Thankful

Today I am especially thankful

for my Father, who created me

to love and to be loved.

Happy Thanksgiving to you!

Love, Backwards

Sometimes I think we put the cart before the horse.

Sometimes we think we have to follow a set of rules so we can be good Christians.

No matter how hard we try, we just can't be good enough.

{Well, at least I'm better than ol' Joe down the street; he's a drunk wife-abuser.}

But Joe is not the standard God would hold us to. It's not enough to be better than Joe.

You must be as good as God himself.

Impossible, right?

That's why we need Jesus.

So if you try to be a Christian by following all the rules to be good enough, you'll fail.

You have to work it backwards, actually.

Instead of being good enough to get closer to God, do that upside down.

First, get to know your Father. Realize how much He loves you.

He loves you.

He created your little being and spoke His Word into you.

He planned out all the days of your life before even one of them came to be.

When that really hits you, you will love Him back.

With all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.

And when that happens, you will do good things.

The goodness will ooze out of you.

Because you'll be so grateful that your Father loves you so much.

And you'll want to share that love with everyone else.

Ask Him to show you how much He loves you.

He loves you.

"The Lord your God is in the midst of you, a Mighty One, a Saviour! He will rejoice over you with Joy; He will rest in silent satisfaction and in His love He will be silent and make no mention of past sins, or even recall them; He will exult over you with singing." zeph 3:17

Scents of the Season

Don't you love how certain scents remind you of memories? And how each holiday has its own smells associated with it?

I've been alternating between burning an Apple Cider candle and a Pumpkin candle during the evenings this month. Today I started baking some of the casseroles we will eat on Thanksgiving. So now my house smells like loaded cornbread casserole (with smoky bacon!). If those casseroles survive until Thursday, it will be a miracle ;)

Here's the recipe.

So, what are your favorite scents of Fall?

I wanna be the one doing back-handsprings across the balance beam with sprays of technicolor rainbows arcing out, for God's glory :)

Oh My!

A post! Imagine that. . .

Just thought I would share a few pictures from the pumpkin festival we went to last weekend. It was so much fun - there were pony rides, a pumpkin patch, a corn maze, candied apples, a beautiful farmer's market, and tons of other stuff. Unfortunately, it was almost ninety degrees that day, so we were really hot and sweaty, but we did have a great time.

What kind of fun Fall stuff has been going on in your neck of the woods?

Our new little guy has been with us for 5 or 6 days now. It's going really well. It's fun to see his real personality emerge as the shock wears off. We have no idea how long he'll be with us; another day, a week, a year? But we're enjoying every minute of him.

Last night, a scared little guy was dropped off with his suitcase at the bottom of our driveway.

His mom wrote him a touching note, which we found in his backpack at bedtime.

He snuggled down to sleep without any trouble.

I, on the other hand, needed a good cry.

Today, I'm getting to know this sweet, polite boy.

{So far, I've figured out that Star Wars Legos bring a smile to his face.}

We shopped for some personal items {and some Legos}, ate lunch together, and are awaiting a visit from the social worker any minute. We'll register him at school this afternoon so he can start Monday.

It's Official !

We are licensed :)

Stuff

Well, while I wasn't paying attention the other day, my blog had its first birthday. And the only reason I remembered is because today I was reminding myself to stop being distracted by my circumstances and keep my eyes on my God. You can read my very first post right here. I'm having a good laugh at myself now because I've had all the ups and downs that a whole year serves up, and yet here I am a year later again reminding myself to ignore those stupid, aggravating, nagging circumstances.

Earlier this week I was thinking about how some people will talk or write about something great that happened and finish the story by saying, "God is so good." And I was thinking how God is definitely so good, and how that doesn't change or waver, it doesn't ebb and flow. I think someone should write a blog post that says something like, "Man, things really stink and God is so good."

***

In other news, I was invited to a meeting yesterday with about 30 other people from all over for the purpose of foster care reform. I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am about this. I am hoping for a paradigm shift in the way the system sees itself and therefore, the way things are done. And while I was at the meeting, I met a lady who had traveled from another town to attend. She works for the Department of Children and Families. And it turns out that she is the lady who reads all the homestudies and gives licenses to new foster homes in our area. And it also turns out that she had just read and approved ours :) and that it is on her supervisor's desk. Once the supervisor sends the word to my local licensing agency, we will be official. Could be any day now.

God is so good.

{I couldn't resist.}

Moving on . . .

My little Lulie is in third grade this year in a different classroom with a very low teacher to student ratio. She is not a good candidate for an inclusion setting and we're very happy with her placement this year. I guess she's going through all the stages involved in making a rough transition. She's decided that she doesn't intend to do any of the daily tasks which are part of her curriculum, she would rather be alone under the table, occasionally spitting on her classmates. I've spent a good bit of time in her class over the last couple of weeks observing and then problem-solving. We're implementing some new things to help ease her transition and we will wait a bit to see if she settles in. Then we might have to come up with Plan B.

I have a few other things I've been wanting to post, so hopefully I'll be back in the next few days. And I'll certainly be back to let you know when we are officially foster parents.

Coming Soon . . .

. . . a blog post?

Hopefully.

I have some things I would love to share with you.

:)

Maybe September?

I found out this afternoon that our entire packet of paperwork (background checks, documents, homestudy, etc) was approved locally during the last 24 hours and sent to the Department of Children and Families today, and that DCF's approval has been about a two week wait lately. So we might be closer than we thought to our first foster kiddo.

Thank you, Father, for your faithfulness. Thank you for walking ahead of us down this path. Please bless and comfort the children who are away from their own mommies and daddies, and prepare our hearts and our home so we can be your love to them.

I am so excited :) Thanks for being excited with me.

Time Flies When You're Having Fun

Well, the kids have completed two weeks of school already. We've had Open House for all four kiddos. Caroline has had cheerleading tryouts and four practices so far. Eli spent three days home with a bug last week, followed by Lauren out for two, and now Caroline was down the whole holiday weekend. We've had parent meetings for cheerleading and baseball, to be followed by two more baseball meetings this week. Lauren and Eli started with a new Speech Therapy program twice a week before school (those are early mornings!). Thursday was our last MAPP class. We think we should receive our first foster child sometime next month. I enjoyed a lot of low-key relaxation this weekend and caught up on some laundry, too. Looking forward to getting in a groove this week, settled into the new Fall routine.

Are you settled in yet?

Last Shots of Summer

Now that we're three days into the new school year, I've finally found the time to go through some of the many pictures I took a few weeks ago when my mom and step-dad took us out on the boat for the morning.

We rode around the intracoastal a little bit, stopped at a small island to swim and explore, then rode out through a big pass into the Gulf. We even docked at a waterfront McDonald's for lunch, which was fun.

We've had the luxury of some extra days off at the restaurant for the Summer months, which means Daddy gets to hang with the family a little more.

And the kids love a good adventure, of course. This messy little island is in the intracoastal waterway, so the water isn't very pretty and the beach doesn't compare to our real beaches, but we had the island almost completely to ourselves and there were little paths through the middle of the island, which made for some good exploring.

Eli is very enthralled by sand. He loves to play in the sandbox at school and loves the beach. He actually used to call the beach "the sandbox".

The kids all got turns driving the boat and sitting up front on the bow. I've always been the kind of girl who wants to go fast and hit the big waves. Apparently my kids inherited that from me.

She thinks she honking the horn, like in a car, but there's no horn on this steering wheel :)

No day is complete without a picture of Eli's tongue! We don't ask him to do this, it's just one of the many spontaneous sillies of Eli.

I love this shot of the best big sister in America.

You know, there have been SO many times over the years that people have questioned us about adopting Lauren and Eli. They often ask how it has affected Caroline and Alex. To be honest, I really don't like the inference that Caroline and Alex have been damaged in same way or slighted because of their siblings. And my answer is always that Lauren and Eli are really a blessing to us and we are all so much better off for having them. I think that probably comes off as a canned cliche answer, but I really mean it.

And now I have this picture as proof.

The Tail End

It's the end of Summer vacation at our house. Schools starts back on Monday. I'm just not ready. Oh, I have all the glue sticks, rulers, paper, pencils, markers, germ gel, clorox wipies, you name it. It's labeled and packed in each of the four backpacks. And the overflow is labeled and bagged for each of them to carry in their sweaty-little-first-day-back-to-school-hand.

{Those sweet little hands. The ones that are bigger and more dextrous than this time last year.}

My kids are all excited to go Monday. And I'm glad for that. They have great communities of kids and adults at their schools who are sure to dish out another year of fun, effort, drama, tears, and growth.

I love having my kids home for the summer and I'm truthfully not looking forward to another school year. But I have my happy face on and I'm gearing up for all the lunch-packing, homework-helping, volunteering, car-pooling, cheering, advocating, hand-holding, communicating, and whatever else this year has to offer.

I don't really like the thought of time marching on. I want to slow down the growing-upness of my kids. I want to be their mommy longer.

As I write this, my Caroline, who is going into seventh grade, is trying on outfits to decide on one for the first day. And then heading to a friend's house for an end of summer party. She's trying out for cheerleading next week. I just want to spray her with UltraMegaHold hairspray so she can't get any older. I'm savoring every minute of their ages and stages and I know I will continue to enjoy them as time marches on, I just want it to last forever.

While gearing up for the kids' new schedules, I also have been getting my own scheduled pared down a bit and reorganized so that I am ready for a new child to join our family soon through foster care. I am taking a leave of absence from the Guardian Ad Litem program for several months. It will be a big change for me to not be responsible for those kids, four of whom are quite a handful. I'm at peace with my decision to take a break, though. I know those are God's babies and He is taking care of them.

Only two more weeks of MAPP classes, and then I will have one more thing off my plate. I won't teach another round this Fall. So... that will leave me with my wife- and mommy-duties, and whatever help my husband needs for the business (which right now is the monthly accounting and managing the serving staff, mostly from home). Sounds like a breath of fresh air.

Wow. What kind of long-winded, blah-blah-blah post was this?! I guess I needed to process my thoughts. Thanks for reading. I hope your eyes aren't bleeding :)

Lover

I am a believer.

But more importantly, I am a lover.

A God-lover, that is.

I realized that there is a difference between the two.

And that while being a believer can be (and should be) life changing,

Being a God-lover is motivating.

And mind-blowing.

"We love Him because He first loved us."

1 John 4:19

More

Can I vent to you guys?

I really find joy in helping others, meeting needs, and stepping up when the opportunity presents itself. My hope is that God's love will shine through me to people in many situations and in many ways.

But it really BUGS me when people or organizations take advantage of me.

The good news is, I have a backbone :) And I am not afraid to say no when I am asked for more, more, more.

{Like I did today. And yesterday. And the two days before that.}

Miss teen x 4

This Summer, Miss Teen has been spending Mondays and Tuesdays with us each week. It has been a fun time of sleeping over and getting to really know each other better. We've had our ups and downs, highs and lows, and challenges, but overall, things are going well and 'the system' is starting to explore options for after she turns 18. I am thrilled and relieved that none of the options being discussed involve delivering her to a homeless shelter.

She will attend a different school this year. Going into 11th grade, she has now attended over 20 different schools and lived in over 30 placements. Disheartening, no?

Today I'm picking her up for a four day visit. This is the longest we've had her at once. We don't have a lot planned other than swimming in the pool and browsing the bookstore, unless I can talk Mr Abidingthere into taking us to the beach. I'm thinking the chances of that are pretty slim after watching Shark Week for seven days.

Shark Week

We've been enjoying The Discovery Channel's "Shark Week" for the last few days. A few minutes ago, my kids were absorbed in a show about Tiger sharks as I got caught up reading some of your blogs.

