Just give him a river and some rocks!

We're back! We had a wonderful get-away; I'll share more on it later. I'm still in Spring Break mode so I won't write much.

But I did want to share my toddler's new passion. It was the highlight of the trip for him. He told my husband and me so just yesterday. I should have guessed because really I saw it in his face at the time, the utter delight. It was like he discovered what he was born to do. All the kids did it some,
but the toddler did it over and over again for a long time. It is the longest I've ever clocked his attention span. And had we not drug him away, I have no doubt he could have done it forever.

So what it is, this thing my toddler so loves?

Throwing rocks in the river!




And I loved watching him do it!

Find more Thankful Thursday, Things I Love Thursday & A Thousand Words Thursday.

Brotherly Love Revisited

***This was originally published March 11, 2009. These brothers are now 7 and almost 3. They've been sharing a room for nearly a year now; they still feel this way about each other (most of the time, anyway!) ***


This picture of my boys says a thousand words about the love between brothers.

Here are 13 things it says to me:

1. These 2 brothers are now just turned 6 years old and almost 2. They will soon be sharing a room. I plan to frame this picture and hang it in their room to remind them of their love for each other!
   
2. For me, a big blessing of having a 3rd child has been watching my oldest (who was a young 4 year old when his brother was born) enjoy the baby. When his sister was born he was just 2 and too young to really get the big brother role.
3. My oldest began praying for a baby brother months before my husband and I even had made the decision to try for a 3rd child.
4. At the end of most days, my oldest still prays, "Thank you for my baby brother" and it just makes all the work of the day caring for 3 little kids so worth it!
   
5. I love the way my baby's arms are really hugging onto his big brother's arm. And now that he is almost 2, the infatuation is still there -- Oh how he loves his "Brober"!
6. When Big Brother comes home from kindergarten and sits down at the table with his homework sheet and a pencil, Little Brother runs to get some paper and crayons and sits down next to Big Brother to work alongside him!
7. It is not a fun day for mom, however, when Little Brother gets overly zealous and colors on Big Brother's homework sheet!
8. Think how much they will learn from each other over the years!
   
9. "Sibling relationships - and 80 percent of Americans have at least one - outlast marriages, survive the death of parents, resurface after quarrels that would sink any friendship. They flourish in a thousand incarnations of closeness and distance, warmth, loyalty and distrust." ~Erica E. Goode, "The Secret World of Siblings," U.S. News & World Report, 10 January 1994
10. A great quote, “Sometimes being a brother is even better than being a superhero.” ~Marc Brown
11. Another, "It takes two men to make one brother." ~Israel Zangwill
12. Romans 12:10, "Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor"
13. 1 John 3:16, "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers."

The Camping Bag (Republished)

***This was originally published on March 18, 2009***

We are camping for the end of this Spring Break week. Actually combining a trip to Sea World with a camping trip that my husband and oldest son have been dreaming of for months and months. This afternoon I told my 3 year old daughter we needed to pack for our camping trip. I set a bag in her room and before I could pack it, I got distracted in another part of the house.

I returned a few minutes later to find this.

Behold my daughter's bag all packed for camping:

13 things I'd like to say about this picture:

1. Yes, that is a fairy princess wand, along with her blankie, a couple books, a little doll and a stuffed rabbit.
   
2. Clearly she has no idea what she is in for with this camping thing.
3. Or maybe she does. The wand could actually come in handy to transform our freezing, sleeping on the ground, bug tortured selves into palace dwellers!
4. I think she's crazy for packing this bag for camping, but how crazy are her parents for going camping with our 3 kids ages 6, 3, and 1?!!!
5. I'm not really sure how I got roped into this camping adventure.
6. It began as a day trip to Sea World, 3 hrs there, 3 hrs back, and we'd all sleep soundly in our own cozy beds after an exciting, fun-filled day.
7. Then it became "let's combine this trip with the camping dream that our oldest child has had" (and also his dad). My husband even persuaded me with shopping -- "Then we could stop by that great outlet mall the next day before heading home!" he said.
8. I thought, "Okay, I can stand anything for one night, especially if there is shopping at the end of it."
9. Then somehow it became 2 nights and my husband practically bought out the REI store, even a 2 room tent!
10. Now, to justify his purchases (which include both cold weather and warm weather sleeping bags for every member of our family!) he is talking about camping a few times a year!
11. Did I mention that I'm not a big fan of camping? Mostly because I am a fan of personal hygiene and climate control and sleeping more than a couple inches from my 3 children!
12. And now I'm signed up for a lifetime (yes the tent is guaranteed to last a lifetime) of camping.
13. But, I am thankful, in advance, for the family memories that this camping is sure to create! One thing I am sure of. The camping adventure -- it will be memorable!!!

