Family Football Game

What better activity for a fall Sunday afternoon after church than a family football game, kids versus parents! 

Everybody fussed at me for taking pictures while I was suppose to be playing, but the kids were too cute and hilarious not to capture!  

Of course the oldest child secured his position as quarterback:

Not sure what Little Girl thought she was doing in this picture below, but her biggest brother soon got her straightened out and the ball snap went on!

There was much play discussion among the oldest 2 kids:

A team huddle:

The game ended in a tie, which perhaps tells you something about my husband and my combined football playing abilities!

A Music Box, Fake Camera Smiles, and Playing Orphanage

We gave Little Girl a jewelry box for her birthday, the kind that plays music with the ballerina that twirls around when you open the lid.  She loved it!  Pure joy opening and closing the lid over and over again!

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Speaking of Little Girl, lately whenever you ask her to "smile for the camera", this is the face she makes:

All squinty-eyed and grimacing more like she's in pain than happy.

It took a lot of coaching to finally get this:

Our family portrait session in a few weeks ought to be fun!

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I walked into our playroom earlier this week and found this extraordinary mess:

 "What?"  My daughters asked me when they saw the look on my face.  "We are playing orphanage," they told me.

Then I noticed the mess was rows and rows of baby dolls with blankets and pillows.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry!  

My girls know orphanages.  One daughter lived in them for 14 months and the other daughter has visited 6 different orphanages in the past 2 years.

This burden, this heart for orphans that we carry as a family is not always pretty or storybook fantasy.  But, my kids know this reality and they also know the hope of a really big God who promises not to leave us as orphans, but He will come to us (John 14:18)!  May those little girls playing "Orphanage" in my playroom grow up to be world changers!

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Our family is participating in a Run for Hope this weekend to raise money to fund other people's adoptions.  There is also the cool aspect that we'll get to see many kids who were adopted and their families at the race and the families of adoption wear different colored shirts than the other participants in the race, so kids get a good visual for how many other kids were adopted like they were.  I believe there is a lot of power in not feeling alone in a situation.

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Have a Beautiful Weekend!

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A Birthday Card from a Big Sister to a Little Sister

Sometimes it amazes me that people still ask me how my biological children have taken to their adopted sister (adopted 22 months ago).  I don't think anything bad about the person asking the question, it's just that my kids are my kids now and imagining that my younger daughter would have some sort of different sibling relationship with my other 3 kids than they have with each other is such a strange concept to me and so far from our reality.  All 4 of my kids interact as normal siblings, brothers and sisters.  They love each other, they annoy each other, they play together, they share rooms, they correct each other, they laugh, they fuss, but when it comes right down to it, they are each other's best friends.  Lifelong companions!

I understand this curiosity people have about bringing a child into a family as a 3 year old and from a different race and culture than the children already living in the home.  But, what I want people to understand is that the love of a sister or brother can transcend those differences!

I couldn't help thinking of this when I looked inside a small birthday book/card my 8 year old daughter created for her sister, my 5 year old daughter:

"Dear (I blanked out her name), Happy Birthday.  You are medium now.  I love you.  I'll let you pick a game to play.  I looooooooove you again.  Love, (her name was here)"

The "You are medium now." made me laugh.  This refers to the fact that my 8 year old says to her 5 year old sister, "You are not little anymore, but you are not big yet either.  You are medium."

They are sisters through and through!

Surviving the Laundry of a Family of Six

Recently I was at a playground with a friend while we watched our kids run around, I commented that I really needed to go home and put away laundry.  She said, "Oh, I feel like I am doing laundry all the time and I just have two kids, I can only imagine what it is like for you with four kids!"

Yes, the laundry is something!  And it threatens to eat me alive most days.  Thankfully my 8 year old has gotten to be nearly as capable as me at folding and putting away wash!

Find more Wordful Wednesday here.

October 20th

What God Can Do:

October 20, 2010
This little girl entered a government-run orphanage in Ethiopia, malnourished, infested with ringworm, and covered with sores.  Without knowing the real date, October 20th forevermore becomes her birthday for legal purposes.  She is estimated to be 2 years old.  She is a female orphan in a 3rd world country, over the age of infancy, a low state of being by the world's standards.

 
October 20, 2011

That little girl legally becomes our daughter!  God redeems that day, October 20th, in her life, by placing her in a family on that exact day of all the other calendar days it could have happened. Her name is changed, she is an orphan no more.  He made her a daughter!  But she spends that birthday in an orphanage, waiting on remaining red tape to be cleared so that she can go home with her new family.

 
October 20, 2012

She has been home for nearly 10 months.  Her family and friends got to celebrate her 4th birthday with her!

 
October 20, 2013

That Little Girl has been home for nearly 2 years.  Surrounded by tons of friends and loving family, her 5th birthday is celebrated.

 

Our God never leaves us nor forsakes us.  Even when it seems we are all alone, starving, and forlorn, He has great plans for us, plans for a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11)!  He is a God of redemption!

"See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is."1 John 3:1-2

Snapshots from Life This Week

 That dog did not actually shower while she was in there, she just likes licking the shower water (gross, I know!).  I usually keep her out, but she got past me while I was getting out of the shower and then I didn't want to deal with drying off her paws, while I was still drying myself, so I shut her in there for a few minutes.  Too bad she can't shower herself, she really does need it!

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Pedicures with my daughters.  They picked five different colors, a different color for each toe on a foot!  Colorful and high-maintenance my girls are!   

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Practicing his spelling words with my 6 year old.  "Said" does not at all sound like it is spelled, so it's a tricky one!

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Happy Friday, Friends!  Find more Friday Fragments here.

 

When Life Feels Hard

There have been some especially hard things in my life lately, big, ugly situations that are not my fault, yet I must deal with them.  Those situations combined with tons of busyness has made it super important for me to focus on that which is good.  

There is a whole lot of good, some days I just have to remind myself more to look for it.  You know, "Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. . ."

So, let's focus on the positive, 

Like the one square foot of my house that IS clean.

Sisters in matching pajamas:

(That is the one clean spot in my house!  Okay so maybe, it's 3 square feet!)

God's mercies, new every morning.  And several perfectly timed reminders this week that through Jesus we are more than conquerors even though we may face trials here on this earth!

"No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us."  Romans 8:37