The Miller Family Chronicle

Adoption Process update

2011-12-23T11:50:00.004-05:00

I know I haven't been posting a lot on our adoption, so I thought I would give an update.
Update: there's not a lot happening.
At least that's what it feels like. We originally thought that we might be able to travel by Christmas so many months back. We knew it was unlikely but a slight possibility. Now that seems like a distant dream.
As of right now, we don't have our LOA, letter of acceptance, from China. Everyone else that accepted referrals when we did already have had theirs for a while. We finally contacted our agency after waiting for a long time and she contacted the CCAA. Apparently our file was placed in the non-special needs waiting line because when we submitted our dossier we didn't have a match. I guess our agency had to tell the CCAA that our file needed to be moved to the special needs route which takes time. I just contacted our agency and got an e-mail back saying that they have been pushing for our LOA and that they hope to have it soon. However even if we do get LOA soon, IL still hasn't approved our home study. In what has been the LONGEST process of getting a home study update EVER, I have no idea when IL will approve our home study and what kind of hoops we will have to jump through to get it approved. What we thought would be a 1 month process has turned into a 6 month plus process so far. And still we don't have approval. I am going to try to contact the state directly because going through our social worker has been pretty frustrating. However, I don't hold out much hope that will make a difference. I am pretty sure they are closed for the Christmas holidays.
So we are just trusting that God will have us travel when He wants us to travel. His timing is different than ours. It is difficult for me to understand why, but He knows and I trust Him.
So that's where we stand with our adoption. I guess right now we are hoping to travel by March or April. If it happens before then, we will pleasantly surprised.

Merry Christmas 2011

2011-12-23T11:38:00.007-05:00

I love Christmas! Most everything about Christmas-the lights, the cookies, the parties.
But most importantly I love the fact that over 2000 years ago, Jesus was born in a manger. That He made the ultimate sacrifice to enter into humanity and live among us. To be born as a helpless infant, completely dependent, yet completely perfect. This is a difficult concept for me to understand and try as I might, I probably will never fully grasp it. But, that's ok. I don't need to understand everything to understand that Christ came into our world for me. For me and you. So that we can have Hope and Peace. Not just at Christmas but throughout the year.
Thank you Jesus for entering into our world. For living among us and for dying on the cross years later so that we could have Hope and Peace.
Merry Christmas! May each of us enjoy celebrating Christ this Christmas!

Happy belated gotcha day!

2011-11-15T16:25:00.006-05:00

So I am WAY late posting a celebratory gotcha day post.

I mean REALLY late.

BUT, better late than never, right??

I can not believe that it has been 4 years since we brought our little girl home. How has the time gone so quickly?!

Ellie-2007

Ellie 2011

I can't imagine our lives without Ellie. She brightens every day of my life and I am so thankful for the journey we have made through adoption.

She's inquisitive-constantly asking questions! To the point of almost driving me nuts sometimes!

She's doing so much better in school this year! Yay!

I just got home from her parent teacher conference and she is doing great! She still has some behaviors that we need to work on, writing skills that need development, and attention that needs focusing, but she's making lots of gains in the right direction!

Happy Gotcha Day to my beautiful Asian girl!

Thankful

2011-10-04T20:51:00.002-05:00

Yay! The social worker texted me yesterday to say the clearances all came back and I picked up our homestudy today!!! I overnighted it today to USICIS so hopefully we will get an updated I800A soon! Here's praying that there's a chance we can travel before Christmas...that would be the best Christmas present ever!

So today I am thankful for...

1. Our homestudy being completed and sent to USICS

2. Being able to volunteer at my kid's schools

3. Great teachers for my kids

Adoption news

2011-10-02T19:46:00.003-05:00

So I know I haven't updated the blog in a while.

There are always excuses, but the fact of the matter is that while I enjoy reading other people's blogs, I myself don't actually enjoy blogging. Much at all.

So there it is...

Maybe someday I will enjoy it...

However, we do have some exciting news to share to all of our fellow friends in the blogosphere!

We have accepted a referral of a little one year old girl!

Introducing Phynley Xiaoxue Miller!

She just turned one on September 10. She has a diagnosis of 3rd degree Cleft Lip and Palate. We are so excited to bring her home! We hope to travel by Christmas but also know at this point it will take an act of God. I know He can work all the details out and I am trusting in His plan for the timing.

When we moved here, we had to get our homestudy updated. Our agency gave us a recommendation of a local agency to do that update for us. Needless to say, the social worker with the agency is anything but efficient and after almost 4 months, our homestudy update, that would have taken our KY agency less than 2 weeks to complete, is still not done. Because of that we may not have the time to get our I800A amended and approved.

Please pray that we can get it all taken care of quickly and that we are able to travel by Christmas. Or that I can be at peace with the process if it takes longer.

Summertime

2011-06-23T08:57:00.002-05:00

We have been busy the last few weeks. Very busy. We left IL the Sat after school let out and drove to NKY for the weekend. We had a great time staying with our friends the Lewis'. The girls had a great time seeing their girls and Ellie loved getting to spend some time with Jonah, their little boy. On Sunday, our old church had a service Sunday and our family helped package food that is delivered to hungry children locally, regionally and internationally. The organization that we partnered with is called Kid's Against Hunger and is a great organization.

Monday we drove to NJ for our annual beach vacation with our friends the Luke's. We had 7 days of fun in the sun, sand and surf. An amazing time with amazing friends!

Then I drove Jeff to the airport so that he could fly on to Boston for a business trip and I headed with the girls to Columbus, OH to visit my friend Kristen. Three days and loads of fun with Kristen and her kiddos and we were off to NKY again to visit with more friends. The girls and I had so much fun catching up with our NKY friends. The older girls had sleepover after sleepover so that by the time we got back to IL, they were TIRED!

Now we are back and I am busy transporting the kids to camps, catching up on laundry, housework, bills and groceries and hanging out with Ellie. Mackenzie has theatre camp for two weeks and Ainsley has Girl Scout camp this week. Both of them are having a blast!

Will post pictures soon of our adventures! (once I find the time to download them onto our computer:)

Girls on the Run 5k

2011-05-16T13:03:00.003-05:00

Mackenzie has been involved in a program called Girls on the Run. It's a great program that encouraged girls to get up and moving, talks about self-esteem and positive role models for girls, etc. We have really enjoyed it. She had practice 2x/week for the last 2 1/2 months and on Sunday morning she compete in her first ever 5k with me. We were up at 6 to get ready to make the trek to St. Louis for the run. Jeff, the other two girls and my mom made the trek with us to watch us run in the rain and cold. It was rainy and cold...and did I mention rainy and cold...rainy and 51 degrees.

Mackenzie did great! She ran the whole way and completed it with a time of 34:59. I think when she does the program again in the fall she can improve her time. But I have to say getting around all the girls that stop and walk in the middle of the course is a bit tricky. There were over 5000 girls that ran! Pretty amazing! We probably could have shaved off a good 2 minutes without all the detours :) We are so proud of her for competing and completing her first 5k!

Here are some photos from the day...

All of us on our way up to the arch post-run

Mackenzie post-run

Mackenzie and Ainsley post-run

Mackenzie and I post-run

This is Mackenzie and I pre-run...

A New Day

2011-05-01T08:00:00.003-05:00

I don't know why I haven't been taking the time to blog. I have the time but I would rather read other's blogs than write on my own!
We are enjoying our new area here in IL. The area has lots going on and we have begun to meet some new people.
The girls are all enjoying school and have met some new friends. Ironically Ellie is the one who seems to miss her KY friends the most. She talks about them fairly often and is really excited about going back to visit sometime this summer. We are leaning towards holding Ellie back for another year of Kindergarten. She has done well with this move but I think another year in Kindergarten for her to develop socially and to improve her writing skills would do her a world of good. The school has agreed to allow her to stay back but we have till the end of the year to make the "official" decision. Both Jeff and I think it's a good idea but we have asked the opinion of her current Kindergarten teacher too. I think he agrees but I will wait it out till the end of the year and make a final decision then. Ainsley will be moving to the school that Mackenzie currently attends and Mackenzie will be staying there for one more year. In our school district they break the schools into Primary (K-2) and Intermediate(3rd-5th). So Ainsley will be moving to Cassens in the fall. I think she's pretty excited and many of her friends are moving to the same school so that's good. I honestly couldn't have asked for a better transition to a new school system. We have been so pleased with how this year has finished up. Only 5 more weeks of school I think!

And I am slowly but surely meeting people and making friends. I love the area, the church that we have found and the mom's small group that I am attending. I love that God allowed there to be a family here that we already knew a little bit. My friend Lauren has really helped make the adjustment here so much easier! I already feel like I have connected with some of the women in the small group that I attend and I am meeting other women through volunteering at the school too.

I love volunteering! Trying to decide whether to pursue some kind of work opportunity for next year or just stick with volunteering for now. Praying for God to open doors and make it clear to me what He wants for me in the coming months too.
On the adoption front...slow going. We have to update our home study which we are in the process of trying to do. We have an agency and I am waiting for the social worker to call me back after her vacation to set up a time to come for a home visit. But I did e-mail Meg at our agency and she thinks the wait time will be closer to 12 months than 6 so it looks like it won't be till next year that we get to "meet" Phynley. I was hoping for this fall, but this allows us time to save up the money that we will need for the rest of the adoption. Waiting is always tough though! Patience isn't always my strong suit!

