We Had a Vacation!

We went to the beach in October!

Sort of risky I know, the weather was predicted to be cold and windy.

It was...

but not THAT cold and not THAT windy.

I did something else we don't often do, I found a condo, online and went by the reviews 

and picked one that looked good. We were happy with it.

Shekinah had never been to see the ocean,

 but she loved  chasing the waves as much as her sisters did.

I loved the little kitchen, it was missing a few things,

like a toaster and a pancake flipper.

We managed to prep 5 pounds of shrimp and make them two different ways--

deep fried and oven- grilled (on skewers even!)

I had plenty of good help.

The water was still warmer than the air.

And the beach has few shells left on it...the rest are at home in my house! 

The living room area

The beach is right there! straight ahead. We had to drive a bit to get to the 

boardwalk. I figured these people who hadn't been to Ocean City before needed

to see the board walk.  They walked the whole three miles of it too.

Tracking my daughter wasn't hard.

There wasn't a lot of Jana and Ben time...there was a LOT of

Shekinah and Jana time tho'...We did take care of our own kids

some of the time and let the two of them have some time alone.

Really! the beach and winter coats, I was glad I insisted on packing them.

The remains of the shrimp

The sun over the bay

Good-by Beluka Halfmoon Condo. I hope we can manage another trip next year.

Tho next year I plan to actually put our bag of clothes IN the van and not beside the van in the garage. Thankfully the house had a washer and dryer and Jana had a dress along that fit me.

It did give DH and I reason to buy souvenir t-shirts. 

#NEAS2016 and My Runners

This past weekend DH and I attended the NorthEast Adoption Summit in Lancaster PA. While we were there, my niece watched the girls, Joe worked and Zeke had a quiet day on his own. The girls were able to attend a 2.1mile benefit run. It was a first for them. When I first told them about it, Faith asked if she HAS to run and Hope thought maybe she would walk it. I was a bit confused because one of these girls can be seen running in and out of the drive quite often and both of them can run like the wind during track and field. I decided it wasn't my worry, walking it would be just fine, the point was the fun and fund-raising part of it.

Well I got a text from my niece on Saturday afternoon--"Faith came in third for the girls" I figured it was an age-divided thing and she did well for her age group.  No-- she was the 3rd female to cross the finish line! Her time was 18 min and 21 seconds, Hope got side-stitches and made it in 20 min and 10 seconds. Shekinah trotted the whole route with no stops and made it in 28 minutes.

Along the route she and my niece would encourage each other with the phrase, "french fries and hamburgers and pizza"  (That was waiting at the finish line)  After awhile Shekinah said, "I'll just say it in my head now."

Had no trouble putting those girls to bed when we got home.


Now the conference--Enjoyed it of course, some big names were there--that is if you are constantly looking at information on "kids from hard places" and how to help the families.  Dr. David Cross, Mandy Howard, Heather Forbes seemed to be familiar friends because their faces show up so often on the videos I scour for information.
I was sort of disappointed that I couldn't go to more of the workshops, but there were only so many hours to the day.

We listened to Bishop Aaron Blake as he told the story how he and his wife became foster parents after they were empty-nesters. Not to the  tiny babies that needed homes, but to big 16 year old boys who needed a home because their current foster placement wasn't working out. Within a year of bringing home the first son, they had six boys in their home, all of them played on the highschool football team.  He challenged his church to stand with them and become foster parents. Their church with less than 200 members had around 75 foster children at one point. Hmmm

We heard a lot about the foster children of our state and nation, part of me was ready to rush into it and say "sure, we could do that!" Then thankfully, one of the speakers said, "not everyone needs to be a foster parent, nor SHOULD be a foster parent, but everyone should care and help in some capacity."

OK, got it.

One of the speakers mentioned that he would like to see "In this world you will have troubles--Jesus" needle-pointed on a pillow. I am so tempted to make one for him, but I think the other side of the pillow needs to say, "but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."  I am trying not to be too down, this week, it seemed that 75% of my phone calls were hard stuff from the adoption world and yesterday I touched base with two moms that I haven't talked to in awhile and ...more stuff to add to my prayer list.

One "small" peeve I had with the conference was the volume of the "music". Sorry, I'm from an acapella singing church, I enjoy instrumental ACCOMPANIMENT not dominance. I had to think of the comment Karyn Purvis made on "The Sensory World" about pastors driving our sensory kids out of the church with the noise. I confess I had the urge to just scream loudly like Shekinah does when I run the blender, but I pulled up my big-girl undies and did deep breathing---hubby went for a walk.

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.

Fleeting Last Days of Summer

They are just flying by...I realized I didn't do one of the things on my list.

Teach Shekinah to jump rope!

