April 20, 2008

• New Beginnings

  

  Spring has Sprung!! We have been out in the gorgeous weather cleaning up our yard. Tons of raking done and unearthing the flower gardens. FUN! I feel rejuvenated!! I don’t have any pics of our raking because we were all working so hard. It’s amazing how much even five year old little girls can do when they are trying to keep up with big brothers!

  

  This was how much the twins worked outside! During our evening Bible and prayer time we all sit on the couch with a blanket on the cold nights. Well, Chloe and Phoebe said their prayers first and then by the time the rest of the family finished they were zonked out like this! I have never seen them fall asleep during prayer ever! Eric says they take after him. It’s a long standing joke because Eric fell asleep during an all night prayer meeting when we were in college. You can see Chloe’s little hands still somewhat folded in prayer as she is sound asleep. It doesn’t show in the picture well, but we knew she was asleep because her head kept falling over! lol You know the bobbing up and down of the head kids do when they fall asleep sitting up? I just love this photo of Papa carrying his little princess, Phoebe, upstairs to bed.

  Some of our bushes damaged from the snow are bouncing back while others have died off completely. I am pleased with what has been saved though. They certainly are liking the ability to stretch up to the warm sunshine we have been having!

  

  This is our Forsythia that is raising itself up more and more each day. If you look close you will see a bird’s nest Caleb found and there are buds forming too! I think any day we will have yellow flowers. Caleb helped Mama take the nest out carefully so we all could examine it up closely.

  

  “The Baby Birds lived right here Mama!”

  

  Jared got concerned that maybe other birds might want to use the nest this year so he placed it back into the bush.

  The fence remains a big task to tackle, but seeing that the backyard is still a pond we will tackle that later. For now we have gotten bikes out as well as started playing croquet in the front yard. We also had our first BBQ hamburgers this afternoon. YUM!

  

  Eric giving pointers to Jared and next the pic of our front yard of all the kids hitting their croquet balls.

  

  Does that boy look happy or what?! This kid ran and ran and ran in circles in excitement that he was free outdoors without snow attire. Literally, the snow disappeared as fast as it came. The next picture is Papa helping Chloe learn how to hit with her mallet. I have found that most croquet pics are not that appealing as you get a lot of unattractive buttocks shots! lol Thus the reason you do not see a pic of me here!

  The swingset remains to be a mystery as to whether it will be salvageable. Like I said the back yard is a swamp and still half snow covered so it’s hard to access anything right now. Without new babies in the future I am not sure we will need to replace it seeing that we are finding new adventures with our older kiddos. Everyone can do so much more this year! Bike riding is going to be a blast this summer! I think hiking might actually be accomplished without anyone wanting to be carried. I look forward to the new stage our family is entering.

  The only disappointing snow damage was to our good camping friend, Myrtle the pop up camper. She got her pin stripes torn right off from the heavy snow on one side where she was parked close to the neighbor’s hill! It seems rather strange to me as the other side is fine. Poor Myrtle doesn’t look so sporty any more. Eric says it can be fixed. I am just glad Myrtle’s roof held up well with all that snow! We were very consistant to clear it off. We haven’t popped Myrtle all the way up yet, but we have taken a peek inside and it appears that we have made it through the winter with no unwanted visitors, aka mice. (below are two different pics at different angles even though it almost looks like one pic— you will see the pretty pin stripes all torn up as well as the fleetwood name This is on the back, not on the side where our door and awning is located.)

  

  

  Papa gave Myrtle a good wash on the outside after a long hard winter. We cannot wait to go on our first camping trip! We actually have one tenatively schedule for the second week of May depending on how cold it gets at night. Right now it’s still going into the 30′s so we may not be able to do it because some of us can’t take the cold.

  

  Meanwhile, Caleb did a great job scrubbing the picnic table down. Remember how this was completely compacted under snow? We also found that it had sunk six inches into the ground! Papa brought it out into the front yard where it was drier.

  

  Chloe decided to “plant a tree” in our T-Ball stand. It was a piece of dead branch off of my PJM. She is convinced it will grow back.

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  As for our overseas adoption… we received a conflicting report Friday night that our dossier will be submitted on May 8th.  Uh, our dossier expires on April 28th. Looks like the Lord prepared us ahead a time for this disappointment and that our reaction of what was going on was not irrational. Seems we have confirmation now that the adoption center in Kyiv has no plans on cooperating with us.

  We do have a new beginning in the adoption realm as well! I don’t know if this will get us any where, but it is a step that we are taking. For awhile we have been watching the sibling groups right here in the US who are currently in the foster care system and ready for adoption. Our homestudy is currently getting an addendum added to it to make it relevant to a US adoption. We have already begun to contact social workers on certain children. However, like any adoption process there are no guarantees so we would appreciate your prayers in this journey as well. Pray that the Lord guides us to the right child/ren as well as a social worker who will cooperate with our dynamics of family life, including homeschooling.
        
         

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