A few pics from the last few weeks...

Mackenzie was picked as a volunteer for the magic show at City Museum...she loved it!

Mackenzie posing the ball pit at City Museum

Ellie at her friend Emma's birthday party

Most of the kindergarteners for the Easter egg hunt. Ellie's teacher Mr. D is the guy in the photo giving the directions

Our flat terrain

Kicking Cancer kickball tournament-Ellie's teacher has the pink wig...

Mackenzie field trip to the historical Ben Stephenson house

All the girls in Mackenzie's class

City Museum-an amazing museum we took the girls to over spring break here in St. Louis

Kitchen Update...

2011-04-12T10:04:00.004-05:00

Before...

After...

And the countdown is...

2011-04-12T09:46:00.004-05:00

4 more days until Grammie I comes!

The girls are very excited that their Grammie I is coming for a visit!

She is not our first guest in our new home but she is the first family to come visit.

Back a few weeks ago we had some friends stop through on their way from Taylor University to Colorado. It was a brief overnight stay on the way there and then again on their way back from spring break. They were our first "official" guests.

However we are very excited for our first "official" family guest to come and stay!

Here are some pics of our new abode...

The stairs and hallway

The girls bathroom

Ellie's Room

Ellie's room #2

Ainsley's room#1

Ainsley's room #2

The living room

Dining Room

Main Floor Bathroom

Front of the house-yay for 3 car garage!! :)

Happy Almost 6th Birthday Ellie!

2011-02-13T15:24:00.004-05:00

So we had Ellie's birthday party this year at Chuck E. Cheese.

She has been asking for a party at Chuck E. Cheese since shortly after she became a part of our family and I have put her off the last two years so...

Here is her birthday in pictures (and not very good ones at that since I left our camera on our kitchen counter)...

Ellie and dad in the ticket blaster...

Ellie and Chuck E. Cheese

Ellie with her Happy Birthday crown

Ellie

Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of any of Ellie's friends. I used my camera phone, which isn't exceptional, to get the few photos that I got...

She had fun but she wasn't feeling great. She has had a virus all week and is still not feeling great today. She also got a bloody nose that took almost all of her play time to get to stop bleeding. We did let her stay longer at the end of her party to play because of her bloody nose and she did say she had a fun time. I was just sad that she wasn't feeling well and that she seemed "out of it" for a lot of the time.

Her actual birthday is tomorrow and that's when we will give her our gifts.

We have leftover cupcakes from Ellie's birthday and cookie cake from Mackenzie's birthday.

This is NOT good...and by not good, I mean really NOT good...

Happy 10th Birthday Mackenzie!

2011-02-13T15:02:00.004-05:00

So my eldest has turned 10! I can't believe I have a child in double digits. It feels like just yesterday when she was born...

On Thursday we allowed her to open gifts from us...

She got 3 gifts...

A dolphin pillow pet...

Apples to Apples family edition....

Just Dance for the Wii...

We did bigger parties this year since this is their last year here with friends.

Mackenzie chose to have her party at the Independence Skateway and a good time was had by all...and here are some pictures to prove it!

The pained look on Ainsley's face is due to not getting to lick the candles...

I ordered the chocolate chip cookie cake from Sam's and it ROCKED!!!

She did a great job making everyone feels welcome...friends from church, Burlington and Beechwood and I was very proud of her!

Dossier is on its way!!!

2011-02-13T08:35:00.003-05:00

We got the following e-mail from our agency on February 7th!

Dear Families,

Congratulations! Your dossier is on it's way to China! Your official DTC date is listed here: FEBRUARY 7, 2011

In several weeks we should hear of your log in date from the CCAA-as soon as we have that information we will pass it along to you. (Just a quick note about log in dates, it has been taking a little longer for the CCAA to send us your official log in dates. That DOES NOT mean your documents have not been logged in it just means they haven't let us know when they were logged in. They typically wait until they have a bunch to send us and send them out with something else(to save mailing costs). We will send out a similar e-mail once we have the LID's.

The wait time is ever changing, we do not expect it to get shorter. If we get any information we will pass it along to you. The monthly updates will have the current wait time, that is really the best way to keep track of your wait. As I said we will let you know of any updates we receive from the CCAA.

We are very thankful that all of our paperwork is on it's way! Now the process of finding a little girl that matches the description that we gave our agency begins. Not sure how long this process will take but I am guessing somewhere between 6-8 months which is completely ok with me. Right now I have enough on my plate without processing even more paperwork and thinking about traveling back to China! I need a few months to settle in to our new house and get the girls situated in their new schools, find my way around a new area, and the list goes on...

Thanks for continuing to pray with us that we would have peace throughout this move and patience as we continue to look to God for guidance on this adoption!

backlogged

2011-02-13T07:54:00.005-05:00

It has been over a week since I have posted and a ton of stuff has happened since then...

Where to start..

Last Friday night Mackenzie had a friend over and we played her new Apples to Apples Family Edition game. The girls love this game and it's a lot of fun to play, but while playing I noticed it was cold in our house. This isn't unusual as it always seems cold in our house but this seemed unusually cold so I got up to check out the temp and it was a whopping 60 degrees in our house!

The heater was broken.

Fortunately for us Jeff is pretty handy with these sorts of things and diagnosed the problem fairly quickly. He called the repair company to see if he could get the part that night but no call back. Ainsley was at another friend's house for the night and Ellie had already gone to bed, so Mackenzie, Cary and I spent the night in the living room in front of the fireplace. Much warmer than the frigid rooms upstairs!

The repair company called back early the next morning but of course were unable to get Jeff the part. They had to come out and fix it themselves because yada yada yada. So $230 later, our furnace is fixed. Pretty sure the part probably cost $25 and they hiked up all the prices because it was the weekend. But since we needed the heater fixed for an afternoon open house and we didn't have time to wait, It was worth getting it fixed. So we now have heat...yay!

That afternoon was lunch at one of our favorite Chinese restaurants for Chinese New Year. We gathered with most of our Chinese friends and had a fantastic time together. It was our last big group event before we move and they all chipped in and bought us a cake and signed a framed picture of Cincinnati. The cake was very yummy and the picture of Cincinnati was taken by the same friend who took our family pics. Everyone signed the back of the picture. We are going to miss our Chinese group so much. It has been a lifeline for me in helping connect Ellie with just a small bit of her culture and the moms of Ellie's friends have become my good friends. I am glad they will be just a phone call or e-mail away and that we won't be moving to far away that we can't come back for visits!

Everyone signed it

The framed picture, taken by Jeff Fusaro, that our

group gave to us..

Here are the girls sleeping on the sofa bed

Here are most of the kids in our group...I failed miserably with Chinese attire...

More group photos

Lovely dressed children...and then our kids...lol

A picture of our cupcake cake. I didn't get to snap one before it got cut so this is the best I could get :)

Thankful

2011-02-01T10:22:00.004-05:00

Reading over other's friend's and acquaintance's blogs, I am reminded again that I have so much to be thankful for.

And that being thankful isn't always about the earthly possessions that we have though I am thankful for those things as well.

I can choose to be thankful even in the most difficult of circumstances and trying of times because God knows me and loves me. He sees my weaknesses and my shortcomings and He still loves me.

There are days when moving seems to be so overwhelming I can barely accomplish half of what I want to do and then there are days when it's ok. But I am trying to remember that I don't just choose to be thankful on the days that are ok but also on the days that aren't so ok. My thankfulness shouldn't depend on my circumstances but on who God is...and it's a lesson that sometimes seems painfully slow for me to learn, but I will keep plugging on...

Thankfulness...something I need to remember on this very wet, cloudy and cold day.

Relaxing weekend

2011-01-30T06:53:00.002-05:00

It has been a nice, relaxing weekend. We have had very few plans this weekend which has been great. The older girls had a friend overnight on Friday but she left very early Sat morning. I didn't even know she needed to leave early and she was gone before I got up! She is the next door neighbor and they were at her house till after 8 before the came back over here to ask if she could spend the night, so by the time they got over here, I guess they just concluded I didn't need to know! So they set the alarm, woke up on their own, and she went home all by 8 am.

The rest of Sat was spent relaxing until I had to take Ellie to a friend's birthday party at Lazer Kraze. It always makes me smile to see her playing with all her Asian friends. One of her friend's turned 5 and though the entire party wasn't made up of Asian friends there were quite a few of them there. I hope that we are able to connect with a good Asian/adoption community when we move.

Mackenzie, however, was sick all day yesterday. She said her head and tummy hurt and she had a fever so she will be home with dad today since I have to oversee the kid's area at church today. Poor girl. She hates being sick on the weekends. She doesn't seem to mind it during the week since she can skip school, but on the weekends...not so much fun :( Hopefully when she wakes she will be feeling a little better.

All in all a nice, relaxing weekend. It will be our last for a while, so I am trying to really enjoy it!

Surgery??

2011-01-21T07:31:00.003-05:00

I have learned why someone else should come with me to appts, especially when those appts involve Ellie!

