First Cookout of the Year

Shekinah thought it was a neat idea to bring the hot dogs and plates out to the picnic table.

 We decided to finish up with marshmallows, she was a little concerned when the first few went up in flames...she said "fire hot."

Her first taste made her thing they were actually a very good idea

Note the two girls blowing out their marshmallow torches

 Sticky hands!

  

      Hopefully we will do this many more times this summer

Seven Years Ago

 Seven...well 8-1/2 years ago,we set about to adopt another little girl. People told us it couldn't be done. They tactfully cited Ch*na's $10,000 per- person- in- the- household  income rule.
I decided to try just one more agency...their answer..."We don't see why not."

Just a note to people that think international adoption is beyond their means....if God is nudging you in that direction....don't hide behind the $$$ screen.  With God all things are possible.

The wait at that time was 8 months from DTC to referral, what a whirlwind!

After our first visit to Ch*na we decided there was no way we would leave all our children at home again, so we took them along. I'm sure our travel group wondered what they were getting in for.
But miracles do happen, we only had the screaming 3 y.o. on the one in-country flight and some basic normal grouchies...all in all I was impressed by their behavior.  They were 14, 10, 8, and 3

Faith was not happy to meet us

Someone asked me if she was tiny...

 She would not drink a bottle for the first 12 hours...she had some kind of ulcers on her tongue and a double ear infection....

She did get full dose of the whole clan and seemed to soak it up.

 Notice the waving fingers...she used them as a defense mechanism when things were a bit overwhelming...she waved them between her eyes and the scene in front of her.

So happy to be landing

Tonight we celebrated the 7 years at a local restaurant for ....hamburgers and fries.

Things I Need to Remember

The other night a teen aged boy was seen racing through the kitchen a few seconds later he zoomed back the other direction.  "What on earth are you doing."
His reply  " I'm cold and I can't find a sweat shirt."


Shekinah's latest phrase,  "Did daddy say you can?"   She even checks up on me!



Today we went for a few groceries  you know...
5 dozen eggs
12 lbs of peanut butter
5 lbs of shredded cheese
1 lb of yeast

anyway, we got out of the car and  I picked her up and told her " I don't want you to get lost, it would make mama very sad." (wasn't sure she would get that )  
With nary a "what?" she gave me a big hug and said,
"Mama, you happy?"

Why I Wear This.

Today I read this post and decided I should do my own. (you really need to read Dorcas Smucker's post for this to make much sense.)

Actually, I think I am probably a bit lazy when it comes to clothes. I have used the same two styles of dress patterns for the past 20 years.

Well, maybe three patterns....the bodice of #4448 and one of the other skirts...and trust me, they don't turn out fitting quite like that.

So I pretty much just find fabric that
 #1 Isn't too expensive and
 #2 doesn't wrinkle too much and
 #3 is an OK color/design

I stopped looking in the mirror and checking if the color is right for my skin tones etc.
I just hold the bolt under my chin and turn toward Hope...she says "yuck" or "nice" and off we go.

Unlike Doris' Beachy Amish heritage, I have always been allowed to take pretty much any fabric and turn it into a dress. Up until about three years ago, we attended a more conservative Mennonite church and they frowned on neon colors with big flowers splashed all over.  But I have always been more bound by my dress making skills.
 I can make any quilt that you can design ( I think)....but they only have to lay flat.
 Dresses however....have to, sort of ....fit.

That would be why my dresses pretty much look the same, except for the fabric, for the past 15 years. I stick with the same pattern because it normally ...sort of....fits.

Then ten years ago, God gave me this tiny little girl.... (then He laughed and gave me 2 more)
  Hope soon taught me that wearing the same dress pattern over and over gets BORING!  When she was  still a little girl I could go to W-mart and buy a dress off the rack! Oh what fun!  But unfortunately, by the time my girls entered first grade the dress styles at affordable prices were barely fit to wear in the privacy of your bathroom.  So I had to start sewing...

Now, she is almost eleven and she looks at other people's dresses...and she says "mom, did you see how ____did her skirt on her dress?"

OK, new church, new wonderful people to learn to know,

old lady

Who does not remember names

I remember faces and whether we talk about food, adoption or CPR when we meet, but names?

