Prom bling

We went over to a friend's house today to borrow some "bling" for R's prom. The only one really interested in bling at our house is A and we figured my friend had more time to collect bling than A had and would have a better selection. Thanks D! When we got there Thelma Lou greeted us from her perch on the porch. Isn't she cute? Just had to share.



Have you seen CFhusband's blog? Tricia may have a new set of lungs. They don't know if it's a match for sure or not but it's possible. Check them out.

Spider pics, egg pics

Okay, R was going to feed Lillybet, aka Houdini, (she gets out of her pen and her leash) aka cabreat (Creole for goat meat-that's what T calls her) and she found this spider in the grain. Zoiks! She got a plastic container from my mom and captured it in there.

This is my cousin and her family when they stopped on their way through. This was the "funny" pic.

I never dreamed J wouldn't be home by Easter. A said she still wanted to color eggs anyway so A, R and R's BF (and me) colored eggs. We used dye, crayons, tape, stickers and oil in making our eggs.

This is BF's Spidey egg. He managed to crack the egg before he got it done.


I'm not sure who did this one, but it's one of my favorites.

And this is R's "Super Jesus" egg.

Oh, I won the mixed idioms contest on Amie's blog. How exciting is that? My mixed idiom was "Let sleeping dogs make their bed and lie in it." Thanks Amie! You can check it out on "another Amie's blog".

I hate fibromyalgia

I hate fibro, yes, I do. I hate fibro, how 'bout you? Bad evening yesterday. Woozy day today. Yuck. I'm still not sure if it's what I've come to call "fibro flu" or if I had a migraine/stress type headache but I'm suspecting both. I was pretty achy by 3 or 4 yesterday afternoon and had the full blown headache with nausea and dizziness by 8 or 9. I'm okay today though, just a little light headed. Go figure. And my new wonder drug for fibro did not even touch the headache. Boo, hiss. A came home from school and said she had a weird dizzy and nausea spell today too. Thankfully hers was short lived and a Sprite perked her up. Maybe I need sprite. No news on the adoption front. Boo, hiss again. Hope y'all are fine.

Happy Easter/Resurrection Sunday

However you choose to say it I hope your celebration was great. We had a nice service at church and then got together at my parent's house. R had to leave early for a school trip but we had a nice time just visiting and playing a game. We also celebrated mom's birthday. T is ready to get back to work and A is ready to get back to school. It's all about the social scene for her and she misses her friends. I have no idea why T is anxious to get back to work. He discovered some more stuff on his truck that needs fixing, maybe that's why he's ready to get back to work.

We watched Extreme Home Makeover this evening. T's sister and BIL worked on the house. We didn't catch a glimpse of them but his sister got her T-shirt signed by Ty and the design team. Pretty cool stuff.

Zoo Pics

As promised, here are some pics from our trip to the zoo. They had some cute meerkats. This one sits just like Oreo does.
Eww. These are bats. Some zoo keeper lady just walked right in there and hung the bananas up for them. They were flying all around her. Sometimes in the summer if we swim when it gets dark the bats will skim the top of the pool water for a drink, even if we're still in it. Gives me the creeps.

Here is a clouded leopard. I was quite intrigued by the markings on these cats.

Bottoms up! This is a duck fishing for some food.

Old goat. I think this guy needs some dental work. Those are his bottom teeth sticking out.

This is some kind of wild pig. They had tufts of fur on the ends of their ears.

Giraffe hug.

Giraffe close-up. "I don't wanna grow up. I'm a Toys-r-Us kid..."

R was quite mesmerized by the giraffes.

Car on the way home. Two little boys said, hey, let's put our binoculars on our noses. R is sleepy.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Just a post to say Happy Birthday Mom!

Cute praise leader

Want to see a cute praise leader video? Check her out at www.thestenfamilylife.blogspot.com or follow the "Our life" link under blogs I read. It's a precious video.

There was some strong wind near us today and possible tornadoes. The girls and I got into the car to do some shopping and it was 75 degrees. We were watching these amazing clouds and R was taking pics with her phone. We had been in the car for about 5 minutes and R noticed it was down to 58 degrees. Every 30 seconds to a minute and a half it would drop a degree. It was only 52 degrees when we got to the store. Bizzare. Now it's only 40.

Not much to blog about

Not much has been going on here. T and kids are on spring break. We went to the zoo yesterday with another family from church. That was fun but I had wanted to be able to take J with us. Sigh...some day maybe. I'll post pics when I can.

It's raining and we are under severe weather watches. The headache and dizziness I'm experiencing tells me it's a pretty strong front.

