First Hike of the New Year…Lost Valley

Jason and I were both lucky enough to have Monday off in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.  Since the weather was warm we decided to get outside and take Luci on a hike.  We headed to the Buffalo River and Lost Valley…it's an easy hike with beautiful scenery and it happened to be a place that neither Jason nor I had been in probably 15 years.  The following are some highlights of the outing.        

View through the few leaves left on a tree 

 

Beautiful Eden Falls…we have had lots of moisture in January so it was flowing nicely 

 

 

Luci REALLY wanted to get in the water but it is still January so no luck...explain that to an 18-month old!      

Found a couple of sticks so naturally we MUST play in the dirt!  Who needs toys when you have sticks, rocks, and dirt?! 

 

 

Luci receiving her first Geology lesson from Daddy 

 

 

Luci rode the 1 mile in… 

 

 

…and she HIKED the 1 mile out.  Seriously, she hiked nearly the whole way out! 

 

 

This was how she hiked most of it; hands jammed in her pockets, running full speed ahead (great for balance!!!) 

 

 

The elk at Ponca…this was the 3rd time we saw them and I finally MADE Jason stop the car and take a picture.  At this point in time elk are his least favorite animal.  Yes, he is deep into the dissertation again and not really feeling the love for his research subjects!

One Year Ago Today...

Hard to believe that one year ago today I saw this sweet face for the first time.

It was instant love-at-first-sight.  Actually, it was love at first hearing because I heard all the details about my precious daughter over the phone and through email before I ever saw her face.

I have been reminiscing alot lately and I am remembering the day of the referral.  I had just come out of a difficult meeting at work and ran upstairs to grab my things before running out the door and up to my internship site in Bentonville for some observations.  As I was putting my phone it my purse, it beeped indicating that I had missed a call.  I looked and saw that it was our social worker.  My heart literally skipped a couple of beats, my hands started sweating, and I started shaking.  I didn't even listen to the voice mail that she had left;  I simply called her back to see if it was the call I had been waiting for.  IT WAS!  She had a referral for our sweet Luci.  I tried to remain objective but as soon as she told me that her birthday was July 16 (the same as her daddy), I knew.  This was the sign that God was giving me...this was our baby!  She could have had 3 heads and 5 legs at that point and we still would have known she was the one for us.

Still, we did the "smart" thing and let our pediatrician look over the referral telling ourselves that we were really thinking it over...but we weren't!  We knew!  She was ours!

 

I know I have said this before but I am so happy that God chose me to be this special girl's mommy!  She is such a perfect fit for our family!  Happy Referral Day (even though you didn't know anything about it) to our sweet, energetic, happy, fun, loving Luci!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from all of us here at the Kindall house!  What could be better than ringing in 2010 in your too small bathtub with your favorite elephant and a bowl of snacks?!  Hope 2010 is full of  blessings for each of you!