Ellie had an appt on Wednesday morning at the VPI clinic at Children's. If you don't know what VPI is check is out here. How it has taken this long for someone to mention this to me I don't know..but off we went. She was seen by a nurse and then by a speech therapist to evaluate her. She got to wear a cool headpiece that had a plastic visor with an attached microphone under her nose. I wish I had brought my camera! She did a great job and after the testing, the speech therapist told me she doesn't have VPI. There wasn't any air coming out her nose which is good, I guess. We continue to rule out things that she could have which is great. We just want to make sure there is nothing structurally hampering the development of her speech. So the doctor decided not to scope her based on her results. However the speech therapist recommended we get a voice evaluation. They listen to her talk, etc and then they do another kind of scope that looks at her vocal cords. She thinks she has nodules on her vocal cords. However, all they do in kids that have nodules is practice good speech and push fluids. She probably got them from all of her crying, yelling and loud talking. I will probably try to have it done, but we already knew this info and are trying to help Ellie correct her speech and drink more fluids.

The interesting part of the meeting was when we saw Dr. Saal. She has seen Dr. Saal several times before, but it has been a couple of years. He is the director of genetics at Children's. We saw him the first year we brought her home. He did testing, didn't find any abnormalities with standard testing and decided not to pursue any additional expensive testing for now. After seeing her, he was still concerned about the size of her head and the structure of her face. He ordered a more extensive chromosomal study done and then asked me to come back to either him or 2 other geneticists that he recommended in St. Louis in the next 6-9 months. He would like her evaluated by the craniofacial team. Click here to learn more about Dr. Saal. I think he's concerned that her face shape may be affecting her speech. Her jaw is too far forward, etc. I didn't think to ask a timetable on this however...I knew she needed surgery but I thought they would wait until after her jaw was done growing to do this...

When we get the results of her lab work, I think I will try to call and ask him a few more questions. Ellie heard the word blood work and was ready to hit the road! She did great though and I was so proud of her. The best she has done by far!

Will post more when we have more results...

Counting

2011-01-21T07:21:00.003-05:00

Just wanted to post a video of Ellie counting to 10 in Chinese...

I have been sick the last few days with a cold so please excuse my voice...

It arrived!!!!

2011-01-20T20:35:00.003-05:00

We received our USCIS approval!!! So excited that this paper arrived so quickly! I can't tell you enough how God never ceases to amaze me. This was a pretty quick turnaround for this specific piece of paper and I am so thankful!

It actually came yesterday but I was busy and didn't blog yesterday. I made a copy and sent it off with part of my liver and my spleen...ok..so not really...but I sent it off with two checks which equalled a lot of money! It is our last step before our dossier gets prepared by our agency and then sent off to China!!! Thank you God for helping us stay patient. Please bring just the right little girl into our lives! Love, your daughter.

For the birds

2011-01-13T04:37:00.004-05:00

So glad I kept Mackenzie home yesterday as we had a really fun girl time.

We spent the morning at the aquarium where there was almost no one there! We have never been to the aquarium when there has been so few people and it was pretty cool. There was a group of young moms with kids in strollers and that was about it.

The girls got to go to the "touch and feel" area and hang out with the horseshoe crabs and starfish until they got their fill. They also got to pet the sharks without lots of kids everywhere which was loads of fun.

Ainsley's favorite part was buying nectar and feeding the lorikeets. She thought that was great fun. Of course my camera is still in St. Louis with Jeff but I did get a couple of poor quality photo shots with my cell phone camera.

Since it was cold and windy and we were hungry, we decided to eat at Johnny Rockets because it is right near the aquarium. It was a first for us and the girls had a blast. We got to sit up at the counter and order which they thought was pretty cool! And the food was yummy! Ellie asked out waitress many questions including why she was wearing a bow on her outfit, and what that man was doing (I am pretty sure she phrased it this way too...referring to the cook who we could see the whole time).

A very fun day had by all!

Snow days

2011-01-12T06:52:00.002-05:00

Unfortunately Jeff took the camera with him to St. Louis this week so I couldn't get any pictures of the kids playing in the snow. We got a few inches of snow which always slows KY down.

So the younger two had school off yesterday and today. Mackenzie went to school yesterday and I am allowing her to stay home today against my better judgement. She has school but she is sick of having to go to school while the other girls get to be off. So I gave in and am letting her stay home.

I understand her frustration. Really, I do.

In another month or so we will be moving. The girls will all be in the same school district and therefore will all get out of school at the same time. So she will have gone to school 5 more days than Ainsley and Ellie but not get out of school earlier.

If we had stayed here, she would be out earlier than the other two by quite a bit.

This is what causes her frustration. And honestly it is still early on. Burlington cancels even when there is a hint of snow it seems. So in the next 4-5 weeks, we could potentially have several more snow days. Beechwood, being an small independent public school district with lots of walkers and no buses that I have seen, almost never cancels.

So I am allowing a mental health day for her. Keeping her home from school even though she is perfectly healthy. Hopefully I don't regret it...

2011-01-08T07:16:00.003-05:00

There are times when life seems to be moving at breakneck speed and then there are times when it seems like it couldn't possibly get slower.

Life seems to be alternating between those two feelings right now.

There's a lot to be done on the moving front, but not a lot of action happening on our house.

As of yet we haven't had a showing. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

And though I am doing ok with it all, I would like our house to sell. And not just sell, but sell to someone who will love our neighbors as much as we do!

This might be asking too much, but I still hope!

We dropped the price so we are hoping to get some action soon. We got the buy out price from P&G and it isn't good, so we really would like to get this house sold on our own without having to accept their buy out.

So while all of this is happening, I am also trying to save money for our move, which means I have been hanging out around the house a bit more. The kid's teachers have had testing this week so they haven't needed me at school. So there are moments when I feel a bit bored and I wonder...how will I feel when we move? The kids will be in school all day...what will I do?

I don't want to look at getting a job since we will be probably be bringing another little girl home from China in the next year or so. But lest I think I will be bored, I am sure I will find ways to fill my time. Painting, decorating, reading, volunteering...and the list goes on.

So that's our week in a nutshell. It seems to have alternated back and forth between busy and slow.

On our agenda for this afternoon is Ainsley's last soccer game. Maybe I will actually get pictures of this last game! And then to Lowe's to look for appliances for our new home! Mackenzie has a sleepover tonight with a friend, and they had a friend sleepover last night and then tonight is P&G's family movie night/Colts and Jet's game. Not sure which one will win out, but I am thinking probably we will tape the family movie night and watch football :o)

Here's a few pictures from when Jeff's mom was in town for a visit...

Fingerprinted again...

2010-12-30T10:58:00.004-05:00

So with our USCIS fingerprinting appointment in hand, Jeff and I left our house this morning at 7:15 hoping to get our fingerprints taken.

Our rescheduled appt, after I missed the first appt, is for January 10th, but we were hoping that we could get it done earlier.

Thankfully it was not busy today and we were able to be the first 2 to get our prints taken! Yea!!

Hopefully we get approval before we move because that would be the best case scenario.

Otherwise we may have to get it done again...which would be more time lost and more money..

Our goal is to get our approval and get our dossier submitted to China before we move.

Lofty goal..yes...

Beyond God's capabilities...no...

So if you feel so inclined...please pray for our house to sell and for us to get our USCIS approval and dossier off before the 3rd week of Feb!

On the market

2010-12-30T03:19:00.003-05:00

We are now on the market...

Or at least our house is...

The last two weeks have felt like a whirlwind of activity.

We had to have two realtors do a market analysis for us and then decide which one to list with...

Those two market analysis had to be within 10% of each other or we would have to have a 3rd realtor come out and do another one...thankfully they were within the 10%.

We chose a realtor and listed with her yesterday morning.

On Friday we have two appraisers coming out to do appraisals of the house. The relo company will average the two appraisals and this will be out buyout price that P&G will give us if we can't sell the house on our own.

We are hoping and praying we sell it on our own as they also offer a significant incentive to doing this...

So please pray we can sell our house quickly!

Christmas Style

2010-12-30T03:11:00.003-05:00

Here is Ainsley sporting some Christmas style...

I am pretty sure it isn't how my mom thought the outfit she got the girls would look...

Since Ainsley never wears anything together that was actually purchased together, I doubt she will ever wear the entire outfit my mom purchased each of the girls together...

Unless I get their pictures taken...

But the girl definitely has a sense of style...

Christmas

2010-12-30T02:46:00.004-05:00

We celebrated our annual tradition of going out to eat on Christmas Eve at our favorite Chinese food restaurant.
However, as usual, we forgot to capture it on camera!
We did capture our yearly trip to down town Cincinnati though, which was great fun! Especially as it will probably be our last Christmas in downtown Cincinnati for at least a little while.
We had fun walking around Fountain Square, watching the people skate(which we didn't leave enough time to do), seeing the gingerbread displays, the Duke Energy train display and taking a carriage ride around the city. The girls enjoyed it immensely as did Jeff and I.
Here are a few pics from the day...

Girls in front of the gingerbread display

Duke Energy train display

Mom and Mackenzie-Fountain Square

Carriage ride-I really need a cool new hat...this one just isn't cutting it...

