Pre-Picture Shopping

Tomorrow we will have our family pictures taken by a professional, a first for us. David has usually been the family photographer, with great results I must say, but due to the increase in our family size and the variation of skin color we have had trouble getting one where we all are looking good at the same time! Plus it will probably be the last one with our family before it grows in size due to marriage.I was reading on another blog I follow about their shopping trip to get the family attire for the same thing, I laughed at her comments! I am not laughing now. What an experience! Mostly with adult daughters and myself all seeing a different thing!

I think we are happy with our finds, and not what any of us had in mind to start with. Danielle, Erinn and I will be in dressy, shiny shirts (the silver and purple), David and Drew will wear white shirts and black vests, Caleb has a polo shirt and Hannah a purple dress in the best match we could find to Erinn's shirt. And we will all wear jeans and black shoes to dress it down and make it fun. I think it will work. Look forward to seeing the results.

Catch Up

Danielle is home and life is very busy!A quick update.

*Danielle may have found the perfect wedding dress--Yeah!!

*Hannah got her hair beautifully braided by my friend, Rebecca. I took her daughters hair out, I think I have the much easier job!!

*Drew ran at the Oregon Relays and got a new PR in the 800M. 2:04

*Caleb will finish his Alert Cadet Basic Handbook tonight.

*Erinn has the flu!! Praying with the scare out there, that is all it is!

*And this is the normal look at my house when Danielle comes home!!

*I love having older kids, and I love having everyone under the same roof for a while!!

A Child of Trauma

I have posted about educational issues I deal with, with both Hannah and Caleb, just to give an idea of some of the things we deal with on a regular basis with our schooling. Since the kids came home, I have researched educational issues for both of them and am sometimes overwhelmed with what they will face and the daily challenges we will encounter as a result of past trauma and pre and post natal malnutrition.

Some of the new reading I have been tackling is from the Post Institute, to be found at: http://www.postinstitute.com/ After reading an article this weekend on trauma and the development of the brain I gained a little insight into how the kids stress systems (my words) are working constantly in the fight, freeze, or flee. I had never seen the 'freeze' put with the others and I think that was what really clicked for me, because that is exactly what the kids do. Put any small amount of stress, real or perceived, and they totally freeze up.

It was explained that the portion of the brain that the part of the brain that receives the stress or threat develops prenatally, whereas the part of the brain that tells how to regulate that stress or fear develops in early childhood. So if there is too much stress and not enough calm, parental influence in those early months, the ability to regulate the stress response does not develop properly and the child lives in this constant fight, freeze or flee, without the ability to decipher whether a situation is serious or not.

So from what I can gather the idea is to help the kids live in as stress free an environment as possible to allow that portion of the brain to develop. What I am still working on, is how much this can repair over time, or will this be a constant factor for them.

Now understanding all of this, imagine trying to produce a totally stress free environment for children who live with so much real and imagined fear, added to the top of this that they are still dealing with attatchment issues and you have an interesting deliema. For now we are trying to reduce the number of questions, not raise our voices and smile even though you feel like saying "why?" in a very loud voice with frustration on your face.

Hope to post more on this later, but my mind is in overload and I need some time to process all I am learning.

The Prom

So here is what Drew needed the dress clothes for--Prom!!

He was supposed to run a race this evening and it was changed, so at the last moment he had to get his attire ready.

He and Baylee have been seeing each other for about 5 months and she was going to go to the dance with some girlfriends. I am sure she was happy about the change of plans too.

It is nice to see two young Christians enjoy the company of one another in a fun and pure way. We pray they may continue to be an example to those who witness their relationship.

We have already had their track coach comment that he has never seen such a relationship between two young people and he is excited to have their example on the team.

We pray for Drew, as well as our other older children, that they may continue to grow in the wisdom and nurture of the Lord. That they may seek is face in all they do. And that their lives may be a living testimony before the Lord and the world.

The Ballerina

Hannah had her photo shoot with the Ballet Studio tonight. Here she is in her costume. There were actually 4 little girls the photographed in these costumes.

Interestingly enough I figured Hannah was their racial diversity child, but one of the girls had an Indian (India) heritage, one was half Japanese, and one cute little curly headed blond and blue eyed white child. It had quite the international flair!!

We Have A Reader!!!

