OUR PLANS MULTIPLIED: Groundhog Weekend

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.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Groundhog Weekend

I feel like this weekend was a re-run of last weekend. JD ended up making two trips to a friend's house for trees and a trip to the Amish saw-mill. Although we were done with the wood trips, we were blessed with free big trees to make posts out of, so about three more trips and our fencing stash should be done. Speaking of Amish, my tomato plants I bought from them are still going strong. It's amazing how many tomatoes I've gotten off three plants. I'll be buying my vegetable plants from them again next year.

I am half way through Julia's braids. The Zulu knots lasted a few more days than I expected, but we needed a hair-do that will get us through next weekend. I really want to get better at corn-rowing. Here's Julia having a hair break.

It really isn't Julia that requires so many hair breaks. It's this little guy. He isn't impressed with his Mom focusing so long on someone that isn't him!

JD and I spent quite a bit of time today on the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace budget. We have definitely increased our expenses drastically the last few years with our international adoptions and our new house. So, after putting all our expenses on paper today, it turns out the kids are way expensive! I obviously already knew this as it seems every cent we have goes to one of them for something, but it seems so much worse now that it's on paper. Another big expense in my life is all these animals. Mind you, I rarely intentionally go and get them, but I find them around town and lately they get dumped in my driveway. We really don't even do vets anymore; I get everything rabies shots and spayed or neutered at the low cost clinic, but I still feed them all and put FRONTLINE on all of them! I still have two kittens from the dumped litter to get fixed this fall! Here's Kaden enjoying Elijah's attention. You know he's a good kitty to put up with Elijah's "petting."

The good news is that next weekend won't be a re-run; we are going on our annual "back-to-school" mini-vacation. I am really praying that my neck improves a ton this week!

On a P.S. happy note - I found my missing teacher's manual! I offered a $5 reward, but found it myself. It was on the piano shelf, folded open, blending in with the piano books. I'm just thrilled to be back on track for school tomorrow.