Mack and Ainsley on carriage ride

On Christmas Eve night the girls also have a tradition of opening one present each. It is always Christmas jammies. We then go through our What God Wants for Christmas Nativity Advent Set. It is set up to do either the week before Christmas or to do all in one sitting. We usually do it all in one sitting but we have done it both ways.

We have had lots of fun Christmas memories in our home.

I will be sad to leave this house when the time comes as we have really loved this house.

Glad we have a few more weeks of making memories...

Awaited

2010-12-24T09:23:00.005-05:00

Last night we went to see Awaited at Crossroads in Cincinnati. It was amazing! What a great way to usher in the Christmas season, remind us of what Christmas is all about and celebrate the birth of Jesus. Jeff and I loved it. Mackenzie and Ainsley really liked it though they thought it was a little loud...Ellie thought it was too loud :) She covered her hands over her ears for the first part...lol. They asked us not to take pictures or recordings so as not to distract the actors and actresses, but there are a lot of video clips on youtube from past years. I thought I would post one that we loved...

Adopted

2010-12-19T06:34:00.003-05:00

I was thinking to myself just yesterday that I just can't imagine life without Ellie. I was thinking about the many funny things that she does and says that just keep us in stitches sometimes. Take Friday afternoon, for instance.

Ellie was sitting behind me in the van as we waited to pick Mackenzie up from school. She had been talking a mile a minute, which has become more the norm and which is getting to the drive me crazy point, when suddenly she says something along these lines...(and mind you I had already been laughing a lot at what she was saying and will have to give some of the back story)

Ellie-"Awww mom, the batteries to my pretend phone are dead!

Mom-"why don't you go to the pretend store and buy a charger for your batteries?"

Ellie-"great idea, mom!"

Yup..that's me...always full of great ideas!

The prior 45 minutes before we pulled into the school had been spent listening to Ellie chat with my friend Sophia and her son Jonah. Ellie LOVES Jonah. I means really loves him. He just turned 4 so he is a younger man an all. Smart thinking Ellie. Catch 'em when their young.

She wanted to text him. I explained that she can't text because well...she can't spell. Which would make texting tricky. She then said she could text Miss Sophia on her phone to which I had to explain yet again that she can't spell and that Miss Sophia doesn't have texting on her phone. It's just not going to happen kid. So then she moves on to e-mail. Can she write Jonah an e-mail. Seriously? I suggested why don't you pretend to call Jonah...she wanted my phone...don't think so! And then she comes up with the pretend phone! Yea! I love the pretend phone since it requires absolutely nothing on my part! She proceeds to spend the next however long it was talking on her pretend phone to Jonah and his mom. I wish I had recorded it because it would completely crack Sophia up..alas..

Then yesterday she comes over to Jeff and I at the table. We had just let her put in The Incredibles. She wanted to be a supergirl. But she obviously couldn't be a supergirl. Why? She didn't have a cape! Of course you can't be a supergirl without a cape! But she had the solution...always thinking...just like Curious George...

She pulls out her blanket and wants me to tuck it in the back. So, I do. She flies off. She comes back. And she proceeds to do this...per Jeff's quote...

Ellie, running around with a blanket on her back like a cape yells, "Look, I'm super girl! I can toot!" and then proceeds to stick out her bottom at me.

That's my girl!

So when I overhear people say things like " I don't know if I could ever love an adopted child as much as I love a biological child" all I can think is...you just do..

Through all of our ups and down. Frustrations. Setbacks. Therapies to the 100th power. It has never changed the fact that I love Ellie. 100 % as much as I love Ainsley and Mackenzie. And she has definitely blossomed under all that love she gets from us. From her sisters. From our amazing friends and family.

That's why we are doing it all over again. Because every child deserves it. And I can't make a difference in every child's life. But I can make a difference in just one more.

Moving

2010-12-14T05:23:00.004-05:00

What I like about moving:

1. It gives us opportunities to practice not becoming stressed.

2. It enables me to learn how to practice patience with my kids while I am also involved in practicing the opportunity of not being stressed

3. A work in progress...

We are moving to St. Louis for Jeff's new role/promotion.

We are excited and sad all at once.

I am however feeling a little crazy that it happened a few weeks before Christmas, but it's ok because I am practicing #1 and #2...

Family Picture...more to come

2010-12-01T16:33:00.004-05:00

Here are pictures from our family photo shoot. Our friend, Jeff Fusaro, took the pictures. If you are ever looking for someone to take pictures, he does a great job.

We had a lot of fun and are pleased by the pictures.

Enjoy!

Thanksgiving

2010-12-01T15:49:00.004-05:00

I can't believe it has been so long since I posted!

We had a great Thanksgiving with our family this year. My mom flew in and spent two weeks with us and just left this afternoon. We spent the first part of her time in Gatlinburg and South Carolina and the last few days here at home in KY.

We took the girls out of school for Gatlinburg which of course they loved! We had a lot of fun hanging around our cabin and playing in the stream behind it. The weather was actually in the high 60's most of the time we were there and we even got to wear capris and short-sleeved shirts. We spent a few hours driving around Cade's Cove and were able to see deer, wild turkeys and even caught site of a black bear! A day at the aquarium and an evening walking around downtown Gatlinburg. Lots of good family time which was great since Jeff has been traveling a lot.

Then we traveled on to South Caroline to spend Thanksgiving with my brother and his family. Lots of great memories and lots of great food! We love seeing their family and I know the girls would love it if we saw them more often!

We area already in full swing for Christmas. It seems crazy how quickly the calendar fills up in December!!

On the adoption front we received our fingerprinting appt for December 10th. We were going to attempt to get in earlier but honestly with Jeff's travel and our travel we just decided to wait until the 10th and make it easy on ourselves. Hopefully it won't take forever from that point on but I am fully prepared to take until the end of Jan. Hopefully I will be pleasantly suprised and have it move along faster!

Date night with Ellie

2010-11-14T21:36:00.002-05:00

We have no pictures and sadly no video but I have to say date night according to Ellie was a huge success!

We have a regular sitter that comes in on Thursday evenings and Sunday evenings to watch our girls for us. She has been babysitting for us for over a year and we all like her a lot.

She's a college student at NKU (Northern Kentucky University) and Ellie really likes her and looks forward to having her come. However, when we took Mackenzie and Ainsley out last week on a date, Ellie really wanted to come.

So we promised her that next week would be her turn.

She has been sooo excited!

When she woke this am, she was all about date night tonight with both mom and dad.

Where do you think she requested to go? Chinese food? Nope. Sit down restaurant? Nope.

She chose Burger King. Why?? We have no idea but are inclined to think it's because there's a play area...

So Burger King is where we went tonight with Ellie for date night. She had a blast!

If only I could have recorded video...

Tiger Award

2010-11-10T12:49:00.003-05:00

Mackenzie got mail today from Beechwood. I accidentally opened it without bothering to look at who it was to since they kids don't happen to get a lot of mail.

She has received several notecards in the mail from her teacher about how well she is doing which she thinks is cool. This note is from the head of the Board of Education at Beechwood. She is receiving their Tiger Award. I am really impressed by her new school and how well they do at giving praise/recognition to the students who are doing a good job.

Kudos to Beechwood!

Reading

2010-11-05T09:20:00.003-05:00

I just wanted to post a video of Ellie reading one of her very beginner books.

She is starting to get it...

Maybe...

Wish List

2010-11-04T21:39:00.003-05:00

When Jeff and I arrived home tonight from our weekly date night, this is what I found pulled up on my computer...

I'm still laughing...

My Wish List

The Son of Neptune

The Kane Chronicles Book 2

Tangled

A sewing machine

A DSI

An iPod touch

A book of jokes

A phone

A new outfit

A notebook

A dog

My OWN computer

A makeup kit

A Selena Gomez c.d.

Candy

Money

Red and white clothes

A spa trip!:)

Costumes or clothes that look like costumes

Scarves

Moccasins

High heels

Sunglasses

Halloween Weekend

2010-11-04T15:57:00.006-05:00

I am finally getting around to posting about our halloween weekend.

On Saturday we went out to lunch at the Chinese buffet. It was very good, but I prefer our other favorite Chinese restaurant. Mackenzie, of course, convinced Ellie that the Chinese buffet is better so the buffet is where we went. Mackenzie loves it because it has American food..go figure!

We did random errands and then back home to hang for the rest of the afternoon.

Saturday night was the Jack-o-lantern walk. It was a cool evening but not frigid and therefore the walk was packed. I have never waited in such long lines before. But the girls had a lot of fun anyway.

Sunday we spent the morning at church and then went trick-or-treating in the evening with some of the neighbors. The girls loved getting their costumes on and were all ready well before it was time to go trick or treating!

Here are some pics from the weekend...

kissing pumpkins

Super Mario Pumpkin

Mackenzie and Ellie...not sure what Ellie's odd look is about...

Daddy thinks the flash is too bright...

Mackenzie and dad

All three girls together

Minnie Mouse

army girl

Anne Boleyn

Ellie

2010-11-01T18:30:00.005-05:00

I wanted to post a bit more on Ellie in commemoration of her 3rd gotcha day with us.

I can't believe where the time has gone in the last three years. Where we were three years ago and where we are today...it's almost incomprehensible.

