First Snow Fall

So it finally snowed here!! The boys had fun making snow angels, throwing snow balls, and pulling each other around the yard on their sleds.

Not quite sure why this picture is coming in sideways - honestly, John did not stand on his head in the snow!!
Mommy had fun watching snowflakes fall on her coat and then being able to see some them in detail - including all six points and the unique decorativeness and beauty of each. Ou God is so amazing!!

Activity of the Week - Snow Painting

In the hopes that it would finally snow here, we planned some fun indoor snow activities including "snow painting!" Mix equal parts white glue and shaving cream, then stir until it is thick like frosting. Then paint it onto paper and it will dry puffy and look similar to snow!

We added to the activity by finding pictures of animals and people in the snow, cutting them out, and then gluing them to our papers. Then we painted on the snow.

Ryan hard at work:
John painted a mountain behind his snow leopard:

Announcing - Our Adoption Puzzle Fundraiser!!

We are excited to launch our adoption fundraising efforts in a unique way - a puzzle fundraiser!
We have a beautiful, 1500 piece puzzle featuring a variety of animals found in Africa, birth land of our two boys and future son or daughter. We are asking pieces be "sponsored" for a donation of $2.00 a piece. As the pieces are sponsored, not only will we begin to assemble the puzzle but the donors initials will be written on the back so we will always remember you whenever we complete the puzzle! All money raised will go to cover our international adoption agency's first payment - $3,000.

Donations can be given directly to us or mailed to us at: Mike and Amy Vagnoni, 408 South Slusser Street, Grayslake, Illinois, 60030.

We will give frequent updates on the puzzle progress and add it as a side bar on the blog home page. Thank you all in advance!!!

Holidays in Review

A quick (ha!) recap of the holidays:

Two cute elves:
Decorating gingerbread houses:Three days before Christmas we lost our cat Scout. She was fifteen years old and had many health issues for a long time. But she was greatly loved (especially by me who had her for fourteen years) and will be greatly missed.Believe it or not, this picture was taken only a couple of years ago when we were getting our photo pages ready during the adoption process. My friends might be shocked to see Scout so active!

Happy Birthday Jesus!

Christmas Eve:

Christmas morning:

Opening presents is such hard work!

Ice skates for the ice pond that will hopefully be in the back yard:

Mike and I are HUGE Dr. Who fans and each of us ended up giving the other a sonic screwdriver for Christmas - ha!

Two good looking fellows:

The Day After Christmas

The cousins:

(they are really looking at the TV and watching the superhero film they made, not staring at all the presents!)

Over winter break, Aunt Sarah took the boys for a sleep over, stopping first at Chuck E. Cheese (the boys had never been there) for lunch and fun:

New Year's Eve found us visiting the zoo to see the new lion cubs. Even sleeping they are adorable.

New Year's Eve with friends and LOTS of food:

always ending with chocolate fondue:

New Year's Day:

Ethiopian Christmas:

Dinner with our Ethiopian Yahoo Group friends:

Wordless Wednesday

Happy 2012!

I hope that everyone's year is off to an exciting beginning filled with the prospect of a year of adventures!!

Before looking ahead, a look back at 2011:
The Vagnoni 2011 Top Ten List of Blessings
10 - December: the re-launch of SomeThings Creative, our small side business (with the addition of Mike’s skills) - cheesecakes, custom artwork, and more! Please visit our website: http://somethingscreative.weebly.com/index.html
9 - February 6: PACKERS WIN THE SUPERBOWL!!
8 - August 11-13: 2nd (hopefully annual) Green Bay, Wisconsin mini-vacation – We take in Packer’s Training Camp (“It’s the real Aaron Rogers! But why is he wearing a red shirt?”), Bay Beach Amusement Park, and the New Zoo, plus a pool with curly slide at the hotel – WOW!
7 - October 31: Amy begins part time in home child care job. We love having A here for our adventures on Monday and Tuesday evenings and Wednesday and Thursday morning/afternoons!
6 - September 3-6: Hosting the America World Adoption Reunion – a time to gather with other families who have adopted from Ethiopia – we had a blast!
5 - September 30-October 1: Crossroads of America Adoption Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana – an amazing weekend in which we gained not only some fantastic information on adoption and adoption resources but a glimpse into the future the Lord has for us!
4 - June 9-17: Pennsylvania trip – We visited Mike’s sister and her family. A truly wonderful week of spending time with family, sightseeing, and memory making!!
3 - Church and Small Groups – Awesome Sunday teaching for both us and the boys and spiritual support and guidance from small group members!
2 - Family and Friends – The love and blessings heaped on us and the laughter and joy they have brought are immeasurable!
AND THE VAGNONI FAMILY NUMBER ONE BLESSING OF 2011 …
1 - A second year with John and Ryan in which they were excited about: sledding down hills, looking for buds on the trees, playing on the castle, checking daily to see how the flowers had grown, visiting the sprinkler park, trips to the Milwaukee Zoo, birthday parties, Galena Weekend, family camping, starting kindergarten and preschool, play dates, raking leaves, trick or treating (as Superman and Batman), making movies, library story time, going to church on Sunday mornings, cheering the Packers with Daddy, and a million other every day adventures that when seen through the eyes of a child are magic! We are blessed … our cup runneth over.