And a little voice asked, "Mommy, can sharks have down syndrome?"

I don't know sweetie.

:)

Out of My Skin

I've been in this kind of agitated state lately. I have so much on my mind. I feel like I can't quiet my thoughts and like I just want to crawl right out of my skin.

Most of the things that are occupying my brain can be boiled down to a struggle between my flesh and my spirit. I feel like I am straddling a fence between this world (and all of it's distractions) and God's Kingdom purposes for me here.

I love this simple phrase I saw on Julie's blog a while back: "Love God. Love Others." I think it fits me to a tee - the real me underneath the outer me who is straddling that fence. I want to live in that mindset all the time, but I am so challenged daily.

I believe I have free will and can make my own decisions based on my thoughts, feelings, desires, etc. But I don't want my will, I want God's. I believe my life is not mine. I don't want my days on this earth to be wasted with things that do not have eternal significance. I really don't want to care about whether something is convenient for me, or whether it seems ok to other people. I really just want to do Kingdom stuff here. And Kingdom stuff doesn't always look normal to others. I say that my life is not mine, but I'm not sure I'm walking that out daily.

Can I be really honest? I would load up my family and haul them off to a third world country in a heartbeat if I believed God was sending us. I would live in a mud hut and feed hungry children and rock babies with HIV. And I would not fear having my four kids playing on the dirt floor with kids who have AIDS and whose parents have already passed. I would do the same kind of thing right here in the U.S.. I would sell my house and move to the Appalachians and live alongside people in need, helping to meet their needs.

But I have this life. My husband, a house, a business, cars, kids, school, volunteer work. And all of that is a blessing! I am grateful for all of it. But I don't know how to be the real me who exists underneath the surface while I am still caught in the world and its things.

I am caught in this world where my business has to bring in a certain amount of revenue in order to keep running and to pay bills. Do I want to spend even one minute thinking about revenue and bills? No. I am caught in a world where my kids want to go to the mall or to the movies. Do I think there's anything wrong with that? No. But I don't want to be distracted by material things or entertainment. I want to reach out to people. Can I do that in the mall or the movies? I suppose so. I just don't know how to be a suburban mini-van mom in my cute beaded flip-flops with my hair fixed and makeup on, and still be the real me who wants to sit in a circle on the dirt with a bunch of people in Haiti and sing worship songs to my Lord. I want to sit in God's presence with a group of people who love him as deeply as I do; yet in this world, I don't even attend a church. I just want to be the Church. I want to be God's love to others. Without having to tell them. I want them to just know it because it's oozing out of me. That reminds me of a song I sang as a little kid, "..and they'll know we are Christians by our love...". In all of my life and all the people I've ever come in contact with, I think I can count on one hand those who I suspected loved the Lord because of the love they oozed. And I don't think I'm part of that count, except sometimes.

I am a believer. A God-lover. I want to ooze his love. I do not want to be any old religious zealot who knows the rules and the doctrines of the world's interpretation of church. I want to be pure, unadulterated love to all I come in contact with. I truly want to be God's hands and feet on this earth. All day every day. Not just on Tuesday for three hours while I'm doing volunteer work.

Two nights ago I went for a walk all by myself in the evening. I was muttering to God about how uncomfortable my skin is, and he showed me the bark on a Crape Myrtle as I passed. It was splitting and peeling off as the trunk and branches underneath grew too big to fit in that bark. Kind of like it was molting and leaving it's old skin behind because it didn't fit anymore. It was growing from the inside out. Like me.

Meme Camp

My mom is affectionately known to my children as Meme. {Sounds like Mimi.} She's one of those young, energetic, playful grandmas who entertains and tickles her grandkids until they're so tired at the end of the day, they pass out without remembering to be homesick for mommy.

For one week every summer, Meme takes my two older kids for a week of fun-filled fare and she calls it Meme Camp.

No two Meme Camps are alike. Sometimes she takes them a few hours away to ride through swamps on an airboat, other times to a beach several hours South of us to {successfully} hunt for shark teeth. They go canoeing in a natural preserve, explore old forts used by our ancestors generations ago as they discovered Florida. They bake cakes, eat Taco Bell, swim, and do crafts. They stay up late and sleep in. Sometimes they sleep in hotels, sometimes they camp at Meme's. Everytime they have a ball and come home tanned and tired.

Our younger two kiddos aren't mature enough to join in yet, but their time will come - probably just as the older two are outgrowing Meme Camp, trading it in for college and summer jobs.

So for the next 5 days, it's just me and my sweet babies at home while daddy works and the big kids are at Meme Camp. It's a little quieter around here than usual. I'm trying to think of some fun {cheap} things we can do together, just the three of us.

Any ideas?

I almost choked on my gum today when I clicked over to Melissa's Blog to read her newest post. Everything Something about it seemed so familiar.

Six years ago when we were updating our adoption homestudy in order to bring Elias home, the social worker we were dealing with either had a great sense of humor or no sense of humor at all. During our interview she asked what we do to spend time together nurturing our marriage. The G-rated answer was that we went on regular dates out to dinner, usually by followed by running a couple of errands without the kids. You know how much easier it is to run into WalMart without a bunch of kids whining for candy, toys, rafts, bikes, chia pets ....

A month or so later when we received our copy of the final report that went to DCF and was permanently filed with the local agency, we read all about how we "go on dates every week to dinner and WalMart."

Wow. Sounds really exciting. {I was barely 30 years old.}

Today, a different social worker spent almost three hours at our house meeting the kids, walking through, and interviewing us. A new homestudy. We joked as we told her about that old one which carefully documented our wild ways, and made sure she knew that our dates are actually to dinner and Lowe's.

We've come a long way, baby.

The Next Step

So, what's the next step in this foster care thing?

Well, Monday we have our first visit from the licensing specialist. She is the social worker who has been gathering all of our paperwork, references, documents, background checks, and other stuff she will use to write our thirty page homestudy. She happens to be a very sweet, smily gal who is a pleasure to talk to, so we're looking forward to our visit Monday.

She will do a second home visit sometime in the next few weeks while we finish up the next six weeks of classes. Once the classes are over and the homestudy is complete, the entire package will be sent to DCF for approval. We think that takes around four weeks. We're guessing we'll be officially licensed sometime in October.

I'm excited and curious to know who will be joining our family for a while. Boy or girl?? Will he or she be a little bitty three year old or a half-grown twelve year old, or somewhere in between? What kind of needs will this one have and how will the transition go for all of us?

What really strikes me is that this young person who will spend every moment with us for an indefinite period of time is somewhere right now. He or she has been through some kind of trauma or is about to be separated from his/her own mommy and daddy. I am already praying for this little one, and for us, that we will love unconditionally and nurture him/her through the fear, grief, and transition ahead.

Health Inspection

Because we've owned a restaurant for eleven years, we are no strangers to health inpections. Even though we know and follow the laws, I still get nervous at the thought of having someone come through with a checklist and a badge. It always seems like they are trying to find something wrong that they can catch you on. But through the years, the inspections have always turned out fine.

Today, I had the honor of hosting a health inspector in my home! Can I just tell you that getting licensed as a foster home has been quite a good thing for my house? I have done the deepest of deep cleanings, purged and reorganized every closet, and scrubbed refrigerators and freezers; not to mention adding thermometers to refrigerators and freezers, and locks on certain closets or cabinets that have chemicals or medicines. So while it was a good thing for my house, it was a long to-do list. There were actually over seventy items on that checklist!

This morning I bribed my kids with doughnut holes. One of my finer mommy moments. "If you sit on the couch and watch cartoons for the next hour without messing up the house; and if you sit still and don't bicker with each other while the inspector is here, you can have these yummy little balls of sugary dough" :) Worked like a charm.

The inspector actually was very kind and personable. And our house passed with flying colors.

Whew!

I { Heart } Summer

Caroline has a weekly job, babysitting these

two little cuties.



We've been getting our money's worth out of our pool.

Lauren learned to swim without floaties.

We've been spending some quality play time together.

And heading to the beach, to the beach, to the beach.

Lauren and Eli figured out how to sneak a whole buffet into the playroom without getting caught until their fingers were already orange.

And I got to spend a day chaperoning these beautiful girls from foster care as they went bowling with some players from the Tampa Bay Bucs.

I can't believe the Summer break is halfway over. . .

Kitty Hair

Lauren told Eli
"Li, yadoluli kitty cat"

{"Eli, now you look like a kitty cat :)"}

And Eli said, "Thanks, Wonn."

{thanks, Lauren}

I've never met a kid whose personality begged for a mohawk more than this little guy. He is truly one of a kind. Rowdy, charming, loud, adorable.

He is a treasure.

Productive

We had planned a long weekend getaway for Independence Day. I have brothers in Atlanta with wives and kids, and I have a cousin and her husband in Nashville who were driving to Atlanta to join all of us. My mom and step-dad were headed up for an even longer visit. I was going to be so brave and drive the kids up on Friday, then my husband {who needed to be at work Friday} was to fly up Saturday morning.

As the trip grew closer, it was becoming clear that the timing was not perfect. By the middle of last week, we cancelled. We had a "To Do" list a mile long, and hubby doesn't have another cluster of time off any time soon. So we spent the weekend checking off stuff from that list, with little breaks here and there to swim with the kids or go see a movie.

And speaking of the movie, we took the kids to see Ice Age 3D. It was a cute movie ... but I had no idea that there is an extra charge to see a movie in 3D. We very rarely see a movie in the theater. I figured we'd go to the matinee at noon so it wouldn't cost a fortune for the six of us. Imagine how shocked I was when the young cashier told me it was $62.

Wow! Sixty-two dollars? To see a cartoon?

It was cute, but not THAT cute.

Our plan was, if we get enough done on our To Do list, we'd spend the day at the beach today. The good news is, we are our own judge of how much "enough" is :) We did get baseboards installed in Lauren & Eli's surfy room. We rearranged closets and furniture and put an extra bed in Alex's room and in Caroline's room. We're just waiting for one more twin mattress. We repaired a toilet flusher thingy in the kids' bathroom, cleaned out half of the garage, and a few other things. And we all six stayed up for a midnight snack of buffalo wings and fries Sunday night. That was actually a lot of fun because we usually have Lauren & Eli in bed by 8 or 8:30, and Caroline and Alex no later than 10 during the Summer. { I'm a mama who fully enjoys a few hours of peace every night before I turn in. }

So we did award ourselves a day at the beach today. It was overcast and windy, but we had a blast out in the BIG waves. And we managed to all get some sun even through the clouds. Lauren is the only fair one in our bunch and she is actually pretty pink today. I'm always so good about coating her with spf 70, but I didn't today because of the cloudy weather. Now I know ....

All that rambling and not one picture. Sorry :)

Hi!

Hello, there!

Remember me?

Hee hee.

Sorry it's been so long since I posted.

It's Summertime, ya know.

And I have a handful of little kiddles at my house

who need a lot of entertaining.

We've been having a lot of fun swimming and going to the beach.

We've also done some deep cleaning and rearranging around the house,

making room for more beds!

Hubby and I have been occupied with tons of paperwork,

background checks, notarized stuff, reference checks, fingerprinting,

and at least a million pages of every nitty gritty detail about our entire lives.

It's exciting and exhausting.

We still have to finish our chat about our official 'profile'.

Those are the parameters we give the foster care agency which state what gender and what age range we will accept.

We've gone from one end of the spectrum to the other on ages. Some days we think we'll take 0-18 year olds. If they're breathing, bring 'em on. Other days, we're a little more narrowed down. But not much. It's hard to rule out any kid who needs a place to stay while his/her family is in crisis.

