Things You Find

First official day of summer vacation!

Zeke washed windows and put in the screens.

Joe did a load of laundry.

Hope held school.

Faith attended school.

Shekinah attended school for about half the time and then aggravated her sisters the rest of the time.

After lunch I told the older ones to draw until Shekinah is sleeping...One wise soul mentioned that maybe I should give them an idea what to draw, so today we drew a sphere...in pencil...with shading.....that lasted 1/2 hour.

I was busy re-arranging my sewing room...why? I really don't know. I do have plenty of sewing jobs that I should be working on, but there is a lot of dust in here.  I turned my sewing machine around to face the rest of the room...maybe preventing  a little girl from sitting on my back while I sew?

Cleaning out one room, usually means you make multiple trips to other rooms, so while putting dossier forms in the attic, I decided to grab some old receipt and bring them down to be shredded. While digging through the box I found some old calendar/planners from the days when I was "organized".
Turns out they had been a diary/planner/accounts book and since Hope and Faith can't throw out  a notebook I told them they may look through them....Hope started reading the one from 2002 and of course paged to her birthday...I don't think I'll be throwing out the books after all. It says " Bought Little Orbies doughnuts (tiny little fresh made doughnuts) , one dozen for me and Zeke to share. We each had one and he held the bag on the way home. He asked if he may have one more, I said "yes". When we got home the bag was empty!  I should have known better!"

Then I grabbed the year 2000 and found that on Joseph's birthday, my hubby was an outpatient at the hospital for a biopsy on a lump in his throat!

We have a picture from the day Faith was born...we were taking a walk on the street and Ezekiel and Hope were riding in the wagon.

I just need to find out what we were doing the day Shekinah was born.


   Found these bags in the multitude of China paperwork.

Complicated

The other day I was bringing Hope home from school and she brought up home schooling. Now we have discussed this topic before, but I'm just not sure it is for us.
I asked her why she thinks she should home school...

"Well mom, I think high school would be fun, but I'll be so old by the time I'm finished with school. (She'll be all of 18)  I asked what is her hurry.
"I want to work in a grocery store at the cash register, and I want to teach school, and I want to get married and have children, and I want to be a missionary somewhere.Oh and be a secretary in a public school.* Not in that order. If I stay in school too long, I won't have time to do all that."

"AND", I reminded her, " you need to get home from your mission field in time to visit me on my 'Lucky Wednesdays' (the day's she will visit me in the nursing home).
"Of course! I will be bringing my kids to be babysat."

"Wait why does this have to be so complicated!?"


That conversation gives me the strength to go on, since we had a similar conversation the other week with a sibling who wanted to home school. Their reason was so that they could finish school faster and move out. The problems with that plan were duly pointed out and we will be continuing with regular schooling.


* She fell in love with the idea of secretary work when she observed the secretaries at the local high school while we were getting the boys' working papers for the summer.


Quote for the day: While reading quotes in the "Fishwrapper" he read " I have learned that you can love someone without actually really liking them."  to which he exclaimed "Boy is that true!"

    Faith with the bowl she painted at Pottery Works while on her field trip. It was one of the best souvenirs she's brought home from a field trip!

 Some daddies bring butterflies to their little girls, other daddies bring bumblebees with white faces for their little girls....the ones with white faces don't sting.

             This is what we come home to when hubby and I go out for the evening.

Today we got the news that the young man who has been fighting bone cancer for almost 2 years we
nt home to be with Jesus. Graduation was last night, a very bitter sweet moment for all of us. He didn't get to attend grad, but he did get to the junior/senior banquet last weekend.  We also got word that his maternal grandmother went home just hours before he did. Prayers for the family would be appreciated.

Saturday Night Supper

Shekinah's reaction to mom and dad actually sharing her left over ice cream cone

No, you really won't understand...

                   Zeke should have captured some other faces as well....

Faith:  "Excuse me soldier, but this is my house"

Zeke about Shekinah "Would that make her a Trauma Queen?"

 

School Daze

How do you handle this stuff? It started Wednesday,phone call from school...

"Mom can you get my 'disciples project' off the computer downstairs and

print it and bring it to school."  Then realizing this mama doesn't do such in the middle of the day...

"Or you could just e-mail the document to Mr..." 

Started the downstairs computer and it gave an error message "just hit F1"

F1 did nothing...I gave up and figured this is one time I have to practice what I preach. "Allow them to fail when it is small things like missed homework."

Then just before it was time to leave for an appointment I remembered that there are two keyboard sitting on that desk...sure enough the keyboard that was off the desk was actually the one hooked to the computer.

This time you were rescued young man.

Next morning, Faith..."mom did you print out the pictures for the church booklet? I need those pictures."

She had been reminding me for the past week, but always during meal prep, or when there were other things falling down on my head.  I asked her to find the church book so I could quickly scan and print the pictures. 

