Crazy January

This month has been very busy but has also been fun. Lee went to the Commanding General's reception the first part of the month. He got all dressed in his dress blues and I thought he looked pretty good. I was planning on going with him, but our babysitter fell through and it was during church so I took the girls to church by myself. It was definitely a challenge, but I survived, I was very tired when I got home.

Great Grandma Andersen sent the girls dresses and they looked so cute, but they aren't very good about letting me take their picture. Sofi decided who was wearing which dress.

The girls have the cutest personalities and keep me laughing all the time. They are getting along really good and playing with each other a lot more. I love watching them.

Some Pictures from Christmas

The 2 pictures above are from Christmas Eve and playing with all of my stuffed animals. Sofi just wanted to lay into them and chill out.


Christmas morning Emma was more interested in the books than looking at the camera.


Sofi was really happy on Christmas and was just having fun.

Happy New Year

We are a little slow getting our Christmas letter out this year because Sofi, Emma, and I all got sick with ruptured ear drums. I didn't know that ear infections were contagious. So 2 weeks before Christmas I ended up in the ER, Sofi went in Christmas Eve and Emma the Monday after Christmas. It has been crazy and I know that Lee is happy to finally be back to work this week and not home taking care of sick girls. Because we were all sick, a family picture was not going to happen and my photographer moved anyway.

So after all these excuses here is our Christmas letter which was written the beginning of December, just not published.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,
What a year 2009 has been! Really the last couple of weeks have felt like a year to us, but there has been so much more. Last January we returned from a long holiday vacation to Missouri, New Mexico, Utah, and Idaho, back to New Mexico, Missouri, and then finally home to Georgia. It was the first time that we had taken Emma on a long trip to see her cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. It was such a fun trip, but we enjoyed returning home to our new apartment and trying to put it back together.

Lee then started his Captain’s Career Course, but because he was not keeping himself busy enough with the course work, he was heavily encouraged to pursue his master’s degree. So far, he is has just one year and one class left before he will graduate, and has received all A’s except for one class and that was a B. Lee was able to do really well in is Captain’s Career Course, he finished with the 5th highest test average. He was supposed to report to Ft. Leonard Wood, MO in August, but was working on interviewing for a position here in Augusta. As it turned out, at the very last minute he got the job and we remained here. He is the Executive Officer for the highest ranking civilian working on post, but basically he is a glorified secretary. He makes coffee (from what I hear not very well), schedules meetings, cancels meetings, drives his boss around, and does whatever his boss ask him to do. He loves it because he is working for a wonderful boss who is family centered and not work centered. I get to see him every night, and most of the time he is home just after 5:00 pm.

I kept busy working with Emma. It is amazing what she can do, and even more so, because she does it when she wants to and that is usually not on my schedule. I have been trying to get Emma involved in a play group and she just simply loves it. The best thing that happened to me this year up until this last month was that Lee got a position that does not require him to deploy for the next couple of years. Because of that I politely requested that we get a home and not rent an apartment. However, my home needed to have a kitchen that I could work in and with some room so that I don’t feel as if I am living on my stuff.

Emma has been so delightful this year. She first learned how to crawl, stand, and sit all in one week, and right after her grandparents had left from watching her get sealed to us in the Atlanta Temple. Emma was so cute once she learned how to crawl that she would only go to certain locations within the apartment. She wouldn’t crawl on anything hard, cold, or stingy (like grass). If she had to cross cold or hard floors she would try to crawl while avoiding placing her knees on the ground. She was not very good at it. In time she decided to walk, but that was after her 1st birthday. For her birthday, mom decided to get her the best present possible, a one year check-up with all the shots that accompany those visits. Since then she has really grown up; she babbles, understands commands such as fetch, and even sit. We are working on got fetch a soda for dad, but that one is taking a while. Since she has learned to walk, she has not walked once, she is constantly running everywhere and it helps to have such an open 1st floor on our new home.

As a family, we love our new home. We moved in the first week of August, and decided that once we were in we would again submit our paperwork to be eligible to adopt again. It wasn’t more than a couple of days after everything was complete that we got a phone call asking if we were still interested in the baby from Oklahoma that we were trying to adopt last year. Of course we said yes, and soon we were trying to figure out what we needed to do to help the process along. We found out that there was going to be a court date to relinquish parental rights of the mother to LDS family services mid-November, so we decided to take the gamble and be in the area so we could receive Sofia soon after that date. Well, the trip did not go as planned in that there were lots of hiccups along the way. We finally got to meet with Sofia the day before the court hearing, and the state social worker invited us to the hearing. As it turns out, the state had never given up custody of a child to a private adoption agency before, and because of that, they were weary to give them up. After another court hearing the next day, we learned that the State of Oklahoma was really scared to relinquish custody for fear of not knowing who we were. So another date was set to return to court, but the new date was the day before Thanksgiving. Before that court date, we needed to meet with the State of Oklahoma so they could get to know us better. Everything went so well, that on the day before Thanksgiving court date, the judge decided not to come to work because we were his only case and he thought this was not going to work out. He was wrong! The state found us to be model adoptive parents and was surprised at how efficient LDS Family Services were at their job. By lunch time we had possession of Sofia, but there was still the problem of being approved to leave the state; the Interstate Compact paperwork had not been approved by the end of the day, so we would have to remain in Oklahoma for at least the weekend, and maybe longer.