Just now our sweet little Hannah read these words and a few others to me!! What a praise!!!

Did 'cat' and 'box' ever look so good?

And this is just a beautiful picture from our tree out front. It just blossomed out this week!

Praise God for all His bountiful blessings!

Guess Who Is Coming Home?

Yep, Danielle is coming home for a visit and Hannah is beside herself with anticipation, she gets to share a room with her big sister while she is home!! Danielle was last home on Thanksgiving and she had just gotten engaged. We will be spending tomorrow in Eugene wedding dress shopping with my mom and Erinn!!

Hannah has been invited to a photo shoot for her ballet studio. They are doing new advertisement brochures and recital brochures. Interestingly, Hannah has only been in ballet for 2 months and is not even in the recital! I think they were going for the diversity shot. That is OK, Hannah will enjoy the experience.

Caleb has started flag football. He played tackle last year and did not like the tackling, so we thought this might be a better fit. It is interesting that the two teams could not be much more different. His tackle football team last year had the former North Medford High School coach for head coach (his grandson was on the team), they practiced a lot, were very intense and strict, and they won every game they played by at least 20 points. Now this flag football team is ALL about fun. They had 10 kids for their practice (one a week, for an hour) and three of the little boys did not listen much at all and one of them spent most of his time on the ground complaining about something. The coach was hard pressed to talk to them at all. Well they have had two practices and they have their first game tomorrow. I do not believe half the team has any idea what they are doing-seriously! It will be interesting!

Drew has his big special occasion tonight, I will post more on it later. For now suffice it to say he asked me to iron and he got a hair cut for the special night!

Drew will be racing at the Oregon Relay's tomorrow night. The University of Oregon will be running a meet with the top high schools in conjunction with their own college meet. It will be a long day for Drew, but he has qualified to run in the top seeded 1500M and 800M races. He is hoping the intense competition will help him lower his times.

Erinn and David will be helping at a high school track meet tonight. David is coordinating all the Rotary volunteers and Erinn will be running the shot put with a college friend of hers. They have both joined the church softball team also and have their first game on Sunday.

So with the girls headed early to Eugene to go shopping and Drew off with the team to Eugene, that leaves Mr. Dad in charge of the little ones!! He was asking me this morning if he can leave the kids alone at the start of his 10K race in the morning!! I can't believe I had to tell him that I thought it was not a good idea. He will then try to get Caleb to his football pictures and game before heading to Eugene for the race. As he was asking me to make sure the kids had all their things together for tomorrow, he didn't want to have to be looking for everything in the morning, he wondered if we had too much on our schedule! Well I don't know, but I am lucky to keep it all straight most of the time!!

Have a blessed weekend and remember to Delight in Him!

Still Growing

Today we went shopping for a black vest for Drew. He has an upcoming special day and needed to be dressed up, no problem we thought he has those things including a vest. Well when he tries everything on low and behold the vest is way too small!! The change in one year was dramatically seen when he put it on and his tie hung out the bottom and about and inch of shirt showed between pants and vest.

It got me thinking about our spiritual growth. Sometimes we grow like Hannah (2 inches a month), and sometimes we grow like Drew did (2 inches in a year). When we can see the dramatic changes,we feel good about where we are with God. But more often than not the growth is the slow and steady kind that you don't really notice unless you try to fit in where you were last year.

It was a good reminder for me that the slow and steady growth changes you too. That I am being MADE into what He wants me to be, it is not an overnight thing, it is a continual process till we see Him face to face. Praise God, He is not finished with me yet!!

Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts. (Psalm 65:4a)

Swimming With Watoto

Aren't these beautiful children!!

Now when I go to the park or the pool, I usually do not have too much trouble finding my two beautiful African faces in our predominately white community. Today I was having a 'little' more trouble than usual!!! Caleb is on his back a little to the right of center in the picture.
There is a children's choir from Uganda called 'Watoto' in town and we were invited to the gym and pool with them today. Hence the problem trying to pick mine out of the pool. Hannah is at the bottom of the picture holding on to the side. We do have one of the best swim teachers in town living right in our house (Erinn), but alas my youngest do not know how to swim. What is that saying about the shoemaker's kids not having shoes!
Interestingly, after listening to the choir sing on Sunday, Hannah told me she wanted to be an 'African Girl' when she grew up!! After I got over my surprise I informed her that she already WAS and African Girl!!! To which she gave me a huge toothless grin!!