It is a challenge because her "little" hand does not grip the handle well enough. Here we tied it to her wrist, it isn't optimal. She managed to jump 3 times in a row with two people turning the rope for her.

We need to fashion a velcro harness to attache it to her wrist but somehow the timing is never right.

We have peaches to freeze

Peaches to cook and to can. (Actually these are peach peels) I made a "Peach Pie" from them and was met with mixed reviews (In my defense it is a recipe...look it up). The "adults" in the family thought it was good. At the price of peaches $16 a basket, you don't want to waste them.

Then the 8 baskets of apples that are looking at me in the garage need to be sauced.

I need to brag a bit on my hubby. I had started peeling some peaches for canning, knowing that I would have to stop to take Joe to the bank to open a different savings account.

Dad was home early, but I knew he had things he wanted to do so I figured the peaches would just sit till I got home. Of course the banker lady's printer didn't cooperate and the whole business took longer than planned. I walked in the door to my kitchen to see jars of peaches peeled and ready for the canner! He and the girls (Faith and Shekinah- Hope was at work) had kept peeling and chopping those difficult Baby Gold peaches and all I needed to do was the canning!

After lunch, the girls came running in...

"Daddy is building a "Slip and Slide"!

They spent the whole afternoon sliding and making

Soap Soup.

Here daddy was pulling them down the slope until he went on to his other jobs.

In other news, we finished the twelve hours of  professional driver training at Hershey Medical Center. It was a great experience for Joe. The teacher was excellent, Joe took instructions well from him and didn't react to correction. It took a chunk out of our month, but we found a new library (an hour's drive away) and Shekinah got to see Hershey Chocolate World on Thursday. 

Summer Doldrums

I'm trying, but those crafts keep getting less and less ambitious. 

Here is Shekinah's family portrait. The extra one there is Parker, don't get any ideas.

We still need to make our clocks.

We have had our  second day (two hours worth) of driver training. The first day the girls and I went shopping, somehow it didn't agree with Shekinah (surprise!) and I declared she will go to a baby sitter this week. I didn't get that arranged in time so today found us in Hershey again, this time I had a plan. We were going to the Goodwill I found on the map and then if we had time we were going to the library. Well the Goodwill was a DONATION site only, but I now know where East Grenada or Granada (different spellings on different signs) street are in Hershey.

So we investigated the library. They allowed us to check out books, all I needed was a photo ID and my hometown library card. They were even nice about it! Check out just wasn't the same though with out the beep that accompanies our librarian's scanner. So far removed from the old card stampers that they used 25+ years ago. They gave a satisfying "clunk" when they stamped a book card.

We topped off the afternoon by using free ice cream coupons from a local grocery store.

Tuesday night gave me this scene. They played "The Bean Game" for an hour. Shekinah played her own version with the left-over cards. The only city news was that Ben's house was broken in, the only thing missing was a dollar bill that was lying beside his laptop and a piece of cake from the fridge. Guess I'll send more food. I suggested he takes the offered K'nex and Hot Wheels sets, but he said, "They will probably just throw them at each other.  Playing basketball is violent enough."

So I guess my other idea of hammering nails into a board is out too?

On the positive side, the kids like his violin and he is giving "lessons". Might need to buy another $50 violin at Christmas.

QOTD #1  "Driving is stressful"

QOTD#2 "No I don't want to go for ice cream, I spent four hours in the car already, it's too far away."

QOTD#3 "Mom, did my bear come with clothes, cause I don't like him sitting in church nekid."

Ben in the City

So almost a week ago Ben moved to an inner-city apartment, across the street from a mission church and right next to a school. The school is run by the mission church. He has been going to this city for about three years helping with their Thursday night kids clubs. After he came home from Thailand he felt drawn to spending more time working with the kids that he sees on Thursday nights at Kid's Club.  The school needed a maintenance man and Ben knows something about electricity, plumbing and general hard work so he took the position. It is a one year commitment.

His boss from the plumbing/electrical place offered him a one-day-a-week job, that was perfect because it will help with his budget. Voluntary Service pay is generally enough money to buy necessities, but not niceties.

Tuesday night found him at our supper table and the first  stories were told, they need to be written down because in a few weeks more stories will drown out these first days.
The rhythm of the city is different than our home's tempo. The street stays quiet until about 11AM when the youngest kids make their appearance. The street stays lively until about midnight when the very tired children finally find their homes. The sad parts about the five-year-old that doesn't seem to have a home, but apparently does, because he has his papers filled out to come to Kid's Club. The funny parts about the houses where children seem to spill from every window and door.  Ben doesn't think they live there, but simply gather there.

Over the weekend, Ben almost thought one little guy was gonna need medical care when he launched himself over the porch railing to get away from a wasp and fell into the flower bed onto the only rose bush there. Thankfully he hit his shoulder  instead of smacking his head.