So by the time I figure out who she is talking about, then I realized that she wants a dress like theirs!

She doesn't realize yet, that mom just doesn't have the knack of copying other people's dresses.

The other day, though, I got an ad from one of the local stores and saw that dress hemlines seem to be coming down! Then we went to W-mart to buy fabric for "Spring Program" dresses and we wandered into the young girls section....

They had dresses!
That came down to the floor!

Now they didn't have sleeves, BUT

The same store sells t-shirts...
The girls shirts were OK    BUT
the boy's shirts were in pinks and oranges and teals

I think they had us in mind!

Now would I dare to look in the women's dept and see if I could find something similar?

Nah, I doubt it, but maybe I'll try to find a nice sweater or shirt to wear over my dress just to change the look a bit.....but those sweaters do just that...make you sweat.

It's Spring!

The sun shone, the robins...well they sang their peculiar song...flowers ( little tiny delicate things) actually they are weeds, but they are blooming this time of the year.

Delight to the eyes,  I could almost ignore the cold breeze that swept across the yard.

Shekinah will love the flowers this summer...I might not have any on the stalks but, I think she will love the flowers.

This evening Hope brought up the subject of a DNA test again There was a time she wanted it for her birthday gift, but now she wants a pointer...like the teacher's...gum,  oil pastels...normal stuff.

We talked a bit about the DNA test and that I would like to get them done for the youngest four because of some of the medical info they can give us.  Joseph declared that he doesn't want his done. The firmness of his declaration sort of stunned me. We dug a bit further and the rest of the story came out.
"What if the information finds my mom (birth mother)?

Here I have one child that half hopes to find out more about her birth mother and another child who was very relived when we informed him that the chances of finding her in this way are almost nil.

Quite frankly, his reaction surprised me.

Then we went on to discussing trust...after someone told Shekinah to close her eyes and open her mouth and was going to put a piece of onion in her mouth.

Trust is still a foreign concept..."No, I still don't trust you."

Close your eyes, son and open your heart....

You know, but trust is so easy to break...mama's don't close their eyes and open their mouths either. Maybe there is more than one trust issue going on here?

My Day

It's time to start typing the handwritten pages that have been submitted for the Adoption News and I knew this might be a challenge this time.
Shekinah has started just climbing around on my chair , picking stuff off my desk, falling off my chair and generally being very distracting when I'm trying to work on the computer. She keeps asking for the "buffano and alligator" video (The National Geo video that went viral)

Well, today she played!  She was playing with her sister's picnic set...that might have had something to do with it. I drank many cups of "schwey" (water for you English speakers) and ate ice cream out of cups with pretend thermometers. Ate many plates of "for you".  Po-Ko actually got fed too. (gotta post a picture of him sometime)

All this was after a nice long screaming fit over ...actually I don't even know what started it. If she needs a good scream, she will make sure it happens.

And I got 3 pages typed!



This evening I noticed one of the boys reading the dictionary...now if you have teen boys reading the dictionary, you usually check what subject they are interested in.

Well, turns out he couldn't remember what the first word had been...it was a word he noticed in the encyclopedia at school and he COULD remember it the whole way home

BUT when he read the definition....he couldn't understand the words used in the definitions.

So twelve (his estimate) words later he couldn't remember what word he started with.

Ya think?
Maybe we need to get us a simpler dictionary. (Actually I'm impressed that he now takes the initiative to look up words that he doesn't understand. Dont' tell him, but I keep using big words to keep stretching his brain)

 Oh and someone learned a new skill this weekend....called natural consequences... when you put wet shirts on a hanger and you don't straighten the collars....daddy won't wear them....and you have to iron them....I think we understand the value of the straightened collars....maybe....
Actually I think he enjoyed himself...dangerous equipment and all.

Why Do I Do This? part 1( I think)

The other week I couldn't think of much to blog about and thought maybe I should just scrap this blogging thing. Then I remembered that it keeps me paying attention to life in our house and hopefully I manage to write more memories this way.
Then the funeral of my brother-in-law.
We were sitting in the receiving line (is that what you call it?) and a lady leans down to shake my hand and says "I'm a lurker on your blog, I love it."  Sorry I don't remember your name...