Yup, the book was no where to be found...

Minutes later, Joe...."If you need to buy ink, you'd better get it. I need 15 pictures for tonite so I can finish the time line. Oh, and they are supposed to be high quality pictures,

 the teacher doesn't just want blurry blobs."

  Excuse me?!

I got some pictures for Faith's church project, dropped them off at school after I dropped Zeke off at the funeral.  Later carefully found CLEAR pictures of the 15 items that were carefully listed for me

 and printed them out in high resolution. 

I might have over-reacted a bit when someone needed a picture re-printed because he had nipped off the upper left-had corner instead of the upper right-hand corner.

 I might be biting my tongue while I struggle to mesh a Mac template with a Microsoft word program.

Pulling pictures from the internet to paste onto school projects is probably a copy write infringement of some sort...hmm

Maybe I have to buy them a printer and make them fund it out of their own pockets.

 I am ready for school to be OVER!

                    Always floating along to distract us from homework is this young lady who seems to have daily temper tantrums that are sprinkled with the word "STOP!" and "NO!"  She was doing that about an hour before this picture, but bouncing on an exercise ball and singing "If you're happy and you know it scratch your head" seems to fix a lot of problems.

Quote for the day: Driving to school this morning Shekinah noticed an un-mown lawn "mama there are a bunch of "blowy" things in the grass"  Later on the way home  "Mama how do we get more blowy things in our grass?"

Mother's Day, Social Media, and Expectations

Happy Mother's Day to all you wonderful mothers that I have learned to know over the years. Because of the wonderful world of adoption I have come to know a lot of strong, faithful mothers.

Because of some mothers who had no choices or maybe choices made for them, we have 4 wonderful children. I honor their mothers this day too. I need to come up with some kind of method/ceremony to honor their part in our children's lives.

Social media- People like to bash social media and I can totally agree it can be a time waster, but there are people that I rarely get to see and I can keep up with their lives. There is also the helpful side of FB...the other day I realized I'm going to need extra pizza pans for a supper, I simply posted my need and within minutes I had four offers of pizza pans someone even offered their very expensive Pampered Chef stones...my hubby advised me not to accept that offer...not sure if he was afraid I'd break them or like them so much I'd want my own. Ask a question on the private FB pages and you soon have answers for picky eating, tantrums or IEP meetings.  It's like the old time circle letters, but much faster!


Expectations-- Back when I volunteered with the ambulance a lot more, I would leave for a call in the middle of a meal, two hours later I'd come home and find quite a bit of a mess to clean up. That mess quite frankly irked me! But I learned over the years to try to expect a mess and be pleasantly surprised when the mess was actually not there...most of the dishes washed and some of the counters wiped. ( This is not a criticism of my hubby, but of my children, who know how to clean up, but need reminders for each step) Over the years I have learned that this technique allows me to be prepared for other tough times....one of the children is known to have a fit over a bit of homework, or combing of her hair, or cleaning up the books that were spread over the floor....I picture the worst case scenario and then also picture how I will handle it (deep breaths, calm voice, and a matter of fact attitude)   Every time I miss this step and get caught off guard, I goof up on my reaction.
 The other Saturday, I had a part in a women's seminar. The seminar lasted all day and I had 2 presentations. The preparing took a lot of my concentration the previous week so I left the house in less than stellar condition that morning. I had given some ideas of what should get accomplished during the day so that we could all attend the Spring concert that evening.  On my way home, I was suddenly struck by the thought "What if they didn't wash any dishes all day?!"  I went over the most important tasks that would need to be done...make sure the showers had been taken and then try to do as many of the dishes while making supper and try not to give orders too harshly....OK mind prepped....
Walked in the door and my counters were clear! The floor was clean! All the dishes had been washed AND dried AND put away (anyone who visits my house knows that is a rarity)  Turns out Joe took care of the floor (his normal job, but sometimes needs reminding) They took turns doing the dishes throughout the day and Zeke cleaned off the counters and cleared under the microwave. Hope did an excellent job on her living room (normal job, but sometimes needs reminding)
AMAZING! we are all growing up :)

Pray for the families with funerals this week....on Wednesday evening a father was backing his fuel truck into his driveway and his young son ran out to meet daddy, but daddy didn't see him...the grief is not something you can prepare your mind for...while we rest in the fact the little boy is safe in the arms of Jesus, I am sure his family has many questions.
The second funeral is of a young man from our school...he was on his senior trip with his class in Grenada, something went horribly wrong while they were snorkeling and he died. This happened Thursday. His classmates tried to get flights home, but there were no flights with 34 empty seats, so they decided to continue with the work projects that were planned and grieve together. They will arrive home Wednesday and see their friend layed to rest on Thursday...not sure how they will finish out the year, they will have 6 more days of school.