Ray and Julie: Thanksgiving In Disneyland

Introduction

We've been married for ten years. We love being an aunt and uncle to our nieces and nephews. We have been through the roller coaster of fertility options and are glad we explored those avenues. We now know that our children will come to us through adoption.
The purpose of our blog is for you to get to know us and to get word out that we are looking to adopt in the hope someone we know knows someone who is pregnant and considering
placing the child for adoption, and then refer them to us.
To the expectant parent, I don't know you or how you found yourself looking at this blog, faced with this decision to place or parent your baby. But I do know that you are a strong and amazing person for even considering adoption. God knows you and loves you. With His help and your faith I know you will be guided to make the choices that will be best for you and your baby. Know that we pray for you without yet knowing who you are.
Adoption is such a personal and unique experience for all involved and is different for each case. I believe the specifics of adoption are between the people involved and not for the general public. We do have a letter for you that has more information about us, our ideas on parenting, our families, our open adoption plans, and where you fit in. We want to get to know you and in doing so we can discuss more openly what adoption looks like to each of us.
Thank you for taking the time to look at our blog. I hope you will be able to get to know us through our posts. If you want to read our expectant parent letter please email us at jewelstewart@gmail.com and we will send you a copy.

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Thanksgiving In Disneyland

We had a family trip to Disneyland planned for Christmas with the whole family on my side. Then my brother Nick got a new job and was unable to get time off to go and my mom got sick and now has to be on oxygen at night and she didn't want to bother with that on vacation. So that left us and Jennifer (my sister) and Kaitlynn (niece), except Ray would have to fly back home to go to work on Christmas Eve... We decided to cancel the trip all together so we could still spend Christmas as a family. Then Jennifer and I were talking at lunch one day and we were both kind of sad that we were no longer going. So we looked at the school schedule and decided just the three of us would go for Thanksgiving instead.

Jennifer, Kaitlynn and I headed to California on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, we stayed in Las Vegas that night and took Kaitlynn to the M&M store Wednesday before finishing the drive. Ray's Uncle Bill and Aunt Paula let us stay at their house (while they were visiting Utah for Thanksgiving)so we were able to save some money on lodging. We spent one day at California Adventure and two days at Disneyland. Jennifer had an "agenda" all planned out for us so we could make sure to do the things we wanted to do while at the parks. We did pretty good on time in the mornings riding all of the rides we wanted to, but by the afternoon the parks got so busy the lines were too long to bother waiting in. So we enjoyed the shows and other activities. My favorite part was the Animation Academy at California Adventure where we learned how to draw Mickey Mouse and I really liked World of Color. We also decorated Christmas Cookies with Mrs. Claus and got to see some of the characters in their holiday wear. The Christmas Parade was fun to watch also. It rained on our first day at Disneyland so we got some ponchos at the gas station on the way there. We had a lot of fun together!

Sunday we went to the beach and walked around before our long drive home on Monday.

Since it was Thanksgiving I thought I would share some things I am thankful for:

I am thankful that I have a good relationship with my family and that we enjoy spending time together

I am thankful that we had a safe trip

I am thankful that I have an amazing husband who loves me