Where we live, homes can only be licensed for a maximum of five kids and since we have 4 already, we will only be licensed for one foster child. But we'll have two beds, in case there's a sibling pair. Sometimes the agency will give you a waiver to have an extra kid if it means they won't have to separate siblings. I like that.

Well, that's our news for now. Hope you are all enjoying your summer :)

Interviews & Trainings

I had a great morning today!

There's a therapeutic youth ranch not far from us that houses and educates teenage girls. The girls are learning independent living skills during the summer and we hosted them at our restaurant this morning. We did an interactive discussion on applying and interviewing for a job, they filled out applications, had mock interviews, and then we talked about being a valuable employee.

The girls were so sweet and they did a great job listening and participating. They all came in dressed for the occasion and put their best foot forward during the interviews even though they were nervous.

We had the opportunity to encourage each of them to let their lights shine. We enjoyed a yummy lunch together afterward and then parted ways with lots of hugs. It was a really cool experience for me and I hope to do it again and again for other teens.

I wish I could have taken pictures and shared them with you, but photos aren't allowed since the girls are in foster care :(

Tonight starts the next round of MAPP training. I'm really looking forward to meeting all the new families and I'm especially pleased to have my husband in the class. I met a few of the couples in Orientation a couple of weeks ago, and it looks like an interesting bunch. I wish I could share some details with you over the next 12 weeks without breeching anyone's privacy, but I wouldn't want to cross a line. I will say that out of every group that comes through training, only a couple of families actually become a licensed foster home, because most are disqualified for one reason or another. Sometimes I can't believe the things we come across as we are assessing people. (I would love to go into detail about some of the ridiculous things we come across, it would sure make for an interesting blog post.)

So, I'm always curious to see who my next students are, and I love the process of digging in and finding out what lies beneath!

Picnik: Love it!

Remember this post, when I shared the photo editing site Picnik.com?

Well, I hate to be redundant, but I wanted to show you some neat stuff I did with just a few clicks today. It was SO easy and only took a few minutes.

The photo above was the original.

And below are some of the variations I did.

I think the third revision is my favorite.

Any of you who are expert editing gurus probably aren't that impressed, but I have had Photoshop Elements for a few years and never have warmed up to it. I haven't found it to be very user friendly - too complicated for me. So, you can imagine my happiness over finding a free, easy way to do some neat stuff with my pictures. :)

Which one is your favorite?

Happiness is . . .

Eli . . .

chillin' . . .

in mama's . . .

cool, comfy bed.

Wonderful

I praise you

because I am




fearfully and wonderfully made.

Your works are wonderful

I know that full well.

{ Ps. 139 }

MAPP Class

If you were reading my blog back in January when I posted this, you might remember that I co-teach a MAPP class which trains parents who wish to become foster parents or to adopt kids out of foster care.

And if you were reading my blog back in November when I posted this, you might recall that my husband and I have long discussed having a house full of kids that may have otherwise been stuck in the system without a family.

I am starting a new session of MAPP next week for families who are attempting to become licensed to foster and I am so excited to have a special student in my class this time. My husband is sitting through the 12 weeks {again} because it has been longer than five years since he went through MAPP training, and because we want to become a licensed foster home :)

We're pretty excited about this opportunity and I'm pretty excited to spend the next 12 weeks in MAPP with my husband! It should be very interesting....

Wings

This weekend we celebrated our friend, Tara's, highschool graduation. Her very sweet parents hosted a party for her. The three of them are pictured above, during the really touching words her parents spoke to bless her.
Tara's family and extended family are all very dear to us. They are our closest friends and they are the families we are the most spiritually intimate with. We've been through the very thick and the very thin together. It's so wonderful to have friends like that.

We used to gather the 24 of us together quite regularly to share our lives, but over the last few years, we don't all seem to be in the same place at once very often.

I guess that's what happens as kids grow up and go off to college. It's a sweet thing to see them all launching off on their own God-given path, but I do miss them. Out of the fourteen kids in our group, five have gone on to college over the last few years, with two more moving on this year; and one handsome young man who will head out to attend an academy for high school about three hours away.

It's such a sweet thing to witness the upbringing of these precious young people and then to see them stretch their wings and fly.

How to Dance in the Rain

I received this little story by email from a friend and thought you guys you might enjoy it, too:

It was a busy morning, about 8:30 , when an elderly gentleman in his 80s arrived to have stitches removed from his thumb. He said he was in a hurry as he had an appointment at 9:00 am . I took his vital signs and had him take a seat, knowing it would be over an hour before someone would be able to see him. I saw him looking at his watch and decided, since I was not busy with another patient, I would evaluate his wound. On examining I saw it was well healed, so I talked to one of the doctors, got the needed supplies to remove his sutures and redress his wound. While taking care of his wound, I asked him if he had another doctor's appointment this morning, as he was in such a hurry. The gentleman told me no, that he needed to go to the nursing home to eat breakfast with his wife. I inquired as to her health. He told me that she had been there for a while and that she was a victim of Alzheimer's Disease. As we talked, I asked if she would be upset if he was a bit late. He replied that she no longer knew who he was, that she had not recognized him in five years now. I was surprised, and asked him, 'And you still go every morning, even though she doesn't know who you are?' He smiled as he patted my hand and said, 'She doesn't know me, but I still know who she is.' I had to hold back tears as he left, I had goose bumps on my arm, and thought, 'That is the kind of love I want in my life.'

Unconditional love is neither physical, nor romantic.

Unconditional love is an acceptance of all that is, has been, will be, and will not be.

The happiest people don't necessarily have the best of everything;

they just make the best of everything they have.

Life isn't about how to survive the storm, but how to dance in the rain.

Eye Candy Awards

It's been a long time since I passed out Eye Candy Awards for bright, pretty photos and I have seen so many bright, pretty pictures lately! This new batch goes to :

Meg at Whatever

Kim at Daisy Cottage

Karen at Gavin Owens

Lorie at Be Different Act Normal

Julie at Joy's Hope

Heather at Cookie Mondays... Ice Cream Sundays

The little award thingy is in my side margin. Any of you can feel free to take one down and pass it around :) I just think they are a fun, little, happy way to spread some cheer.

There are no rules. You see some cool pictures on someone's blog - you give them a cute award. Share the love. No strings attached.

Ignorance is Bliss ?

Today we're having a new A/C unit installed. The guy, Al, has been here since 9 am. God is so nice because we are normally about 90 degrees and humid, but today it's breezy and 84 - raining and even cooler than that right now. We will not have A/C again until after 6 pm.

Anyway. Al is very nice - an old country boy. Chatty and kind. We fed him homemade cookies for breakfast - lol. But just now he came inside so I could speak with him about some ductwork and a return in the back bedroom and he was watching Lauren and Eli run around, excited to get their swimsuits on, speaking their own little chip-and-dale language - cute as buttons. And he looked at Lauren and said, "Aww, she's so sweet. Makes me appreciate all I have - when I think I've got it bad I just look around and see that there are other people worse off than I am."

Oh My! I was speechless. I am not one to get offended. I realize this was just old-school ignorance, but I am surprised. Do people really look at my kiddos and think they're "worse off"?

Picnik dot com!

Julie at Joy's Hope told me about this neat website. It's FREE and you can edit your photos using all their cool tools and fonts. It is totally user friendly - even I figured it out - and it's quick!

My blog will be a work in progress for a few days while I experiment . . .

Have a great day!

{Thanks, Julie!}

Summer Vacation

Today is the last day of school.

In a few hours, we will have our children all to ourselves for almost three months!

I am SO looking forward to lazy days by the pool, sleeping in, staying up late to watch movies, and maybe a quick trip or two.

I certainly wouldn't mind if the owner of that hut in Moorea {pictured above} called and offered us the use of his place for a few weeks.

:)

Little Bit Funky

Have you already read this post at Little Bit Funky?

You might want to check it out - It's a good read.

:)

Ramblings of a no-longer-homeschooling mom

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The first couple of years after we adopted Lauren and Elias were like a blur. We were a homeschooling family back then. The kids were 2, 3, 4 and 7. Lauren and Eli had therapies at home all week: OT, PT, and Speech, plus an Early Interventionist, for a total of 14 hours of therapy a week between the two of them. Daddy was running the restaurant about ninety hours a week, and the other five of us hardly left the house.

When Caroline started third grade, everyone went to school. I spent that first school year practically at the school with them, volunteering as much as possible. That all seems like a lifetime ago. It actually seems like it's a story I read about some crazy lady - it doesn't seem like it was me. Although at the time, I was fine. {Or at least off my rocker enough to believe I was fine!}

When we began homeschooling it was just Caroline and Alex, so it was a breeze. We had a lot of fun together. After a couple of years of becoming more and more overwhelmed, I was feeling guilty at the thought of sending my kids to school. I really was afraid, especially of public school - ooooh, scary! {hee hee hee} A close friend of mine did me a huge favor by asking me what our motives were for homeschooling. My knee-jerk answers sounded pretty fair, but when I talked myself through it to the root I realized that what had begun with great motives had turned into homeschooling out of fear. Fear of what my kids would be exposed to, fear of losing them to the world, blah blah blah. Once I realized I was acting in fear, I knew something had to change. We couldn't flourish/live/grow if we were chained up by fear. And we knew that fear is not of God.

So that Summer I visited the public school in our neighborhood and fell in love. The staff and administration were so friendly and warm, they opened their arms and welcomed us into their fuzzy little community. They invited me to get involved and took me to district meetings about issues I was concerned about so I could be comfortable and be part of the process. It was such a wonderful transition from being in our cocoon at home to all of the sudden being part of an 800 student school. They had a great program to meet Lauren's and Eli's needs, and they brought us right in and made us part of the family.

Almost all of those initial people have moved on to other schools now, and the group of PTA moms I was close with no longer have elementary kids. I often think about what an amazing gift all of those people gave us. They were kind to our family. Very kind.

I hope I pay that forward often.

Lauren

It's been six years since we first met our Lulie.

These where she's wearing the yellow shirt are from the very first time we met her.
She wasn't really that into us. . .

But we were really into her . . .

The foster family that had her had cut her hair into a mullet! Her bangs were all jagged and went all the way back past her ears. Then there was long hair hanging down her back.

So the first thing we did was grow it all out.

{You just can't help but smile when you look at this one!}

Isn't that the cutest little monogrammed hiney you've ever seen?!

Her bedroom was practically hosed-down with Pepto-Bismol, it was so pink!

Once her bangs were chin-length we had it cut into a little bob while it grew long.

She didn't smile a whole lot back in those days, but I did seem to get plenty of smiles on camera .

:)

Joy's Hope

I hope you already know about Joy's Hope. It's a fun, bright, cheery spot on the web you won't want to miss. And right now, she is doing a really great giveaway with Trish from Daisy's and Dots.

Have fun checking them out :)

Oldies

I was browsing through some old pictures and just can't believe how little my kids used to be! Silly, I know, but my goodness they were so little and cute!

These were from the first Christmas that Lauren was with us. She was two and Alex was three. Those little baby faces just make me want to lick my monitor.

These are from the first time we brought Eli to our house for a visit. He was just turning two.

{The first several weeks, we had to visit at the foster home so we could learn how to do the feeding tube.)

I can't get over how much they've grown and changed - all of them!
Time flies when you're having fun
:)

Ta-Daa!

Yesterday, the beautiful Elani at Palm Avenue Salon

spent a couple of hours with Miss Teen and Caroline.

