Grandma's visit

Well Grandma just left from her 9 day visit. We had a fun, busy week as there were 2 holidays and 2 birthdays to celebrate oh, and no school!! Yeah! The kids always hate to say goodbye to family when they come visit and my drama queen summed it up today by saying, "my heart is broken". (I think Grandma's was too)



Grandma treated us all to a trip to the theater - Spiderman's first! Horton hears a Who is a WONDERFUL movie and we all recommend it! Not only is it funny and sweet but it has an amazing message for our culture - "a person's a person, no matter how small". This movie screams about our responsibility to care for the unborn and also reinforces that we all have a responsibility to do the right thing no matter how we are treated as a result. We will be owning this movie someday.

BOTH of the boys learned to ride without training wheels on Saturday! We are so proud of them. Considering how little they get to ride their bikes, it is a big deal. Living on this gravel road makes it difficult to ride much. Cars fly by too fast for us to let them ride in the road so it's just the driveway (unless we load up the bikes in the truck and drive into town - that's what happened Sat). Jaybird has been riding non-stop since then and we've promised Spiderman a bigger bike. :)

We had a warm day at the park and I just thought this was a sweet shot of Grandma connecting with her granddaughter.

Boo's drawing was just too cute to leave out. :)

Coloring Eggs

Like most Americans, we took some time this week to color Easter eggs. Of course, this was Elijah and Hope's first time for such a tradition and it was delightful to watch them take their time and plan them out (or in Spiderman's case, dye them over and over and over again so he could ge the most out of each egg).

It was quite a party as Grandma was here visiting for a week full of birthday parties and Easter celebrations.

We won't actually be hunting for eggs until after church on Easter Sunday but I imagine that will be full of fun as well. We did use our Resurrection Eggs on Good Friday as a bedtime story and the kids all loved it of course. God bless whoever dreamed up those eggs!

the family farm (AKA: Tick Hollow)

We just spent a cool, spring day exploring Grandma & Grandpa's farm. It could have been a bit warmer but we did enjoy getting some mud on our boots (and pants, and coats and....). Hopefully these photos will sum it up for you and give you a glimpse at our country bumpkin side. Yeehaaa!!



Can you believe it? A rare sighting of that creature we call "Mom". Yep, that's me - I'm pretty rarely on this side of the camera so I took matters into my own hands to fix that. You never know when that will happen again. :)

Spiderman had a great time scaling the muddy creek bed. He's starting to understand that it's OK to get dirty (or wet) at certain times. He'd really rather stay clean.

You know Daddy is wrapped around someone's finger when he lets a 7 year old drive the 4 wheeler.

Tom Sawyer here has no fear of getting dirty. Had it been warmer he probably would have been bathing in this creek.

Country guy meets City Chick. Big brother and little sister come from very different worlds right now as Aunt Laura visits from Chicago.

The diva enjoyed the nature walk but is NOT up for the daring or dirty stuff.

We actually use the farm pretty regularly but it's not always ALL of us going there at the same time. Kids take turns going up with my man and a week or two ago, the older 3 spent the entire day up there while Boo and I had a Mommy day. I have never seen my kids any dirtier as they came home caked in mud!! Believe it or not, I'd take mud over doing tick checks any day!

Happy Birthday Goose!

Let's see who can guess the theme of this party?



Is there a little girl who DOESN"T like horses?

This was just sort of a time filler but it was so much fun to watch the kids play Twister.

There were definitely some squeals and giggles from Goose upon opening her presents. Not only is she the hardest kid to shop for (as she never really knows what she wants) but thankfully, she is grateful for everything she gets and therefore, is easy to please.

It's hard to believe she is another year older! We had her party on Saturday but she actually turns 7 in the morning. She is enjoying having Aunt Laura and Grandma here and playing with her new birthday gifts. Of course, all she is still talking about is her chickens-to-be. :) The irony is that she is very tall for her age, taller than some 9 year old friends, and yet LEGALLY she still has to sit in a booster seat. It looks almost comical to see her sitting there and to know Spiderman will get rid of his before she can get rid of hers.

Tomorrow she plans to have pizza for her dinner and Grandma is making homemade ice cream. (funny thing is that when we made it this past summer, Goose said "this is better than the other kind of ice cream, we should take it to Walmart so they can learn how to make this kind instead"). She's also starting a gymnastics class tomorrow night so it "feels" like a birthday gift to her.

I know I'm her Momma but I can tell you that she is the sweetest, most joyful little girl in the world! Honest. I keep telling her to stop growing up but she just won't listen (in fact she says she wants to be as tall as Daddy - 6'7" tall -wow!)