Caught on Camera

***This was originally published Feb. 8, 2009. The ages of my children have changed by about a year, but basically all this kind of stuff still happens!***

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! In this blog carnival created by MckMama everyone has fun telling all the things they DID NOT do (but really did). You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week. This is my first stab at a Not Me! post but surprisingly I could think of tons of things I DID NOT do, so here goes!

I DID NOT catch my 1 year-old eating a cracker with completely filthy, dirty, black hands!

I most certainly DID NOT take a picture to document this filthy cracker hand for all the world to marvel at my super parenting abilities! Seriously, y'all, how does a hand get that dirty and then get a cracker without a mother noticing?


I DID NOT happen to find this article entitled, "Babies Know: A Little Dirt Is Good for You" that same day by chance and declare myself an awesome mother for allowing my kid to eat dirt that very morning!


I DID NOT spend an entire week documenting every moment with the bunny mascot from my daughter's preschool class so we could complete the Bunny Journal.

And when my little girl woke up the night before the bunny had to be returned to school crying that she didn't want to take Benjamin Bunny back to school, I definitely DID NOT wildly dig through our stuffed animal bin, pull out a white bunny from the bottom and declare it Benjamin Bunny's long lost sister Becca Bunny who could stay at our house forever and ever! No, I would NOT do that because that would be mind games and I DO NOT subject my children to that sort of fantasy world! And, by the way my daughter DID NOT fall for the long lost sister bit and is NOT now carrying Becca Bunny everywhere!


We DID NOT go to the car show and let our 3 children climb all over, rub fingerprints on, and pretend drive all the brand new cars while the salespeople frowned at them!



My cart DID NOT look like this leaving Target on Friday. We DO NOT attract attention from other storegoers when my 5 year-old chooses to ride in the bottom like this!



Okay, now your turn, what did you NOT DO this past week?

Is it really possible to overuse the word "awesome"?

1.

So after the mind-spinning news yesterday that we'll now have to travel twice to Ethiopia for our adoption instead of the expected one trip, and my reminding myself that God is in control and using the Rom. 8:28 verse that He causes all things to work together for good on my blog, I walked into my Thursday Bible Study this morning and what was written across the white board? "God is in control. He is faithful." And the ladies were reading 8 different verses relating to God being in control and faithful, including Rom. 8:28! Is God awesome, or what?

2.

And speaking of God being awesome. The FedEx delivery man brought a very important envelope this afternoon. The FBI clearances we've waited over 10 weeks for!!! And we passed! No criminal records! I wasn't worried about that part, but I was worried after all that waiting they'd send a notice that they couldn't process my fingerprints, like the notice I got from Immigration. So getting the clearances is a huge relief and huge step closer to the waiting list for us. Now we are only waiting on one document -- our approval letter from Citizenship & Immigration Services - then we will go on the wait list and around 5 months after that be matched with a child in Ethiopia. I know there will come a time when I'll get tired of the wait list, but right now it is very much the green grass on the other side of this enormous paperwork process we've been in for nearly 6 months! And no, I don't believe it is a coincidence that we got this key piece of long-awaited paperwork the next day after getting the hard news of Ethiopia now requiring two trips. I believe it was God reaffirming this path we are on towards adoption.

3.

I know you're sad I didn't post another picture of my mail with all its excitement, but I have a consolation prize in the form of a picture of my bathroom! My toddler is now so good at using the potty that I can even send him in to the bathroom to go by himself, which is awesome, until I go in later and it looks like this. . .

4.

And in case you were wondering, yes I did re-roll that toilet paper back onto the spindle to be used and yes, I am too cheap to just rip off the unrolled portion and throw it away! I hope you're thinking, "Awesome, I would so re-roll that t.p. too!" and not "Gross!"