I remember seeing Ellie for the first time in China and shutting down myself, completely overwhelmed. Looking back with the advantage of time, I can completely see how I could have handled the first few days with Ellie differently, but in the midst of uncertainty about what could be "wrong" with her, I just shut myself down emotionally. It took a couple of days, the working of the Holy Spirit and lots of tears to get me to the place where I knew Ellie was ours, rain or shine, easy or difficult, and that we would not be turning back. And what a ride it has been!

I can't imagine my life without her in it. She has changed my world, my perception of special needs and my desire to be the difference in the life of one orphan. She is a trouper. She loves people, is outgoing and friendly and continually makes us laugh!

Our life would be incomplete without Ellie in it. I am so thankful God let us into the unknown to adopt Ellie. It is because of Ellie that we have decided to head back to China to adopt another little girl for our family.

Without a family to love her, intervene and advocate for her, I can't imagine where she would be today. Thinking about it brings tears to my eyes and I wish I had the resources and strength to connect all kids with loving families. But all we can do it take the step of faith that God has called us to take and continue on the journey that He set our family on.

I look forward to the day when we can announce our next little bundle of joy!

Gotcha Day 2010

2010-10-30T10:31:00.003-05:00

So I will post more on Ellie later, but today is the day we are celebrating Ellie's gotcha day-the day she became part of our family!

Her actual gotcha day is Halloween and we have learned in the past that somehow that day gets very busy since it is often during the week. So we usually celebrate the day before.

She gets to pick out where we go for lunch and it is always a Chinese restaurant.

This year Mackenzie heavily influenced the choice by asking Ellie leading questions that would get her to agree to to where Mackenzie really wanted to go.

Mackenzie then sent me an e-mail that said..."please can we go to the empire buffet?"

This is the picture that she attached to the e-mail....

Fall Festival Parties

2010-10-29T07:25:00.004-05:00

I am heading up to the school today for fall festival parties.

Ellie decided to dress as an elf and Ainsley as a rock star diva.

I will get to go to Ellie's party and then do the parade of characters walk.

I won't be able to be at Ainsley's party since I have to pick up Mackenzie from school, but that is ok with her since I will get to walk with her for the parade.

Kinman Farms

2010-10-24T07:28:00.006-05:00

The whole family went to Kinman Farms yesterday and had lots of fun! A great fall day to go to the pumpkin patch and corn maze! This was the first time we had gone to this specific farm in the fall and the kids liked it. I think I like the Union Corn Maze better but we still managed to have a blast :)

A small petting zoo, a hay ride, a corn maze and pumpkin picking are all lots of fun in the fall for all ages!

Columbus Half Marathon

2010-10-22T07:06:00.002-05:00

I was hoping to have photos to post of me but I haven't received them yet so I figured I would go ahead and post without photos. I spent Saturday and Sunday in Hilliard/Columbus for the Columbus Half Marathon. I had been planning to run this event for the last 4-5 months and it was the culmination of 12 weeks of training. I was sick all last week which put a damper on my training, but I was determined to move forward.

So on Saturday I drove to Columbus with Ainsley and picked up my race packet. We then drove to Hilliard where we spent the rest of the day/evening with our friends the Nelles. Kristen invited Ainsley to come and play with their daughter for the day/overnight. The girls had an absolute blast! So much fun! I had a good time visiting and hanging out with Kristen too.

I got up early Sunday morning after a VERY restless night of sleep and honestly didn't feel that great. I got to the start line with no problems and was able to run my first 10K well, but at mile 7 I started not feeling well. I had to stop briefly for a cramp but when I stop it seems to slow me down and I just didn't feel great after that. All in all I am glad that I ran it since I trained so much for it but I didn't meet my goal which was to get under 2 hours. However I did improve my time from 2:22 to 2:08 so that was all I could ask for I guess. Maybe I can get under 2 with my next one! The Columbus half was not nearly as fun as the Disney princess run. But then I guess everything Disney is probably lots of fun. Columbus seems geared for serious athletes of which I don't consider myself one. But it was definitely worth running. I will have to look for another one to run next year...or maybe a triathlon will be next...who knows!

When I get the photos of me from my friend I will post them.

Deer

2010-10-15T15:58:00.003-05:00

We have seen a LOT of deer lately hanging around our neighbor's houses. Ainsley has been very diligent at trying to capture them on film.

She has actually gotten some good pictures.

Ready to run

2010-10-15T15:46:00.003-05:00

Well I am about as ready to run as I could be I guess.

I have been battling a cold all week which is a bit of a bummer but I feel like I am on the mend now, so hopefully I will feel even better by Sunday.

I am taking Ainsley with me and she gets to hang out with my friend Kristen's daughter, Audra. They play well together and it will be fun for her to get some time away with just me.

So to compensate for being gone with Ainsley all weekend, I will be getting up tomorrow and taking Mackenzie out to breakfast. We are then going to pick out stuff to place in shoeboxes for her Operation Christmas Child class project. She is so excited about doing this as it is the boys versus the girls :)

Ainsley and I will head to Columbus tomorrow afternoon, early enough for me to get my race packet, and then get to Hilliard for dinner.

Bright and early Sunday morning I will be up and getting ready to run. The half and full both start at 7:30 which is actually later than when I normally run for my long runs. I am usually up running by 6 and done by 8 so hopefully it isn't too hot at 9:30 or so when I finish. I would love to get under 2 hours but honestly, I completely my last half in 2h 22min so under 2 would be a pretty lofty goal. My aim is 2h 15min or under.

Any prayers for me while I run would be appreciated!

This was me after my first half marathon in March 2010. Sadly I will not get to see my friend Jane at this one...but hopefully I won't be as sore either!

Days..they are a passing...

2010-10-06T08:10:00.003-05:00

So not sure where my time goes exactly, but it sure does seem to fly by!

We finished our last meeting with our social worker last Friday. Now we just live in wait mode for the next 18 months of our life I think...with a little paperwork thrown in for good measure. It is up to her to write up our Home Study and send it off with our paperwork and $ for our I800A. Apparently this has been averaging 4 months. I am going to send off all of our paperwork and "stuff" for our dossier to CAWLI today. So our next step will be getting our fingerprints taken when we receive our notice.

In other non-adoption related news...

Mackenzie made the academic team at Beechwood and is very excited about it! She had her first practice on Monday. She is also getting evaluated for GT. So we shall see how things progress with that also. I have no idea how Beechwood handles their gifted and talented program but I am looking forward to finding out. She has been doing well with school for the most part. Still a big adjustment responsibility wise but she is making strides.

Ainsley is loving school. Or at least the parts of school that involve either hanging with friends or eating. Everything else is non-essential in her opinion. If she has to pick something "academic" that she likes, it's math. I am still working on learning what motivates Ainsley. She does ok in school but doesn't particularly care about all the academic stuff. She does seem to do well with math which shouldn't be shocking since her parents are math geeks. She has started to like to read a little bit more than she has in the past which is encouraging too. She really enjoys gymnastics though and is doing well.

Ellie. Where to begin with Ellie. We are in the process of getting an OT eval from Cincinnati Occupational Therapy Institute (COTI). She has had her two appts and now our formal sit down and talk about it appt is next Monday. We shall see what we find out and how we can best help her succeed academically. She is struggling in Kindergarten a bit. I am not sure what to do about it. Her teacher requested a meeting so I need to set that up today. Her fine motor skills are atrocious because we haven't had the time and/or therapy visits enough to work on OT. When we brought her home, we focused primarily on speech and PT because those were what seemed to need the most work. Speech will be a major issue for years and years. She is making progress but it is very slow and seems to take a lot of time. She also is still behind her peers socially and I think keeping in kindergarten 2 years honestly might have to be the plan. It feels like it is taking forever, but there's no way to force "catch up" that I can find. She still fusses at the teachers on occasion, gets worked up over sirens and lots of loud noises (we have the OT can help us with some of her sensory issues also) and in general is just behind her peers in how she responds to life. I wish I knew how to help her better but right now I am doing the best I can and that's all I can do. I feel that between working and her therapies, I have very little time to actually spend "helping" her work on her letters, numbers, pre-reading skills, coloring, speech, etc. Her OT will take up all the time I have on Monday before gymnastics; I work Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Wed is speech therapy before picking up the older two and Friday we usually get together with her Chinese playgroup. That leaves evenings but by then I am usually busy helping Ainsley with her school work, cooking and cleaning up from dinner and starting the bedtime routine.

And we are adopting again...why?? How do other moms make the time for everything they do and have 6 kids? I have no idea but if anyone has any helpful suggestions please let me know because I sure need them!

King's Island

2010-09-22T08:52:00.005-05:00

Saturday was our annual trek to King's Island for P&G day. We decided to get an early start and the plans were to spend all day and evening there, staying for the fireworks. It was a good plan in it's origination but not in its application. By 8 pm all of the kids were exhausted and I knew that there was no way we would be able to make it to 10 pm and the fireworks. They were sad that they would miss the fireworks but there's always next year, right?

