Court

It's very hard, the not knowing.  We keep getting calls out of the blue saying that two of our former foster daughters may be coming back to us.  Their lawyer is pushing very hard for that to happen, but she can't seem to get anyone to agree with her.  They are with an uncle who is not doing a good job of looking out for their safety.  However, he's also not doing bad enough that the system is willing to remove the girls.  Until then we just keep getting asked to come to court again and throw our whole lives into upheaval.  We've repainted and moved beds around and gotten the boys to all share one room so that we can have a room available at any time for the girls.  I know God has a plan, but it's hard not knowing what it is.

Molly's Baby Shower

 Molly's baby shower turned out very nice.  Several ladies from church came and several others dropped off gifts.  Molly's baby girl was very blessed.  I think Molly had a nice time, too.  We had fun decorating our Sunday school classroom with a jungle animal theme.  She's been trying out various names including Layla, Rose, Bethany, and an "A" name I can't remember.  The first name she thought of was "Jordan", but our daughter, "Hoops" liked it so much she decided to choose it for her new name when she gets adopted.  I can't wait to see my first grandbaby.  She's due April 19th!

Photo Scavenger Hunt

Danya, Gloria, and Jordan are all in the older girls group of AWANA called TNT, which stands for Truth and Training.  These fourth through sixth grade girls got together for a photo scavenger hunt in February.  They met up at the mall on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.  Each team was given two pages of photos and a time limit.  They ran all over the mall trying to find the exact location each photo was taken in.  Some were easy.  Some were impossibly hard.

They laughed, they giggled, they tried on funny accessories.  They even took pictures with the guy in the giant cookie costume.  Afterwards, Danya took her sisters and a couple of her friends, Lauren and Sarah, out to the movies to see "Hugo", which turned out to be a very good movie.  It was a great day!

Options Fun Day 2012

I'm not sure whose idea a "Fun Day" was, but my kids certainly enjoyed it.  They got to do a three-legged race and play games after school.  It's always nice to have a little extra time to play with friends when the school day is done.

Homeschool Daddy Daughter Dance 2012

We went to the big Daddy Daughter dance for all the different Options locations this year.  Unfortunately, I didn't verify where it was located.  We were running late to begin with.  Then we showed up at the kids' Options school location.  That was about 30 minutes North of our house.  It was closed.  So we called a friend who told us that the dance was being held about an hour South of where we were.  Ugh.  The girls were very worried that they'd miss the dance.  We missed the first half.

It was much bigger and nicer than I'd imagined it would be.  It felt like a high school prom.  They had a masked ball theme.  There was a whole room for refreshments with all kinds of foods including a chocolate fountain.  At the end, Jordan won a prize in the drawing.  She got a 3 bedroom cabin up in Estes Park for a weekend!  We're all looking forward to going.  The girls enjoyed getting their hair and makeup done and shopping for new dresses and shoes for the night.  By the time we were painting finger nails, Daniel was getting pretty antsy to go.  He had already put on the tux he'd rented for the night and taken the van through a car wash.  Men have no idea what the most important parts of a special night are.  I was very glad that the young trumpet player from our church band, Luke, was willing and available to babysit.  I was able to take pictures and try not to cry every time they played a special "daddy daughter" song while Daniel danced with each of his girls.

Super Why Birthday

Katie, my youngest biological child, has turned three years old.  It seems a little unreal to me.  I keep thinking "this is my last time to..." with everything she and "Happy" do.  As far as I know, we aren't having any more babies.  We're in the final stages of toddlerhood for our family forever.  I know there will be grandchildren some day, but it's not the same.

Her party was fun and noisy, just like a three year old birthday party should be.  Several of her friends from church came to share her special day.  She dressed up in her Super Katie costume because her favorite "Super Why" character is Super Wyatt.  "Happy" went as Princess Pea.  They were both very cute.

Homeschool Valentine Party

This year we hosted the H.U.G.G. for Life Homeschool Group's Valentine's Day party.  We had crafts and food followed by a Valentine's box judging contest.  Everyone said it was a lot of fun.  We even had about the right amount of guests.  Many more and it would have been a mad house.  I'm not sure if we'll do it again next year, but I enjoyed pulling it together and the kids really appreciated it.

Valentine's Day 2012

Jordan's 10th Bday Party

Selina and Maleah came to Jordan's tenth birthday party.  We went to McDonald's for dinner then played at Chuck E. Cheese.  That place was PACKED on a Saturday night!  She had a Hello Kitty theme for her party.  Her friend, Maleah, gave Jordan a big Hello Kitty stuffed animal from Build-A-Bear.  That was probably the coolest gift she got.  We gave her yarn and fancy duct tape to make projects with among other things that were on her wish list.  The girls giggled like crazy and generally had a great time.

Besties

Best friends, sisters, partners in crime.

Love Comes to Visit

 Our former foster daughters, Molly and Selina, went to church with us and spent the weekend at our house.  We took some seven months photos of Molly.  I still can't believe she's going to be a mommy soon.  She's been the daughter of my heart since she was 12 years old.

