Making A Home

Busy

Remember the schoolhouse?  It had become a storage barn, holding all the miscellaneous things that didn't have a place in our house.  Or the things that needed to be put in a garage sale or taken to goodwill.  Or the clothes that needed to be sorted and put away for when the children are a bit bigger.

Until a few days ago, when I decided it needed to become a schoolhouse again.  The truth is, in a 900 square foot house with only one closet, there just isn't room to store all the supplies it takes to homeschool four children.  (And live among it all, too.)

I'd started homeschool planning over a month ago, hoping to get the bulk of the (copying, planning, researching) work done before the start of the school year.  And before I knew it, I had 2 card tables in my dining room, piled high with books and papers and supplies.  And some days the diningroom table was taken over, too.  That's the shameful truth.  Some days my kids had to eat at the kitchen island, or at their lapdesks on the floor, or have an impromptu picnic, because there was no room to eat at the table among the homeschool supplies.  And the year hasn't even started yet. 

So I've spent a lot of this week trying to clean out the schoolhouse and turn it back into just that.  Oh the piles.  Oh the mess.  Oh the daunting task.  I've been moving the homeschool supplies OUT, bit by bit.  I've been sorting through my craft supplies, knowing that I don't have time or energy for scrapbooking or many of the other crafts I used to do.  I saved some knitting/crocheting supplies.  I saved some glue and pompoms and google eyes for kids' crafts.  I saved paints and drawing pads for school.  And I saved my sewing supplies (though I sorted through my fabric stash visciously.) 

And I found out yesterday that with our homeschool parent partnership, school is supposed to start Tuesday.  GULP!  I need to finish cleaning the house today for an adoption-related home visit (we don't expect any news yet) in the morning.  And once she leaves, I'm going to take whatever precious moments are left before Brian leaves for work to hide in the schoolhouse to plan and prepare.  And I'll be out there again with a cup of coffee bright and early Saturday morning... the family may not see me until our cubscout meeting on Sunday night.  But I'll be ready by golly!  If it kills me!

Sam's New Glasses

Maybe I'm just biased, but this boy is cute. 

 

No change on the adoption front.  We are praying and waiting to see what happens.  We have several birth relatives "on our side", knowing this is where these children belong.  But that doesn't change the fact that this aunt that now wants them is blood... and that takes priority.  The easiest way out of this mess is to find our own relative connection.  Remember when I mentioned the children already have our last name?  If there's any way to find a place where Brian's family tree meets theirs, we're told the whole issue would be over and the children will stay here.  (Relatives are relatives, no matter how distant.)  Unfortunately, our information about the birth family is very limited, as are my geneology resources.  The other option, is to wait for a judge to decide.  As I mentioned, we have relatives that will tell the judge that the children belong with us.  We have a transition counselor and their social worker that will say the same.  The children will be seeing a counselor soon, and we are hoping (s)he will vouch for the fact that it would be detrimental to the children to move them again.  I have plenty of moments of concern at the thought of losing them.  But the fact remains, we serve a powerful God.  He is faithful.  We are hopeful.

Birth relatives have come forward...

...and they want our new kids. 

Pray?  Please?

The Eye Doctor

Today we took the children to the eye doctor.  The new kids were due for a checkup and the old ones had never been.  (H wears glasses, and we were told T was "borderline" at his last appoinment.) 

All 4 big kids had appointments, and we pretty much reserved the whole office for the morning.  They did each exam in stages, so each child went back 3 times.  Between each session, Hallie would ask the doctor "Do I need glasses???"  Obviously, she was very excited about the prospect.  Although she'd be unlikely to admit it, I think she thinks H's glasses are pretty cute and wants a pair of her own. 

When the appointments were finished... THREE children picked out new glasses.  Guess who didn't need them? 

This fake pair came with a Barbie she got from her grandma a few years ago.  When she wears them, she becomes her alter ego, who she has named "Trina."  I guess the Trina glasses will have to suffice until her eyes degenerate like she is hoping. 

Campout 2009

(I seem to be missing the USB cord to connect my camera to my computer to upload pictures.  Again.  Those will have to be added later.)

Last weekend we went on our second annual church campout.  (Second for us... the church has done it for many years.)  They rent out the whole horse camp at Silver Lake, so every campsite around the loop is filled with people we are at least familiar with (it's been hard to get to know everyone in the almost 2 years we've been attending this church, since there are two services, and therefore some people we never see!)

