OUR PLANS MULTIPLIED: Hurricane Reunion

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.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Hurricane Reunion

We hosted our first annual hurricane reunion tonight. Back in September of 2004, we got hit by hurricane Isabel. While we didn't suffer real damage, we did have to manage about 8-10 days with no power. While it was all fun and games the first few days, by day five when we were running out of food that made any sense together and were unable to wash any clothes, it got real old. NONE of us had a generator back in those days, so we literally grilled any and all food three times a day. We basically banded together with two other families that we lived right by and grilled... and grilled... and grilled. On day three, we were also throwing away large amounts of food going bad.

JD made eggs almost every morning on the grill, once they were gone, it was on to cereal with no milk for breakfast. We had one dinner where we all brought out our overly-thawed frozen pizzas. Turns out that frozen pizza on the grill is pretty good.

So, now our three families live three different places, but we had one grilled dinner together again. It was even better than frozen pizza!

Here's Alyssa and Elijah with friend, Caleb.

Back at hurricane time, our three families had a total of 11 children; now there's a total of 20 children between us.

One of the families has four children from the same orphanage in Liberia as my three are from. So, in spite of not living through the hurricane, they had their fair share of bonding!

We all had a great time and although it was nice to remember the fun that we had during the hurricane, I don't mind not doing it again - especially now that we have a well and still don't have our whole-house generator hooked up!