The girls had an absolute blast all day and did a great job. I stayed with Ellie most of the time because well..I don't ride rides! Jeff loves the roller coasters so her took the older two off and did more of the big rides. Mackenzie was tall enough for everything, but Ainsley wasn't tall enough for several of the rides. Jeff got into several "discussions" about this because he said that she was 46 inches or however tall she had to be and they said she didn't quite reach it. Apparently she should have worn taller shoes! But she was still able to ride many of the rides, just not the big roller coasters that she wanted to go on. Mackenzie was able to ride the big roller coasters but didn't want to this year. She rode some but refused to go on the really big ones. Ainsley is hoping next year she is tall enough!

All in all a very fun day! We packed our lunch and came out to the car to eat it since technically you aren't supposed to bring food in to the park. We bought dinner at Chick-fil-A. The girls really like Chick-Fil-A and so do I but I find it to be more expensive than say Wendy's and at King's Island it cost us a whopping $42 and we only got waters!! It blows my mind what they charge to eat there, but since we only go once a year and we don't pay for our tickets into the park, I figure it is a small price to pay for fun :o)

Home Visits

2010-09-17T04:31:00.002-05:00

Yesterday we had our first home visit with our home study agency. She met with us and did a short interview with both Jeff and I. I made a copy of our last home study which I think was helpful. She was able to ask update questions and move quickly through the process. Things went smoothly and we were done earlier than anticipated so that was great. Now it's finding a time to meet with her again that seems to be the daunting issue. She has to meet with the girls and us. She doesn't come up here very often and to meet with the girls the weekends would be preferable. She had this Saturday available but we are going to King's Island on Saturday. Then she's busy for the next 4 weekends. I am busy the weekend she suggested and on it goes. I may pull the girls from school for a day and try to drive to Lexington and meet with her. It slightly frustrates me that we can come so far only to have to wait to meet for another month and delay the process so long just because the agency is so far away. I am trying to be patient, but she informed me that the I800 process, which is next, has been taking 4 months. So it looks like the earliest we would be DTC would be Feb or March. I wish it wasn't so far away! But I guess everything to this point has gone along smoothly so I really shouldn't complain at all. Just pray that I can be patient. I got my physical on Tuesday. Hopefully I can pick the paperwork up on Monday and that it is filled out correctly. China is very detailed about how the form should be filled out. I had to get lab work done so I also had to go in on Wed am to get blood drawn. Jeff has his physical Thursday of next week and I think he is going to try to get his lab work done while he is there. I think the only other thing we are waiting on is our PA child abuse clearances and my passport.

Nothing too exciting this week on the home front. Jeff was gone Monday-Wednesday. He's been traveling a lot the last few weeks. I am trying to convince him to stay the next two weeks because he is gone for a week in 3 weeks and he has been gone 3 days of each week for the last 4 weeks I think. I volunteered at the girls' school for picture day on Wed and then today I will be volunteering for health check day. So it means I have been pretty busy this week too. Mackenzie has early dismissal today so I have to pick her up extra early and she likes this! The high light that we are looking forward to is King's Island Day on Saturday! It is P&G's annual day at King's Island and we are looking forward to lots of fun, fun, FUN! The girls are ecstatic. I don't ride most of the rides but it is a lot of fun to watch them.

Hopefully I will get some good pictures to post.

Sorry I haven't taken out my camera in recent days.

I will do better!

Paperwork

2010-09-06T05:14:00.003-05:00

I remember now what so easily seems to fade into the background after you adopt.

Paperwork. And lots of it!

I have been working on all of the paperwork that is required for us to proceed with adoption #2.

I don't think much has changed in the way of paperwork, I just think that once you bring your child home you forget about it.

But that's what I have been busy doing. And there's a feeling of accomplishment in me that I am close to having all that I can gather together. Apparently I let my passport expire so I have to get a new one.

Left to do on our list before we can start our homestudy:

Physicals for Jeff and I

Physicals for the girls-I think I can actually just bring in the form and have the docs fill it out if they have had a physical in the last 6 months so this is what I will try to do.

Verification of Employment for Jeff-I already have mine

Waiting on letters of recommendation from 2 people

New online Hague Training for both Jeff and I

Wait for background check/child abuse clearances to come back

Pick up the girls immunization records

Once we get all that completed, I can call the agency that will be completing our homestudy and set up a time to meet with the social worker. I am hopeful that we can get through our actual homestudy quickly! Once that's done we can get all of our paperwork together and submit for our I800A, which we need with all the new Hague Convention rules. The I800A is our USCIS/INS approval that shows that according to the US we are ok to adopt. The technical name for it is the "Application of Determination of Suitability to Adopt a Child from a Convention Country."

I am hoping to have all of this completed so that we are DTC (Dossier To China-this means all of our paperwork has been sent to China) by early December.

Like Dad

2010-09-02T15:12:00.003-05:00

Here are a few pictures of Ellie as she puts it "being like dad."

We have had a busy week it seems. School has gone well for each of the girls. Ellie still manages to tell me she is sick every morning to try to get out of going to school, but once she gets there she loves it. Both Mackenzie and Ainsley have had good weeks too. Ainsley and Ellie have started back at gymnastics on Mondays and Mackenzie starts back at theatre after Labor Day.

We have been trying to keep more nights free so that we are not running around as much as we have in the past. I have to say that I am liking it! The girls like being home and not running around and so do I. We may have to cut gymnastics for one or both in an effort to save money for the adoption. I am trying to figure out all the costs we can cut out of our budget to help pay for another adoption. I like to keep them active and wish they liked cheaper sports!!

A little sick...

2010-08-28T12:32:00.006-05:00

Ainsley stayed home from school on Tuesday.

Honestly she could have gone but...

102.5 fever the night before....

...and a 100.5 the morning of school...

So I kept her home...

Based on the self-portraits, she doesn't look too sick to me...

Crazy Hair

2010-08-28T12:22:00.002-05:00

These pictures don't do justice to Ellie's hair this morning.

But it's the best I could do...

An E-mail...

2010-08-25T09:59:00.003-05:00

I wanted to share an e-mail we recently received from one of the large group teachers involved with our Children's Ministry.

I am sharing it with her permission.

Often I forget to celebrate the amazing things that God has done in the lives of my kids, especially Ellie. She has come so far, but often I forget this and focus on the things she still needs to improve on. Her personality is so extraverted and mine is right in the middle and there are times (many of them to be exact) when I want to try to shush Ellie, calm down her exuberance at life and in general just want her to be more like me. I am ashamed to admit it because God has created each of my kids and their differing personalities. He loves that we are all different yet we make up one body if we trust in Him.

This letter reminded me to take every moment and celebrate what He has done in Ellie's life and to celebrate who He created her to be...

Jeff & Stephanie:

Each month when I’m in CrosswayKids I try to recognize a child who is doing something special or out of the ordinary--showing leadership, or helping others out, being a peacemaker, participating enthusiastically, just something out of the norm that stands out. Then I also email his/her parents to brag on their child.

This month, that child was Ellie. Ellie made my day yesterday!! It was her first time in the elementary large group and I have no doubt that she had a wonderful time.

Since you both work in CrosswayKids I don’t need to tell you how challenging it can often be to get some of the kids to participate in worship. But not Ellie!! Ellie was dancing and singing her little heart out and when worship was over she turned around to me and said “I want to do it again!”

Before the lesson, I had all of the kids introduce themselves since we had new ones in the group... some mumbled their names under their breath, but Ellie introduced herself to the group loudly and clearly.

She paid attention during the lesson and participated very enthusiastically!! When I asked questions she always raised her hand to answer, never just shouting out. As an ice breaker to draw into a bigger point, I asked the kids what their favorite breakfast food was. Apparently the kids loooove breakfast food because everyone wanted to answer. So I was going around the room letting everyone say their breakfast food, Ellie was waving and shaking her little hand in the air, very excited, but she never answered until she was called on. (By the way, her favorite breakfast is toaster strudels!) :-)

Ellie rocks!!!

I am excited that Ellie has moved up to the elementary group, I really look forward to watching her grow and learn in Crosswaykids!!

donna

Thanks Donna!!

First Day of School

2010-08-20T15:20:00.004-05:00

Well we have completed our first two days of school and overall I think it went great!

There were of course a few glitches and crazy moments but all in all I think the kids had a fantastic beginning of a new school year!

Ainsley and Ellie seem to love their new teachers and have had a lot of fun already. I knew they would like their teachers because I know both of their teachers. Mackenzie and Ainsley both had Mrs. Baker for kindergarten and she is awesome. Mackenzie had Ms. Quinlan for 1st grade and that is who Ainsley now has for 2nd grade. Looks to be a great school year.

Mackenzie was the wild card, starting a new school with new teachers and all that involves. I honestly was pretty nervous for her, because she was a little nervous on the first day. Beechwood doesn't have a meet the teacher night and there was construction going on in the school so we didn't even get to take a tour of the new school. She did great however and I am so proud of her. When she got into the car after the 1st day, she didn't stop talking the entire 25 minutes it took to get to her sister's school! She seems to love her new teacher and loves all her new classes and the fun stuff they get to do! I am ever so thankful!

I myself and loving my new schedule. I am working Tuesday and Thursdays and then have Mon, Wed and Friday mornings left to do stuff I need to get done and volunteer. Looking forward to a great year of school!