Miss Teen's hair had been colored previously and she wanted her ends brought back to her natural color now that her roots were growing out. It was pretty convenient that the salon is next door to our restaurant. Not only were we able to barter the salon services, but we had a yummy lunch while we enjoyed a day of beauty :)

Caroline wanted a trim and some "side" bangs.

Miss Teen is growing out her length, but decided to have her hair trimmed so it was shaped nicely while it grows.

I love this shot of Elani - looks like she's working some magic on Caroline's style :)

The final result for Miss Teen: Adorable!

And Caroline got just what she asked for - she is such a sweetie-pie!

Ta-Daa!

{Thanks, Elani!}

Nook Beds

I love those beds tucked away in their own little nooks.

I bet my boys would be surfing that rolling coffee table across the room.

Or one kid would be inside the table while the other gave him a wild ride.

Isn't this so cool?!

It seems like such an efficient use of space.

Look how each one has a little cubby with a basket at the head of the bed.

It would pain me if the kids actually got on the beds, though.

I wouldn't want them to get messed up.

"No, no... those are just for decoration. Get the sleeping bags out of those seagrass trunks and make yourselves all cozy on the floor."

:)

1-2-3-4 . . .

. . . I declare a noodle war!

Four noodles from Dollar Tree: $4

One backwards hand-me-down Barbie bike helmet: $0

Fun Memorial Day family entertainment: $ priceless

:)

Cheaper than therapy . . .

. . . and no need to dirty a dish.

:)

Photos

Eli, Miss Teen, and Lauren

Miss Teen's birthday party went well, thank you for all of the well-wishes!

I'm really itching to share so many details about her, but I'm having a hard time figuring out how to walk the fine line with privacy issues. So for now, I will just keep my mouth shut and share some pictures.

Hope you are having a great day!

Seventeen

Today Miss Teen turns seventeen years old!

We are hosting a little party for her at our restaurant this afternoon.

In addition to our family and a couple of friends, there will be a few members from Miss Teen's biological family there. Two of them are close relatives who are allowed to have supervised visits, but haven't seen her since before Christmas. The other family member is her brother, who was adopted several years ago.

I've been thinking about Miss Teen a lot this week for a lot of reasons.

I know she's excited about having a birthday party with cake and gifts; and

I know she's happy to see her family members; and I also know she's a little nervous to see these people who are from an older chapter of hurts and rejections. I wonder how she is dealing with the swirl of mixed emotions without a mom to hold her and encourage her that everything's going to be alright.

And the other reason I've thought of her a lot this week is because this birthday is the last one before she becomes a legal adult. I'm wondering what her future holds. I'm praying she will have opportunities to reach her potential. And I'm thankful for her Father who is Faithful.

Grown Up Macaroni and Cheese

Have you visited Chocolate Chic ?

You won't want to miss her recipe for grown up mac n' cheese.

Bacon, crushed bbq chips ... this ain't your mama's recipe.

{my mouth is watering}

Summer Yumminess

Pineapple Margarita

Caribbean Chicken with Pineapple Salsa and Coconut Jasmine Rice

Cheesecake topped with roasted pineapple and rum and then decorated with pineapple flowers

I just found Tastespotting.com.

There you'll find these summery delights and links to all sorts of blogs with recipes.

Click here for more pineapple yumminess.

Opportunities

I couldn't decide if the title of this post should be "Challenges" or "Opportunities" :)

There are some things that have come up in my life lately that have caused me to go deeper in some areas. Areas that I thought were not a challenge for me have become a challenge under a new set of circumstances, and I'm thankful that I'm being given the opportunity to refine my attitute. I'm the the process of having to strictly call my focus into line throughout the day. If I let my thoughts run rampant, I become irritated and negative. But, I truly want to walk in God's unconditional love toward others, so I can't feed the irritation and negativity, I have to re-focus my thoughts. That's where these are coming in handy:

Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

{James 2:15-17}

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that.

{Luke 6:32-33}

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

{2 Corinthians 10:5}

I hoped you guys might add me to your prayer list while I'm working on this "opportunity":)

Do you have a favorite quote or scripture that reminds you to keep your attitute in check?

This morning as we were hurrying to get out of the house on time for carpool,

Lauren pooped on the floor.

Then Eli stepped in it and tracked it through the house.

There once was a young boy, who was so upbeat and optimistic about everything, it actually had his parents very concerned. What would happen to him as he grew up and started to engage with the bleak realities of the real world? Would he be prepared to deal with the ups and downs of life? To help him cope, they tried a drastic measure. Filling his bedroom with horse manure, they lured him there, pushed him in and shut the door locking him in. Extreme maybe, but they felt it would be for the best in the long run. After a few hours they checked in on him. But instead of finding him a broken young boy, he was shoveling through the manure with gusto, saying, ” There must be a pony in here somewhere!”

I'm very busy today

on a pony hunt at my house.

Cheers!

:)

My New Best Friend

For years, I've seen that odd little jar on the top shelf of the peanut butter aisle.

I never had any desire to look at it closely, much less buy some and eat it.

But then I started hearing about it on this blog, where Jennifer eats it by the spoonful,

straight out of the jar!

She's the one who convinced me to at least try the stuff.

Not that she knows me or anything. But her blog posts are so colorful and she does keep mentioning her spoon-in-the-jar obsession.

So, I finally took a jar down from the top shelf in the grocery store and read the label to see what it was, exactly. And I can't remember precisely, but it does include sugar, cocoa, and hazelnuts. Need I say more?

I've been enjoying mine on apple slices this week. I'm picking up some bananas later because I love bananas. And chocolate. And nuts.

The jar boasts its tastiness on multigrain bread, muffins, bagels, english muffins . . .

but I'm getting pretty close to just eating it with a spoon straight out of the jar!

Apparently, it's the number one spread in Europe, and generations of Germans, Italians, and French have grown up eating this stuff on a daily basis. To be honest, I can't for the life of me figure out why Americans are so far behind on this one.

Read this.

Have you ever tried Nutella?

Are you a fan?

{Check this out, too! }

For You

My gift to you this Mother's Day

is this most precious post by

Melissa @ Stretch Marks

Miss Teen

We've been spending time with Miss Teen every weekend.

She is such a sweet girl and has been in such a sheltered situation for the last several years. It's interesting to see what God is doing with this tender young woman. She will be turning seventeen in a couple of weeks, which means there is only one year left before she ages out of foster care. Her siblings have already been adopted by other families. Her own parents are not available.

Where will she go?

What will happen to her?

I cannot express in words how totally grateful I am that our Father loves each one of us more than we can fathom and that He has a plan for each of us. I am in awe of this for myself daily, and I am in awe of this for Miss Teen. I pray that God will use my family to share His unconditional, faithful love; that He will help us keep our hearts surrendered and our ears keen to His voice; and that He will show Himself in a very real way to His precious daughter, Miss Teen.

My soul, wait silently for God alone,

for my expectation is from Him.

Psalm 62:5

I Dare You

Check out this post at Joy's Hope.

Don't ya just love it ?

Swaying

Monday

Today is one of those really exciting days!

I'm cleaning out closets and bookshelves, bagging up donations, putting together piles of crib sheets to pass along to the local foster parent group, and sorting through keepsakes to see if any of them are actually keepable :)

Later, I'm planning to stop by and visit a sweet friend who had surgery Friday and bring her some goodies.

After that, it's carloop times two, carpool for three, dinner for six, baths for four, homework twice, and kisses and bedtucking all around. I'm looking forward to a few minutes of peace with my husband after that.

Nothing too exciting, just regular stuff.

It wasn't always this way. When Caroline was a baby, I worked full time. She was two when I quit to stay home.

I have days when I feel like nothing more than a maid (an unappreciated maid, at that!) but I'm really thankful to be here.

So, I'm going back to cleaning out a closet and mopping the kitchen.

I hope you guys have a great, exciting day, too!

Unmotivated

My house is a wreck this week.

I've been busy, but mostly I've been unmotivated.

I just really don't feel like cleaning up the house again.

In about 10 minutes, I'm calling the kids in from playing outside and I'm enlisting their help.

I always feel less overwhelmed once the cleaning gets underway,

it's the getting started that I struggle with.

As if you needed to know all that.

:)

Natural Florida

Last week, I got to tag along on a field trip with Alex's third grade class to the Energy and Marine Center in our school district. This is a piece of county land right on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, used by the school district for field trips. It's such a neat place, I thought I would share it with you!

The first thing the kids did was drag a cloth net across the surface of the brackish water where the river meets the gulf. Then they rinsed the net into a jar to catch microscopic plankton.

They took their "catch" into a lab pavilion where they examined samples of the water they caught under the microscope. It was really neat to see live plankton and microscopic shrimp swimming around - invisible to the naked eye.

{ Yikes! }

This was my favorite part! The staff smashed some barnacles and each child had rubber gloves and big tweezers. They got to pick through to find worms, tiny crabs, little snails, hermit crabs, itty bitty shrimp, and other neat stuff. Everything they found was placed in saltwater containers and returned to the Gulf unharmed.

The last hour was Alex's favorite - the kids got waist deep in the water with a big net. It took a lot of coordination and teamwork to get that net just right, but they did catch several little fish, two tiny blowfish, and some worm eggs. {yuck!} All the harvested sealife was returned to the Gulf.

I left the trip so happy that we have this great resource and thrilled that the kids were able to have such a hands-on learning experience.

Today I went on another field trip with Caroline's 6th grade class and I'll post about that cool trip soon.

Have a wonderful day!

Surf's Up!

A little over a year ago, we closed in a bedroom at one end of our playroom to make a quiet spot for Lauren and Eli. I had decided I would paint something cute on the walls and not have to buy prints or mirrors or anything. Back when the room was finished, I painted the background: sandy bottom and sky top. I just never got motivated to paint the whole mural until THIS WEEK!

Today my mom came over for a marathon day of creativity. All day I thought of the Nester's little phrase," It doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful". We so enjoyed the process of free-handing the mural scenes - and there was no pressure to have it any certain way. It didn't have to be perfect, it would certainly be cute no matter what.

Hubby will install new, white baseboards this weekend and I'll paint the door and trim white.

I'm so excited that it turned out happy and fun!

:)

Brilliant

I was born and raised in Florida.

For most of my life, my dad lived on the water and we spent weekends

on the boat or riding around on waverunners.

I am quite familiar with palm trees, salt water, and mangroves.

Well, at least I thought I was, until today.

Mangroves are clusters of bushy trees that grow at the water's edge and

in shallow areas of salt water and brackish water.

They have an exposed root system which acts as a net of sorts,

capturing things that might damage the ecosystem,

but also acting as a refuge for sealife during storms.

But today I learned the neatest fact about mangroves, and I was so moved by it I just had to share it with all of my bloggy buddies {that's you!}.

Mangroves need fresh water to survive.

Since they grow in salt water, the root system is designed to filter the water.

The leaves of this plant grow in organized clusters near the ends of each branch.

When the root sytem filters the water, it sends the {poisonous} salt water to

one chosen leaf in each cluster.

The other leaves get the filtered fresh water.

When you see mangroves, there are a few yellow leaves scattered among all the healthy green ones.

Those yellow leaves are the chosen salt water receivers.

It is their job to die so that all the others may live.

Sound familiar?

Isn't God brilliant?!

Visit x 2

We had a great visit with Miss Teen Monday evening.

Mr. Abidingthere got to meet this sweet girl AND the horses.

We'll get to start taking her off campus from now on and

she'll start spending weekend afternoons with us.

We had the pleasure of a second important visit this week, too.

My brother and his family were here from Atlanta.

Since they had a place at the beach, we let the kids miss a day of school

to go hang out in the sun.

The picture above is me (in my non-removable cover-up :)) and my beautiful sister in law.

