She sings!

Yesterday in Sunday School, my kids were learning about the 12 disciples. Makenna told her teachers that she knows a song about them and she proceeded to sing it for them. They asked her if she'd sing it in front of the church that night. Anyone who knows Makenna knows that she is terribly shy and never wants the attention on her. Imagine my surprise when she actually did it! Her teacher sat up on the stage with her as she held the microphone and sang! It's a little difficult to understand some parts (she's not finished with speech therapy yet!), but it's so precious. The words are as follows:

There were twelve disciples Jesus called to help him:
Simon Peter, Andrew, James, his brother John,
Philip, Thomas, Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus,
Thaddeus, Simon, Judas, and Bartholomew.

That would be a lot for any 5-year-old to say! Anyway, here's Makenna singing "The 12 Disciples"

Our Journey Begins!

The time has finally come. Tonight is the first night of the training Ed and I will go through to become foster parents and possibly adoptive parents! We will be training throughout the month of February and will hopefully have a child (or children) in our home by this spring. We're so excited about it. I wanted to share just a little bit of our story and how we got to this point. I hope that, by reading our story, other families will see the need for foster parents and will get involved.

My mom said it well last when she said, "When you are obedient to God's call, He equips you to do what He called you to do." I am still amazed at the changes in my attitude and desires lately. It was just a few months ago that God put foster parenting and/or adoption on my heart. My answer was always the same: "We don't have the money for any more kids. We like our life just the way it is." Over the following few weeks, however, I was surrounded by foster parenting. I would hear a conversation at the mall, I'd hear people on t.v. talk about being raised in foster homes, I started coming across blogs by people who foster/adopt kids, etc. It was everywhere! It almost became comical to me. I would be watching a show and someone would say in passing that they were raised in a foster home. I would look at Ed to see if he noticed it too. This was not going to go away!



I finally took that first step and talked to Ed about the possibility of doing foster care. To my surprise, he didn't object! What was going on here? Was this the same man who said a few years ago, "Do you really think we can afford 3 kids?" You can imagine my surprise when he was just open to this! Since then, though, I have been even more surprised by the change in me. After spending about 1.5 hours in an informational meeting about foster care, there was no turning back. I can honestly say that I walked out of that meeting and have not one time thought about the money factor. Not once! It's not a concern for me at all.



My concern, from that night on, has been for these children that are getting tossed around and all too often lost in the system. I realized that we, as Christians, have been missing the boat. I'm including myself in this group too. We have been too content and too self-centered. We like having our little family just the way we planned it. I know because I was there! I have always wanted 3 kids, I had my 3 kids, and that was it. I like my life! I see now that it's not just about me. So many kids need homes and families, and too many of us have wonderful christian homes to offer, but we don't want our lives inconvenienced.



I found out a startling statistic at the meeting I attended. The "cut-off" age for children waiting to be adopted in the state of Indiana is eight. Now, that doesn't mean that you can't adopt a child over the age of eight. It means that if a child isn't adopted by the time he is 8 years old, the chances of him being adopted are slim to none. Eight years old! They're still so young! They also pointed out that the state so badly wants these children adopted that they will pay money to the adoptive family every day until he/she is 18 (sometimes 20) years old! How sad that no one is there to help.



Another troubling thing I noticed is that there are so many people who ARE passionate about helping these kids. Gay and lesbian couples are fighting tooth and nail for the right to adopt these children. Why are we, as Christians, not as passionate as these people to save these children? We have so much to offer them, and yet we don't.



I'm so excited to get started in this process. So much has taken place already. Even during the one hour I spent at my informational meeting, change took place. The meeting began by the case worker asking who was there for the purpose of adopting and everyone raised their hand except for me. I was interested strictly in fostering. By the time I got home, I was talking to Ed about adoption. Fast forward a few days ahead and we were talking about the possibility of getting a 15 passenger van (instead of a minivan) because we can take more children in that way!



I just can't wait for what God has in store for our family. I just asked Ed last night if he ever thinks about what our family will look like 5, 10, or even 20 years from now. Oh the changes that could take place! It's exciting! Please pray for our family as we venture into this new area.



I saw this quote on another blog and thought it was very fitting and worth sharing:



"Children will come in and out of our home, but they will never leave our hearts. My first prayer is that we can be a part of saving families. That is what the children need most. If a family cannot be saved, I pray that we can become a new family. Some will stay and some will go. The right ones always stay."

