Remembering and Being Thankful

This girl-- we are coming up on four years. Four years ago, I was frantically putting my house in order and fixing freezer meals, praying that my ulcerative colitis behaves itself (do diseases have selves?).  I worried if it was a crazy plan to leave all the children at home, could I go for two weeks without my husband to bounce ideas and give me a steadying hand?
I knew that there was no way we had the funds to again take the whole family to China so this was the best option, but still was this God's plan was I being crazy?

Four years later I can tell you for sure that God had His hand in this. She has taught us so much. I remember showing her pictures to the doctors at Shriner's and Dr Kozin confidently saying, "she'll be fine."  I was glad for his vote, but inside I wondered how he could be so sure of himself. He was right!

Her whole adoption story was a big step of faith.  See, we (well, mostly my hubby) had agreed that we should have all of our children born by the time he turned 40--so that he wouldn't be an "old man" and still teaching teens how to drive.  So this time when we had started looking at files, he told me to look only at files of children of five-years. That would have about worked in his timeline.  But then I came across that picture of that little girl and he had that Sunday morning vision--in church, mind you and well.... He told me that he is sure God was telling him that little girl is to be our daughter,but since she was so young and since we needed a waiver to be approved to adopt, we should probably wait until the agency is willing to "go to bat" for this little one.

We waited about four weeks and then sent in our paperwork requesting permission to adopt this little girl...even if our yearly income did not reach their requested level.  We received permission within a week. I thought the home study would be a breeze after that, after all, we were using the same agency for the third time.  Ah, not so fast! New people in charge, apparently they didn't really like large families and, and, and.
We managed to jump over all their hurdles , squeeze through their flaming hoops, and tunnel through the thorny thickets. God allowed it to actually move forward in good time. My niece and I were flying to meet her in about ten months from the day we sent our first piece of paper.

She is a survivor.
She is brave--last week she was allowed to go to the inner-city kid's club with Zeke and Ben (her sisters were along too). Later she told me about the other girl who just was so curious about her and how they figured she must only speak Spanish because she was so quiet. This little girl declared she was going to pray so that Shekinah has the same hands as everyone else.  I asked her if it bothered her that the other kids asked so many questions. She said, "yeah, but Zeke was protecting me, he sat between me and that girl and told her that she is asking a lot of questions."

I told her that was her big brother's job...she agreed.

She has no problem telling her siblings what they should and should not be doing. She is living proof that the youngest child is the loudest.

She is learning about jokes....she ends them with "boom chee"  Just like the terrible comedian in Adventures in Odyssey.

So the other night dad brought out his joke " If a canoe goes backwards down a one way street and the wheels fall off, how many flapjacks does it take to cover a dog house roof?"

She looked at him a bit cross-eyed and says "none"

Dad says at the same time, "none, because ice cream don't have bones!'

She crowed, " I finally got a joke right!"    boom- chee


Tonite after Joe came home from the freshman/sophomore campout, he had to tell "The Brick Joke"
It's an old joke made up of two stories.  After the first part when everyone else is looking at the story-teller as if he lost his train of thought...Shekinah was roaring with laughter and yelled ,"I get it--boom-chee!"

She wasn't paying attention when he finally got to the punchline at the end.

The other day I complimented her on how fast she could navigate the stairs, I mentioned that some kids still take one step at a time and it showed how fast she is growing because she doesn't do that anymore.  Ever since she has been coming home with stories of who goes up and down the stairs "the wrong way".  I didn't ask her if she informed those children of their error...I really don't want to know.

End of Summer Report

So now that all the kids are in school, why on earth am I not finding time to blog, take pictures and finish projects?
We are flying through September and the "Christmas Quilt" is still in pieces and there has been no sign of that house-cleaning lady. I finally had a phone chat with a friend and still have a sore shoulder from all the catching up we needed to do.
Driver training with Joe is proceeding --"fast enough," I say. "At a snail's pace" he says.

The daily struggle to get enough calories in one dear child in the morning is boggling my mind. She would do best with a  school day that started at 10AM and ended at 5 pm. We have a "rule"at our house,  if you can't eat breakfast, you stay home and you are sick. And by sick I mean you stay on the sofa all day. You may read a book and get up for lunch and bathroom, but otherwise, it's the sofa.
I have not had my children take me up on that too many times, but Monday morning was one of "those" mornings. Everything was overwhelming AND her belly hurt. This one has had that complaint off and on for years and we really can't put a diagnosis to it. So after an orthodontist visit for Joe, we went home and she headed for the sofa. She ended up sleeping about four hours and by 3 PM she was raring to go.  We did have revival meetings every night last week so maybe she really did need to sleep.
Today I bough high-caloried drink mix and she thinks that sounds like a good plan.  But then she thought the energy balls,or the scrambled eggs sounded good too--the night before.