If it clears up a bit the girls and I may do some shopping this afternoon. R is working this morning.

That's about it for now.

Saturday (with an evening edit)

Late Sat. edit: It's kind of weird, after I wrote that (I wish I knew what God wanted...) bit I was working on the order of service for tomorrow morning and I was looking for a Psalm to read before the first song. I didn't use this one for that but I just about laughed out loud at the Lord's sense of humor when I read this one. Psalm 119:33-35 "Just tell me what to do and I will do it, Lord. As long as I live I'll wholeheartedly obey. Make me walk along the right paths for I know how delightful they really are." Isn't that hysterical? Gotta love it.

Another "no news Friday" has come and gone. It just makes no sense to me whatsoever. I wish I knew what God wanted from me so I could do it and our son could come home. It feels a lot like being punished, only I don't know what for and our son certainly didn't do anything. Sigh...

Friday morning

It's Friday once again. This is the day that the O receives updates on it's MOI files. Please pray with us for good news today of forward movement and a passport. Thanks.

Got this in an email

I got this in an email and had to share it. It's so good.

Cherokee Legend

Do you know the legend of the Cherokee Indian youth's rite of passage? His father takes him into the forest, blindfolds him and leaves him alone. He is required to sit on a stump the whole night and not remove the blindfold until the rays of the morning sun shine through it. He cannot cry out for help to anyone. Once he survives the night, he is a MAN. He cannot tell the other boys of this experience, because each lad must come into manhood on his own. The boy is naturally terrified. He can hear all kinds of noises. Wild beasts must surely be all around him. Maybe even some human might do him harm. The wind blew the grass and earth, and shook his stump, but he sat stoically, never removing the blindfold. It would be the only way he could become a man! Finally, after a horrific night, the sun appeared and he removed his blindfold. It was then that he discovered his father sitting on the stump next to him. He had been at watch the entire night, protecting his son from harm. We, too, are never alone. Even when we don't know it, our Heavenly Father is watching over us, sitting on the stump beside us. When trouble comes, all we have to do is reach out to Him.

With God all things are possible Matt 19:26

Tuesday morning ramblings

I have a mountain of laundry to do today and the washer is making a funny noise. Sigh...please just work a little longer. I haven't told T yet. I keep forgetting. It's been doing this for about a week.

I'm having some bad fibro days. I keep having what I've come to call "fibro flu" as it feels like I'm coming down with the flu. Then I sleep and I'm okay in the morning. I even ran a low grade fever last night which is not uncommon with fibromyalgia. This morning, so far so good. I wonder what this afternoon will hold.

R needed a car today so we all switched up. T has our van, R has the Jeep and I drove my mom's van. I thought I'd be nice and take it through the car wash for her. I even remembered to take her "Support our troops" magnetic thingy off the back. I lost one of those once when I took T's car through the car wash. Now I'm not allowed to have anything stuck to my car. Anyway, it had obviously been on there a while and I managed to break the top of it off. Oops. And the car wash didn't wash the back of the van at all. I was telling mom about it and she said it never washes it well. Go figure. We have the same van and it washes ours okay. Bizarre. So my good deed turned into a half done deed and a broken "Support our troops" sign. Oh well.

The girls went on their "tour" with their play this weekend. They got home last night and had thoroughly enjoyed themselves. They liked the people they travelled with, they did okay at the hotel and they enjoyed performing the plays. They both truly love the theater.

I mentioned that T got the tires on the truck. He drove it in the field Sunday and got it stuck because it wouldn't go into 4 wheel drive. Sigh...something else to fix on it.

Still no word on the adoption front. The other mom who is visiting her child should be arriving at the O today with J's shoes. I sure hope he likes them. And I hope they fit. I never dreamed it would take so long to finish this adoption. I gave birth to two kids in the time that we've been working on this adoption. 2 1/2 years is too long. Please pray for forward movement of our file. We need a passport, final DHS approval and a visa. It's been 9 1/2 months since we've moved forward.

Good news, bad news (not adoption related)

Remember in my last post I said they were calling for snow? The good news is it snowed. The bad news is it was too fluffy to pack into a snowman in the morning and mostly melted in the afternoon. Oh well. We had some fun anyway. T took R to work and then got the tires mounted on the truck. Yay! A and I tried to make a snowman and quickly gave up. We called my SIL to see if we could come over there and sled. Mrs. H gave us two sleds that looked like they had never been used. Thanks! Anyway, we picked A's friend up on the way over and she had a blow-up tube for sledding. Here are some pics from this morning. Actually the first one is from the other day when a storm moved through. Oh, speaking of storms, there was lightning and thunder with the snow that came through last night. How bizarre is that?

