OUR PLANS MULTIPLIED

In the beginning, JD adamantly only wanted two children. I thought that four would be perfect. Once we caught God's vision of putting orphans into families, our plan was multiplied by God. We are currently blessed with 12 children; five biological, six adopted and one more waiting in Ethiopia. Our first adoption was from the U.S., the next three were from Liberia, West Africa, and our last two were from Ethiopia. We are supporting our 12th child in Ethiopia after her adoption could not pass court.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Socks, Food and Hidden Actions

So, here's my random post for the week. First of all, I recently bought James and Ben TWENTY pairs of new socks, never mind the many pairs they already owned. The idea of 20 pairs of the same socks is that it makes laundry folding much more mindless. Wouldn't you think that in light of doing whites every few days, they would always have abundant socks? I present you James' feet this morning while he was reading. I just sighed and kept walking.... then came back with my camera. He never noticed.


Next topic - food. In light of the new year, we are trying to return to more healthy eating. Our family can consume an enormous amount of fruit and veggies and the affordable selection is so boring this time of year. I went grocery shopping yet again today.


Here was tonight's dinner: chicken, broccoli and carrots on rice. There were two carrots leftover, not even enough for JD's lunch tomorrow.

Lastly, I'm contemplating what I should do with a child that is being consistently mean to his siblings behind my back. He almost never is even remotely rude in front of me, but I'm getting too many reports of the ugly words and actions behind my back. Does anyone have any ideas that don't turn the other kids into constant tattlers? I'm really frustrated with lecturing children who stand there and repeat "yes, ma'am, yes, ma'am" but have no real interest in the right thing to do.

OK, three random topics for Tuesday, maybe my brain will be more organized tomorrow.

2 comments:

  1. In our house, if you say something mean about someone, you have to come up with and write down three positive things to say about that person and present this in front of the rest of the family at dinner (or just before bedtime if it was after dinner). That way they are forced to focus on the good things about someone else. You can save the sheets because the rule is that you can not use the same three things over for the same person. That doesn't really cover the tattling aspect though. Doorposts.com has a "brother offended" chart that goes through Biblical steps for both the offended and the offender. I just got it and have not yet begun implementing it, so I can not testify to it's success, but I do like the concept. I am hoping it will help address both the tattler, "I'm gonna tell on you!" and the too easily offended children. Anyway, for what it is worth.

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  2. Thank you. I had the brother offended chart way back with my oldest two. It's good as long as you use it, like most things in life. I think I'll try the writing good things, the boys hate writing anything and it has worked well for picking up shoes, etc, that they consistently didn't do until I made them write the rule over and over.

    Thanks!

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