If you are interested in the ministry of Watoto you can visit them online at http://www.watoto.com/ They have built self contained communities where the orphan children are raised in home-like settings--8 children to one mother. To raise the next generation to fear the Lord and serve their country.

Sarah's Covenant Homes

You will hopefully notice the new picture on the sidebar. It is for a ministry that I have been following and hope to soon be able to help participate in funding. I invite you to go on over an see the amazing work being done in India to help those who have no voice and whom many would want to pass on by as too much work.

The Next Teaching Challenges

So now that we "have" the letters, and I say that very loosely. The next challenge is to combat all the processing issues that Hannah has. Many of these letters she will only recognize as capitals, so this challenge took about an hour to match the capitals with the lower case letter. Her visual processing issues cause her problems with seeing letters and being able to write it, say it or connect it. It is hard to explain and understand.

Drew is dyslexic (was), so I have dealt with some of these issues before. But with Hannah there is an added stress issue. If she feels pressure she will just shut down and really not be able to take any input.
--With her speech this showed up as a stutter till we put no pressure on speech of any kind (no questions) for about 2 months, thanks to the advise of her new wonderful speech therapist!
--With numbers we saw this when she got 1,2,3 then could get no other numbers for about eight months. Then we realized that she did not get 4 because it is written in two different ways (you know, like this closed 4 and an open one). We tried to skip '4' for a long time, but the stress of 'knowing' it was still there to be dealt with caused her not to be able to move on. For some reason last month she 'got' 4 and now knows them all the way to 10 most of the time.

So understanding this you may better understand my trepidation as we move on with Hannah's letters. Taking them one at a time, when she was finally ready, she was able to tackle them. If they are presented together, such as Aa, Rr or Bb, she can confidently move forward. But try to present them as r,b, or a, and she will shut down-hard. I saw that today.

The issue with the number 4 took eight months to tackle, now I have 26 letters that all present the same dilemma to her. And the letters a and g are often written as you see here, not as they are taught, adding to the challenge. Add to that b, d, p, q, m, w, n, u the all-around challenge letters that are copy cats and her visual processing comes to a halt.

Interestingly, I am not real discouraged. Hannah has made such tremendous progress in the last nine months, I know she will continue to bloom and move forward. Now we will just be moving forward into a new chapter for her and seeking the best ways to help her grasp these concepts.

I remember thinking some time ago, before the new kids came home, that I 'knew' how to home school. Isn't it interesting how God challenges our thinking and our pride to bring us back into total dependence on Him!!

"Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 19:15

Thought for the Day

Having a daughter working at the Regan Ranch Center puts you in contact with lots of good quotes from this great President. The following is on her emails these days. A good thought for the days we find ourselves living in.


Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free -- Ronald Reagan

So let's remind our children what freedom means and that it is not free, we must work for it and fight for it.

Have a great day, enjoying the freedom to enjoy it as you will!

Another PR For Drew

Drew ran a 4:06, 1500M today! That is a 4 second PR!He then ran a 9:12 3000M. Not a PR, but a great race indeed.
The biggest challenge for all the runners was the heat. It was about 85 degrees here in Southern Oregon. Believe it or not we had a little snow floating out of the air on Tuesday here. An amazing turn in the weather that threw a little bit of an extra challenge for the runners.

Guess Who Is Toothless!!

Yep, it is our little Hannah!!

We were at Drew's track meet and she had nothing else to do I guess. So she pulled this one out too.

Ask her what the best part was, she will tell you that Dad was standing right there and she got to "really gross him out"! Yes, she is very proud of that!

And look at this grin! Worth a million bucks!!

A Wonderful Thought....

I saw this video posted on a couple of blogging friends sites and it brought me to tears!

What about you?

Am I being Christ's hands and feet in this world?

What about you?

Or am I just living in my comfort zone?

What about you?






A good thought for the day!

So how will we live differently today?

Shifting Funds!!

So this is what our bike rack looks like all taken apart on my front room floor. A few weekends ago David had one of the straps actually break while he had bikes on the back of the car!! Luckily they did not fall off and he was able to secure it somewhat by tying the ends together. So it has been sitting on the side of the house waiting for some TLC. Today it came apart and I was able to replace the worn out and broken straps with new ones. And I only broke 3 needles on the sewing machine!!