Then last weekend I got an e-mail from someone who was referred a child with ectrodactyly. They had until Sunday to decide if they wanted to accept the referral. She was searching for 'real' information not the little bit of text book stuff that is out there. She found my by my one post labeled ectrodactyly. Shared our story, found out they really don't live very far away from us....and they accepted the referral!

Saturday the girls and I were shopping and a lady came up to us and asked if I'm the one who writes "Shall Run and Not Be Weary"  Another lurker and they are finishing paperwork hopefully for a child with limb difference.  Went to Pi**a Hut for lunch and to get the girls' free pizzas...there was one other family in there...and they were caucasian and their daughter was Asian. When the mother turned around I recognized another "semi-lurker"  she's the secretary at my Ob-Gyn's office and she had introduced her self one time when I was in for an appt. But this was the first time I'd met her daughter.

Those are some of the reasons I do this...
The other one is to keep it real...well sorta...I don't tell everything because parenting is hard...if we had a clue, the human race would have died out.  BUT God puts beauty in between the tough stuff

tight hugs,
belly laughs,
sloppy kisses,
"Thanks mom"
"good supper mom"
"will you look at this for me?"
"I love you mom"
"sorry"
tight hugs
belly laughs
sloppy kisses

Some one asked me the other day if I ever thought about what life would be like if we hadn't adopted.
Yeah, every now and then....
But then I think of all the things we would have missed

                                                   peas for breakfast

There are probably 1000 people that I know now because of our adoptions that I would never have met otherwise....yeah, I probably would have met 1000 different people,but I'm sure they would not have been as nice.

I think our bio sons are more well rounded people than they would have been. They would not have --held babies
-learned about the shrieks of their sisters
-seen the other side of the world
-seen the measuring and fitting for a prosthesis
-learned the art of navigating a wheel chair in this house
-learned the patience of teaching a differnt way to hold a glove, do a lay-up shot
-witnessed the determination of a 3rd year English speaker memorizing whole chapters of King    James' English Bible

To be honest, yeah, I might get more sleep, the house might stay cleaner, and I might not have to cook quite as much food.
BUT
I think life would be BORING!!

They're Back

Well, they came home with an All Star Award 

 A first place

  A third place

And a 7 year award

My 1000-watt (what) Child

 Shekinah has recently started a habit of saying "what" to anything I say. I almost was wondering if she is hearing impaired....
that is, until I started answering "you heard me".
her reply, "oh, OK mama."  and she'd go off and do what ever I had been talking about.

It hasn't stopped her from answering with "what", but it has lowered my repetitions.
She is also responsible (I think) for the smudge that has been appearing on the right side of all my pictures lately...I cleaned the lens today...see if that helps.

The other night my brother and his family were here for supper. We haven't been together since Christmas, a result of them living 5 hours away. Here Brent and Shekinah are trying to decide the pecking order. Shekinah definitely was at an advantage on her home turf....plus she is 1-1/2 years older. Till the end of the evening they were shrieking and running around the house with the rest of the cousins.  That night "the girls were winning" (as Hope noted) because our oldest 3 were at Bible quizzing retreat and the shrieks of little girls were not absorbed by the body mass of teen aged brothers. Actually I think it is the glares of disapproval that tempers the normal shrieks of this household.
Oh and good news, Brent is recovering fine from his cleft palate repair yesterday.

I just had to catch this picture. Faith sat Shekinah on the bench so she could read her a story...

good training for kindergarten.

Speaking of Faith, she ordered school workbooks for Christmas, but it didn't take long until the answers were all penciled in....but that is what erasers are for....erase the answers and do it again.

Book Winner!

Sharon, please e-mail me your complete address. I realized I only have your city and state on my files

Congratulations!

Those of you that live close to me can loan my copy of the book. If you live too far away Amazon still has them.

Thanks so much for your interest.

Don't Forget! Book Giveaway!

The boys from "Ugly Sweater Day" remind you to leave a comment if you want to be in on the book drawing. Will do the drawing before bed time tonite.

Go back to the post about the book here  to read the review and the rules.

Best Seat in the House

 Pun intended...

  

It is not good enough to sit on daddy's lap or hang off the back of the chair...

we must now work on our climbing skills