Sky from the other day. Of course just before I took the pic the sun was out behind me and the stark difference was amazing. I still like this pic though.
Okay. This morning A told me to hang on to the animals so she could make a snow angel. Ha! Like I could hang on to two dogs and a goat. They thought she was getting down on their level to play with them.

We have a little hill behind the house and A tried to sled down it. As usual, the animals were right there too.

It's not much of a hill so she didn't get much speed.
I think she hit a rock and rolled out of the sled.

So we decided to go over to my brother's house and sled down their hill. This is the view from the top of their hill.

Their dogs were excited about the sledding too. This is A with Bella and Livvy.

This is my niece.

She said, "Look. The boys took all the good gloves and I had to take what was left." All she could find was two right gloves. Too funny.


We were sledding in what used to be the horse pasture. Lots of horse manure under the snow. It melted enough to pack and I started making a snowball and it was about 1/4 horse manure and the rest snow. I finally let it roll down the hill and it broke. There was mud under the snow too. The kids ended up pretty muddy, at least we hope it was mud. A's friend ended up popping her snow tube. This is her coat and her tube when they were done sledding. Oh I hope that's mud.


I think I was the saddest that we weren't able to make a snowman. One of these years maybe. At least we had fun sledding.

100K, 200K

Remember when it was a big deal for the car to turn over 100K miles? Odometers didn't even have the 100K place. They just started over at 0. I remember when the family station wagon turned over. My mom nearly drove off the road watching it. Kidding. She had been watching it and then missed it somehow and caught it at like 2.

Now days cars have 100K place on the odometers. I knew someone who had a Jeep with 275K miles on it and it was still going strong. I have known multiple people who have had Honda Accords with over 300K and still going strong.

For the first several years of our marriage we traded cars often and I don't clearly remember any of them going over 100K. I suppose some of them did, I just don't remember it. We've actually had the Jeep that we have right now for over 10 years. It was used when we got it and we watched it turn over 100K and then 200K. It's at like 209K right now. It mostly runs well. It has a few small issues like the passenger door has a screw in it where the pin used to be. The driver's side door won't "catch" and stay open, it just swings closed. It has a weird leak that lets anti-freeze drip on the passenger side floor. Other than that it's in very good condition, for the condition it's in. We bought our old van used with about 80K on it. We watched it turn over. I remember telling the girls to watch and they looked at me like I was nuts. When we acquired our current van it had 180+K miles on it but everything worked. A had been calling our old van "Herbie" because of the weird things it did. Sometimes the wipers would come on without being turned on. It had some serious locking issues and you never knew if it would be locked or unlocked when you tried to get in it. If it was locked you had to turn the key just right to unlock it and then a lot of times it would lock back up before you could get in. The locks would go up and down while driving down the road too. It was a quirky thing. It also had a slow transmission leak and if it was too cold to suit it, it would refuse to go forward until it warmed up a little. The current van has 191K on it. I'm suspecting we'll get to see it turn over 200K sometime this summer or fall. Ah, cars. Gotta love 'em.

They are predicting snow for us tonight. I still want 6 inches but just like the adoption stuff, I'll believe it when I see it. R is supposed to work tomorrow. She wanted to know if she still had to go to work if it snowed. I said, "Honey, it's not like school. They don't cancel work because of snow." But if it actually snows they may open late. If that's the case I hope the kids get to make snowmen and do the jousting and potato cannon. IF it happens, we'll try to post videos.

Did you see the "Fraggle rock a bye baby" pics of Gwyneth on cfhusband's blog? They are too cute and she will hate them some day. And Tricia got to be interviewed for their local news station. Cool beans for them.

A's cat, Misty, doesn't always get along with R's cat, Sanome. In fact, sometimes Misty gets her fur in a wad and gets quite agressive with Sano. Sano has had cuts on her face more than once from Misty. We discovered that Misty needs a time out when she gets like this. For some reason she is afraid of being in the bathroom with the fan on. So we put her in there when she's too agressive and it takes her down a peg in a hurry. It totally changes her attitude. When she's in time out she meows very loudly and obnoxiously and sticks her paws out under the door. Being the humans that we are we sit there and laugh. We love Misty though. She's so funny (she's the one who sits in the stroller and drinks out of a sippy cup) and has a great personality (when she's not trying to kill Sano).