So what do you do when you save all that money, since you do not need to buy a new bike rack? Well you buy yourself some fun new shoes on clearance!!! I never do this! I do not like to shop and I do not like to spend money on myself, and did I mention that I never do this!!

Had a fun morning shopping with Erinn and Hannah. Good girls time. Hannah is so proud of loosing that tooth, I think she told everyone we saw today about it. I guess she was more traumatized by having the last one pulled than I realized. I bought her a small toy at the used store as a prize. We avoided all fairies, magic and make believe when the kids first came home (it scared them). So there was no tooth fairy for Caleb, so we have instituted small prizes instead.

Did you know that in Liberia you throw your lost teeth on the roof of your house? That is how you are sure they will grow back!!! I guess it is no stranger than putting your tooth under a pillow and waiting for a small magical creature to turn it into money!! Really think about it! We think others customs are strange, but that is only because we look at them through our American glasses.

Have a great weekend! Remember to look for those opportunities God places in your life to be a light for Him!

Smile of Success

What do you see here?

I see a beautiful little girl who just finished her alphabet book, all by herself!! Yep, she has them all. She still needs a little help, but overall she has them.

Six months ago I would not have believed she would have them by this time. At that time I would have said her learning delays were almost 2 years behind, but now she is probably about a year behind her peers. We were unsure of how severely the malnutrition affected her ability to learn or if it would be permanent, but she is steadily progressing at her own pace and very proud of her accomplishment. Praise the Lord for this victory!

Now if you look closely in this picture you will notice she also lost a front tooth!!

She was sitting coloring a page and came out to me with a tooth. We knew it was loose, but considering how long it took her to get the other ones out, I was very surprised to see it today!!

A Smile for Today!!

Saw this on my MSN homepage today. Had the whole family in front of the computer smiling!

A good reminder that our attitudes really affect those around us!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkBepgH00GM

Remember to Delight in Him Today--For today is the day the the Lord has made!!

Scrapbooks Again

David is again out of town for a couple of days, so I am trying to get another season of running scrapbooked.

So here is my kitchen table in the front room covered with Drew's sophomore season of cross country.

I do so miss David when he is gone, but I do appreciate the time to get caught up with some things.

So the little ones are in the kitchen making their own hamburgers and the house looks not so great, but I have the whole season organized and am about 1/4 of the way through already!! Yeah!!

Late Easter Post

This year our Easter Celebration was anything but normal and traditional for us. We were gone all day on Saturday, between the two races and did not get home till 11:30.

Easter morning we were so very tired. We did get the lamb on to marinate and went to a wonderful worship service. We then came home decorated eggs with the little ones, read the Easter story together and ate our meal. Not our usual celebration!

We all ended up in bed about 8:30, seriously, we were tired!

No matter how we celebrate the day, we are so very thankful for a risen Savior to celebrate!

Christ is Risen--He is Risen Indeed!

Another School Record

Drew already holds the school record in the 3000M, so whenever he runs a personal best (PR), it becomes a new school record. Pretty cool!

This picture was taken last night at the Roseburg Twilight Invitational, where Drew had the privilege of running at 8:30pm under the lights in wonderful weather.

The camera was going dead, and David ended up with the cool picture.

Drew ran an 8:46 3000M, which is a 10 second PR.

He is just 3 seconds shy of hitting his dad's all time best. David is excited and ready to pass the baton to the new fastest in our family.
Since David did not get any good pictures last night, I posted this one from the same race last year. I will update it if I get a new one from someone else from last night.

Pear Blossom Time

Pear Blossom Run 2009David was able to find some familiar faces in the middle of the 5K. Here, he and Caleb are encouraging Heidi and Robin the final 400M of their 5K.
Part of the church group that showed up for the day! Pastor Dale, Dustin and David before their race. Bill, Anne and Kim after their 5K. Caleb, Hannah and Mason before their 1 mile race.

David at the end of an amazing 10 mile race!
About 1 month ago at a Rotary fund raiser, Bob, a friend of David's, asked him if he was running. David responded that sadly his arthritis had been so flared up at for the last 6 months, that he had not been able to run at all. Bob stated that he would pray in faith every day for David that he would be given the blessing of running again in time for the Pear Blossom. Here you see the end result of God grace on David's health! With only 3 weeks of training under his belt, and most of them extremely short and slow, David was able to complete this 10 mile run in 1:12:41

David got the further blessing of again running with his good friends, Terry and CB. We are talking one happy man. I mean literally he has been shouting for joy!

