Top Secret Blogging

In the next few days this old bloggity blog will be going private.  If you would like to continue being all up on the Beckstrand's business, leave me a comment or email me your email address and I'll send you an invite to my "by invitation only" blog.  

Later.

Ice Castles

 Alyssa and I headed to Midway today to see the Ice Castles.  They were SO cool!  Unfortuantely, due to the "heat wave" ("heat" apparently being defined as 38 degrees) we couldn't walk through the 2 or 3 great big ones.  You could still get close enough to see in them though.  Way fun.

 Most of them are smaller, can't exactly walk through the castle.  But there were a few of them that were HUGE!!!  The one above was my fav.

 Alyssa loved them.  She also loved picking up "ice babies."  She found a hole next to one of the ice walls and put probably 10 or 12 little babies inside so they could rest.

 Since we were there during the "heat wave" the icecicles were dripping.  One managed to drip right down Alyssa's shirt.  Brrrrrrrr!

And what's an afternoon out without a little tooshy dance?!

Tender Moments

I don't believe there are words to adequately describe the tender experience I had with Alyssa last night, but I'm going to do my best so that I can remember that night.

I was backing up photos from 2010 and pulled out a dvd my dad made me of Alyssa's first year.  He took several snapshots and put them to the perfect music.  Now, of course, I cry every time I watch it.  Through the entire thing.  Every time.

The opening line is "Alyssa - we have been waiting for you and we are so glad you are here."  You can see the reason for the tears.

I pulled Alyssa on to my lap and we watched it together.

After only 7 or 8 photos, I noticed she was tearing up.  When I asked her if she was ok, she told me she was just crying happy tears.

After sharing a movie filled with "happy tears" I wanted to talk to her about how she was feeling.  She told me she was just so happy.  We talked about what a special girl she is.  How our whole family waited to have such a special girl come in to our lives.  That everyone loves her and we are all so grateful that we get to have her in our family.

We called Tim to come up from the basement and have some family time with us.  She told us that she loved us and was happy to be in our family and we told her, again, how much we loved her.

She truly is a special little girl.

And we are the luckiest parents to have such a special girl to be our daughter.