This is my dad, my brother, and my most scrumptious, smiley nephew.

We've had a great week with beautiful weather.

Hope you are all enjoying Spring in your neck of the woods!

Miss Teen

Guess what!

Our family has been offered the opportunity to mentor a teenage girl who lives in a group foster home about a half hour from us. We will be getting to know her and she'll be spending time with us on the weekends.

{For privacy purposes, I'm just going to call her Miss Teen.}

I met Miss Teen Thursday evening. Mr. Abidingthere was coaching Alex's baseball game that night, so I went alone. It was a really great idea, actually, because the two of us were able to chat and giggle and get comfy with each other. Mr. Abidingthere is looking forward to meeting her with me Monday {that's tomorrow!}.

If all goes well and our background screenings come back in time, the plan is to have her for the afternoon next Saturday. The kids are really excited to get to meet her then.

So here's a little something you don't know about me yet:

I don't really like getting sweaty and dirty

and

I am not especially fond of animals.

How is this relative to meeting/mentoring Miss Teen??

Well - she lives on a ranch.

With horses. And an emu.

Lots of dogs and cats.

You get the idea.

So I {in my infinite wisdom again} chose to wear a really cute, Spring outfit for our first meeting. I had on a satiny lime green top with a cute pair of white capris and some really adorable white thong sandals with narrow wedge heel.

Go ahead, it's ok to laugh.

Yep. The horses were truly impressed.

And so was that tick I flicked off my arm.

Tomorrow I'll be in jeans and tennis shoes.

Tragedy Averted

I just love this picture.

It was taken not long after Lauren and Eli joined our family.

Sometimes when I feel like we haven't made much progress with them,

I can look at this picture and it reminds me how far we've come.

It's easy for me to get caught up in the day to day routine - stuck in a pattern - and not see clearly the path I've traveled. This is especially true in my marriage.

My husband and I have been married for thirteen years.

I turned twenty-four two weeks before our wedding. I'm sure I must have thought I was grown up and mature enough to get married, but the truth is, I didn't even know who I was or what my priorities were. I knew I wanted to be married and have babies. And I thought this guy was handsome and sweet and responsible. So I guess I just figured getting married was the natural next step after dating for a couple of years.

Boy oh boy.

Somehow we muddled our way through the first years.

By the tenth year, things had gotten pretty uncomfortable, to put it mildly.

Then everything finally hit the fan.

I was in so much pain. I was so hurt and so afraid of what would happen to my kids if this marriage fell apart.

I specifically recall going to the beach alone one day, just trying to escape all the distractions and get alone with God so he could refocus me. I was walking in the softer sand and there were some tire tracks crossing each other up ahead. I was asking God what I should do. In my infinite wisdom {ha ha} I offered God a multiple choice selection .

I asked if I should :

A. get a divorce and move on, or

B. stay and try to work things out.

In my mind, I could see a virtual fork in the road. Choice A. curved off to the left and choice B. curved off to the right. I was so confused after everything that had happened in the previous year and my brain was sure that these were my options, even though I have never before considered divorce an option and still believed that God could redeem my marriage.

I'll never forget what happened next. I glanced up at the sand ahead of me and the tire tracks were in a pattern that swirled to each side, but right where I was walking there was a straight track that led me straight ahead. I realized that I was not on curve A, or curve B, that I was on a different option - choice C. which led straight ahead. At that exact moment, my cell phone rang and it was one of my dearest friends. I answered, ready to tell her what I was experiencing, but she stopped me and said she had been praying for me and had to call right then with a message:

Follow Hard After God.

God was not participating in my multiple choice options - he wanted me to look straight ahead at him, never wavering, not shifting my eyes to either side. I didn't need to choose to stay or to go, all I needed was to focus on him and follow hard.

So I did, by the skin of my teeth.

I had one particular scripture I clung to.

And I didn't get out of bed in the morning until I got my God on.

For me, that meant resetting my focus on him and on the truths he gave me.

Every day.

That was three years ago, almost to the day.

A lot of the time, I'm so busy with the daily grind I fail to realize how far we've come.

I'm so grateful for what God has done in our marriage and I'm so hopeful for what he's still doing.

And on the days I get frustrated or discouraged, I have to stop and look at where we are now.

We've come a long way, baby!

I can honestly say that this man is the love of my life.

I actually know now what it means when people say their 'heart swelled' with love.

Our marriage is not perfect, but I plan to enjoy the process of perfecting it.

We are committed. For the rest of our lives.

I watched this video the other night, and what really stuck with me was a quote stating,

"When things get really bad, that's when things are about to change. But that's when most people leave, so they never get to the change. It's such a tragedy."

Tragedy averted.

Thank God!

Redeemed

~ Happy Easter ~

Spoken For

He's a Masterpiece!

He is such a challenge because he is in relentless pursuit of our undivided attention every waking moment. If you've ever experienced a kid like this, you know what I mean.

He never stops talking, even though most of it is repetitive, obsessive questioning.

He is so passionate about everything.

He's wired for total exhilaration and total exasperation.

He barely sleeps.

He can't stand for anyone else to be the focus, not even for one minute.

He will literally put himself between two people just to become the center of attention.

He laughs loud and hard.

He cries loud and hard.

He loves, yep, loud and hard.

I love this little guy so very much. And there are days when I wonder what in the world God was thinking, putting Eli in our family. But our God is so nice, he gave us something to fall back on.

When we were approached about adopting Eli, we were told very little about him. Hubby was concerned that we would be in over our heads. I was gung-ho, ready to swoop down and scoop him up. We prayed so much leading up to the meeting with all the social workers - so afraid to make a mistake. We wanted whatever God was planning. We couldn't bear to think that we would not take a child God meant for our family, BUT we certainly didn't want to step out and take a child that wasn't meant for us.

As we prayed, God gave us this scripture:

"... take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say: for the holy ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say." {Lk 12:11-12}

It was actually tied to the name Elias in the baby name book we were browsing. {His first given name was different, and we were choosing a new name for him.} We both knew immediately his name would be Elias and we clung to the scripture as we showed up with our other three kids for the meeting. We knew that all the details and facts they would give us during the meeting were really beside the point. We both believed that all that mattered ultimately was whether God said he was ours. So we sat through that meeting not knowing whether we would say yes or no, but knowing that in the minute we needed the answer, God would provide it.

And the facts we heard were a little intimidating.

He had Down Syndrome and had a heart defect.

Born addicted to cocaine.

Global delays.

Couldn't walk or talk at all yet.

Relied on a feeding tube for liquids and solids.

He had been in several foster homes over two years and

was 'returned' by a hopeful adoptive placement.

It was challenging not to be distracted by these facts.

But God.

So we left the meeting and went to our separate cars - I was heading home with the kids and hubs was heading to work. We spoke very briefly in the parking lot and my sweet husband told me he really didn't think this little guy was for us. I was so heart broken. I went home and spent a couple of hours crying out for God to unbreak my heart, to give me some peace about His provision for this sweet little boy.

At the same time, our restaurant was in full lunch-rush mode. It was busy and hubs ended up jumping on the line to help cook. The last thing he was concerned with was petitioning God for a clear answer about a tiny orphan boy at that moment.

But God.

In the midst of tickets flying and food flying and servers and cooks and customers, my sweet husband heard our Lord speak.

{ He is yours. He belongs with you. }

And so the Holy Spirit himself taught us what we shall say.

And we are the proud parents of Elias.

Elias, who is exhausting and incessant; adorable and totally edible; and who loves us passionately and unconditionally, even when we fall short of being the parents we want to be.

I sometimes joke that Eli is lucky he's so cute because it has saved his life a number of times.

Eli is spoken for.

Success

Our mini-vacation was a beautiful success! We had such an amazingly great time, and two days felt like a whole week. It was kind of like how Jesus worked that miracle by multiplying the fishes and loaves - as far as any clock knows, we only had a 26 hours, but we were living in a different time zone for those hours. I have many cute pictures to share!

The kids did great. Going places with Lauren and Eli is always an adventure, but they did really well - and neither one even pooped in the hotel pool! :) {Don't even get me started on this one!} We had reserved a standard hotel room with only two double beds and we figured a couple of the kids would camp out on a pallet on the floor - it was just one night and we weren't planning on spending much time in the room anyway. But when we unlocked the door to our room, I was actually choked up to see that we had been blessed with a two room suite, beds for six and a full kitchen!

Eli and Lauren haven't stayed in a hotel in years, so I'm sure they don't remember. Eli asked me all day, "Sweepin? Ny-night?" I kept telling him we were going to sleep in the hotel tonight . . . over and over at least a thousand times. But when bedtime actually came, he was so disappointed because he was sure he needed to swim one more time.

We let the two older kiddos sleep on the pullout sofa {don't ya know that's so exciting!} and we shared the bedroom with Lauren and Eli. How do you spell Ai-Yi-Yi ?? Eli was up at least eight times during the night. Four times, he stood next to my bed, tapped me on the arm rapidly so I awoke startled, and he'd smile and say, "ah-morneen!" {'good morning!"} Only problem was, it was still pitch black outside. Each time he woke up, he would use his handy-dandy self-soothing method to get back to sleep: lay on his tummy, clasping his hands together in a fist up by his head, and repeatedly bang his forehead against the fist rhythmically until he passes out. To everyone else, this sounds like THUMP_THUMP_THUMP_THUMP_THUMP_THUMP_THUMP_THUMP for longer than five minutes sometimes. Do you know how long five minutes is in the middle of the night??

{Honestly, it was not that big of a deal, but I do get a little grumpy being repeatedly awakened during the night.}

The second day, we pedaled around on little boats, played mini golf, giant chess, and pool. It was a great time. At one point, one of the kids and I were talking about adopting kids that would get stuck in foster care forever and we were saying that in our area, there are children of other races that don't get adopted very quickly. My kiddo asked if people would stare at us if we had a child of another race, and I said maybe so, but who cares. My husband and another kiddo chimed in and said people already stare at us.

WHAT? THEY DO?

Hubby said he's noticed people staring at Lauren and Eli all weekend and sizing up our family. He wondered why I haven't noticed. I said I have noticed, I just thought they were admiring how cute the kids are! Maybe they're wondering where they can get such great kids for themselves!

Ha! I will never take these rose-colored glasses off :)

Can't wait for a repeat staycation this summer!

It's in the Bag!

We're throwing some things together for an impromtu stay at the beach this weekend. The kids are on Spring Break this week and the weather has been beautiful - we've got Spring Fever :)

For Christmas, our very sweet staff gave us a night at a beautiful resort on a local beach, and we're cashing it in!

Thanks, guys!!

Happy Spring

:)

:: Beauty Secrets ::

For beautiful eyes, look for only the good in others;

for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness;

and for poise, walk with the knowledge

that you're never alone.

{A.H.}

i love this!

A Walk

Lauren and Eli enjoying a neighbor's sprinkler

Beautiful sunset

Dusk

It was a perfect evening for a stroll.

Sand Angels

We've been enjoying Spring!

Caroline
{was fully coated in sunscreen}




Sugar coated Eli
{sandy!}





Digging in sand is hard work!
{and lots of fun}

Gobble

My Yummy Eli

Princess

Lulie on her fifth birthday.

Lauren and Emily

Christmas morning

{three years old}

Lauren's Eighth birthday :)

{3-20-09}


I am so very thankful God delivered you to me. I wish I could have been there when you were born, during your early struggles, and to save you from abuse and neglect. I can imagine God's grief as he watched you {his precious treasure} in the hands of those who did not meet your needs and caused you more harm than good. I pray that God will continue to parent you through me, guiding me in every move I make.

Happy birthday, sweet, sweet girl.