Adopting

2010-08-16T08:47:00.002-05:00

Well here's the big news of the last few weeks. We have decided to adopt again! I have been waiting for God to lay it on Jeff's heart to adopt again. I told Jeff on our flight home from adopting Ellie that we would adopt again but it has taken a while to get there for both of us, really.

Parenting kids takes a lot of time and attention! But then you throw in one that has some special needs and time seems to fly right out the window! But I think I have known all along that I wanted to eventually do it again. We haven't made a final decision as to all the specifics though we certainly are leaning towards adopting another girl from China.

We have loads of decisions to make in the coming weeks, but will keep you posted as we go along.

This new journey is especially exciting because we don't have the money saved up! Not sure how God will choose to bring it in but am certain that if He wants us to do this than the money will be there! Can't wait to watch amazing things happen!

How does time...

2010-08-06T05:46:00.002-05:00

...fly by so quickly!!

If you can't believe that it is almost time for school to start than please join me in my amazement!

We have had such a fun, busy summer that it seems like it can't possibly be time for school to get underway yet again.

As the week finishes up, I think the sitter will be taking the girls somewhere fun today. I spent yesterday and today at the Willowcreek Leadership Conference via the simulcast. It has been a great learning experience. I always love listening and learning new things from some great and amazing leaders of our time.

On the schedule yesterday was Bill Hybels, Jim Collins ( he was awesome), Christine Cain ( she was AMAZING), an interview with Tony Dungy (pretty good), Adam Hamilton (good and helpful info), Dr. Peter Zhao Xiao and Andy Stanley. Unfortunately I think Peter Zhao Xiao went longer than anticipated and we had to leave before Andy Stanley spoke which was sad! But still some great leaders with some God-given insight!

On tap for today are Jef Manion, an interview with Terri Kelly, Daniel Pink, and interview with Blake Mycoskie (really looking forward to this one...he's the founder and CEO of TOMS shoes, a company that for every pair of shoes a consumer purchases they give a pair away to a needy child), and interview with Jack Welch, TD Jakes and then Hybels with closing remarks.

Looks to be a great challenging day! It is on central time, which means that we don't get to eat lunch till close to 2 and I don't get home to eat dinner till 7. This is very late for me...probably need a power breakfast :)

Weekend activities

2010-08-02T05:09:00.002-05:00

Our weekend was pretty low key but we managed to throw in lots of fun too! Friday night we went to the pool and had a really good time. That was our first time at the pool in at least several weeks because of vacation. It was nice to hang out as a family. Jeff was gone this past week on a business trip so the girls we glad to have daddy back too.

Saturday morning we just spent around the house relaxing and doing some yard work. The girls played with a neighborhood friend and then we headed out to do some shopping, eat dinner and go bowling. They were very excited about the bowling as we haven't done that in a long time. However the evening really turned into a comedy of errors on my part! We had some landscape needs to get at home depot, a few P&G coupons to use before the expired, pick out a camera for Ainsley with her birthday money and school supplies for the girls. Then the plan was to go get new running shoes for Jeff and I at the specialty running store in Newport. We got everything we needed to get done and then drove to Newport, which is about a 25min drive. We got there, found parking (which is no easy feat at 5 pm in Newport) and then found out that the store closes at 4:30! Grrrr! Who closes at 4:30 on a Saturday night?? So decided to get dinner since we knew there would be a long wait at the restaurant we wanted to go to.

After a very yummy dinner out Outback (thanks to gift cards), we headed to the bowling alley. We had coupons for bowling and it should have been a very inexpensive outing all things considered. But no...I didn't read the fine print on the coupon (which honestly I should have because it wasn't so fine..)! They can't be used after 6 pm. Of course the bowling alley doesn't open for the public till 5 so that gives you an hour in which to actually use the coupon!! But since the girls were looking forward to it so much, we decided to just spend the money and bowl. We get our shoes and ball and off we go! They put the bumpers up for us since we had the girls and they had a lot of fun. Ellie lost interest about halfway through but I still had her come up and bowl. As a lot of you know, she is pretty weak. She has made lots of progress but still her arm strength is not nearly where it should be. So essentially she placed the ball down, pushed it and 4 min later it arrived at its intended destination! So I was helping the process along, giving it a little push along with her push to cut the time down to 1 min. I missed the extra push on this specific occasion and it started trickling down the alley VERY SLOWLY! I thought for certain I could grab it before it got too far and give it another push. NOT A GOOD IDEA! Not 2 steps in and I was laying on the floor on my back in some pain and very embarrassed. Had we had a video camera there, I am pretty sure I would have been a winner on America's Funniest Home Videos. Needless to say, I am still sore today! I was however the winner at the end of the night so apparently it didn't incapacitate me too much :)

On Sunday we headed to the creek which is one of the girls' favorite destinations. We spent a couple of hours there and found a soft shell turtle which was pretty cool! They had a great time. I didn't bring my camera but once I load Ainsley's pictures onto our computer I will try to post 1 or 2. I think she might have taken 30! Then of course it was off to church. For any of you who don't know, our church meets in the afternoons right now because we are renting space from another church who meets in the morning. Dinner at Chipotle with friends, a friend overnight last night completed the weekend festivities. We will be celebrating Ainsley's birthday Tuesday night by letting her have a fried of two over and then heading to Chuck E. Cheese Wednesday morning. I have a pretty busy but fun week ahead. Today is pool day with lots of cool friends! Tomorrow I work all day and then have a cell group pool party at night. Wednesday is Chuck E. Cheese in the am and then speech in the afternoon for Ellie. Thursday and Friday I am going to the Willowcreek Leadership Conference in Cincinnati via simulcast. It should be a really cool event! I went last year and loved it!

Training

2010-07-31T08:11:00.003-05:00

So I have started training for the Columbus Half Marathon. I figured trying to do 1-2 half marathons a year would keep me in shape and the Columbus Half is close by, cheaper than Disney and most importantly FLAT, which is my number 1 requisite!

I am in week 1 of training using Hal Higdon's Intermediate Half Marathon Training Guide. Tomorrow will be 5 miles. Today I ran 3 in about 30 min. My goal in training for this marathon is only to beat my last time of 2:21:36.

If anyone is interested in joining me, let me know!

Ainsley's Birthday

2010-07-31T07:43:00.007-05:00

I forgot to mention that while we were in Maine we celebrated Ainsley's 7th birthday! I can't believe she's already 7. Where does the time go?

We did a big family celebration and she had a great time with grammie's and grampie's, Aunts, Uncles and cousins! It doesn't happen very often that my girls get a family birthday party since we live so far away from family. Ainsley seems to be the one that gets it most often since Mackenzie and Ellie's birthdays fall in the winter and we don't travel to Maine in February!

She is going to have a couple of friends overnight here and then to Chuck E. Cheese when I can find the time to arrange it, but I wanted to post at least a couple of birthday pics!

I didn't get a good picture of Rian. At the party she was in her car seat sleeping and the pics didn't come out that clear. I have no idea how I didn't get another picture of her! Rian is around 3 months and is a cutie! Her cousin Jordis is around 6 months and adorable too!

All the kids together! You can't see Conner since he's hiding behind his sister Rian

Here's a picture of Conner kissing a fish. He taught Ainsley to do this too!

Cousins Conner and Lexie

Lexie :)

Ainsley with some of her birthday gifts...(she got mostly gift cards so that we wouldn't have to pack up a lot of stuff...)

The cake! I meant to have them write on it but well..it was a busy day! Ainsley didn't mind :)

Ice cream cake is yummy!

Ainsley's birthday hat that she got from Grammie I :) Too Cute!

A blog worth checking out

2010-07-29T11:56:00.002-05:00

I love reading Perry Noble's blog. He is the pastor of Newspring in Greenville, SC.

He offers a lot of insight, encouragement and often a whack upside the head.

His blog is definitely worth checking out.

www.perrynoble.com

A post that he wrote yesterday entitled Why I Believe You Can Do Exactly What God Has Called You To Do spoke to me.

Here's a portion of it. If you want to read the rest, check out his blog.

Why I Believe You Can Do Exactly What God Has Called You To Do! July 28, 2010

I believe you can do exactly what God has called you to do!

We serve a God who is a MASTER at calling those who are not “qualified” to do things that seem “impossible!”

I believe that when a person becomes obsessed with the character of God by reading the Word of God and then gets empowered by the Spirit of God…that person is unstoppable and his/her potential is unlimited as long as they will dare to continually follow Jesus and refuse to play it safe! (See Zechariah 4:6-7)

(A quick note on this…you’ve GOT to make sure you’ve heard from God and are not simply getting ready to do something and then begging Him to work!)

I believe God puts dreams and visions in our hearts that are so HUGE that it causes great desperation for HIM and HIS power…thus leading to the world seeing what HE can do through us rather than what we can do “for Him!” (The bigger the revelation the greater the desperation!)

I believe we are all GIFTED....

Check out his blog for the rest of the post!

It spoke to me specifically because I am wrestling with what God wants of me right now.

I desire to be used by God in life changing ways. Life is WAY to short to waste time on things that don't really matter. It is just a matter of seeing what the next step is...I am glad I am not alone on this journey called life and that He is with me all the time.

Amazing!