Then there was the time Ben was cleaning up his sink and heard a crash from his minuscule back yard. Knowing there wasn't much to make that sort of noise he went to investigate and saw three boys running different directions. One hid behind the truck, another went over the neighbor's fence, the third hid behind the metal shed. Knowing all their names, he called them and asked what was happening. "How could you see us?" was the question that came back.  "We were trying to put up the ladder to the school roof, but the ladder fell on the shed."
Ben was not surprised that the ladder fell, it was a sturdy 30ft extension ladder and weighs quite a bit.
"We were trying to get DiAngelo's shoes, they're on the roof."
"Why are your shoes on the school roof?"
"We were throwing them after his socks."
"Why....?" Ben quit then and put up the ladder and found the shoes. As he retrieved the shoes he saw the offending socks hanging from a neighbor's 2nd floor dormer roof and two young boys already up on the third floor house roof. Apparently they had been on that roof and were throwing socks down...not up like I was picturing (Zeke pointed out that it is very hard to throw-up socks-how would he know?) and after one got stuck on the roof, they lobbed the shoes after it.

Ben told them to please ask the next time they need the ladder.

We agreed that "Idleness is the Devil's workshop".

In an effort to give the boys something profitable to do, he had them cleaning up an old Kitchen Aid mixer that was left at the house. "You can't take your eyes off them a minute, I went in the house 30 seconds to get something, when I came out one of them had found my permanent marker in my electrical bag and had 'checked if it worked' on the top of the mixer."

Not that he was surprised, just amused.

I told him that his porch walls need scrubbing, but we are wracking our brains for something that he can give them to do that can keep 12 hands busy and isn't inside his house. Maybe cook on the front porch?

Ladder Golf, String Art, and Driver's Ed

We made our own ladder golf game last Saturday evening.

In the past week we have tried string art, it brought back memories of 6th grade. I still wonder where our teachers got the instructions for the stringing. I haven't been able to find the instructions how to make certain designs. Because of that some of my artists were not overly happy with their final product. It was a fine afternoon of hammering nails though.

One great thing about summer is that are rarely left-overs cluttering up the fridge.

Oh and driver's ed. We have twelve hours of driver's ed scheduled at a local rehab hospital.

It hasn't happened quickly and I'm surprised how well that has been handled.

So how did "Listen and Obey" and "Ask with Respect" work? Well I think the first day after I posted I met head on with one stubborn child. I had asked for a verbal response to a request. I almost thought that I was the stubborn one and maybe should lighten up.  Then I got to thinking of all the times there is confusion of whether or not a child actually heard a request. So I decided to stick at it.  It took about an 90 minutes. What was I doing during that time? I hung up laundry, helped replant sunflowers that had died, dodged some poorly aimed missiles  and basically stuck with the child until FINALLY, we were both on the same page. There were tears on both sides. Since that day that particular child has done very well. The youngest one is still work in progress.  :)

I read some advice that  I think I will probably get a chance to use one day and thought maybe someone else  might like to try it too.

When your child decides- at Wal-mart or some other public place—to suddenly NOT cooperate. You know, the sagging to the ground and screaming, won’t get into his car seat because you are asking him to leave a fun place or you didn’t buy the toy he saw in the store.

This lady said she watches for the pause in the screaming, there usually is one and you insert a comment or question that engages the frontal cortex (the thinking/reasoning part) of the brain. Say something like, “ I wonder, do you think cows can be orange?” or look at his shoes and say, “do you like wearing green shoes?” (pick a different color from what he is actually wearing). She said she has done this dozens of times with her five and eight-year-old foster sons in the nine months they have been with her and it has usually worked. She said she coached a camp counselor through the process over the phone when her son went “off-line” over something that had happened. The counselor was amazed how it worked.

You will need to choose a question that is developmentally appropriate, but give it a shot and let me know how it worked.  I used it on Shekinah yesterday when she “wasn’t tired” and was going for a nap. She was wailing beside the bunk beds, not moving. I glanced up and noticed Faith’s pink sock monkey hanging from the top bunk. I decided to try a question since we were getting nowhere fast. I asked, “where did you get that green monkey?”  She stopped crying and asked “where?” I pointed out the monkey and she declared , “That isn’t my monkey (she missed the green vs pink) that is Faith’s!”  I quickly asked if she has any friends hidden under her pillow pet and she started crawling into bed. She wanted her one animal that was downstairs. I quickly ran down, got it, and heard her start crying again. I thought maybe  this technique wasn’t working, but I hurried back up the stairs , and gave her “Waddles”. She sniffled a bit, gave me a kiss and settled for a nap!


Something I never thought I would hear said to a two-year-old!  "You gotta eat something else before you may have any more broccoli or peas."