Weekend "Fun" at the Rental

We spent the weekend at our rental house, clearing and cleaning. I'm not sure what to think when people leave their garbage under the deck and in the edge of the woods. We did clean lots and lots of yuckyness, but thankfully they didn't damage the house, which was a legitimate concern! The kids were helpful and Elijah had a blast. Here he is playing peek-a-boo with the camera.

The girls ran and played while the bigger kids helped work.

Here's the little crew on Sub lunch break. Everyone, except Tori, loves subs, so Tori had a nasty hot-dog.

Other than the cleaning, my only accomplishment for the weekend was doing Julia's hair. Here she is asleep at the counter, poor girl.

We still have a few more hours of cleaning, then a hideous pink room to paint, then carpets to clean; then we have friends moving in for a few months while they build a house. It will be a refreshing change to have someone actually pay rent!

Just a Picture

Think Happy Thoughts

My last two blogs certainly can not be tagged "cheery" or "happy." Unfortunately, they were/are the reality of the writing moment. I am not even going to launch into a dog-blog, because then I'd have three downers in a row. Instead, I'm choosing to focus on happy thoughts.


Here's a few from my last few days.

Doing "school" with Julia, Elijah and a large inflatable duck -

The big "cheeses" that Julia and Elijah produce at the sight of a camera -

The excitement of the little kids at getting to go on Daddy's dump-run. It's kind of ridiculous to install three car-seats for them to make the three mile trip, but it's worth the excitement they show. (Yes, Tori had just had her hair taken out; I just hoped that they wouldn't run into anyone we know since I was too unmotivated to get her a hat. Elijah is also toting Julia's tooth-brush along for the ride.)

Lastly, my little man with his trucks. He has a security tractor now that he takes everywhere with him, fortunately, it's a bit smaller than this truck.

Have a happy weekend. I'm going to finish up some things at home tomorrow as I'm sure we are going to be putting some long hours in at our rental house starting on Sunday. I'm assuming that evicted people don't clean too well.

Landlord Woes

My daughter, Alei, said to me a few months ago, "you know how in the movies, the mean land-lords throw the poor people out of the houses; it's sure not like that here." It's so true. Our night-mare renters moved in last June. It was the only time they have paid their rent in full and on time. Since then, in spite of two incomes, they have purchased vehicles, financed an elaborate Christmas and repeatedly eaten out - but they don't pay rent! We formally evicted him in court several months ago, but allowed them to stay on the agreement that they pay a certain amount every other Friday. Not once have they followed through. We continued to allow them to stay based on the promise that they would sell a vehicle that was given to them by family to use for back rent and that they would give us their income tax. They have ignored the deadline for both of those for two full weeks.

They refuse to answer the phone if we call; they generally ignore text messages as well. They told JD off in a text a few days ago because his text arrived while they were out to dinner! In the "tell off" he also stated that he wasn't "ready" to give us the car or tax money. So, we had no choice but to file the 72 hour notice to vacate the premise. Amazingly, they are now calling and texting asking for more time. It's crazy, wouldn't you think that if you choose to not pay your rent and break all your promises and had already been formally evicted, you would at least start packing?

I could go on and on about the lies, etc, but this is the nuts and bolts. I am FLOORED that there are 40 year old men roaming the earth with such lack of character. It motivates me all the more to instill honesty and integrity into my children!

So, now we have a house to clean; I've been kind of wishing that we sold it a few years ago when the market was good!

One of Those Days

Ever have one of those days that if your life was your job, you'd resign? Yesterday I certainly would have just to preserve my health and sanity. It started as an ordinary day, but a few children decided to really try my love and patience throughout the day. JD had a day trip out of town, so I made two trips to the court house in reference to our still-not-paying-and-very-dishonest renter. The clerk of the court was none to helpful, resulting in me potentially missing a dead-line and just standing there wanting to cry.