We shared a single-family campsite with Renee's family again.  With so many little ones to care for, we couldn't wander far to socialize, so it was nice to have a friend right there in the campsite (and lots of friends for the children to play with, too!)  On of our church deacons came around to record how many people were in each campsite, and was surprised to see a group of 19 in one little campsite... until he got to ours and found 22!!  It was unusual to have one campsite empty during the church campout (usually they are all full and doubled-up!)... but we weren't surprised that the one not chosen was tiny little campsite 25... between these two groups with so very many children (a total of 33 between the two sites.)

After the heatwave last week, the weather this weekend was a little chilly, but the campfire helped with that.  At least it only rained for a short while during the last night.  There was lots of running around, playing, cooking, eating, coffee drinking, climbing stumps, walking the loop.  I brought a few things to entertain the children if they got bored (playdough, coloring, croquet, ladderball), and didn't end up getting a single one of them out of our van!  They stayed entertained all three days.

As for sleeping arrangements, Brian slept in our 3-room tent with the big kids, and I set up a pack-n-play in the van for Natalie (baby R) and slept in the van with her, by reclining the passenger seat all the way back.  It wasn't too bad, really.  And the van did a great job of muffling the camp sounds so she could sleep.  She woke less than she does at home!

I wish she'd been so cooperative during our outdoor church service Sunday morning.  By the time the worship was done, she'd had enough of sitting quietly and started to fuss and scream, so I ended up bringing her back to the campsite.  Unfortunately, that meant missing my last opportunity to hear our pastor before we leave for the new church plant.  It didn't help that the service was precisely during her usual nap time, I'm sure.

I drove out alone to snag a good campsite early the first morning, and brought our tents, sleeping bags, camp chairs, pillows, etc, knowing there's no way we'd be able to fit that in our minivan with all 7 people.  But on the way back, somehow I was able to cram it all in!  It was a cozy ride home, but it worked.

Meeting Grandpa

My dad moved to Canada over a year ago with his wife (who is from there.)  It has taken the immigration lawyers and whomever else until now to get all of the government paperwork completed so he could move freely between countries.  So in this one trip, he got to meet FOUR new grandchildren!  (T, H, R, and of course, baby Lizzie!)

And here's a new photo of the little cutie at 12 days old. 

The Great Heat Wave of 2009

Oh A/C...

Where have you been all my life?

Temperatures close to 100 last week.  Hotter in some areas.  Crazy for the Pacific Northwest.  Sweltering last Monday night, we set out to find an air conditioning unit but came up empty at every store we checked.  Figures.  Onces we decide to shell out the money, we're a day behind everyone else in the state!  But there's always Amazon!  Overnight delivery.  It came Thursday morning.  We installed it, and in about 30 minutes we'd already dropped 5 degrees in the house.  Nice!

Add some Arnold Palmer over ice (half iced tea, half lemonade) and a quiet activity for the kids (drawing the bugs we've been studying so they can be released), and it turned out to be a pretty nice day!

The children have spent much of the last week in our snapset pool and accompanying slip-n-slide (I keep repairing the pool with packing tape... it keeps springing leaks, but is another item every store was sold out of by the time I was resigned to spend the money on a new one. So we picked up a slip-n-slide at Walgreens to go with the leaky pool.  And then there's the frog "pool" (little sandbox) that they've deemed the "hot tub"... since the sun warms it up so quickly.  It's funny to see 4 big kids trying to cram in a teeny pool.  But that little one... nope.  She'll have nothing to do with water.  Sets out screaming whenever we get her to near the pool or sprinkler (and throughout every bath, too).  So she can just enjoy the A/C with me.

The Island

We took the new kids to our family's island property a week ago.  The boys (Sam, T, and Daddy) slept in a tent, and the girls took our little (8x12') cabin.  Hallie and H in the loft, R in the pack-n-play, and me with a king sized bed all to myself!  Ah, the luxury!

The first night the rest of the family went to the restaurant on the island ($10+ a plate, I'm told, so our crew opted out).  We ate a delicious mexican casserole brought to us by our new pastor's wife.  After dinner, the children all played a game (no, not nicely... plenty of whining and fighting.)

Then we had Hallie's birthday "cake" (frosted brownies with M&Ms) and she opened presents from the extended family.

Brian took the children all to the beach the first evening.  Warm, sunny weather was predicted for the whole weekend.  They hadn't been down there long when a big thunderstorm rolled in!  I certainly didn't pack for rain and cold!  But the weather cleared up on the second day, and we got to spend more time down there, climbing around a fort (built by their older cousins) and exploring the native sealife.

 

  
(Sam is recovering, but still requires Tylenol every 4 hours... he still has throat pain and is VERY whiny.  Hoping he is healed soon!)