Anyway, on to other things.  We celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary.

Goodness we look young...yeah, guess I was...I was nineteen.

We were much more mature at nineteen back then.

We did some day trip stuff to celbrate, took Hope off to the baby-sitter in the morning and were back to pick up the school kids in the afternoon. Spent one day at Longwood Gardens and another day wandering around Ikea's store in Philly...of course we ate out at lunch time.

And guess who pulled a tooth!

The second one is about to fall out too, but IT HURTS!

The adult teeth are both through the gum, but behind the baby tooth. I'm afraid it is going to look a mess in there for a few years.

.

Satisfying Sunday

That was a satisfying last Sunday of summer.  We went to church, heard a sermon on repentance. Ate a quick and easy lunch. Certain folks took a quick nap, then hubby and I took a walk. After supper we played a made-up basketball game that involved people on rip-sticks shooting baskets , then somehow ended up with a game of Knock-Out but you had to shoot by first bouncing the basketball on a mini-trampoline and then hopefully have the right trajectory to make a basket.

Unfortunately, I was having too much fun to get the camera.

We watched one of our bake-off competitions online. Grabbed blankets and pillows and set up camp on the blacktop looking for shooting stars. Some people were sure they saw shooting stars,

 I didn't so I'm sure they weren't there.

Were convinced to set off some of the last of the fireworks and found a crazy bug/millipede thingy crawling through the ashes.

He proved to be quite aggressive for such a little critter, rearing up to attack an inquisitive finger. Looked it up and after a bit of debate- even online- decided it to be a Rove beetle. They are nasty little critters, that seem to make a drug that will make other bugs slaves to it.

Finished up the watermelon, ate some hard-boiled eggs and tomatoes (really kids!) And they are off to bed. Determined to "make something" with the twelve dozen eggs our industrious chickens have given us. Possibly Floating Islands and Angel Food cake.

City Life and Country Life

Cleaned up my multiple camera cards, I need to keep better track of life.

We had a Monarch nursery this summer and watched a few of them hatch.

We are waiting on some swallow tails to hatch too.

Shekinah learned to swim this summer. I was worried that a couple of episodes would scare her off, but she is a determined little mite!

For the first year, I decided to try canning grape juice. I was worried this might be a lot of 

hard work. I was pleasantly surprised, it was a lot of fun.  My SIL has a steamer juicer. It has three levels, the bottom one has water in it, the middle section with the hose attached has the space for the juice. The very top level has small holes in the bottom and you put the grapes in there.  Set it on your outdoor cooker. Let the water boil awhile and after awhile you release the hose clamp and the juice comes out into your waiting jar. I was told you can put on the lids and allow it to seal. ( I know that isn't an approved method, but we shall see)  One 1/2 bushel basket gave me 10 quarts of concentrated juice. One quart of concentrate made a gallon of juice, I added one cup of sugar and we seem to have a winner. 

This is what was left after all the juice was collected.

Hope started school the same week the others did...well actually she started in July, but this was the first official day. 

And then a "Ben in the City" post.

A couple of the kids from Ben's street wanted to see "where Ben lived" after a second attempt at gaining permission and finding the interested parties. Saturday was finally the day.

The other adult that was going to ride along, had last minute plans. It looked like "Mr Ben" would have to go back on his word and I almost told him that they needed to learn those life lessons too.

Actually, I did tell him that, then I felt guilty.

So I called Ben back and told him I'd drive out and be the second adult.

We still needed to wait awhile for the right persons to show up, so the violin/ukelele came out. The poor thing wasn't a high priced musical instrument when I bought it, but it wasn't made to make those kinds of noises (not the kid shown above, but another one that was there).

The street is pretty quiet at noon on a Saturday...life was definitely happening at 7 PM when we took the boys home again.

We spent the afternoon shooting baskets, riding rip stick, whittling sticks for marshmallow roast, riding bike and generally tiring them out. 

This little girl has some strength in that small hand! She can't swing hand over hand yet,but I didn't think she would manage this either.