In Just 4 Days

Wow, what a weekend we've had here. It all started Friday night when we finally got the girls' bunk beds together. They were so excited! We had Grandma and Papaw come over to check out the new room, we stayed up late, the whole nine. They had been waiting for these beds for months and now they had them. Here's the pic:

Then, when it was time for Ed and I to go to bed (around 11:30), I just couldn't do it. I couldn't leave my 1 year old in the room with a ladder leading to a bed 6 feet off the ground. I kept imagining her climbing up in the middle of the night and falling. It scared me so much that by midnight, I had taken the mattress off the toddler bed and moved it into our room. Ayda slept on a mattress on our floor for the rest of the night.

The next morning, the first thing we did was make the bunk beds two twin beds (both on the floor). It made for tight quarters, but I was still excited about how cute everything was. Here's what the room looked like 12 hours into this journey:

Now, fast forward 48 hours to this morning. I heard the kids playing nicely in the girls' room and was enjoying some quiet time. I heard a loud BANG and said, "Is everyone ok?" No answer. This time, I went in there while I asked, "Is everyone ok?" I found the 3 kids standing in shock, not sure what to do and I found this:

Yep, that would be our brand new bed---broken! Makenna has only admitted to standing on the bed, so I'm not sure exactly how this happened. To look at the positive side of this, though, I'm glad we had separated the beds. The bed that broke was the one that was on the top! Maybe it was more than just my fear of Ayda climbing that made me unable to go to sleep with bunk beds in the room. Maybe it was God giving me an uneasy feeling about them for this very reason. I'm glad I listened!

Now, off to do some bed shopping....

Project 365

I saw about this project on another blog, and it sounded like a great idea. Project 365 is a great way to document a year in your life. You take one picture each day for an entire year. You can write a little or a lot about each picture. By the end of the, you will have a scrapbook that shows what was going on every day of that year. How neat! I got started a couple of weeks into January, so I'll be missing a few days at the beginning, but so far I've been keeping up with it! I'm excited to see the final project. I'm certainly not a crafty person, but I will learn as I go.

What I have noticed so far is that this project makes me stop and enjoy the everyday things more. I usually only broke out the ol' camera for things like birthday parties, holidays, trips, etc. Now I keep my camera with me at all times. It has made me document what I always knew--that memories are in the day to day life. I've had moments previously in which I was watching the kids eating breakfast and would take a picture because I didn't want to forget the picture in front of me. This has just made me do that more often. There are so many memories being made here every day. Now I'll have them all together in a book!

When Momma's on Facebook....

...Ayda finds a way to entertain herself. I saw her go into the bathroom and thought she was getting a kleenex since she was saying, "nose!" About 2-3 minutes later, I wondered why she hadn't come back out. I went to check on her and found my little angel doing this:

Yep, that's lotion all over my mirror. She was having a great time, though! I let her "fingerpaint" on my mirror for a few minutes, but not to worry--I gave her the obligatory, "Let's don't do that again" line. :)

Book Review: The Language of Love and Respect

I started my 2010 “30 Book” Challenge by reading The Language of Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs. Anyone who knows me well knows that I don't like to harm the books I read in any way. I don't open them fully, I remove jackets so they don't get bent, I don't write in them, etc. The exception to that rule is if I am reading a book that I know I will need to keep on my shelf to revisit over and over. This was one of those books. I got about 20 pages into it and realized I was going to have to grab a pen and start over, making notes along the way.
As the subtitle of the book ("Cracking the Communication Code with Your Mate") suggests, the whole book is about communication. Eggerichs points out that men and women are, by their very nature, as different as pink and blue. Women see through pink glasses and hear through pink hearing aids while men see and hear in blue. Therein lies the problem. He goes on, however, to show how couples can work around those differences, since trying to change them will only leave couples frustrated and in what he calls "The Crazy Cycle."
Behind all of the advice on how to deal with day to day conversations, how to make your spouse feel loved/respected, and how to better understand how your spouse feels, Eggerichs' main point is that the solution lies in your relationship with God.
For a marriage to thrive, a wife should respect her husband as herself, and a husband should love his wife as Christ loved the church. (Ephesians 5:33) The key is that this love and respect must be unconditional. As Eggerichs writes, "Yes, the two of you are very different, and I am telling you to love and respect unconditionally anyway." He later points out that this unconditional love and respect can only be offered to a spouse "by being faithful--to God, to His Word, and to your spouse."
I highly recommend this book or any other books/DVD's by Eggerichs. He has a great insight into men and women and into marriage itself. You can check out the products he has available here. Has anyone else read any of his books or been to one of his seminars?