Another Friday has come and gone with no adoption news, which means another week has come and gone with no news. It breaks my heart. It was a year ago now that we got out of IBESR (Haitian social services) and had our approval to adopt. We've been 30 months in the process, 9 1/2 months waiting for a signature to get a passport. Huge sigh...I asked the blessing at supper. After blessing the food I asked for 6 inches of snow, a passport, DHS approval and a visa. T said, "'Well I guess the Lord knows just where you stand." Yes, He does. But He hasn't seen fit to answer yet so I keep bringing it up. Pray for us. This is a hard road to walk.
Amy

Hades?

Check out the "Something to make you smile from the mailbag" post on the Livesay's blog. It's hysterical, yet it fits somehow. www.livesayhaiti.blogspot.com
Amy

Struggles and triumphs

I'm struggling. But I found something to praise the Lord for. Tricia got to hold baby Gwyneth! Check it out on www.cfhusband.blogspot.com
Amy

The world according to A

I got to talk to a little boy today. He's really not that little anymore but I still think of him as a little boy. I told him that I got his shoes and that they were Transformer shoes and who I was sending them down with. I tried to get him and the two girls near him to sing for me but there was a lot of giggling and a couple of starts but they never really got a song out. When we got down to one minute left I told him that I love him and to pray for a passport. He said his usual "yes" and then asked again who was bringing his shoes. I don't know why those shoes are so important to him but they are. Too funny.

I'm still struggling with having hope to bring our son home soon. It hurts so much to hope anymore. I struggle with the fine line between waiting on and trusting in God and not being passive. I have several devotional type books and switch around a lot. I wondered if Oswald Chambers "Utmost" had anything in it for Feb. 29th. It did. One of the things it said was, "When Jesus asks us what we want Him to do for us in regard to the incredible thing with which we are faced, remember that He does not work in commonsense ways, but in supernatural ways." And it ends with, "Our agony comes through the wilful stupidity of our own heart. We 'won't' believe, we 'won't' cut the shore line, we prefer to worry on." Oh Lord, help me believe, cut the line and give up the worry. Give me hope.

I posted some pics a while back that A had taken. I called them "The world according to A". She has an interesting perspective on life. And she's a pretty good beginning photographer too. Most of these were taken yesterday when A, R and BF went for a walk in the woods with the dogs and the goat who thinks she's a dog. She has figured out how to get out of her pen consistently now and prefers to live on the front porch with the dogs. Here is some more of the world according to A.

This is looking up a tree trunk (like I had to explain that).
Moss covered ground under some trees.

If you look close there's a cabin in the center of this pic.

She discovered the close-up option on her camera.

I love this. It's looking down into a stump.

Aww. R and BF.

Here's that close up option again. I like the bright color of the berries against the plain background.

This is from a week ago or so. She looked out on the front porch to see Lillybet had gotten into the porch swing. It looks like she's smiling. Actually, it looks more like a smirk.
I may have posted this one already but Oreo sits like this all the time. We think it's hysterical.

This is from yesterday again. I love this pic. It's too cute.

Oh yes, this is one goat who knows how to get what she wants.

Here's the close up again. A really likes this one.

This is so cool. Her creativity never ceases to amaze us.

And this is my favorite from yesterday's pics. My dad has a flagpole by the pool. He has a US flag, TN flag and a Haitian flag on it. I can't wait for J to see it. I really like this pic.

In the "praise Him anyway" theme I thought I'd do another thankful list. Let's see. I'm thankful for the snow we had this week and the 60's and sun today. I'm thankful for our little church and the people who make it up. I'm thankful for my job and the people/friends I work for. I'm thankful for T's job and that he enjoys it. I'm thankful for our kids. They are great kids.

Amy

Quick post

We have been crazy busy. After our "day off" on Wed., Thursday was quite busy. The girls had plays and T, Mrs. H, and I went and watched it. It's cute. Then R came home for a while and went back to school to practice for something they were doing that evening and for her vocal scholarship competition on Friday. Then she came home and had to be back to the theater to sing with her choir for a presentation. Friday I worked all day. R did her singing for the vocal competition in the morning and came back to school around lunch. T and I went out to eat with some friends last night and then we went to Barnes and Nobles. I got two new books. Yay! I don't have as much time to read as I'd like so that will keep me busy for a while. I love that my whole family loves to read. I hope J likes it too someday. R has always loved books. This morning T is helping a friend with a greenhouse covering, R is at work and I'm getting ready to head there myself. The girls have a play this afternoon too so A will ride in with me. I need to shower first and A is using up all the hot water in her shower so I better go.

Have you checked out the new pics of Gwyneth Rose on cf husband's blog? Too cute.

Keep praying for the adoption stuff. It's so hard.

Amy