Thank you God for the overflow of abundant blessings you have showered us with!

He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it. 1 Thes. 5:24

Thinking Skills

Both Caleb and Hannah struggle with everyday thinking skills. It is different than not listening or following through type of things we had with our first set of kids. No, my guess would be we are dealing with either adoption, lack of early stimulus, or malnutrition issues; all blog entries by themselves

So I am constantly looking for ways to reinforce skills that cause them to think about why and how something works, or cause and effect type things.

So you can imagine I was excited to find these tanagrams and the dollar store. We covered the key cards with clear shelf paper to help them last longer and we were off.

I basically had to build Hannah's for her, but is great to work on big, medium and little concepts. We also are still working on top and bottom relationships as well as upside-down. So who care who actually puts it together, she felt great success anyways.

I let Caleb go alone on this and asked him to try it all by himself. He struggled a little at first, then really went at it. The idea of using all the pieces caused him to rethink the way he had them out. Also turning things so they would work better. Moving gently, so as not to make it all break apart was also hard for him. Caleb also like to settle for just close enough, and I pushed him to do his best to make it just like the picture, and he was finding real satisfaction in having and exact match.

So we go lots of thinking going on, with them just thinking we are having fun!! Us tricky moms!! Well they are asking to play lots now, I guess it won't make me sad to see them work on these needed skills.

Anyone have any other fun ideas to work on those thinking skills?

My Big Boys

I am so thankful for the two big boys in my life. I say boys, because I asked them for a picture and I could not get them to give me a serious one for anything. They are also two of the hardest playing big boys I know. You gotta love the 'big boys' in you life!Here I thought I was going to get serious, then right as I snapped the picture, Drew went to grab David's stomach!

Here it almost looks serious, but David has what we around here call his 'tourist pose', and he is running his hand up Drew's side tickling him!

Then of course you throw the lovable, but very mischievous 'Liberty' in the picture and all ideas of calmness are gone!

So when you see this sweet innocent looking face, know there is another side! A side I love and have been so blessed to have in my life.

Thank you Lord for the blessing of my 'big boys'!!!

Chances?!?

OK so what are the chances that today; the day I get up with David and get him out the door at 6am, then promptly fall asleep on the chair while doing my devotions till 7:40; what are the chances that today the verse of the day on my blog, that I do not choose by the way, would be
"Love not sleep lest thy come to poverty. Open thine eyes and thou shalt be satisfied with bread." Proverbs 20:13????

I just had to laugh! OK, OK I am awake and it is full steam ahead for the day.

May God be your delight today!

Blowing My Mind

After working with Caleb this morning, I think I am convinced that I may NEVER understand what he is thinking!?! But I will continue to try!!

So this first example is Caleb's rough draft of his story. The actual first few lines were not even on the correct subject, so this is the second try. Not too bad for a 2nd grader. All the red circles were creatively misspelled words. We took about 20 minutes to go through and correct these together.


This next page is actually the one that 'blows my mind'!! So I told Caleb before he started, "Make sure you start all the way on the left side and go all the way to the right side before starting the next line. Do not stop at the period and start a new line if you still have room on the line." He has just been putting one sentence per line and I was trying to correct that thought.

So about 10 minutes later this is what he brings me!?!?


And he says, "Mom, I can't write like this."

And I say, "Well son, I don't think many people can!"

I have no idea what prompted him to write from the wrong side of the paper. He has never done this before, ever. And if you look closely you will see that some of the letters are actually written backwards! Drew, my dyslexic, pointed that out to me.

So anyways I sent him back to erase it and start over correctly and this beautiful paper is what I got 20 minutes later!!!

Can you believe that penmanship for and 8 year old boy? Especially one that had not really ever held a writing utensil till he was 5 1/2 years old.

I know sometimes I push him hard, but I guess that is because I know what he is capable of. I have never accepted half way from any of my children and I think Caleb is happy with half way. So the goal is to challenge him to see the rewards of giving his all.