Great Homeschooling Quote

I saw this quote on another blog and thought it was worth sharing:

"In not mentioning God, my public school teachers preached a thundering sermon every day. By implication, they taught that God is not relevant to most areas of life...with every lesson, in every class period, all day every day for twelve years, I was being taught to think like an atheist in the academic realm. And I didn't even know that I was being indoctrinated."

My Sweet Boy

Wyatt has always been both a challenge to me and a joy in my life. He has so much energy and can't seem to sit still for long at all. He's been on the go since he started walking at 10 months old! He has always been able to find a way to get into trouble; we have often said that trouble just seems to find him. He can't resist it. It's been a constant struggle for us.

Recently, however, he is starting to mature and outgrow some of that. He just turned 4 and we are finally seeing more about who he really is. He's showing his personality and his heart more and more with each passing month. One thing that we have noticed about him is that he is very sweet and tenderhearted. He will always get up to turn a light on for Makenna or stop eating dinner to walk all the way around the table to get Ayda's fork if she drops it. He takes a lot from Ayda, who has recently started biting (usually only him), and he never retaliates. Of course, it doesn't help us deal with Ayda when he ALWAYS gives into her, but it shows what a sweet heart he has.

The greatest trait that we have noticed in him recently, however, is his love for God. Even through all the squirming in chairs through Sunday School, he has been listening. He knows his bible better than most kids twice his age. There are many times he says something to me and adds to the end of the statement, "because that's what the bible says." Now, keeping in mind that he's 4, he sometimes uses that phrase with things that have nearly nothing to do with the bible. He'll say things like, "We need to wear a seat belt because the bible says so," or "Always wear an undershirt because that's what it says in the bible." We will never correct him, though, since he's obviously learned the important lesson--that we live by the standards of the bible.

Wyatt also always wants to pray. In fact, it can cause quite the argument between him and Makenna over who gets to pray at that meal. Lately, he has combined his "prayer life" and his nurturing of Ayda. He is like a protective mother to her at bedtime. He says very quietly and sweetly, "Come on, Ayda. Get your baby and get into bed. I'll cover you up." Here he is just a couple of nights ago putting her to bed. Keep in mind that the room was completely dark, I just had my camera on night time mode so we could see.

Then, after her gets her tucked in, he gets on his knees, puts his head on her bed, and prays for her:

I think that is the most priceless picture. It is one of my very favorites.

Wyatt is just a loving little boy. He has such a tender heart and a love for God. I pray that he stays faithful to God, and I can't wait to see what God has planned for his life!

2010 "30 Book" Challenge

I saw this on my brother's blog (Dr. Ron's Blog) and thought it was a great idea, so I'm borrowing it. :) It's called the "2010 '30 Book' Challenge." He encouraged everyone to read 30 books this year. I love to read, but all too often I don't take the time to do it. I seem to go in spurts. I'll read two books in record time, then won't read for a couple of months. I want to commit to spending more time reading and less time watching t.v. I plan on updating this post as the year goes on, and hopefully I will reach 30 books by the end of the year!

My list:
1. The Language of Love & Respect by Emerson Eggerichs
2. The Power of a Positive Mom by Karol Ladd
3. Facing the Giants
4. Adopted for Life (currently reading)

Anyone else up to the challenge?

Snow Day!

Seven days into the new year and we're having our first snow day. I wish I could say I was excited and able to sit back and enjoy the beautiful scenery, but it's snow. It's cold, wet, and a mess! Since 7:30 this morning, the kids have had one thing on their mind--playing outside. I put it off as long as I could, but had to give in.




I don't think they even noticed the cold! It was just under 20 degrees and they were running around like it was summer time! Ah to be young again!



After a whopping 15 minutes in the snow, the kids are having some hot chocolate and marshmallows and I'm left with the memories, a few pictures, and this:


The good part is that they got it out of their system. They'll be content to stay inside the rest of the day. Snow is much more beautiful from inside a warm house with a hot cup of coffee. Off to start a fire in the fireplace....