasbourg is right on the border of Germany, so one day I took a train into the Black Forest. It was so fun to see the quaint little villages and the beautiful scenery. I stopped in Triberg to see Germany’s highest waterfalls, and then went on to Gengenbach. Gengenbach was very pretty and scenic, and I loved just walking around and seeing everything. Of course I had to buy a pretzel and a piece of black forest cake. 🙂

At the end of week, Mike and I took the train back to Zurich and got to spend a few hours seeing the city.

Food highlights of the trip: Fondue in Switzerland, every single pastry I ate in France, Raclette and Aligot at a nice restaurant in Strasbourg, Tarte Flambe at the home of one of Mike’s coworkers.  I had planned to try to eat somewhat cheaply on this trip to save some money, but as soon as I got there, that all went out the window. I wanted to try everything! I am already planning to try to re-create some of these at home. Classic Swiss fondue is first on the list – I’ll let you know how it turns out!

Thanks for sticking with me through this long post – I hope you enjoyed reading about our travels. 🙂

In other news, I thought I would take today’s post and update you a little on our vacation to Spain! We had a great time, and of course I took a ton of pictures of food to share with you all when I got back. I knew next to nothing about Spanish food when I went, and I came back certain about one thing – I could eat chocolate con churros every day for the rest of my life. 🙂 Good news – I’m already working on getting a recipe to share!

As far as our itinerary goes, we flew into Madrid since that’s where Mike had to be for work the following week. We spent a day there wandering the city and seeing some of the major sights. We must have walked 5 miles, and I was exhausted! Of course gelato played a role in keeping me going. 🙂

After Madrid, we went to Nerja. I really think Nerja might be the cutest town I’ve ever seen! It is right on the Mediterranean coast and has some AMAZING views of the coastline.  We spent some time at the beach, taking pictures from the balcon de Europe, wandering the quaint streets, and visiting the caves of Nerja. When it was time to head to our next destination, neither of us wanted to leave! We absolutely loved our time here and would go back in an instant.

Of course, we are glad we left, because Granada was next on our itinerary! We couldn’t go to Spain without seeing the Alhambra. We didn’t know much else about Grananda before we arrived (this was a very hastily planned trip!), but we enjoyed our time there so much. We spent a ton of time wandering the old city streets of the Albaicin, and of course touring the Alhambra. It wasn’t until the second day there that we discovered the Arab teahouses, but we made up for it by going to two different tea houses in the course of one evening. 🙂 We are big tea fans, and it was so fun to enjoy the whole experience – and the teas we tried were amazing! Of course we brought lots of tea home as well. 🙂

After Granada, it was back to Madrid, with just enough time to tour the Royal Palace before crashing for the night. I left the next morning, but Mike had to stay an extra week for work. I tried to feel bad for him staying there by himself, but he kept sending me pictures of all the amazing food he was eating! All in all, it was a wonderful trip and I’m so glad we went.

I hope I didn’t bore you with a travel post – don’t worry, it’s back to food in a few days! 🙂