Brthday Soccer

James got to celebrate his 10th birthday yesterday by playing soccer in the 97 degree heat - what's up with that on September 25th? Thankfully, we had some cooler weather today for his party. When we first arrived at the game, Elijah wanted to go see his "friends." Tori and Julia accompanied him to say hello to the two little boys that have become his soccer friends.

It's a good thing that James is loving soccer so much; I may have considered running for an hour in that heat as torture rather than fun! (James is in the blue.)

We are still amazed at how good James is for his first time playing. It's the only time we've ever seen him hustle or be aggressive!

One perk of having boys the same age is that they can play on the same team! It cuts back on driving to practices and sitting at as many games.

At first Elijah was yelling "go blue" from the side-lines. Once he noticed the other team was orange, he yelled, "go blue, go orange;" then he added "go Mike," (since the lady in front of us kept yelling that as well.) By the end it was, "go blue, go orange, go Mike, go Ben, go James."

Tori and Julia always want to go to the games, but they generally complain most of the time. It was legitimate yesterday, as I was pretty hot and miserable as well. As Julia whined on the soccer blanket next to me, I turned around to see Tori - at least she was suffering quietly!

I'll post more traditional birthday photos tomorrow.

Picture Catch Up

My new computer has a few glitches which have prevented me from down-loading pictures. Actually, this morning, it wouldn't even turn on for me. Maybe JD will have time to work them out this weekend; I don't know - he's cleaning carpets now. It's amazing that we've lived here long enough that the carpets really need cleaning, but we haven't finished building yet - some day...

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We have had a very productive week of school; of course, school is basically all I've done. Tomorrow is James' birthday and Sunday we are hosting a party for him, so I need to switch gears a bit.

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While we were working on school, Elijah branched into the art of toe-nail painting with markers. Nice choice of color for a two year old boy, I'd say.

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He really considered adding a splash of red to his pigs, but I talked him out of it.

Yesterday, I decided to take a quiet trip to the grocery store with only the big girls. Elijah and Julia were left at home, heartbroken, with their Dad at nap time. Here's the pictures he took of them while I was gone. I'm not sure why Julia was under the time-out bench when she fell asleep , I assume she was moping about being left at home.

Elijah picked a more comfortable place to sleep -

until he semi-fell off the couch -

I love summer, but I'm ready to turn the air-conditioner off! These 95 degree days are getting kind of old for "fall."

Blog Update

My blog has been neglected this week, as has been my laundry and other home essentials. You know it's bad when Tori whips open her drawer and it's completely empty. I have been working the last few years of having less clothes per child, but that only works if you actually do laundry. To be honest, I actually have done laundry, but none of it has been folded and put away; so a quick dig in the laundry room at least produced a pair of shorts. JD had the crazy idea the other day that we might actually fold the clothes when they came out of the dryer, but that would only work if I enrolled the kids in school - so we are on year 14 of homeschooling and wearing horribly wrinkled clothes. JD presses his own work clothes every morning; I pressed a shirt for him once about 17 years ago and when he saw it, he said, "I thought you were going to press this?" He hasn't asked me to handle the ironing since then. I do, however, cook and complete other traditional home-maker chores, so he doesn't complain.

One of the events of the week is that JD is upgrading a few of the computers. I am not able to upload the pictures that I wanted to accompany this post, however, since I can not find the camera cable. So, I'll give a book update and post my pictures later.

I just finished Red Letters, Living a Faith that Bleeds by Tom Davis and I just started Fields of the Fatherless by the same author. I am excited about reading these since he is one of the speakers that is going to be at the Orphan Summit in November. Here's a very basic idea...To my knowledge, the only thing that the Bible calls true religion is taking care of widows and orphans. Over and over the Bible describes that when we care for the least of these, we are actually doing it to Jesus. Jesus also says that when we care for the least of these, we are his hands and feet. So it's a win, win when we care for orphans; we are representing Jesus and serving Him at the same time. I certainly don't see this combination anywhere else in Scripture. So, how do we grasp that caring for the orphan is not an optional ministry, nor is it something that we need to be "called" to do? It appears to me that if we are Christians, it should be our primary focus.

I'm going to search for some statistics, but I'm sure that in America, we generally spend more on pet food than feeding the orphans and more on video games for our own children than clothing or educating orphans. This just should not be! More on this later...

Four Things I've Learned This Morning

I learn a lot from my kids, today is no exception. This morning I learned that Barbies like to watch TV; apparently The Chipmunk Movie is a favorite. I know this because while everyone was outside doing chores, I found this Barbie family sitting in front of the TV in my room. (They are supposed to live down in the play-room.)

I also learned that you can skate-board in Barbie convertibles. They are the perfect size if you are two. (I just realized how the Barbies made it upstairs!)

My third lesson of the morning is that if you are hoping for a tractor ride, the perfect combination is na-na (which means no shirt,) Tori's cool brown boots that are four sizes too big and green gardening gloves. Elijah was pretty worked up about wearing his boots or any other gloves - it had to be the brown boots and green gloves if you want to ride the blue tractor!

A side note on the na-na is that he really doesn't ever want to wear a shirt these days. He goes for it if I tell him that he can't go by-bye without one, but other than that, na-na is the way! I do insist that he wear a jammie shirt to bed, since I think he'd get cold, but that usually involves some crying!