So do I keep trying to figure it out? You bet! And in the long run I will trust that it will be worth ever ounce of effort and every sacrifice of time, both for his spiritual and academic growth.

"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6

A Tribute to Wounded Warriors

I was having trouble getting this in the right way, but you can click on the link and see the video anyways!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0mm4u2VzDs

A beautiful tribute to all our warriors serving to protect our freedom. And a good reminder that whether we agree with this war or not, we need to be behind those who are on the front line doing their jobs for us!

Dry Days

Been struggling with feeling a little dry spiritually. You know the kind of days where God is there, but feels to very far away. Kind of like being in a desert and really wanting a drink of water; or low in a valley with no sun shining. So I pray and read and seek His face, knowing He has no desire to hide from me.

So I thought I would blog my thoughts instead of hiding and pretending everything is sunshine and flowers.

This morning in my study of the Word I found myself in Matthew 8. The first four verses where the leper is cleansed hit me. He had no doubt of Christ's power, "Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean." He knew Jesus could do it if He chose to, and Jesus did choose to heal him. But it is interesting that the man then choose to disobey Jesus, "See that you tell no one." In Mark we are told more of the story and how he spread the news, and because of this Jesus's ministry was hindered-He had to move out of the city to the desert regions.

I also find myself NOT doubting the Lord, knowing He is there, knowing He loves me. But am struggling with the everyday. So when I lost it today teaching my son, I knew I was in disobedience; when I am selfish with my time, I know I am in disobedience; when I am bitter over unkindnesses against me or my family, I know I am in disobedience. So I sit feeling the failure hit like a ton of bricks. The old self wanting to resurface and say, 'you are not good enough.'

So as I write these words and seek His face and seek my delight in Him, what is He saying to my heart today? 'Remember Donna, that I am your all, that it is by My righteousness that you are made whole. It is not your works or your failures that make or break our relationship, it is My love, grace and mercy that never fails!!'

Isn't He so very good to us. No matter how many times I find myself back in this place, He is there to remind me of His unfailing love for this imperfect child of His.

Thank you Lord!

"Lord, You will establish peace for us, for You have also done all our works in us." Isaiah 26:12

Fast and Full

Today we went in so many directions, it took lots of phone calls to make sure everyone was where they needed to be at the right time!

David and I started early measuring of for post holes for the new grape plants. We did start digging them, but quickly realized we needed some water to soak in the soil first.

I then headed to the track to help set up the concessions stand for the invitational (13 team) track meet. Drew went to meet up with the team for the day. David took Caleb to his flag football clinic. I woke Erinn up enough to let her know she had Hannah and to remind her to take her to her ballet lesson in 2 hours.

David met us at the track meet to check in runners all day at the 'bull pen'. It was so sunny today he and Drew both got burnt!

I then ran to pick up Caleb from his football and promptly got LOST! I do not drive on that side of town often and got totally turned around. By the time I got there, Caleb and one other boy were all that was left. He said he was starting to get worried. I am always early to pick them up and usually stay for the whole practice. We then headed back to the track.

Erinn picked up Hannah from ballet and had to run home to meet the people buying a castle from us on Craig's List. She then had to help them tear it down and move it to their car. When she finished, she raced to the track with Hannah to just catch Drew setting a personal best in the 800M (2:03).

She told me her phone was not working and Mike was trying to get a hold of her and she was worried because he called so many times. She used mine to call and find out that he had badly twisted his knee while he was paint balling. It was about double size and turning colors!

I settled Hannah and Caleb in for the day in the tent we set up at the meet with blankets, books and toys! Keeps them very entertained and I do not have to worry where they are. We did have a couple big gusts and I thought he tent was going to blow away! An outhouse actually fell over with someone in it!!!

Erinn headed out to a look for a table and chairs. She found a new damaged set, and offered $30 for it and they took it! So she had to find some good friends with a truck to help her pick it up. In between she was able to make it back to the track to watch Drew run his mile race in 4:37.

She headed out to pick up her table. I helped close the concessions stand after we actually ran out of food! Helped the kids pick up their stuff. David finished clerking. Track meet was OVER!

When we got home we finished digging the post holes, got the posts in concrete, and planted the grapes. Liberty got one before we got it in the ground and was chewing on it! So we had to cage and net all of them to keep her out. David then mowed the lawn and I finished planting the onions.