To top off the rough day and my pounding head-ache, our dog bit a neighbor's puppy. Reagan is a devoted dog and great watch-dog, but she took it too far trying to protect our skate-boarding kids from the puppy. Apparently, she has done this once before (although they never told us) so we really have to do something with her. Since her entire life has been these 25 acres, there's not a simple solution of invisible fencing or something. She has proven herself an escape artist when we were forced to "confine" her due to her interaction with a rabid skunk. I need to post the skunk story sometime, it makes me smile just thinking about it.

Today I'm praying for wisdom with the renter, the dog and an over-all better day!

Here's an unrelated picture of Gabriel giving Elijah a ride around the yard. I'm hauling Elijah into the doctor to get his ears checked; I'm suspecting that his previous ear-infection didn't clear up as we didn't sleep much last night and he's quite whiny.

Storage, Birthday and Spring

Since I got so much response to my storage room post (just kidding, only my friend Wendy commented about her love language of diamonds), I thought I'd add on to the post. Last night we moved the video cabinets in the storage room. Why? Because I can't take the DVDs all over the floor even though small children are not supposed to be in them!


You wonder how moving the cabinets is going to keep the little guys out? Well, because my storage room now has a door - with a lock! It started with the idea of being able to store presents without concern, but it's turned into so much more. Now the DVDs are always picked up, the soda snipers can't attack AND the presents are snoop proof!

I guess this post could also be part of the faking it post series since I'm admitting that I'm housing present- snooping, soda-thieves!

If you are bored anytime in the near future, feel free to come and help insulate the basement. These are the piles that are holding up my shelves, part two; these insulation piles are 10 feet tall and 6-8 feet wide!

On a happier note, yesterday was Benjamin's 9th birthday. I had a scheduled luncheon with my sister and another friend that had been delayed several times, so I took Ben, James and Elijah with me and we met at Chick-Fil A. The boys had a great time eating BIG meals and playing on the play-ground. My nine year old boys play in there just as excited as the toddlers. We ran some errands and I tried to make it all Ben focused and fun. Each stop held a little surprise, even Cheez -Its and gum made the errand running seem fun to them.

We then came home for Ben's requested lasagna and ice-cream cake. Oh, and presents - glorious presents. Just look at the smile on his face when he opened his new heelies. He has worn his other pair almost daily since Christmas 2007!

He's quite a handsome boy if I do say so myself.


Look at the chaos that erupted as soon as present opening was complete.

I have to add to this already long post that I'm so thrilled that it's starting to feel like spring. I love, love the fact that day-light savings time is on the way and that the kids can play outside more.

Have a blessed day.

True Love

If you've never read the book, The Five Love Languages, I'd highly recommend it. It has the ability to transform marriages by teaching you how your spouse views love. I've always been a very practical person; if I need a toaster and it's my birthday, by all means get me a toaster. So, nothing says love to me quite like fixing one of the things that drive my crazy. Nothing has driven me crazier this last year than the storage room. We built a nice big storage room, but there has been no organization and things have been piled in the boxes they moved in. To make it 20 times worse, the kids routinely dig through the boxes and leave piles all over the floor. When I was complaining about it last week, JD made it the weekend project. We unloaded the room -

Then JD had to finish drilling the holes for the Geo-thermal that needs to be run in that area.

While I took Alei to David's Bridal to be fitted for a bridesmaid dress, JD kept the kids and built the shelves that we bought back at Christmas on clearance.

Yesterday, we re-organized and re-loaded the shelves. After never having good storage, this is a beautiful picture to me!

When we use up the insulation piles on the other side of the room, I get more shelves! Oh, happy day!

Tori's Color Lessons

In our unit studies on geography, we have moved on to Africa. I pulled out a book on Liberia that I had bought a few years ago and never read. It is a children's story called, Will You Carry Me? Ben is familiar with the African way of carrying items balanced on people's heads, but this was news to Tori. She impressed us with her ability of carrying a book balanced on her head.

Then she moved on to two -

Three didn't work as well, but Alyssa joined her in the attempt at this point. Tori looked at Alyssa and exclaimed, "Alyssa, I didn't know peach people could do this too!"

Color Lesson #2:

I picked Tori up from her class at church on Wednesday night. When I asked her what she learned, she told me she learned about the Red Sea. She said the most interesting thing is that the Red Sea isn't red, it's blue; red is just it's name.

