Pictures

Back in November, we had family pictures taken. The Botanical Gardens were absolutely beautiful and Heather, the photographer, was great. (http://www.clportraits.com/ is her website.) We paid WAY too much for the pictures, but they were worth every penny! :) The turned out beautifully--especially the ones of the kids!

Clanton Look-alike Meter for Wesley (I had to do it just to see what it would come up with!)

MyHeritage: Family trees - Genealogy - Celebs - Collage - Morph

Clanton Look-alike Meter for Maddie

MyHeritage: Celebrity Collage - Pedigree

Adoption Humor

The fact that we are white and Wesley is black is something that I thought we should never make an issue of. You know, like we're colorblind. Of course, it doesn't matter to us--we love Wesley. But I was reading an article on interracial adoptions and the author said we should acknowledge and celebrate Wesley's race and deal with any negativity we face with humor. Sounds great to me! In fact one black man who had white parents used to answer "Is she your real mom?" with "Yeah, but sometimes she burns things." I loved it!! So if someone ever asks Wesley that, I'm going to teach him to say "Yeah, sometimes she just likes a little chocolate." :)

So here's our little adoption humor:

Obviously I have never had to deal with anything but thin, straight white-girl hair. So I knew I was in the dark when we got Wesley. A few days afeter we brought him home, I gave Wesley his first bath. Put him in the little tub, washed his body and hair with the sweet-smelling soap we got from the hosptial. (To preface this, Wesley was born with wavy, almost straight hair and light skin. In fact, most people who saw the first picture we first sent out didn't realize he was black.) So anyway, within seconds of me getting his hair wet, Wesley's hair curled up into the cutest, tightest curls you have ever seen. When I brought him out of the bathroom, everyone was in shock. So I said, "Mexican to black in one washing." :) Apparently black moms don't wash their babies hair for weeks after they're born. (This is according to a lady my mom works with who had just had a baby three weeks before Wesley was born.) It was super funny and will make a great scrapbook page when I get around to scrapbooking again. :)

Wesley--Before his first bath

After

The "Newest" News...

Let's see, life in the Clanton household has been CRAZY!! Christmas was a whirlwind of family, driving, friends and driving!! Needless to say, we are still feeling the effects of Wesley getting off schedule and being rocked/fed to sleep at night. He's spoiled rotten now. :)

The biggest bit of news for us happened right before and right after Christmas. On December 17, Wesley's adoption was finalized, much to our relief. Not that there was ever any question or need to worry. It was just nice to have it finally legal! (This should have happened a month earlier, but was delayed thanks to the department of human resources who told us they had never received our fingerprints that were sent to them last December. The prints showed up in our mailbox in August with an "incomplete" notice in them. The paperwork was sent back to LDSFS with the same notice attached.)

And most importantly, Wesley was sealed to us on January 5 at the Atlanta temple. :) It was an awesome day! We had a TON of family and friends there--we felt like a million bucks to walk in the sealing room and see it filled to capacity with the people we love the most. What a blessing! And Maddie was walking on cloud nine because she was able to observe the whole thing. She still tells people (members and non) that she was the only kid who got to go in the temple. And the day was even more special because we were able to bless Wesley right after the sealing. Because so many people came from all over the southeast and most couldn't stay for our 1:00 church the next day, we used the chapel right behind the temple to bless Wesley and feed everyone before their long drive home. It was wonderful and happy and I have got to sit down and write about it in Wesley's baby book. :)

Yesterday was Maddie's 6th birthday party. I went a little overboard, as I usually do, with the Hollywood theme that she picked out. We decorated Aaron's gym at his school and it basically looked like a high school prom (or better than, says my sister lol) We had a punch fountain(like at weddings) and a chocolate fountain, glitter stars hanging from the ceiling and a powerpoint of "Maddie throught the years" playing on the big screen. A little boy in Maddie's class even brought her a corsage that matched her dress. :) It was a ton of fun and Aaron is very glad it's over! He keeps waiting for me to say I'm done with the big parties, but it's never going to happen. And now I get to start thinking about Wesley's first birthday in May. :) Aaron will be so excited. lol I'll post pictures once I get them from my mom (she took all the pictures).

If at first you don't succeed...

Try, try again, right? I have no idea what happened to my first blog, but I can't access it. My "dashboard" shows no blogs. So, I'm just starting over. I'd only posted a once or twice, so it's not really a big deal.