Let’s just say that spending Thanksgiving in Oklahoma without family and a place to call home really stinks. We moved from hotel to hotel eating Mexican food on Thanksgiving day because only a couple of restaurants were open and the lines were really long. It was nice, different, and I felt like we were betraying the season. Well Monday and Tuesday came and went, and after sitting around, we just had to leave. So we decided to drop Emma off with Lee’s parents at the border, but along the way we got a phone call allowing us to leave. It was perfect timing, because we were all getting sick and needed to get going and return home to feel better.
Well in a short letter, these were the events that have taken place in our now larger family over the past year. We have felt so blessed, and we want to thank each of you for your thoughts and prayers in our behalf.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year
The Lorenz Family (currently based in Georgia)

Adjusting Back Home

We have now been home just over a week and it has been an adjustment with 2 little girls running around. We have all been sick this week so it has been a slow process getting the house back together after being gone for 3 weeks. We finally got Christmas up yesturday and are starting to get into the spirit of christmas. It should be fun this year because we are home and we are all together.

We had a church christmas party on Friday and we had breakfast for the food so they told the children that they could all come in their pj's. When I heard that I had to rush off get the girls new matching christmas pj's (I got them 2 sets so that they could have one for christmas). This was the first time that people in the ward saw Sofi so when we walked in with girls in the same clothes and their hair pulled back most people had to take a double take. They figured out that one was Sofi because both Lee and I had a girl, but they really had to look to tell the difference. It was actually kind of fun. The picture above was taken before we went and Emma did not want her picture taken.

Both girls love books and are always bringing us books to read to them so of course when we got home from the party they brought dad a book and wanted him to read to them.

Our New Addition

I realize I have neglected to post on the blog for a while, but I will do better. As you know we put in our papers to adopt another child. Once we finished that our prayers were answered. About 19 months ago we found out about child and were trying to adopt a little girl from Oklahoma, but due to legal issues we were told it wasn't possible until late Septemeber when we found out that it was a possibility again. It has been a trial getting to this point but we were finally able to bring Sofia home to become part of our family. We spent 3 weeks in Oklahoma and now I am glad to be home.
Sofi is beautiful and looks like she belongs to our family. It is an adjustment for her in her new home but she is doing great with it. Emma is also doing good having a big sister (only by 3 months). I think this is what it is like having twins. The girls play with each other and they also push each other and fight for the same toys. It is going to be a challenge but it is also going to be a blessing.


This is a picture with Sofi the second time we saw her. We had just finished up with the first court appearence and the state was not sure about releasing her to our adoption agency so we had another court appearence the next day. She was tired and hungry and still not quite sure about what was going on. We were able to make her smile a little bit and she did play with the toys with us.




Once we picked up Sofi we decided to go to the park to help her adjust to us a little better. What kid doesn't love to play outside at the park. It was a bit chilly but the girls loved it. They didn't want to go even though they were really cold by the time we left.

We had to get a car seat for Sofi but we kept the box just incase it didn't work out for some reason. The girls loved to play in the box and play peek a boo. It was so cute watching them.

We are so thankful to receive Sofia into our home and have her become part of our family the day before Thanksgiving.

September is Almost Over?

I can't believe how fast this month has gone. Emma is growing up and becoming more mobile. She finally started to walk on her own on September 14th and has just been getting better and better. With this new ability it has brought new adventures. She was climbing on things before but now she is able to explore more things to climb on and wont sit in the stroller or the grocery cart anymore she would rather walk. I guess that is because she can find more things to get into. She now has found my keyboard in the living room and has figured out that when you turn it on it makes noise. Then if you push some buttons it will play songs. Then of course she has to sing with it. It is so funny to watch her play it and actually only hit one or two keys at a time and not bang her hand on it. We are just letting her continue to play it and maybe we might have a musician in the family, who knows.



The other thing that we have been working really hard at this month is trying to get all the paperwork done so that we can adopt again. We had it done by September 1st but then we had other requirements that came up such as getting a letter from the 911office of every place we have lived in the past 5 years showing if we had any 911 calls and then get the transcripts. We didn't have any calls but getting a letter saying that was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. We also have been waiting for the LDS Family Services to get our FBI checks back showing that we are not criminals. It was suppose to take a month, but it took about 7 weeks and that finally came in today. Now we have our home visit scheduled in a couple of weeks and then we will be on the list again. So if any of you here of a child that needs a home, we are willing and ready for them.

Labor Day Weekend

We had some friends, the Robison's, come up and we had so much fun. We were finally able to use are huge house and with lots of people we didn't feel like we were on top of each other. We had 5 adults (they brought their neice with them which was so fun to have her here also), 3 babies and 2 dogs. It was a real adventure and so much fun. We played games until midnight almost every night. Lee was finally able to go biking on some trails he wanted to try out but didn't want to go alone so he had someone to go with. We went to the lake for a picnic and also the park.

Not only are they great friends, but also our personal photographer. We needed new family pictures for our adoption file. We have our papers and now updated pictures done so we are waiting for our home visit(hopefully in a couple of weeks) and then we will be on the list again for adoption.