Joseph's Newborn Pictures

Because I have had many people ask about them, here are a few of not all of Joseph's newborn pictures (he's just so cute and Heidi did such and amazing job that I have a hard time narrowing it down).  We ended up doing both a newborn session and a family session.  The result was a lot of great, frame worthy pictures.

 

And last, but not least (because I like to keep it real).

A Good Ole Fashion Shrimp Boil

This post should have been written a while ago (about four weeks, to be exact), but we've been a little busy around the Parks' house.  Oh well, here it goes.

For a while now, Sam has been wanting to host a shrimp boil.  We finally decided to go for it, ordered a hundred pounds of shrimp, and invited a bunch of friends over.  To all my Cajun friends, please ignore the Okies as we try to recreate one of your traditions.

Shrimp ~ check

Seasonings ~ check

Beverages ~ check

Friends ~ check (I don't have a picture of everyone as people were coming and going all day)

Many of our friends had never been to an event like this and were a little surprised when they learned that we would be dumping the food on the table we had set up in the yard. 

Luckily, they were able to overcome the "unusual" dining conditions and enjoy.

After dinner, the guys moved inside to watch a UFC fight.

While the women folk stayed outside for pony rides,

fun with the water hose,

and begging dogs.

In all, we only ate 20 pounds!  You read that right, we only ate 20 of the 100 pounds of shrimp we ordered.  Luckily, we had a back up plan to help us get rid of a little more and we enjoy eating shrimp.

So, what do you do when your friends don't eat enough shrimp?  Call in the professionals... football players that is!  The guys on either side of Sam are signed to play with the Washington Redskins this fall and happened to come home the Sunday after the boil on a training camp break.  We fired everything up and cooked another 20 pounds.  Can you believe the six of us ate pretty much as much as everyone on Saturday combined!

Joseph's Homecoming

Joseph was released from the hospital on Sunday, May 20th.  Since we were unable to schedule the initial court date on that day (for obvious reasons), we stayed the night at my dad's house and went to court on Monday morning.  As soon as our court appearance was over, we packed up and headed to Stillwater.  After a quick stop to visit my mom in Oklahoma City (she broke her leg on Sunday...), we were finally home.  As we were driving home, Heidi (neighbor, good friend, dog sitter extraordinaire) called and asked if we would like for her to come down and take pictures of our arrival home.  Of course, we said yes.  When we finally pulled up to our house, we found many of our neighbors and friends in our front yard along with our dogs and balloons.  Wow, talk about a homecoming!

Sam and Joseph were excited to finally be headed home!

How pretty is Miss Bella with her big, blue bow?!

Rufus got in on the bow action too!  I thought the bows were such a sweet touch.

Heidi put balloons and a stat sign in our front yard.  The pink balloon is for big sis :)

My co-workers put balloons and a welcome sign in our house.  I guess I need to do a better job hiding the extra key ;)

The cherry on top was our decorated mantle.  Heidi knows that I like to decorate it for various holidays, so she decorated it for Joseph's arrival.  The gas pump and truck will be making their way to his room when we get it finished (we're working on it... slowly, but surely).

God Said Yes

As you know, Sam and I have prayed for children for many years (in fact, many of you have joined us in this prayer).  This prayer has always been answered with wait.  Friday, our prayer was finally answered with yes when our son, Joseph Dean Parks, was born.

I've been in love with this little guy since January when we found out about him and his birth mom chose us to be his forever home.  Every since then, I've been telling myself that birth mom could change her mind and decide to keep him, but in my heart I loved him already.

His birth story goes like this:

Thursday evening, I told Sam that I was going to stay up until I finished my student assessment portfolios so I could take them to school with me on Friday and not have to stress about them if Joseph made his appearance over the weekend (his due date was May 26th).  I finally finished at 12:30 a.m. and went to bed.

Around 1:30 a.m., my cell phone rang.  It was birth mom telling me that she was headed to the hospital and we needed to start that way too.  I woke Sam up, we grabbed our stuff, and we jumped in the car to head to Lawton.  At 2:40 a.m., my cell phone rang again and, over his crying in the background, birth mom said, "Courtney, you have a baby boy."  I will never forget that phone call!  Our precious baby boy was born at 2:36 a.m.  He was 7 pounds 7 ounces and 20 inches long.  We drove as quickly as possible while still being careful and arrived around 4 a.m.  We were taken to the nursery where we met our sweet little man.

The tears couldn't be contained any longer (let's be honest, I had already cried multiple times on our way down) as we sat there looking at the child that is the answer to our prayers.   The next few hours/days are a blur of paperwork, visitors, crying, lawyers, diapers, and court dates.

I've want so badly to blog about Joseph many times in the time leading up to his birth and since, but Sam and I made an agreement that we would wait until everything was legal.  Well, he's ours now (as long as mom doesn't change her mind in the 30 day grace period) and I'm so excited to share him with you!

And, because I'm a proud new momma, here are a few more pictures of our little guy:

Sam has really fallen into the role of Daddy.

He's just so perfect!

 

Here is Joseph on his birth date with his cousin Bryar who was a day short of two months old.  I can't believe the size difference!

Aubrey's Birthday

Last Thursday was the second anniversary of Aubrey's birth.  As we did last year on her birthday, Sam and I both took the day off from work to enjoy spending time together (we've decided that a great way to honor her is to spend time strengthening our marriage).  We ate a nice lunch, took a fresh spray of flowers to her grave (where Sam also read his annual letter to her), made a donation to St. Jude in her name, and took a nap.  All in all, it was a great day!

A Month in Review - April

Well, since April has come and gone already, I guess I will write a recap of our month.  You might be thinking that I didn't write anything last month because I didn't have anything to write about, but it's actually because we were so busy I didn't have much time to get on the computer.  Here are a few of the highlights from April.

~ Sam and I started the month by coming home from dinner to find this in our yard.

 That's right, as an April Fools joke our neighbor forked our yard! 

~ We cleaned out the pond and added a second fountain.

~ We had a carnival at school. 

 

~ I finally convinced Sam to let me update our mailbox.

 Nothing is safe now that I have a Silhouette!

~ Sam got a shot in his back to help with the pain he has been experiencing.

 When I went back to sit with him and wait for his procedure I wasn't expecting him to be dressed like this.  Luckily, he was in a good mood and let me take a picture. 

~ I made a shirt for my friend's son's first birthday party.

~ I let my friend talk me into running the Remember the Ten 5k.  Thankfully, Sam ran with me since Bailey was actually running the 10k.  I might or might not have run into a huge flower pot mid-run.

~ Sam and Ben added a column to the back porch.

~ Bella went to school with me to teach safe procedures when petting dogs during pet week.

She waited oh so patiently in the office as the kids were waking up from rest time.

She even used good manners and looked at the speaker while the kids were asking me questions about her.

~ We went to Tulsa to The Black Keys concert.  Since we stayed at Sam's brother's house, we were able to take the dogs.  They had a blast playing with the cousin dogs!

Pete loves Bella so much!

Bella loves Sam!!!

So there you have it, April in a nutshell.  Maybe I'll have time to blog again once summer break starts.