Family Camp - Part One

We were invited to take the kids to family camp over the weekend in the place of another family that cancelled last minute. We were probably larger than the other family, but the camp was really excited to have us come and it led to many opportunities to speak to people about adoption.

We stayed in a cabin that had eight beds, two bunks and four single beds. We had to also cram an air mattress in, so it was cozy sleeping.

The kids got to fish which was a first for many of them.



Tori holding the worm she found to fish with.

We also got to canoe, which was Selah's absolute favorite activity.

There was some spontaneous tree climbing -

There was the opportunity to do several different crafts.

Since Selah and Bella know NO fear of strangers, they were enjoyed by the nicest group of college aged camp counselors.

 

 

more to follow...

Karate

 Elijah is taking a 30 day trial karate class to help him achieve his dream of being a black belt. He isn't the most confident little guy in groups so it was exciting to watch him go right in his first day. You could tell he was pretty nervous, but he did it.

The challenge is when the 30 days are up, I don't feel real good about signing a six month commitment to anything for a four year old.

But for now, he counts the days between classes.

Reece's Rainbow and a Giveaway

If you have never heard of Reece's Rainbow, it is a group that raises money for special needs children that desperately need families. They are currently raising money for specific families that are adopting and also grants for children that are waiting for their families. Right now, there are huge prizes that you can be entered in a drawing to win if you donate. Read and enter here -


http://covenantbuilders.blogspot.com/2013/04/it-is-in-giving-that-we-gain.html

Clothes Break

 We are going away for the weekend; since it has been over 90 degrees the last three days, I decided I couldn't delay getting out the summer clothes any longer. I currently have the youngest five almost done and just have James and Ben to do tomorrow morning before I pack for all of us. (We don't swap the older girl's clothes.)

Since I'm tired of looking at clothes, I thought I'd share Julia's "Lucky Day" paper that she did on St. Patrick's day at school -

"Today is my lucky day. I would eat pizza and go to Toys R Us. I would play balloon ball. I would see God. I would get a toy. I would have a car. That is my lucky day." Julia

Saturday Workday

I've been busy enough that I didn't get our Saturday yard clean up properly documented, so I'm just jumping to the end to show you how full our trailer was heading to the dump. I pretty much decided that unless it's the new swing-set or the trampoline, it's getting sold on Craigslist or going to the dump. I've found that the single easiest way to move things is to give them away on Craigslist, then you don't even have to load them!

Here's when JD said, "whoever goes with me gets a soda". (They had to go to the bathroom first.)

This is what really cracked me up -  "bungeed" on farm tag and stick on lights on the rusting through trailer. No one would claim that we don't have class in the country!

Easter Photos -

Since we were sick on Easter, most of the children wore their Easter attire today and we took a few pictures.

Selah and Bella -

Elijah -

Julia -

Tori -

Ben -

The best we could get family photo is now the new header picture!

Finally!

 JD and I decided that the pool in the front/side yard has to go. Now that the pasture fence is going up and we are hoping to grow decent grass (I will, I will, no matter what it takes....) we just can't take the hideous eye-sore that it is sitting there. If you've ever wondered why we stuck a pool up in our front yard, I thought I'd do a quick review.

From 2001 to 2004, we lived in a normal house in a normal neighborhood, but since we decided to retire from the Navy here, we started looking for land to build on. We bought and purchased the 25 acres we now live on in hopes of building on it several years down the road. In 2004, we had some issues with birth parents of a child we were adopting. In fact, we got scared enough that we didn't consider it safe for any of our children to even play outside. We started looking at homes to rent, just to move to safety. This was rather sad for us, as we had just put in our little pool and JD had built a screened in porch and deck up to it.

After not really finding anything to rent, I got the brilliant idea of purchasing a trailer to move into on the land we were already making payments on, until we built our house. We ended up purchasing the largest double-wide they made and moving to a small clearing in the middle of the woods. Let me just say, it was ugly. The mud was so bad for so long that we literally couldn't even let the children out without them being stuck in it.

View from the front of the trailor - yes, I got goats with zero fencing.

We moved our pool as well and slapped it up in the backyard of the trailer. We also put in the swing set that still sits by the pool. Once we built our current house, the trailer was moved down the road and is currently a rental.

2007

This summer will make five years that we have lived in the "new" house. There is still tons undone, but we have never wanted to move the pool to the back because it really isn't big enough to be worth the effort. It was good with four and five kids, but isn't cutting it with almost 12 and all their friends. So, today, the pool went on Craigslist and we are going to invest in the largest above-ground pool on the market. We had original plans for an in-ground, but that money went to Ethiopia last year.

An above ground will be fine, just as long as it's in the backyard!

Fence

 The fence is starting to look like a fence -

It will move even faster when we hit the woods line and start putting posts in every 15 feet instead of six along the house side of the fence.

James and Ben hard at work -

Happy Easter

 Since we still had three running fevers this morning, we had a quiet Easter at home. Only the big girls were healthy enough to go to church. I guess the younger crowd will be wearing their Easter dresses next week. I was also very excited to replace my last year's Easter picture on the header of my blog; I will hope for that also next Sunday.

Bella and Selah were pretty impressed with the fun side of Easter. Bella is a big fan of chocolate, so the whole event was right up her alley.

I hid the kid's baskets down stairs; then since it was raining, I made them clean up the basement before we had the egg hunt down there. Otherwise, we may have never found some of those eggs!

This year we color coded the eggs. Since everyone is only looking for their color, we were able to hide Selah and Bella's very easy for their first egg hunt.

If we don't color code them, then I give them a number they are allowed to find; once they find their target number, they help a younger child that is still searching. Either way seems to work well and prevent greed and tears. 

It All Started Tuesday

 Ben woke up Tuesday morning with a cough and cold; by the afternoon he was running a 103 degree fever. While I hoped it would end with him, I started coughing by that evening. Fast forwarding to yesterday, Tori and I had to head to John's Hopkins in Baltimore and JD called to say that he had three sickies lined up on the couches. By this morning, Julia was the only one left standing in the 12 and under crowd (which is seven kids if you aren't quick with math), and JD was off to Urgent Care with James since his fever was 104 and we were concerned about strep. We had a little hope shine through this afternoon when the fevers dropped and James's culture returned negative. We all took a break from being sick to dye eggs.

Bella is one of the complete recoveries, so she was really into her first egg dying.

Thank you, Moriah, for being the egg dying coordinator

By evening, Elijah, Selah and Tori all had spiking fevers again. When Elijah's fever is up, he layers on a t-shirt and sweat-shirt; as soon as it comes down, they both come off.

I'm thinking that the majority of us will not be able to attend the Easter service in the morning, which is very disappointing. We also have a dinner invitation tomorrow night that is in "pray for a miracle" condition.

While none of it has been serious, we have had a long winter of sickness. I am so ready for spring and good health!