So we just showered and are eating dinner at 8:00pm!! And then we realized it is supposed to freeze tonight so back out to cover all those new plants to keep them from freezing overnight!

We are exhausted! David is checked out with the basketball game, the little ones are playing, Erinn is at Bible study, Drew is at the movies and I am blogging. I guess we each find our different ways to relax after a crazy day!!

Hope your day was blessed as well!

Good Day!

Caleb and I finally hit a good day after a couple of hard weeks of homeschooling!!!

This picture is what victory looks like when you finish school before lunch!

I am thankful that I have homeschooled 3 easier kids first! I was able to look back this week and know that hard weeks come and go, it helped me keep my eyes on the goal and keep looking for what would help him over this hump.

And what was it we found today? Well I made new school lists for him last week thinking that might help him see what needed to be done and know that I was not just making up what he had to do as we went along (you know moms do that just to be mean!?!). Well that really backfired and this week was worse. Maybe he saw it all and was discouraged. I am a list person and this really works for me, but last night Erinn reminded me that she never liked lists, still doesn't.

So this morning I took all the pages out of the different books and stapled them together, crossed a lot of his list off (because it was now in the packet), and took all the books that I just took the papers out of off his desk. And who knew--It worked! I never tried this approach before, but hey, we will take whatever works. Guess it looked like a lot less when it was actually out of the books.

Thank you Lord for the wisdom to seek out an answer for Caleb in this area!

Racing

Drew's second meet of the year was yesterday. He ran the 800M and the 3000M trying for qualifying times for later meets. He missed on both, but I think was happy with both races for this early in the season. And I know it looks nice in the picture, but if you notice the mom and child in the background you can see that it was actually quite cold. Drew said the finishing straight-away was killer cold wind, he hated to round that corner on the track and have to head into it each time.

Pizza Fun!!

Here are the pictures from our pizza night last week, just go them from Erinn.You know you don't eat out much when your adoptive kids say, "You mean you can eat pizza at the store!!!" And your birth kids say, "We are eating at the pizza parlor?"
We did end up at a place where David had a good view of the NCAA basketball tournament and Caleb was watching some sort of cart car racing where everyone was crashing. We did put an end to Caleb's entertainment when at a big crash he laughed so loud his food came flying out of his mouth!! Literally he was picking chunks up off the floor!

Hannah got to wear her new shirt her sister bought her. She came down saying it was too big, but it actually fit her rather than being a little to small like all her winter shirts. Will her growing ever slow down. She grew another 2 1/2 inches this year, but still as little as possible in every other way.

Erinn started back to her college classes this week. She is so busy between classes, work and Bible studies, that we see very little of her. But with David gone and not much homework the first week of classes, we sat down on Wednesday evening to watch 'Australia' together. Little did we know that it was one of the longest movies we had ever watched! I worked on my ironing and she worked on the computer, we talked and just enjoyed being together. I do enjoy having older children around!

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb is His reward.

Psalm 127:3

Busy Days

The plan was for me to head up to Seattle with David for Tuesday through Thursday. I am so glad at this point that it fell through. I do not know what I was thinking. With David only being paid once a month the end of one month and the start of the next are usually totally crazy for me. The last two days have been no exception.

So here is all is:

Grocery outlet shopping
Emissions testing and registration on van
Walmart shopping (toiletries, clothes)
Costco shopping
Kids Discovery (last day on our membership!)
Pharmacy
Regular grocery shopping
Filled up the cars
Ordered shoes for David
Ordered straightener for Hannah
Paid Bills
Signed Caleb up for flag football
Went to flag football meeting
Corrected Drew's school for last week
Got school ready to go to Abeka
Schooled Hannah
Tried to school Caleb (he has not had a good couple of days)
Updated It's Deductible
Laundry
Ironing (while laughing and crying watching Marley and Me)
Cut the dogs hair
Brushed the dog 3 times
Listed and sold toys on Craigslist
Answered email
Put links to missionaries on blog
Hemmed and cuffed a pair of pants for David
Hemmed cut-off jeans for Caleb

I do not know about you, but I am exhausted just writing about it!! And whether I like it or not I better get back to the ironing (it is hard to get much ironing done when you are laughing and crying that hard!!!) and I have the last load of wash in.

Hope your day was a little lighter!