My fourth and final lesson is that tired Mommas and sick kids are no fun on Monday mornings! I want someone to come take this crew of coughing, sneezing, snot-producers that showed up at my house this weekend and bring back my more pleasant, healthy kids!

Little Surprise

If you've never read Linny's blog, I highly recommend it. As I was reading late last night about a 5K walk/run that her church hosted to help orphans; I was thinking, "what a good idea." Then I stumbled upon a surprise, a picture of my smiling son that I haven't seen in almost a month. Linny's church is the church that runs the internship program that he is in CO for all year. It made me cry to see his smiling face - I don't know why, just because I'm a Mom I guess.

http://aplacecalledsimplicity.blogspot.com/2010/09/river-run-for-orphans.html

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!

Red Letters

Since Tom Davis is one of the speakers at the Orphan Summit I'm going to, I ordered two of his books to read before the November Summit. The first to arrive is, Red Letters, Living a Faith That Bleeds. I had absolutely no idea what the book was about, other than he is obviously concerned for the orphan crisis of today or he probably wouldn't be one of the main speakers. The introduction alone was captivating. Here's an intro. section...

The Christian church owes an apology to the almost fifty million individuals in our world currently infected with HIV/AIDS.

Those of us who claim to follow Christ's teachings should be ashamed for what little we've done to help the countless millions of women, children, and orphans who have died or are dying. Entire nations are going up in flames while we watch them burn.

Bono and the supporters of the ONE Campaign are right to use words like "crises" and "emergency" when talking about the situation in Africa. The continent is on fire with AIDS, and unless drastic action is taken, entire countries will be wiped off the face of the planet by this disease.

Sadly, the church has been slow to act in response to this crises. Like the priest and Levite of Jesus' parable, we have passed by the man on the side of the road, too busy or too "holy" to involve ourselves in lending a helping hand.

Africa is indeed on fire. But as we argue or fuss about how it started and who should be saved first, thousands more children are orphaned each day. Every hour, another one thousand children will die. Did you know that you are just a short plane ride away from a world where eight-year-old girls prostitute themselves for food?

The true state of emergency lies within the church - it lies within us. It's our problem. We can't leave Africa's children lying by the side of the road as we pass on by.

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I have no idea what I'm supposed to do for this crises; a perfect excuse is that I'm a homeschooling mom of nine in Virginia. I mean, if I lived in South Africa, I honestly would comb the public toilets looking to rescue the HIV babies that are daily abandoned there. But since we are across the ocean, it's so often out-of-sight-out-of-mind. However, God presents this crises to me, over and over. Actually about twenty times a day, as I look at my sweet Liberians, I think, " it could have been them." And the reality is, I know that those children deserve the love and respect every bit as much as all of ours.

Tip of the Day

James came up with our "short cut of the morning" tip of the day......He decided to dip the chicken water buckets into the pool, instead of using the hose. Why? Well, the hose was about five steps farther than the pool. The problem with this plan is that it leaves a bit of chicken poop residue in the pool that James' Dad cleaned out yesterday in preparation for closing it for fall. The other problem is that I really am not sure that chlorine is what my entire flock of baby guineas need to remain healthy and strong. I'm very thankful that Ben took the time to come in and ask if it was appropriate before he joined James!

This is why we say, "If you've never been told an idea is OK, you need to ask before you do it!" Some day, I pray it sinks in!

I could write a series on tips, as James is very skilled at finding valuable short cuts to his everyday chores. You gotta laugh (or I might cry!)

(I have a follow-up to the story.....Apparently, chlorine doesn't kill chickens, because Tori told me that James often uses the pool instead of the hose! Good to know...)

Hair Day - Take 200

Hair day rolls around pretty fast. My week has been quite demanding, but I really couldn't put it off any longer. We started taking out both girls' corn-rows last night, but Julia whined and cried until we put her to bed. We did finish taking Tori's out around 10 p.m.

Today everyone was involved. We had to take shifts taking Julia's corn-rows out. Then they both had to be washed and brushed. Then Moriah did zulu knots on Tori while I did twists on Julia. It was Moriah's first time even parting, and she did a really good job.

I put Tori and James to work organizing the mounds of messy barrettes and beads. (We can call that Tori's K math right? Sorting? )

Here's Julia during the hair process; she whined or cried the majority of the time. In fact, if anyone out there is praying for an opportunity to expand their patience, you can take over Julia hair time at my house. About every fourth round, she is cooperative; the other three, she wails, "I hate doing my hair; it hurts, it hurts," - you get the idea.

I do feel bad for her, she has a ton of really beautiful curls, but it takes a lot to keep it all tame.

Now, here's Julia after hair time is over. She also got to "go to chicken," which is her favorite treat of the moment!

Little Elijah was such a good boy during the whole hair ordeal; he just fell asleep next to me towards the end.

On top of hair today, I took Elijah for his two year old well check, took Moriah to Civics class, took Alyssa to violin lessons and took all the kids to church tonight. I'm planning on blogging about bigger things than hair tomorrow, but tonight I'm too tired.

Why We Only Have Washable Markers!

Here are two reasons that the only markers accessible in our home are washable: Julia did this masterpiece two days ago on her bed -

Then, the next day, she spiffied up the doll-house and the carpet that unfortunately was around the house.

What I didn't get a picture of was her legs, they were streaked with the same marker.

Her reply? Well, (with hands on her hips) I can clean it!