5.

Speaking of the bathroom, my 7 year old ran in a few days ago, peed and yelled, "Mom, something awesome happened! Right when I pulled down my pants I went, so I didn’t have to wait at all!" Me: "Wow, Buddy, that is awesome!"

I don't pretend to understand the mind of a 7 year old boy!

6.

One more funny kid statement for you. My toddler was doing something a little crazy on the stairs and I cautioned, "Be careful." To which he replied, "I try not to go to the hospital, Mommy."

"Awesome, that's really a good goal for us all!"

7.

Spring Break starts tomorrow so I'll be doing some re-publishing of old posts for some of next week to have more time to hang out with my kids. Assuming I survive all the awesome Spring Break fun, I may post some new stuff mid to late next week.

Have an awesome weekend! And feel free to sound off in my comments on the answer to the question asked in the title.

Find more Friday Fragments, Finer Things Friday, 7 Quick Takes Friday.

Find more Friday Funnies at Homesteader's Heart.

Thirteen Thoughts on Two Trips

We knew it before we started. Adoption is a roller coaster ride.

In domestic adoptions birth mothers can change their minds up to 48 hours after the baby is born. I know friends who have been called to the hospital the day the baby they've been matched with is born. They held him, took tons of pictures, emailed all the relatives, fell in love, only to find out the next day the birth mother changed her mind, she decided to parent her child rather than giving him up for adoption.

In international adoptions countries can change the rules partway through or even shut down their adoptions entirely.

We signed up anyway.

It was a huge step of faith and to look at the whole process seemed too overwhelming, so we decided to take it one step at a time and trust that God would lead us one phone call, one document, one check written at a time. And He has.

We've already had a couple of unexpected delays and we hoped they would be it. The bumpy spots on our adoption road that all adoptive families seem to experience somewhere along the way.

But today brought a bigger bump, actually a semi-hill, for us as well as anyone in the process of adopting from Ethiopia.

Ethiopia has been a one trip country for adoptions. You pass court and the child is legally yours before you ever travel. Then you'd go for 1 week to pick up your child and bring them home. This 1 trip policy was rather unique as many countries require multiple trips during an adoption process.

The word broke today that now Ethiopia will require adoptive parents to travel twice. One trip of around 5 days duration shortly after getting the referral (where you are matched with a specific child) to meet the child and testify that you are willing to adopt the child and then another trip 3 to 6 weeks later to finalize the adoption, have the embassy appointment and pick up the child's visa. The 2nd trip is around 1 week.

We don't have a lot of details around the change. Our agency sent out an email and is likely scrambling to figure out the ramifications themselves before communicating more via conference call. I belong to a few different Ethiopia adoption groups and can say the news has definitely rocked many people's worlds.

More expense for an extra trip, more time off work, leaving current children behind for now not only 1 trip but 2, the fact that both parents must travel for the court trip (before only 1 parent had to travel even to pick up the child), and leaving Ethiopia at the end of that 1st trip without our child are all huge issues facing adoptive parents.

But there are positives. For one, it seems we'll be able to see, meet, and hold our adoptive child sooner. (Although we will have the agony of leaving her behind when we return home for a few weeks without her.) Also, there is the fact that due to immigration rules, because we will meet our child before adopting them, when they set foot on U.S. soil they will automatically become citizens. Before they would have come over on a Visa which would have required us to re-adopt them here in the U.S. before they became citizens. Also, hopefully the new process will help solve the problems a few people have had where they traveled to pick up the child who was legally theirs by this point (but they'd never seen in real life) and they discovered their agency (have not heard of anyone experiencing this with the agency we're using) had misrepresented the child to them and the child was either a different age or had more medical & developmental issues than the agency let on.

We are thankful to have no doubt that God lead us to this journey and although we can't see the whole road, we are trusting Him with it. "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." Rom. 8:28

Find more Thankful Thursday, Thursday Thirteen

Three Lil' Texans

For today's Wordless & Wordful Wednesday I have 3 pictures from our trip to the livestock show this past weekend. I couldn't pick just 1!

My cowboys and cowgirl:
The toddler getting up close and personal with a goat:

Llama feeding: