About Time!

I guess since Thanksgiving is right around the corner I ought to post some pictures of Halloween.  The kids had a fun time, but unfortunately they are STILL eating candy!

This composite shot is from Sarah-Grace's second post placement report.  It is hard to believe she has been home 6 months.  

These months have been both slow and fast.  It is hard to believe sometimes it is ONLY 6 months.  She feels like she has been part of the family forever.  

Sarah-Grace is doing really well.  She is growing very fast and her English is getting very good.  She even prefers to say most things to Kai in English.  She is enjoying the family and she (and we!) are glad she is here.

Kai is struggling some lately.  Which makes life harder for us all.  I think having Sarah-Grace home has made him worry again about his place in the family.  Unfortunately this makes things difficult for Daniel, who is apparently a threat.  And who does not have the maturity to always deal with things in the most positive way.  

It will be nice to have Annie and Rebecca home for a while over the holidays!

A bit of sanity. . .or at least insanity grown-up style!

What We've Been Up To

An easy day of school while we recuperate from a weekend of flu


I was actually afraid to start school this year.  The attitude and backbiting in our family over the summer was getting really horrible and I didn't want to think about schooling this crew.  But God gave us grace!  While we still have attitude problems (myself included)and way too much competition among the ranks we are actually accomplishing our school work and sometimes (on those rare occasions) we have fun!

Here are some pictures since I've been such a poor blogger:

Making an American Indian wigwam

       A sailing ship like explores of North American may have used

Observing how salt water is more buoyant than fresh

Another wigwam

A fun train field  trip with Daddy

Painting the rivers on our salt map of the USA

Our salt map finished and labeled -- complete with our American Indian artifacts!

Another fun field trip--this time colonial style
Can these be my younger children and my youngest niece?  Yikes--they look like preteens if ever I saw one!  Dressed for the symphony (daytime--for kids)

A big thanks to Jonathan for the great pictures.  He does lots of school work too--but manages to stay out of our pictures.  Perhaps because he has become the photographer now that Annie is away!

Hi from Costa Rica!

Hi everyone! I've been enjoying my time here in Costa Rica and learning a lot. Our lecture phase of the school I'm at just ended yesterday, and now we start the outreach phase. Our team of 10- 5 Costa Ricans and 5 Americans- will spend the next 2 months traveling to several different towns in Costa Rica (Talamanca, Jaco, and Tilleran) to do outreach. We'll be doing presentations in schools, performing dramas, sharing our testimonies in churches and as we meet people, working with youth in impoverished communities, and helping out the Red Cross.

Our whole team combined needs to raise $8,000. We're already halfway there. Would you consider helping us reach our goal? Posted to our sidebar is a chip-in widget. You can use it to make a donation through paypal. If everyone that each of the 10 of us knows gave even just $1, we'd probably meet our goal.

All of us (including staff) after a day of painting and hole digging

Our whole team plus staff the first week of school 

The Distant View

See this crazy, wonderful, insanely awesome stair-step family of mine (minus Tim, Annie and myself)? I've been away from them for two weeks now. It's been amazing. 

I don't at all mean this in a nasty way, but you grow older and you need to move on. Even if your family is still so new and wonderful and growing into more of a family each day, you still have to step out and head off on your own. But sitting here in my blessedly silent apartment, fresh baked bread on the window sill and a 'to-do' list rapidly dwindling, I find myself looking through pictures of the summer - and drat it, but I miss those crazy little kids. My roommate and apartment, my books and walks to the park, papers and interviews, they are all great. But their entertainment (and irritant) value compared to a bunch of siblings? Pretty much non-existent. 

So here are some of the best pictures of my crazy siblings that I really love very greatly (especially from a few hours away). 

Sleeping with sunglasses...

Acting shy...

Being crazy with cousins...

Swinging...

Chillin' with Dad and Java...

Reading comics while dressed like Spiderman...

See what I mean about insanely awesome?

Rambling

Summer has been too fast and furious for me.  

There were 3 main things I wanted to do this summer:  1.  clean my desk, 2.  make photo albums for Kai and Sarah-Grace,

3.  make composite pictures for my 3 youngest kids like the 4 older ones have, 

4.  finish up all adoption paperwork--hmm, that's four.  Well, number one got done.  Numbers 2 and 3 are being worked on as I type(I'm uploading 300+ photos to print).  Sarah-Grace had her first post placement visit and we did get her COC shortly after she got home--now I just need a US birth certificate, adoption decree and ss# and I can be DONE with adoption paperwork.  I'm trying to figure out what to do with it all. . .(does one need to keep triplicates?)

The end of July and early August were camp weeks around here.  We started off with Jonathan going on a short term missions trip to New Orleans.  They thought they were going to help with construction, but instead did mostly street evangelism, sports evangelism and prayer.  He LOVED IT!  He witnessed the salvation of five people and spoke to and shared with 100's.  What an awesome week for a 14 year old boy.  I'm really proud of him and the way he let God use him.

Daniel went to cubscout resident camp during the first week of August and Kai was at Chinese Culture Day Camp.  I thought it would be a quiet week for Sarah-Grace and I.  Did I have that wrong.  We spent our time running between picking Kai up and dropping him off, visiting with Daniel (cubs are supposed to have a parent AT camp) and trying to visit and play with friends.

SO summer rolls on.

Our rabbits are getting bigger.

Our house is getting cleaner

And our dog, Java, is still bad--and he knows it

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Annie! & Hiking on the AT or What we did on Annie's birthday

So today was Annie's  birthday.  She noted that she was a quarter of a century, which made me feel particularly ancient, since I will be exactly twice her age on my next birthday.  We just finished a skype call with her where we watched her open the presents we'd sent down with a short term missions team from our church.  How good is our God that he allowed us to know people going to the same place on our daughter's special day?  It sounded like she was happy and had a nice day.  Here is a picture from our call:

She was holding up one of the t-shirts we'd sent.

While Annie was celebrating in Costa Rica some of us were sick on the couch:

We assume the boys have 5th disease, judging from the nasty, itchy, rash.  They don't feel too bad, just itchy.  So it earned them much more computer time than usual.

In these pictures they were  saying, "Hi Annie, HAPPY BIRTHDAY."

And here are Rebecca and Sarah-Grace celebrating Annie's birthday:

After church Dana and I took Sarah-Grace and the dogs to hike a bit on the Appalachian Trail.  Sarah-Grace was a bit hesitant at first, as on our last hike Daniel had gotten multiple bee stings.  But after a while she was enjoying climbing on the big rocks and finding dinosaurs:

Of Clothespins and Rock Band

Sarah-Grace marched up to Dad the other day and proclaimed: "I'm a woman!" Apparently, earrings made of clothespins and sunglasses is all it takes to transform a little girl to a woman. They grow up so quickly...

(Sarah-Grace, our little woman)

Little boys, unsurprisingly, are less interested in becoming men then they are in becoming monsters. It comes so naturally, even without the clothespins to help the fantasy along.

(Daniel, as a monster. You should see his Gollum imitation.)

The easiest way to make this gang of hooligans happy might be letting them play Rock Band with Tim. Saying yes to their pleas results in crazy dancing around the kitchen table and squeals of joy in Chinese, English, and some language known only to those under 18.

Rock Band takes some serious concentration, man.