OUR PLANS MULTIPLIED: Valentine Circuit

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.

Monday, February 24, 2014

Valentine Circuit

Since we have spent half the winter on snow break, the girls' Valentine parties were delayed until President's Day. Elijah attended the parties with me. The first party was in Tori's classroom. We were a bit early and Elijah and I were waiting in the hallway. When the classes got out, two boys headed straight for us and asked us a ton of questions. Here is part of our conversation:
Boy #1 - "Did you bring us candy?"
Boy #2 - "Whose Mom are you?"
I replied that I was Tori's mom.
Boy #2 - "Then I'm trying to figure out how come you are white?
I replied that I adopted Tori."
Boy #1 - "My Dad threatens to put me in an orphanage when I'm bad.
I blessed him with the news that there really aren't orphanages in America."
Boy #1 - "I'm going to tell my Dad that!"
Boy #2 - "So, did you adopt Tori from England?"
I then gave a brief summary of Africa but they just stared at me baffled. Then we were saved by Tori finding us and leading us in.

Elijah waiting to enter

Here is Tori with her sweet teacher; her son is also our swim coach. The cool thing is that she spent a few years living in Liberia as a child, as a daughter of a Marine guarding the embassy.

Tori scored in the candy department. I remember just paper Valentines when I was a kid.

Our second party was Selah's K class. Selah was pretty thrilled with the ice cream sundaes they had. Selah is blessed with the teacher that we adored when Julia had her in K.

Julia's party was the last scheduled one and I was pretty happy that there were fruit and veggie trays. It was perfect after two parties of sweets. Since we were ending the day in Julia's room, I asked her if she would like me to check her out and she could ride home with me. She told me that she would rather stay; she didn't want to miss the last five minutes!

Here's Julia with her teacher, who was Tori's teacher last year.

After only homeschooling for 18 years, I can't say enough good about the teachers that my girls have had the last two years; they have been a blessing to our family.