Jordan's Double Digits

 Jordan turned 10 in February.  We had a mini blizzard hit that day, so her official party got postponed a week.  Still, she did get to have Molly and Selina over.  She and Selina had a sleep over in the basement on the fold out couch.  I'm still dealing with some sadness over the fact that I didn't really get to be her mom for the first decade of her life.  She's halfway to adulthood, and it's hard to think that I have so little time with her.

What an amazing young woman she is.  Jordan is tall and beautiful, smart and funny.  She's kind to younger kids and talks easily with adults.  She's patient while I take hours to do her hair.  Her creativity shows in the drawings and crochet projects she makes.  Her fun sense of humor matches mine, in some ways.  For instance, when we were at Best Buy looking at electronics I came over to her and Selina to ask what they were doing.

They were listening to music on the big stereos.  So, I made a funny face and started doing a goofy dance.  Jordan burst out laughing, but Selina turned bright red and ran off in embarrassment.  Ah, the fun of being a mom and getting to embarrass your kids!  Of course, Jordan just gets my craziness and tops it.  She'd be the first to jump right in and start doing an even goofier dance.  It's so much fun being her mom!

Pizza for Books

My kids have been doing the Pizza Hut Book-It program again this year.  They've been doing a great job reading.  I've been doing a not-so-great job of giving them their certificates and taking them to get their pizzas.  I always seem to be behind on this for some reason.  So, just lately, I've taken them a LOT to use their certificates.  They are probably getting sick of all the mini pizzas by now.  Or not.  They are kids, after all.

Expanding our Circle

 When we decided to adopt African American children, we realized that our circle of friends was rather narrow.  Part of the problem is the area where we've lived and gone to church for the past five years.  It's not exactly diverse.  The only AA friends and loved ones we have were all back home in Oklahoma.  That's fine for our yearly visits, but not good for an everyday basis.  It's important that our children have strong role models that look like them, so that they'll grow up feeling proud of who they are and of their heritage.

Fortunately, our new neighborhood is much more diverse.  Even more fortunately, Daniel knows some good guys at work, like Leo (pictured here), who are willing to get to know all of us better.  We invited Leo over for dinner and he invited us to try out his church.  We'd like to give our kids the opportunity to experience the major difference between our church and an African American Methodist church, so we're hoping to do that within the next month or so.  We want them to see that even though cultural and worship styles can vary greatly, the important thing is the underlying foundational love for Jesus Christ. 

Talent Show

 Jordan (a.k.a "Hoops"), played the bells with her fourth grade class for the school talent show this year.  She did a great job and the music was fun.  I think she enjoyed being on stage.

The thing that I found the funniest, however, was before the show.  I told Jordan to pose with her friends for some photos.  She rounded them up for the shot, and they all started saying, "Where's your mom?" She kept saying, "Right there!"  I was cracking up laughing as they tried to look past me and around me to find a black woman.  Then their eyes got all big when they realized she was talking about me.  Jordan and I laughed about it later together.  I'm glad she was able to keep a sense of humor about it.

Libraries are for READING

I'm a bit frustrated with our library system.  They spent a ton of money remodeling and building new locations.  They're all very pretty now.  My problem is this.  I take my kids to the library so that they'll be excited about all the books and want to spend an hour or two reading.  Instead, in these nice shiny new buildings, they walk in the door and get bombarded with giant flat screen t.v.'s and computers.

If I wanted them to watch t.v. and play on the computer, we could stay home.

What Snowmen Read

The kids made snowmen reading books as a craft project to display in January.  We got the idea from the school at our church.  They have the cutest projects on the walls and I'm always taking mental notes as I walk around on Sundays and Wednesdays.  This project was a bit more complicated than I imagined it being.  Next time, I'll cut all the pieces ahead of time.

Church Cleaning Crew

The church cleaning crews are often short handed.  We're fixing that problem for our particular crew that works the third Saturday of each month.  We just bring our own crew.  Our older kids are getting the opportunity to serve the Lord and our church family while also learning some new cleaning skills. 

Cleaning a huge worship center is a much different experience than cleaning our house.  They have to wipe down the arm rests of several hundred chairs, vacuum football fields worth of carpet, wash windows higher than their heads, and dust all the equipment used for the worship team.  It's actually a lot of fun and they get that good feeling on Sunday morning looking around a bright shiny clean church and knowing they helped make it that way.

AWANA Rodeo Night

It was Rodeo Night at AWANA in honor of the National Western Stock Show in Denver.  Danya was an adorable rodeo clown.  Michael, Kevin, and Brianna were cowboys and a cowgirl.  Shane, our off beat little boy, went as chicken feed in an old pillow case.  The judges must have thought it was unique, because  he won.  What I never quite understood, was how Gloria thought a rabbit had something to do with a rodeo.  The teeth were pretty cute, though.

Mashed Potato Head

She's a handful, all right.  If there is something that she can smear all over herself, she will.  If there's something she shouldn't touch, she makes a bee line for it.  If it's something I carefully put out of her reach, she will drag a chair over, climb tables or shelves, open the drawer, and dig it out.  My scrapbook supplies are no longer safe.  I'm planning to get a lock for the pantry door.  I keep my room locked at all times.  But most importantly, I keep my camera handy.