Faking It

Courtney just wrote a post on bloggers being real (http://www.storingupteasures.com/) and how it's easy to post a false "togetherness" that isn't reality. I try really hard to not present that we have it all together, because that is so, so, so not the case. I loathe the idea that people think we adopted because we were doing so well with our first four biological children that we were sure we should parent more. Our adopting has nothing to do with our parenting skills and everything to do with the fact that there are 143 million orphans that need families. When it's all said and I'm feeling very discouraged, I always come back to the reality that we are a better family than no family at all!

I'm thankful we don't have any HUGE problems, but we certainly have our share of "issues." I would love to blog on and on about my frustrations with a couple of my children that are in therapy (or need to be) but I don't feel that I can in fairness to them. Years from now, they will read these posts and I don't want extra therapy bills due to my blog! It's sometimes a tough call to post honestly and yet respect those in our lives that are are "victims" of blog-land.

What I can do is rat on myself. So, there are days, like today, that I took a shower, but never put on any make-up or brushed my hair. There are days that my kids sleep in their clothes. There are many times that my girls need hair attention for a full week before I get to it. I don't do kiddie-crafts, nor am I any good at teaching my girls to cook or sew. I really admire people who work home-ec into their homeschool, but I have a tough enough time getting my crew through the basics! I also really admire the organic Moms who feed their children perfectly and I'm trying to move in a more healthy direction, but I'm a long-shot from organic. When Elijah was born, I looked into the cute clothes diapers that the "cool" moms use, but I settled for my on-going habit of filling land-fills with mounds of Huggies. I am always impressed with the Moms that feed their family well on $350 a month, but I still spent over $1000; I really have never figured out how they do it. I'm known to say on an almost daily basis, "I'm on overload" and occasionally I do yell.

I could go on and on, but I'll conclude with a picture that says a thousand words - my school room on any given day, rest assured the rest of the house falls along the same lines.

On a humorous note, my husband read the kind words that my friend Steffany wrote about me when she gave me the bloggy award. It was something along the lines of balancing structure and still being fun. He chuckled and I jumped all over him, I mean nicely inquired to the reason he laughed; his reason was that he didn't think it's always well balanced. Great, one more thing to work on!

(For those of you bloggers who are contemplating writing a "real" post, such as this one, know the secret to controling my stress lies in chocolate hidden in my closet.)

Awards and Such

If you've never "met" my friend, Steffany, I can only say that she is a modern day activist. I "met" her when she set out to adopt siblings from Liberia. Her little girl passed away, so she raised funds to build a baby home in her name. Then she adopted twins from Ethiopia and brought home a pregnant lady that she didn't know, but needed medical care to prevent losing the baby. She let her live with her for like a year, funded the hospital bills then funded her return (with healthy baby) to Ethiopia to be reunited with her husband. She then started a group called Because Every Mother Matters which helps Moms in need - one by one. She recently helped a mother of three receive the very needed surgery to correct the fact that she had lived a few years with her uterus outside of her body.

You can visit Steffany here - Steffany

Steffany was kind enough to award me these two blog awards. I'm supposed to list 10 things that make me happy and pass the awards on to 10 other bloggers.

So, 10 things that make me happy are:

1. My salvation and my identity in Christ.

2. My husband

3. My 9 children

4. My plethora of pets

5. Good home cooking (and baking)

6. Reading blogs

7. All things Africa

8. Family trips

9. A clean house (doesn't happen too often)

10. My sister moving near us

I'm passing this on to 5 (for now) blogs that I always read:

HisHandsHisFeet -

K. is an adoptive mom of 10, two which are from the same orphanage in Liberia as my three.

Courtney at www.storinguptreasures.com

Courtney is also a mother of 10 also and always a joy to read.

BakersDozen

Renee is a mother of almost 14; she also has three children from Liberia.

APlaceCalledSimplicity

Linny will never know I nominated here since she has 10,000 readers but she is an inspiration.

Ginny

Ginny takes beautiful pictures and inspires me to appreciate all that is around me.