I was so moved by the post Katie at Amazima wrote today.

She puts into words the thoughts I am unable to eloquently write myself.

You may read her blog here.

A portion of her post is below:

"Then I begin to think of the children who do not have a mother or a father. Where will they learn love? Who will tell them bed time stories and dance them around the living room? Who will teach them that they are loved and valued and cherished?

Oh, yea. The body of Christ. Each person who calls themself a follower of Christ takes up the reponsibility to love and care for the fatherless. It is not some special, specific calling. It is the duty of all who call themselves Christians. There are ONE HUNDRED FORTY SOMETHING MILLION fatherless, motherless, parentless children who are not shown unconditional love by another human being on a daily basis. How will we then tell them that Jesus loves them? I am certain that God did not mess up and create too many children and not enough people to love them. The body of Christ is responsible for sharing His love with the people that we are also responsible for making destitute.

Please join my broken heart in praying for the fatherless, but more than that please pray about how YOU can be instrumentall in loving the fatherless.

They are not just in Africa, they are right in your own community."

Lisa here. You know, if you have heard or read anything, ever, about our foster care system in the US, then you know it is severely broken. It is so broken, I'd have no idea where to begin to fix it. But I do know that there are little things each of us can do - things that are not expensive and may not be very time-consuming - things that would make a little change here and there. Those might all add up to a different life for each child touched by those little things.

There I go, being un-eloquent again.

Maybe you don't think you can make a difference or fix the system.

I promise you, for that child whom you touch with your caring, you will have made a difference. You may be the one who breaks the cycle after generations of hopelessness.

I encourage you to do something. There are so many ways to volunteer your time; as a mentor, a Guardian ad Litem, a foster parent, and adoptive parent, or dedicate yourself to pray. If you can't figure out a way to help in your community, let me know and I'll be happy to help you.

There's such a need out there. And there are children suffering for the ignorance of their parents. One day those kids will be adults. You can be the intervention that breaks the cycle.

You can.

There is a well-known saying by Mahatma Ghandi,

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

Last year, the world was saturated with the idea of Change.

Millions believed that one vote for the right politician was all it took.

I'm here to remind you that

YOU

are the change the world is waiting for.

Step outside of your comfort zone

and do something to make a difference.

Be the change you want to see.

Consider these:

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph

is for good men to do nothing."

(Edmund Burke)

"Nothing changes if nothing changes."

(Unknown)

I'm not talking about politics.

Or the economy.

What I mean is, look around you at this beautiful world we have been given.

Do you see the Need? The Hurting? The Hopeless? The Helpless?

Do something.

You can make a difference.

You can be the change that starts a new pattern.

Today I am so happy to unveil this new award.

It is available for any of you to take

and to share.

Post it in your own sidebar as a reminder to yourself

and a declaration to others.

Award it to a blogger who is an illustration of this concept.

Enjoy it.

Pass it on.

Another Birthday!

My little Caroline Elizabeth started out as a four and a half pound preemie, staying in the NICU for her first three weeks in this world. She was an only child for almost three years, but now truly enjoys being big-sister to her brothers and sister.

She's a remarkable, smart girl; beautiful inside and out.

And today she turns twelve.

Happy Birthday, Sweet Sissy-pie :)

Sun!

It has warmed up around here

and I'm craving summertime!

These are some pictures from last summer . . .

Eli's starfish impersonation

Lulie looking for a piece of seaweed to dangle :)






That gorgeous blue water at Clearwater Beach.

The kids think our spa is a kiddie pool :)

Lauren isn't a big fan of getting all the way in,

she teases us by sticking a foot in every now and then.

It's a super treat if Daddy gets in :)

Speaking of Daddy, I'm trying to talk him into taking us all to the beach tomorrow.

Maybe I'll have some cute pictures after that!

Have a beautiful, sunshiny day

:)

A Heavy Heart

Are you familiar with the song "Slow Fade" from the Fireproof soundtrack?

It's a slow fade

When you give yourself away

People never crumble in a day . . .

Today has been a difficult day for me. I'm totally submerged in a new case I'm handling as a Guardian ad Litem. And it has a recurring theme with other cases I've handled in the past.

People never crumble in a day.

It is so sad to see case after case where parents are making one choice after another that serves their own desires without regard for their children's well-being.

It's so sad.

The kids take such a hard hit from their parents' selfishness.

I always think of all the little decisions people make; one leading to the next. One compromise here, another there. Before you know it, you are miles down a road heading the wrong direction.

I heard this little story a few years ago that really stuck with me:

One evening, a grandfather was teaching his young grandson about

the internal battle that each person faces.

"There are two wolves struggling inside each of us," the old man said.
"One wolf is vengefulness, anger, resentment, self-pity, fear.

The other wolf is compassion, faithfulness, hope, truth, love."

The grandson sat, thinking, then asked, "Which wolf wins, Grandfather?"

His grandfather replied, "The one you feed."

Leapday Baby

Alex is my leapday baby. He doesn't actually have a birthday this year.

Last year he had is 2nd real birthday.

Today he is nine :)

This was his classroom celebration yesterday:

And today was the first game of the season. He was the pitcher.

Out for lunch after the game:

Coach Daddy

The kids tried the nuclear wings - OUCH!

Mommy and Daddy

Caroline and Lauren

- Having a good day so far -

Happy Birthday, Little Boy!

We love you!

Special Olympics!

This week, my kids had the opportunity to participate in our district Special Olympics.

They had a wonderful time and we truly enjoyed watching the events.

Thumbs up from Lauren and Eli !

Eli ran the 50 yard dash, making sure we were watching the whole way.

Alex is a Unified Partner, so he gets to play along side the Olympians as a guide.

Eli took a break to wrestle with Daddy

He ain't thirsty, he's my brother :)

Caroline gave Lauren a free ride to the next event.

Eli showed Lauren a little love between games.

Movie star Lauren.

Fun!

Alex really enjoyed the soccer games.

It was a great day!

My Cute Little Chef

Recently, my Caroline asked if she could claim Thursday

as her day to cook dinner.

She chooses a recipe earlier in the week so I can pick up the groceries,

then on Thursday, she creates her masterpiece.

The first week, she made Pesto Chicken Paninis.

Tomatoes, basil, spinach, mozzarella . . . mmmmm.



Chicken breasts coated in pesto,

then sauteed in olive oil.

Garlic Artisan Bread spread with pesto mayonnaise.

Couldn't find our panini press (I think it's in the attic!),

so she smashed it with a heavy pan on top.

The yummy result! And it really was so yummy!

Last week she made Thai Peanut Chicken Pasta, and last night she made Asian StirFry over Brown Rice.

We've been eating well around here. At least on Thursdays :)

(I am so thankful for close-up shots! You guys can't see how messy my kitchen was! Ha!)

Beach Date

Last week, my husband took the morning off work. I dropped the kids off at school and met him for a three hour vacation at the beach. The forecast was mid-seventies and sun. I stopped at Walgreens to pick up some Australian Gold and spearmint gum. A good tan and some fresh breath - good recipe for a date, no?

Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell the weather what the forecast was.

The beach was completely socked in with chilly, wet fog.

We shared some smoked fish spread and a grouper sandwich.

At least the gum came in handy . . . :)

Pure Love

If you're not yet familiar with Amazima Ministries,

I encourage you to check out the blog -here-.

Wow.

This is a great example of pure love, not religion.

Afloat

Tonight I'm pretending I'm out in turquoise Caribbean waters, afloat in that little hut. I'm pretty sure I've strung a hammock from post to post. I've got a pitcher of icy, fruity sangria and a good book. I'd invite you to join me, but I'm enjoying the solitude.

Gavin needs prayer, please.

"Who's Gavin?", you ask.

He's this little guy, and he needs you.

Please visit his family's blog and keep them in your prayers.

Thank you!

On Love.

Unconditional Love.

Over the last several years, I've examined some of the relationships in my life and tried to assess whether the love I'm dishing out really is unconditional.

UNCONDITIONAL:

absolute

not restricted by reservations

not contingent

complete

not limited in any way

Conditional love is earned by meeting certain expectations.

Unconditional love is freely given, with no strings attached.

How can one love unconditionally without forgiveness?

Happy Heart

Happy Valentine's Day :)

(photo: simplycupcakes.com)

These things

Today I was thinking about my state of mind during the last six days. I have been stressed and on edge. This is so disappointing to me because I normally choose to focus on the positive and I prefer to keep my eyes on God, not on my circumstances. Unfortunately, I did not succeed at this during the past week. I was wondering what to post about and all I could think of was this:

Whatsoever things are true,

whatsoever things are honest,

whatsoever things are just,

whatsoever things are pure,

whatsoever things are lovely,

whatsoever things are of good report;

if there be any virtue and if there be any praise,

think on these things.

(phil 4:8)

In other words, I've turned off the news. I'm not allowing my thoughts to linger on the negative chatter about the economy and blah, blah, blah.

I'm taking a little advice from a very smart God,

whose wisdom is always right on time.

As I tuck my little self in bed tonight, I'll be reminding my busy brain to (shut up and) think on these things.

Sweet Dreams!

Eye Candy

I am so in love with the great pictures I see on some blogs.

I really appreciate escaping into the scenes pictured.

And I've been thinking of a way to express my appreciation

to those bloggers who thrill me everytime they post new photographs.

So . . .

I've created a new award :)

The Eye-Candy Award is bestowed upon blogs who consistently have great photos upon which to feast our eyes! Recipients choose three more beautiful blogs to share this award with.

I'm so happy to debut this award by passing it to the following bloggers :

MckMama at My Charming Kids

I'm going to assume you've all seen her pictures - wow!

She is so good at capturing the moment and popping the colors in her photos.

I love looking at her pictures every day, even when I don't have time to read the posts :)

Linda at Lime in the Coconut

Oh my goodness! I cannot express to you how much I enjoy the visual vacations Linda takes me on everytime I click over to her spot. I sincerely hope you're a regular visitor. It's never too late to pack your passport and head over to Lime in the Coconut. Enjoy!

Layla at The Lettered Cottage

Layla is the sweetest, most adorable blogger and friend. She's always got great photos to share and neat virtual designs to daydream about. Even a quick peek at her header is a treat. I hope you guys will enjoy what you see on her blog :)

I am looking forward to sharing the award with many more beautiful blogs.

See you around!

Thanks, Tim!

It's so fun having blog friends!

These were passed to me from Tim at Fort Thompson .

Thank you, Tim!

Random shots fired . . .

. . . with my camera this week.

Lauren, Daddy, and Eli demonstrated a fist-pounding, foot-stomping, silly tantrum for Mommy.

Caroline tried to cheer up an under-the-weather Lauren.

Alex made PRO level on Wii Bowling.

Lauren and Eli cooked up a gourmet meal.

Have a great evening :)

Friendship Award

Thanks, Amy!

I have a few awards from the past couple of weeks that I still need to

pass along to my bloggie friends.

{ Hoping to post them soon! Sorry for the delay. }

Winner(s) :)

Thanks to all of my sweet followers for being

sweet followers!

As I wrote each of your names on a slip of paper for the drawing, I prayed for each of you, thanking God for his unconditional love toward you and for his faithfulness in your lives. I asked him to bless each one of you with peace & trust in him and good health.

So, you are ALL winners :)

And the name drawn anonymously by my daughter was

Tim from Fort Thompson

Congratulations!

{ Tim, please email me with your mailing address. }

Valentine Giveaway

Will you be mine?

On Saturday, one of my sweet followers will be chosen at random to receive this cute, little wreath I found at Michael's. I'll include all of my existing follower friends and any new ones who include themselves by Saturday night at midnight.