And now, on with 2012!!!!! We have begun this year with the continued passion to adopt, the surety and prospect of additional income, and the decision to begin fundraising with the hope of starting our paperwork in late summer or early fall. So with that said, we humbly ask for your prayers in the process - please pray for God's will and timing, our trust and patience in His will and timing, and joy in the journey.

Activity of the Week - Postcards!

I discovered the website Postcrossing recently in a Family Fun magazine. This is a website where people sign up to send and receive post cards from around the world - how cool is that!!

So we put up our new world map and got ready to send our first two post cards - one to Taiwan and one to Poland. We then received two post cards from Michigan and Germany. We sent another to the Netherlands and are waiting to see where our next post card will come from!

This site has been great fun! Postcards are pretty cheap (we bought some at Jewel for 33 cents) and it has cost 98 cents to mail each card internationally. And who doesn't like getting fun mail!

"I had a dream ..."

Several months ago, as I was looking in on the boys sleeping before heading to bed myself, I noticed John having a dream about Mario Kart. How do I know this you might ask? Because his hands slowly moved up and grabbed on to a steering wheel and he began to move them as if he were driving - it was quite hilarious! I of course shared the story with everyone the next day and we all got a good laugh.

Every once in a while, Ryan will say he dreamed he was playing Mario Kart too.

So when I overheard him say to Mike this weekend, "I had a dream," I expected it to be about Mario Kart. But instead, Ryan continues, "There were seven skinny cows and they ate the seven fat cows." It seriously was all I could do to contain myself!!

Wordless Wednesday

Waiting for the Cloud to Move

The Lord has brought many verses to me over the past few weeks after we learned we could not proceed in the adoption process.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Proverbs 3:5
trust: to place confidence, depend, hope, entrust, to rely on, a practical willingness to let God hold me

Do not let you hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. John 14:1

Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust. Psalm 40:4a

Is anything too hard for the Lord? Genesis 18:14

Those who hope (trust in God's power, patience in His timing) in the Lord will renew their strength. Isaiah 40:31

I am thankful for the Lord and His word. I am thankful for friends and family who are and who have been praying for us. I am thankful from so many from my Yahoo Group who have walked the path of adoption who have offered their encouragement and support. I am thankful for the two amazing boys the Lord had blessed us with.

I have been asking God for wisdom and revelation in all this. Should I hold on to the dream of another adoption or let it go? Are you calling us to adopt again Lord and should I begin fundraising? Or is our family complete? I have not felt an answer either way, simply the need to wait. i have struggled. Why did You call us Lord to step out when You knew our path would be blocked right away? So next I prayed for the Lord to give Mike revelation as to what to do! No answer that way either. I have beseeched the Lord - tell me what to do and I'll do it!!

Yesterday as I read in Numbers 9 of the Israelites moving through the desert, following the Lord who was in the form of a cloud, I finally got it - God's revelation is for me to wait - to wait for His cloud to move:
Whenever the cloud lifted from above the Tent, the Israelites set out; wherever the cloud settled, the Israelites encamped. At the LORD’s command the Israelites set out, and at his command they encamped. As long as the cloud stayed over the tabernacle, they remained in camp. When the cloud remained over the tabernacle a long time, the Israelites obeyed the LORD’s order and did not set out. Sometimes the cloud was over the tabernacle only a few days; at the LORD’s command they would encamp, and then at his command they would set out. Sometimes the cloud stayed only from evening till morning, and when it lifted in the morning, they set out. Whether by day or by night, whenever the cloud lifted, they set out. Whether the cloud stayed over the tabernacle for two days or a month or a year, the Israelites would remain in camp and not set out; but when it lifted, they would set out. At the LORD’s command they encamped, and at the LORD’s command they set out. Numbers 9:17-23