Looking For Good

Last Sunday, I stayed home from church, with a friend's foster baby (he's supposed to stay out of crowds for a few months)

I listened in on our church service, while the sermon was on Barnabas and being and encourager, something the minister said struck me.

He mentioned how we are so programmed to think negatively of any given situation. Lyndon Johnson pointed out, "If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read : 'President Can't Swim'."

We read the weather forecast and cynically snort "yeah, we'll see." Do I give credit when the forecasters are actually right?"

In the international adoption world we first meet our child the day before adoption, parents are advised "prepare for the worst, and hope for the best."

It's way late for New Year's resolutions, but I thinkit would be a good idea to look for the positive in all the interactions with my children. A child makes themselves annoying by standing in my way...he/she is just needing some closeness with me and not actually trying to be annoying.

Then another child leaves yet ANOTHER load of laundry sitting in the washer, I am sure he/she is just so busy doing math or history homework that they really didn't have time to do their chores.

You get the idea ( I know those pronouns are off but they read my blog!)

This past week has been interesting, on Tuesday I took Parker and Shekinah along to do some banking and a stop at the post office. When I was getting Parker out of his seat I noticed a catch while I was closing the roll door on the van. I opened it and tried again and THE BACK PART OF THE DOOR FELL DOWN!  Thankfully I had already taken Parker out of his seat and the bottom roller stayed in its slot. Otherwise the door would have fallen on my toes or worse. The door was too heavy for me to put back in it's place. My dear hubby was able to put it back into place when he came home that evening. Needless to say everyone has had  instructions on how to PROPERLY open the van door and the replacement part is in the mail.

In other news: Shekinah is rising to the challenge of getting ready for Kindergarten. A number of times in the past few weeks I asked her to do something and she was reluctant. All I needed to say was, "well, you should learn that before yougot to school, but if you want to stay home another year, that's OK too."

We suddenly know how to open the van door from the inside (not the one that fell off), draw the letter "K", and recognize a bunch of numbers. Tying shoes and getting the letters of her name in the correct order are next on the list.

Then the big boys had a youth group function. It was labeled "color night"

The colors selected were pink and brown

If your birthday fell in the last half of the year, you got to wear pink

Guess which half of the year these boys were born.

This dapper young man left the house in his father's wedding suit coat

(he doesn't fit into the pants)

carrying his great-grandfather's cane and wearing great-grandpa's glasses.

Old-fashioned night with a different youth group

If these pictures should suddenly leave my blog, it would probably be because

 my children read my blog