So pass it on and send your friends to join the giveaway.

And have a great night :)

Yummm

Totally yummy.

And we watched a movie together while we indulged. Double bonus.

Now the four are tucked in and snuggled down for the night.

Sweet dreams, little kiddos.

xo

Birthday Boy

This charming and irresistable little guy turned SEVEN today.

Eli. Seven. I can't believe it.

A Million Thanks!

I am so excited and honored to receive a few awards from two of my blog friends!

The Sisterhood Award and Best Friends Award come from my new friend (who has a cool name!) Lisa:

And the Triple Award and Proximidade Award were bestowed by my 'Bliss'ful friend and Florida neighbor, Kathleen :

Thanks so much, ladies! You are so sweet!

The Girls

In case you've ever wondered what happens when you let an eleven year old hang on to the camera for a while . . .

Caroline and Lauren

Disaster

We emptied our master bedroom this weekend. All the way empty.

It's now in my foyer.

Check back for before and after shots of our bedroom - it's getting a new look!

Cyberfriend and Guatemala

Here's a neat little story about a match made in cyberspace.

About five and a half years ago, when we were in the process of adopting Lauren, I joined a Yahoo group with parents of children who have down syndrome. I was looking for information that would help me meet my daughter's needs. After a few months of figuring out who was who in this group, I kind of bonded with a mom named Debbie. She had four kids, one of whom had ds. Debbie had written a book and was doing some speaking engagements on the subject.

Then she adopted a fifth child, a boy with ds from Hong Kong. As time passed, we became close friends through email and by phone. But Debbie lives in Oregon and I'm in Florida, so we had never met in person. Almost three years ago, Debbie was in the process of adopting a little girl from Guatemala who had ds. Since her husband was going to need to remain at home with their other kids, Debbie invited me to accompany her to bring her daughter home!

After two or three years of friendship, we met in person at the Houston airport and traveled to Guatemala side by side. (Unfortunately, the airline left our luggage in Houston and we didn't receive until the third or fourth day in Guatemala. )

The day we arrived, we got to visit the orphanage to pick up Debbie's new sweetie. I was in heaven, holding all those babies and loving on all those kiddos! I definitely wanted to stash a few in my pockets to bring back home.

We spent several days in Guatemala City before heading back to the states. It was so much fun meeting Debbie and sharing in this very cool adventure. It was unforgettable!

Sweet Siblings

My little Eli has something like six biological siblings. The oldest two are with bio-family somewhere up North. The other four were each adopted individually by different families. Some of us are in contact with each other and we try to get the kids together from time to time so they will know each other.

A couple of weeks ago, we enjoyed a visit from one of the families who adopted Eli's sister. She was already in foster care before Eli was born, so they never knew each other until they were each adopted and we all started getting together.

One of the younger sisters was hoping to join us that day, but wasn't able to make it.

Two mamas with our beautiful babies.

That's Cheri on the left and her sweet princess next to me.

Their family went on to adopt another beautiful daughter. Going from left to right, these are Lauren, Alex, Caroline, her daughters, then my Eli. Aren't they wonderful?!

Li'l Ol' Me

When I'm hopping around from blog to blog, checking out pictures and stories and blurbs, I almost always start at the About Me spot in the margin. I'm curious - nosy, even. I like people. They're so interesting. Everyone has their own story - their own flavor. And I want to know who you are and where you're coming from.

When I started this blog, I really wondered how to sum up who I am in that little, bitty 'About Me' section. And then I realized I couldn't, really. So if you're curious - or nosy, even - about who I am and where I'm coming from, read on. If not, it's okay to click over to the next blog on the roll :)

First of all, I am God's daughter. I'm not sure how to state this in a way that sounds un-cliche'. Or un-religious. But really, my daily life is pretty much intertwined with God. I've been in love with God my whole life, and my intimacy with him has grown in spurts. Over the years, he has walked me through things that showed me how faithful he is and how much he cares for me. I'm hooked.

I was raised in one religion and switched to another during college. I had an experience where I committed my life to Christ and was baptized as an adult. After that, I just got to know our good God and wanted to be part of what he was. For many years now, I have not considered myself to be any particular denomination. I'm his. I don't want to be part of what is divided. He's whole; so am I.

{I will clarify that the God I believe in is the God of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob; I believe the Bible is the Truth; and I believe I am saved by the blood of Jesus. In fact, I believe we all have that option available:) }

I'm also a wife. We will be celebrating our 13th anniversary next week. I met my husband while I was in college at Florida State in the early 90's. He had already graduated from Univ of South Carolina and was working in Tallahassee. I graduated with a BS in Child Development and Special Education. His is in Hotel, Restaurant, & Leisure Services. ( I think I'd like to sign up for some leisure services. Sounds relaxing!)

Of course, I'm also full-time mommy to our four kids. You may have read about them in previous posts. Caroline and Alex and Lauren and Eli . Two of our kids were adopted locally out of foster care.

That brings me to some other issues I'm quite passionate about: adoption and foster care.

If you read this post, you know the in-a-nutshell version of our desire to adopt kiddos that may be hard to place. While I'm waiting for God to let us know if or when he has a child or children that belong with us, I am feeding my passion in other ways.

A few years ago, I became a volunteer Guardian ad Litem. If you're not familiar with what that is, click here for a detailed explanation. The short definition is: a trained adult who is court appointed to be an advocate for a specifically assigned child or siblings in depency care. So, I get assigned a case, then I learn everything about the child or siblings involved, interview all the folks who have anything to do with the child or the case, become the one stable thing in the child's life, represent the child's best interest in court, etc. These are kiddos who have either been removed from their parents or are allowed to stay with the parents but are under the state's watchful eye due to abuse or neglect.

I have handled a case in which the parents' rights were eventually terminated and the child was adopted; a case where the kids were eventually placed with a family member; I've testified in many hearings and in a trial; I've interviewed a homicidal/suicidal parent in a mental facility; I've advocated for proper school placement for a child with an IEP; I've spent days and days in a row sitting in a shelter with a little guy who didn't have a foster home available, and he was 'bouncing' from one emergency placement to another each day until there was an empty bed available at a home. I could go on and on. As far as I know, every state has a program like this. Some are called Guardians ad Litem and some are called Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA). A lot of these programs are staffed by a few paid folks and an army of volunteers. There are never enough volunteers to meet the need, so many of the children go without an advocate during their time in care. If this sounds like something you might be interested in doing, I urge you to contact your local program and get on board.

About a year after I became a Guardian, I trained to become a certified MAPP trainer. MAPP stands for Model Approach to Partnerships in Parenting. Click here for a detailed description. Basically, in our district, it's a 12 week course that is mandatory for anyone who wants to foster or adopt. We call it mutual selection, meaning the parents are deciding whether they want to foster/adopt after hearing all the nitty gritty; and we are deciding if the parents are good candidates. So in addition to teaching the curriculum, we are getting to know the couples and assessing them to find out what their strengths are. I also like to make sure each person in that room knows that if they choose to foster or adopt this way, they need to be willing to commit to the children through the ups and downs. And that there will definitely be ups and downs. I really love this training opportunity for so many reasons. I love meeting all the people. I like getting to know them and assess them. And I love finding folks who are there for all the right reasons and who really are committed to the kids. I also enjoy sharing real stories, and bringing some of the folks out of their bubble and into the reality of 'the system'.

*

One more little tidbit about me: my husband and I have owned a restaurant for almost eleven years. It's a small place with indoor dining and an outdoor covered patio. We serve 'casual southern cuisine', which means if you have a hankerin' for some comfort food, you know where to come to get your fix. Our place is in a coastal community with lots of loyal local folks and lots of seasonal snowbirds. This time of year, we're hoppin'. And loving it!

We are so happy to have many customers that have been eating with us for years. We know their families and they know ours. We love seeing familiar faces and meeting new folks. We love that our kids can be there with us from time to time. And we're so happy to have a young staff that is like family to us. Sometimes I feel like the restaurant ate my husband, because he's there so much. But I'm very thankful for our business and for my husband who is smart, capable, and dedicated. He's a great husband and a wonderful daddy.

So, now you officially know me :)

Nice to meet ya!

Hey there

I haven't posted in a while, so I just thought I'd say hi :)

I'm having a productive day of domestic bliss. You know, laundry and stuff. I'm hoping for a shower soon. And I need to color these cute, sparkly, silver roots on my head.

One of those days.

I am working on a few posts for another day, though.

I thought I might share a little about li'l ol' me, in case any of you are as curious/nosy as I am about ya'll :)

And I also have some before and after kitchen shots of a budget-friendly semi-remodel we did in '07.

Layla from The Lettered Cottage has finished the virtual re-design of my master bedroom! I want to show you guys the before pics and her design.

So, pop back in and I'll try to get some fresh material on in the next few days.

Have a great evening!

Cute Finds

Thought I would share my little purchase from Target today.

These little s&p birds were only four dollars!! And they are so very cute.

And -

In the dollar area (for $2.5 ea.) I found these adorable and useful small metal tubs.

They met their new home on the shelves in my son's room.


Hurry to your Target :)

H * B * T * M

Happy Birthday To Me :)

Stripped

Last Spring we started a project that we still have not gotten around to finishing. (I'm pretty sure Eli's so disappointed about the blank walls, he refuses to pose for the picture) We already had a large playroom between our great room and the back pool area. The playroom was pretty spacious, about 12x22. We decided to close in half of it to make a bedroom for our youngest two kiddos, who both have odd sleeping behaviors which were keeping the older sibs up at night.

We had the framing, drywall, and texture done by a pro. We primed and painted it ourselves. A friend built us a pre-hung Dutch door. We installed the door and plan to install baseboards ourselves. I've got the sand and sky on the walls so far, but I'm planning to paint a mural on all four walls. I'm hoping for a whimsical surf scene with a tiki hut and some other tropical things. I'm using fuschia, orange, lime green, and turquoise. I'll let you know how that goes, seeing how I'm not actually an artist . . .

The Dutch door has been in use for six or eight months already. The kids are not gentle. Lauren and Eli think it's funny to hang on the door and swing back and forth. They also chase each other into or out of the room and slam the door. Repeatedly. Fun. The original screws that held the hinges into the door frame loosened up and fell out. My husband reinstalled the door with heavy duty tap-con screws (the ugly blue ones), which have now worked their way out also.


Mama got really tired of the door hanging all whopper-jawwed - couldn't get it to close right anymore, couldn't latch the top of the door to the bottom slab. So tonight we rigged up a quick fix for the stripped holes in the frame. Maybe you guys already know this little trick, but we are novice DIYers and we thought this was amazing :)

Hubby pulled the old screws out first. Then he took a cluster of toothpicks - just regular wooden toothpicks (unused!) and globbed them really well with glue. If we'd had wood glue, we'd have used that, but we didn't so we used Elmer. Then he shoved the gooey glob of toothpicks into the first hole.

He tapped them in with the back-end of a screwdriver and broke the ends off flush with the frame.

Repeat for each hole.

Then he used mile-long screws (didn't even wait for the glue to dry) - right into the wet, gooey toothpick-filled hole. The screws grabbed right on and are doing a great job so far. I'll keep you posted about how they hold long-term.

I hope at least one of you has a stripped screw-hole that needs fixing so all this blogging wasn't in vain :)

* 2009 *

h a p p y . n e w . y e a r !

Snow in Florida

It' s been so warm and beautiful here for the last week.

We spent a day at Busch Gardens where all the foilage makes it seem like Spring.

The only snow around here is in our sunroom when two little

mischief-makers pull all the stuffing out of a bed pillow while mama's not looking!

