Goodbye dear friend

So this is it .. the very last post on Sunflowers and Ladybugs. For the past 6 years this has been a place of great comfort at times and of great joy. I have been able to chronicle our lives and the adoption of our two beautiful girls here. I will always treasure the memories that have been captured here. I will always be grateful to the people I have met and who have helped us along the way to being a family of four. I have made some life long dear friends from blogging and will always cherish them. I am going to stat a new blog but I am not going to post the link here for a number of reasons. I will however be very happy to share the address with you if you would like to continue to be part of our lives. Please just send me an email and I will send you the link. The new blog has a much different look it is fun and fresh very bright and cheerful and will hold a whole new group of memories. We have no idea where life will take us next but we are very excited to see and we hope that you all will join us along the way. I am going to send out an email to those of you who I have email addresses for and those of you who are on Facebook I will post the link there. Thanks for being part of our lives...

sophiajoy06@yahoo.com

The simple things

Sometimes it is the simple pleasures in life that make you happiest

like strawberry shortcake in the living room.

or cooking a nice meal for your family

some uninterrupted Facebook time and a glass of wine

a new organized place for your cookbooks
a neatly organized Montessori shelf
your very own bulletin board to hang your art work and important papers

wearing daddy's shirt as a hat

or a pretty blue bowl found at Hospice thrift store for $2
or a table full of baskets also found at the thrift store for $2

Happiness comes in all forms... :)

"Booty" its a good thing

No not that booty....

Pirates Booty that is.. this stuff is addicting my personal favorite is the Aged White Cheddar but it is all good. If you have never had it you MUST! and I mean MUST! go directly to the store and get yourself the biggest bag they have a small bag simply will not do.

Trust me you will love it...

morning dress-up

it is so fun having two

Sunshine and pigtails

REAL BEAUTY

A Happy Day

We had such a wonderful day today celebrating Amelia's second Birthday. We started out with a very special breakfast prepared by daddy. Then we took Sophia to school and ran into one of her classmates (who is also a friend) it was her son Henry's Birthday as well. In Montessori school they celebrate the child's life from beginning until the current birthday. So they have the child bring in a poster of their life. A sort of "lifebook" if you will done in story board format (we are currently working on Sophia's). Henry and his mom Erin shared his with us and it brought me to tears. I was a wreck the rest of the morning. You see Henry was adopted from Ethiopia. He is a beautiful child tall and strong handsome like I have never seen. His "lifeboard" was amazing and captured so much of who he is now and where he came from. I hope I can do something half as good for my girls when the time comes. Later when we went to get Sophia from school all the moms waiting to pick up there children sang Happy Birthday to Amelia, it was very sweet. She was so excited she smiled and clapped the whole way through the song. Tonight for dinner we went Cajun style with Popeye's Fried Chicken and red beans and rice. Oh and for her birthday cake she had a King Cake. It was loads of fun and she really enjoyed herself,we all did..



In reflecting on today I can't let it pass without remembering my father. Today was his birthday as well. I felt him all day looking down on us smiling and knowing that he has a very special granddaughter who will forever share this day with him. We found it very fitting that Amelia's first birthday with us falls on Fat Tuesday . My father lived for many years in New Orleans when I was a child. I have very fond memories of The Big Easy. I would spend part of my summer there with him. I spent all summer there once with my best friend and we got into way to much trouble but we had so much fun. Riz and I even spent our honeymoon there 20 years ago. So, today for us was something extra special a celebration of life that has come and life that has gone but will never be forgotten.



One more thing I have been thinking a lot about my friend Tamera who lost her father just recently. It is never easy to lose a parent or anyone for that matter. I know what she is feeling right now. I remember it well from when we lost my father 5 1/2 years ago. Her father passing and today have brought a lot of those feelings back up for me. Strangely enough to add to this my very best friend in the world Lisa's father's birthday was also today and he too is gone. But with Amelia joining our family it has brought us all something to celebrate again. We all love you sweet baby Amelia Grace Cimei .. Happy Birthday.

She is a HAPPY girl

tonight my sweet, happy, silly, strong beautiful youngest daughter is fast asleep in her comfy bed in her beautiful bedroom. I kissed her good night tonight for the last time as a one year old and tomorrow she will turn two. This is her first birthday with us, her forever family. I can't help but think of her last birthday, her first. We were very lucky to receive pictures of the celebration with all of those who loved her at the True Children's Home. We are so grateful to them for this beautiful girl and for capturing those moments and memories for Amelia. I also can't help but think of Amelia's birth mother tonight. I wonder if she is thinking of the child she chose life for two years ago. I wish I could somehow let her know that she is safe and loved beyond measure. I wish I could tell her that her cleft lip and palate have been repaired and that she is healthy and happy. I wish I could say thank you to her for the amazing gift she gave my daughter ...Life....

Thank You....

Amelia Grace Cimei Rizzo

Cooking with Mama

I love to cook and cooking with my girls is one of my favorite things to do. I love that they love to help me in the kitchen .

Inspired

I have been away to long... November, really? that was the last time I posted here? WOW time flies when you are having fun.

I have been spending so much time cooking,crafting and just enjoying my family that I have not had the time nor the energy to post updates here. I have however, been inspired to start blogging again. In addition to all of the above I have been reading some great blogs. A few of them are adoption blogs and they will always be my favorite blogs to read. I just love to hear others stories about becoming a family. I have also been following a few Montessori blogs and I LOVE those. Sophia has been attending a GREAT Montessori school for the last year and a half and she is LOVING it as much as I am. Amelia will be starting there in the fall as well. It is no secret that one of my great loves is cooking so, toss in a few cooking blogs, oh and recently I have found some great crafting/party blogs. I guess it goes without saying that late at night when I should be sleeping I am reading, learning and being inspired by these great blogs. I am SO less talented then all of them when it comes to blogging but I try. I take crappy pictures because I have a crappy camera, hopefully one day we will get a cool new SLR, who knows. With all that said there is the source of my inspiration, well not just that these two are also my main source of inspiration.

Since I DO NOT scrapbook this Blog has always been a place that I can document and chronicle the lives and goings on in our family. Stay tuned for more fun and adventures of the -

Rizzo's family of four

Sweet Sophia

Amazing Amelia

P.S. I have also decided to open the blog back up.. :)

The most wonderful time

It has been a long time and so much has happened in a month. We had the most amazing trip to China to adopt Amelia and there is so much I want to share but it is going to have to wait until the jet lag has passed and the girls are sleeping on a "Normal" schedule again. They were wide awake this morning at 4am and after an hour of trying to get them to go back to sleep I gave in and brought them downstairs so daddy could sleep. One of us needs to be well rested,right. I feel pretty good right now but I know it is that first day home adrenaline that is fooling me into thinking I am fine. It will hit tomorrow I am sure...let me close this short post with a beautiful picture form our trip...more later

Just moments after they handed Amelia to us