Dear Mr. President

OK, I've got lots to post and I'm running behind. Beware for multiple posts this week. :) I'll try to keep them short and in order.



This is Spiderman's envelope - pretty good huh?

On our way to the mailbox (Yes, we are back to being Spiderman again)

These photos are precious to me as my kids "just decided" they wanted to write a letter to the President, George W. Bush. Well, who wants to tell them "no" so we just dug right in. The letters were precious (and I did keep copies) and ranged from telling the President they "liked how he ran the country", asked him if he could "send some money and some food to the people in Ethiopia who don't have any", suggested that he put "Bibles in all the jails so the bad guys will learn how to be good guys", and Boo drew a picture of him as a patriotic colored flower. I even splurged and let them each send it in their own envelope, who knows, maybe they will get letters in return? They keep asking me if their letters have arrived at the White House yet. Priceless!

Here is what I can't help but draw conclusions about. My little children have such confidence that they can approach the God of the universe in prayer about anything and know that He hears them, why wouldn't the President of the United States take the time to listen to them? After all, "God is his boss" and we have the confidence to know that God is never too busy or too important not to listen to us. Praise God for the faith of children - "ye have not because ye ask not".

Gotcha Day

Last weekend we celebrated Boo's "gotcha day" - the anniversary of the day we actually "gotcha" in Guatemala "for good" (March 1st). It's hard to believe it's been four years ago since we picked her up knowing she was finally ours. This is the first year she seems to have "got it" but certainly Spiderman's adoption has made it more understandable. She anticipated it the entire day before and would make up her own tune singing, "tomorrow is my gotcha day". Of course we pulled out her lifebook (story of her life, not just the adoption side of it) and talked about Guatemala. Just for a fun project the kids decorated cookies (again) :)

That night we ordered Dominoes pizza and just celebrated how God brought Boo to our family. (She picked the meal and insisted - "Mommy, I do NOT want those tamales!" - remember Christmas eve?) She opened a small gift from Guatemala, we bought 18 of them when we travelled to pick her up. This little whistle doesn't seem like much but she has taken such pride in knowing it is from Guatemala. She toots on it around the house, singing her made up songs. Not a huge deal but just enough to remember the special day.

No surprise to any of us, Spiderman was asking how long til his "gotcha day" and anticipating what was to come for himself. He even asked Jaybird and Goose when their "gotcha days" were and Jaybird replied, "we don't get any because we were born from Mom's tummy". You could hear the disappointment in his voice.

project chickens

Isn't this sweet? Goose is all about quality time and is most likely to seek out Daddy to just hang out. This was an afternoon of watching some sort of televised sport. I couldn't resist these precious photos. Anyway, about the chickens.....

Goose has been wanting to raise chickens for about a year now. We've always just said, "maybe someday" but for some reason we have felt like this is something we should let her do this spring. She does love animals and this is the least we can let her do out here in the country. She has been very excited anticipating chicks this spring.

Last week we finished reading the book George Mueller for school. We finished it way ahead of schedule as we had a hard time putting it down. For any of you who don't know about George Muller, he lived about 200 years ago and is well known for his trust in God's provision. God led him to open an orphanage for 30 kids in Bristol, England which grew to housing 1,000 kids at a time. He never asked ANYONE but God to provide the money or means to meet the needs of the orphanage. He simply prayed and presented his needs to the Lord and God miraculously provided for them. A famous story is having 300 orphans sit before their empty breakfast plates while he thanked God for the food that He was about to provide them. They had NO FOOD in the orphanage at the time and after the prayer, someone knocked on the door who had a truckload of bread to donate to the orphanage. Minutes later, a milk wagon broke down in front of the orphanage and the driver asked if they could use the milk so he could empty the wagon to make repairs. The book is full of amazing stories like that and by the time of his death, he had cared for more than 10,000 orphans through his 5 orphan homes. Everyone should read this book.

So having finished this story, we talked about what God could do if we only ask Him and believe. Goose excitedly states, "Jesus just talked to my heart and I want to raise chickens so I can send their eggs to the hungry people in Ethiopia!" Of course I melted right there and explained it would be tricky to mail eggs to Ethiopia and that it would probably work better to sell the eggs and send the money. She was so excited that she counted out the money in her bank and placed it in an envelope labeled "chicken money" so she would be able to buy lots of chickens and we would get lots of eggs! All week she told anyone who would listen about how Jesus wanted her to sell eggs for the poor and we had to check out 6 books at the library about raising chickens. No backing out now. :) Today she and I drove about 90 minutes round trip to pick up a big ol' rabbit cage we are going to transform into a chicken coop. This is going to be a most interesting springtime. I'll eventually take pictures.