A Smelly Giveaway

Linda at Lime in the Coconut has posted a few of her favorite things

and is promising a giveaway to one of us lucky folk on Sunday!

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So click right on over to her blog

Lime in the Coconut

and leave a comment to enter.

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While you're there, be sure to browse around. It's like being on vacation.

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Enjoy!

Tropical Holidays

Sometimes it seems a little too warm and muggy here in Florida at Christmas.

But I was born and raised here on the Suncoast,

so all of my Christmas memories involve saltwater and palm trees.

I fondly remember one balmy Christmas Eve night

lying on the bow of my dad's boat

gliding slowly up and down the canals in St. Petersburg.

Looking at Christmas lights on the boats and docks behind houses,

listening to Jimmy Buffet's Feeding Frenzy Live on the boat stereo.

I've never seen a white Christmas. I've never been snow skiing.

I'm a flip-flop girl, happiest with sand between my toes.

Merry Christmas!

R E J O I C E !

For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world;

but that the world through him might be saved.

John 3:17

Christmas Miracle

I am so excited about a very cool thing God has done.

Because of the personal nature of this story, I'm going to use fictional names, but the story is a true account.



Friends of ours, we'll call them Sam and Jenny, have been married for probably 15 years or so and have three beautiful children together. Their daughters go to school with my Caroline and their son plays ball with my Alex.



When Sam was a teenager, he and his then-girlfriend had a baby and placed her for adoption. Sam had been adopted as a baby, himself, so he believed in the value of giving an accidental-baby a chance at life. After a year or so, Sam and his girlfriend went their separate ways.



Over the years, Sam looked for information about his own biological family, but was never successful finding them. He is still hopeful he will one day make contact with them.



A week or so ago, Jenny convinced Sam to join the social-networking website that she enjoyed. A few days after Sam joined, a young woman sent a 'friend request' to Sam. He and Jenny had a good laugh about a twenty-two year old girl who would try to pick up on a forty-something married man online :) But it didn't take long for Sam and Jenny to confirm that young Maria was his daughter from all those years ago. It seems that Maria had known her biological dad's name for a few years and continually plugged it in on social networking sites to see if she could find the right 'Sam Nevels'. Her search had paid off. Four days before Christmas.



This year, Sam will be spending Christmas with his FOUR kids, his newly discovered son-in-law and his newborn grandson. Maria is elated. And Sam is mush.



May God bless this sweet family as they get acquainted. May he restore lost years and redeem a painful memory for a lifetime of happy memories to come.



My favorite thought about this? I think of how God was planning this all along. How he orchestrated all the teensy details that played out to this point. He must have been so excited - giddy even - watching at the exact moment the connection was made between a dad and his daughter. Pure Joy!



I love that God. He is so B R I L L I A N T !

Elias

2004

Just five months after Lauren joined our family, we grew again!

This time, we welcomed a two year old little boy, whom we named Elias.

Eli was born to his first mommy and daddy and their ridiculous-saga-of-drug-use and strings-of-children-who-were-removed-from-their-care-year-after-year. Eli's biological siblings had already been adopted by several families, but Eli was still in medical foster care. He, too, had been born with that pesky extra chromosome resulting in Down Syndrome. After heart surgery at three months old, he was left with a feeding tube so that he could recover without exhausting himself every time he tried to eat. Unfortunately, no one ever taught him to eat or drink by mouth, so when he joined our family as he turned two, he was still tube-fed.

Eli was not walking or talking yet, but he sure could communicate. He was a growler. Like a little tiger. We taught both little ones sign language so they could start making all kinds of progress. And they did.

All of the sudden, we had our hands very full and the idea of a sibling-group-of-too-many-for-anyone-else-to-want had passed.

Lulie

2003

You know how nicknames are born and then sometimes evolve into a string of fitting, little endearments? Our little Lauren has a string of names she answers to.

Lulabelle, Lula, Lulie, Lu, Lu-baby.

Our Lulie was born to her first mother over seven years ago. Her mother was young and had a sad tale of a life in her short years. Lauren was born with Down Syndrome and some other health issues that sometimes accompany the syndrome. Her young mother was homeless and felt overwhelmed at the thought of caring for her very special little baby, so the State put Lauren (who had a different name at the time) into medical foster care.

Lauren's mom decided during that first year of sporadic visits that she was not ready/willing/able to parent her sweet baby, so she signed papers to terminate her own parental rights. Lauren remained in medical foster care for a while, moving from one home to another, and then landed in an adoptive placement with a single mom who was a foster parent. Within a year, that foster mom was arrested for charges relating to her maltreatment of Lauren and our little Lu-baby was moved to yet another placement.

Right around that time, my husband and I were finishing up paperwork, classes, background checks, fingerprinting, and a home study. We were high in anticipation of what might lie ahead. The bedrooms were stuffed with bunkbeds while we hoped for a sibling-group-of-too-many-for-anyone-else-to-want. The suspense was magical.

The social worker we were paired with spent a lot of time getting to know us so she could make a good match with a waiting child. She found four different children or sibling groups that she thought would be a good fit with our family. After a long conversation with her about each child, and after a lot of prayer, we became Lauren's parents. We met with a team of people who knew Lauren well and a few days later we met our precious daughter.

A scared, very quiet, little lump of a two year old girl joined our family. She was not ticklish. She could not speak or walk. She preferred not to be touched or held.

She was beautiful and perfect.

Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, there was a smart, handsome boy (all-around great guy) who married a sweet, cute (and very young) girl. They had long talks on long walks about houses, babies, businesses, and happily-ever-afters.

This lovely, young couple soon became parents to an adorable little girl. They put bows in her curls and gobbled her up every day. She was a sweet, little daddy's girl who also loved her mommy tenderly. Life was good.

Soon enough they became the proud, busy owners of a quaint family restaurant that served up the most scrumptious Southern fare. We're talking fried chicken even better than your Meemaw's. Collard greens, pinto beans, cornbread, and sweet tea. You get the idea.

They were busy with diapers and blue-ribbon-award-winning fried green tomatoes, but still had long talks about all the children in this wide world and in their own backyard. It was their desire to be parents to several, if not many, children. But the desire went deeper than that.

Discussions were underway about the many children who were already on this green earth that were unwanted, abandoned and waiting for a family of their own.

And then there was a second baby in the young mother's not-so-flat belly.

Baby number two was quite the bouncing bundle of joy, who was the delight of all who met him. Smiley and rambunctious. The parents were so proud of their two little kiddos.

Once the couple had these two perfectly wonderful kids (who never bickered or fussed) (I said this was a fairy tale!), a different kind of home (with a little more space) , and a mean fire that destroyed their quaint restaurant (don't worry, they reopened all shiny new six months later), they were back to long talks about lots of kids in their own backyard. Only sometimes, the long talks were about a ranch, a lake, horses, canoes, and a bunch of kids no one wanted all together in one place. They even found some acreage on a lake that was for sale (for $2 million, which was quite out of their price range, so it never became theirs).

Now, this particular little family had an ongoing love affair with God. They had no church to call their own (nor were they seeking one) , but lacked nothing as they trusted in God's faithfulness. Thankfully, God is really smart and all-knowing, so he knew the desire of these folks' hearts. And he began to lay out his plan on the road that passed right under the feet of this beautiful family

as they skipped along.

. . .to be continued. . .

I'll Be

If one day you can't find me at home, or in the car loop at one of my kids' schools, or at our little restaurant . . . . this is where I'll be. . . .

It's sort of the tropical version of Swiss Family Robinson.

I'm pretty sure there's no cell tower coverage or internet connection.







Yep. That will be me gazing out over the cliffs of the Domenica coastline.

I'm quite sure that from my hammock I can hear the sound of the waves crashing.

I'll sit in the open air dining hall to enjoy the locally grown organic selections each day.

I'll definitely spend a lot of time poolside with a good book.

And when I tire of sitting by the pool (yeah, right!), I'll meander down this neat, little path to see if I can find the . . .

. . . hot pool that is near the boiling lake.

I'll cap off the day with one of these.

Aaaaaah.

Giving Thanks

Happy Thanksgiving :)

Alex

He's my first boy, my second baby. A bundle of energy and chuckles. He's sweet, snuggly, and often sweaty. I love him to pieces. He's my Alex.

Alex is eight right now. He's a leap day baby, so he likes to say he's only 2. This is third grade for him, growing into a young man, but still sprinkled with little boyness.

Alex has many gifts. He is so compassionate. He is kind and loving, yet knows how to stand up for himself when necessary. He is a daddy's boy (and mommy's, too). He loves sports and is a natural at many of them. You'll find him outside playing with the neighborhood kids.

He is growing into a fine specimen of early manhood. (Did I mention I love him to pieces?)

J O Y

Joy has been in the forefront of my thoughts for weeks now.





Find Joy.



Create Joy.



Give thanks with Joy.



Feel Joy.



Share Joy.



Live in Joy.



Choose Joy.



Abide in Joy.





joy: n. the emotion of great delight or happiness

Caroline

I was just thinking that eventually people may actually read my blog :) And that they may want to meet my wonderful, adorable children :) That way when I talk about them in my posts, they can put a cute, little face with the name.

So, I guess I'll start with my oldest. She is Caroline.


Sweet, smart, and mature . . . she is eleven years old right now and started middle school this year. She's at a wonderful age of becoming herself. What I mean is, she is getting confident about who she is, what she stands for, and what her priorities are. It is so exciting to see her changing into a young lady right before our eyes.

She loves school, friends, lipgloss, trendy clothes, and flip flops. She also loves her siblings tenderly. She is a really good big sister who has a different kind of connection with each of her brothers and sister.


She also loves and trusts God. She is learning to look to him to meet her needs and to guide her in everyday decisions. And he has been so faithful to show himself to her in very real ways.

This year, she has chosen tumbling as her extra-curricular activity. She's a beginner in this activity and is working on perfecting a round-off right now. She enjoys reading novels and volunteering for different things at her siblings' elementary school, at Special Olympics, and in the community. She has a soft spot for kids who don't have families and would sign up to bring home a million orphans if she could.

At school, she is an excellent student and loyal friend. She volunteers to participate in extra projects (and she volunteers me to help!) and she just attended her first school dance. Despite the social dramas of daily school life, she is enjoying her sixth grade year :)

A Quick Vacation

Today I totally enjoyed letting my imagination take a quick vacation over on Linda's blog at Lime in the Coconut. She has the most amazing property in a beach community on the opposite coast from my own home. Her blog is always chock full of tropical eye candy . . .

I highly recommend you treat yourself to a visual vacation, too!

Every Day a Sunny Day

Have you ever flown in a plane through an overcast sky? When you take off it's rainy and gray, but then the plane climbs high enough to pass through the layer of clouds and when you arrive beyond them : a perpetual clear, blue, sunny sky!

I remember the first time I experienced that kind of plane ride. It was a shock to see that it is ALWAYS a sunny day, no matter what the weather is like in my immediate atmosphere. I don't know about you, but I am very thankful for this bit of truth.

The Wind

Too many to count.



That's the number of times I've heard and read the account of Jesus inviting Peter to step out of the boat onto the water. But most recently, I caught something I hadn't honed in on before: the wind.

(Mt 14:29-31)
And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus.But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?

The wind was a distraction to Peter and caused him to get sidetracked; to take his eyes off Jesus. The natural circumstances caught his attention and he allowed the distraction to take precedence. That's when he started to sink.

There are so many convenient distractions in my world: our family business, the economy, the election, the bills . . . they are the wind howling and swirling all around me, begging me to take my eyes of my God. I have to decide to abide in him, where the life is. And I want abiding there to be my default.