Home, sweet home

2010-07-27T07:35:00.005-05:00

We are home! Have I ever mentioned how much I love my bed? I do. I absolutely love my bed.

We had a great trip to Maine, had lots of fun times and made lots of great memories.

Now it is back to real life and getting the house back in order.

I have started the laundry, but desperately need to clean the house.

I am pretty sure that will have to wait for another day however as I need to work today.

Just wanted to post a few pictures of our adventures in Maine...

Tail end..

2010-07-25T10:36:00.002-05:00

So we are on the tail end of vacation. Just another day left in Maine and then off to Boston tomorrow morning to hop on our plane back to our happy home in KY. While I am really looking forward to getting home and getting back to my own bed, we have thoroughly enjoyed our time with friends in family in Maine. I have LOTS of pictures to post once we get back and get them downloaded onto our computer.

We have had a ton of fun spent with Grammie and Grampie Moody, Grammie and Grampie I and Grammie and Grampie Miller. So much fun that I am not sure how on earth going back to KY will ever compare! I am pretty sure it might be a LONG week of transitioning back...

Parades, good food, swimming in multiples lakes, kayaking, fishing, 4-wheelering, jet-skiing, a trip to the ocean. Lots of amazing fun with family and friends! We have been very thankful for our vacation!

Can't believe that it is a little over 3 weeks before the kiddos start back to school!!! Yikes...not sure if I am ready for them to go back to school!

Happy Hills 2010

2010-07-12T15:26:00.004-05:00

I arranged for both Mackenzie and Ainsley to go to camp together this year. They are usually separated by grades, but the week that Ainsley should have gone is when we are in Maine, so they made an exception. So I sent both Mackenzie and Ainsley off to camp at Happy Hills for the 3rd-4th grade camp last Tuesday night. They were scheduled to be there from Tues-Friday but alas I got a call Wednesday night saying Mackenzie was homesick! I think next year we won't send her as this seems to be a problem each year. This is the first year I have had to pick her up but last year she did call and say she was homesick. I thought having Ainsley with her would be helpful but apparently not helpful enough. So I picked Mackenzie up early on Wednesday night and thankfully Ainsley was a trooper and stayed the rest of the time alone without her sister. Mackenzie was really very sweet though. When her counselor called she said that Mackenzie was homesick and really wanted to come home but was very concerned that her sister might be scared at being left alone and wasn't sure she should come home. When I talked to her she said the same thing. She said she would check with Ainsley and see if Ainsley would be ok to stay alone. If not she would stay. Very sweet. But Ainsley said she was ok to stay and so I left her there. I was so proud of her as Ainsley is honestly our least independent girl. She usually needs friends and people she knows in order to feel comfortable staying in new places and doing new things.

I had a good couple of days with Ellie and Mackenzie before we headed back up on Friday to pick up Ainsley. She said she had a blast! I think Mackenzie was sad she didn't stay! She did say she cried a little bit after Mackenzie left because she missed her but then she was ok once they got busy...

She was pretty exhausted though. They keep them up till 10:30 so that when the kids go to bed, they are REALLY tired. She said she fell right to sleep:)

Jeff came home from China on Saturday afternoon laden with all sorts of cool gifts. The girls got new silk umbrellas and another tea set. I am now the proud owner of seasons 1-7 of NCIS, seasons 1-5 of House and P90X. Can't wait to try out P90X when we get back from Maine.

This summer for us is basically globe trotting. We have been very busy doing lots of travel it seems! We head to Maine tomorrow so today has been spent organizing, making lists and packing! Tomorrow at 3 we depart from Cincinnati to Boston, where we will spend 3 days doing lots of cool things. I can't wait! And we hopefully will get to hang out with Aaron and Christina. Then onto Lincoln for a week. We always plan this time to land over our town's homecoming festivities so we can see more people in one place. A week with Grammie and Grampie Moody, Grammie and Grampie I and lots of other family!

Then onto Southern Maine to visit Grammie and Grampie Miller before we head back home to Cincinnati Monday the 26th!

We will post all of our great adventures when we return along with hopefully some good photos...

Here is the boat they made in arts and crafts...

Ainsley next to her bunk. Mackenzie has already taken her stuff to the van...

Ellie next to Ainsley's bunk

Ellie and Mackenzie walking into the girls' cabins

South Carolina

2010-07-12T09:03:00.004-05:00

We spent almost a week with my brother and sister-in-law and their family over the 4th and had a blast as usual. We drove down on the Wednesday before the 4th and had that evening through Saturday with everyone. Jeff had to fly out of Greenville early Sat afternoon for a business trip to China which was a bummer but the girls and I managed to still have a great time even while they were missing their daddy. We got to experience our first swim meet and had a lot of fun watching the kids compete. Their oldest four swim for their subdivision swim team and it is pretty competitive. They all did a fantastic job! It was especially great to see Jackson swim since he is the only boy in the family and is really into swimming. He did a great job! Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera and didn't get any pictures.

The kids as always had a great time hanging with their cousins. They worked on a play while we were there and performed it for us. It was a great job by all. I did take video but Ellie fussed and was distracting so I decided not to post it. Mark preached at their church on the Sunday we were there which was really cool. I hadn't heard him speak in years so it was especially cool for me. Apparently it had been 6 years since he last preached! Their church is very large and has 2 full-time teaching pastors so rarely does he preach. He did a fanstatic job and he seemed like a natural. I was glad I was able to be there to hear him!

We celebrated the 4th of July in our usual fashion. All the people in their cul-de-sac get together and buy separate fireworks and take turns shooting them off. Jackson LOVES fireworks and is getting old enough to set them off so he had a great time! I enjoyed watching them from the sidelines. Ellie did much better this year. They didn't seem to bother her at all but she did ask to go to bed somewhere around 10..:) It was a great time with the family and we are thankful we at least live close enough to drive to visit them a couple of times a year..

Here are some pics from the week..

Dinsmore Camp

2010-07-12T08:41:00.003-05:00

The older two girls spent a week at the Dinsmore Homestead near us doing Pioneer Camp. They absolutely loved it! Mackenzie was sick one day and I had to pick her up early but other than that it was a great week. They did it a few weeks ago but I am just getting around to posting about it. They learned about the Oregon Trail, the Civil War, celebrated a 4th of July like it would have been celebrated many years ago, and many other things. They had so much fun and they learned lots of cool stuff too! We will definitely do it again next year. Next year Mackenzie also wants to go to the Young Ladies camp where they learn how to prepare tea and do all the things proper ladies did many many years ago. I think it would be a great idea and wanted her to go this year but you have to be 10 and she's only 9.

I didn't get many pictures but did take a couple on the last day.

Haircuts

2010-06-09T16:44:00.002-05:00

We spent the last few days with our friends the Lukes. We usually spend a week with them at the beach in NJ, but this year we were unable to get the beach house. Since they were already out in the area for a wedding, they stopped by and spent two nights with us. Trying to cram an entire weeks worth of fun into a little more than 24 hours is a bit tricky but we did have a blast while the time lasted! Two early morning walks pretending we were on the boardwalk, a trip to the pool pretending that it was the ocean, and riding out bikes around the neighborhood like our normal bike rides were fantastic times. But I think the highlight will always be quality time with our friends!:)

Today was planned on being a meet our friends at the pool day, but the weather decided to not cooperate. So instead I decided to get the youngest two haircuts! They have both needed haircuts desperately, but getting Ellie to get her haircut has been a significant trial in the past. So since we could not do the pool, and it was a great day to not be outside, I figured they would go for getting their hair cut. And I have to say, I think it turned out well. Ellie did great. I think she did fidget because honestly who can sit still that long?? Her hair cut took about 45 minutes because her hair shows any and every imperfection and they wanted it to look nice. I struggle sitting still that long so she was a trooper.

They got lollipops after they were done which they thought was great. And they got to walk through down pouring rain which is also lots of fun! I didn't get any pics of them in the rain because I was so desperately soaked, I didn't want to spend any more time digitally chronicling the event! They spent the rest of the afternoon playing with one of the neighbors which is always great fun. Mackenzie got her roller blades in the mail today. We told her that if she did a great job this year homeschooling that we would buy her roller blades. She loves them and has been using them inside since it has been so wet outside. I think she is looking forward to the sun so she can go outside and use them a bit more. Now Ainsley has decided she wants some for her birthday:)

All in all a great day of summer vacation! Next week they get to go to VBS in the evening at a church nearby. I think they are looking forward to it!

This post is for Darcy

2010-06-04T12:39:00.003-05:00

Our friends Darcy and Suzanne Pach are moving today. And it is with a very heavy heart that I have to say goodbye. I am posting because Darcy has not yet moved to the dark side of FB and told me I need to update my blog more. So just for your Darcy, I will update my blog.

We have spent the first two official days of summer break at the pool. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE having a pool in our subdivision?? What an amazing blessing as I don't have to pay any extra to go to the pool and I don't have to drive far to get to the pool. We just love it. So yesterday and today we spent a lot of time with with the Pachs as it was our last hurrah with them. It is always hard to say goodbye to friendships that have been there through many different seasons. They literally moved here about a week and half before us. They even looked at the house that we ended up buying. Suzanne told me today that they didn't buy it because Walt fell in the driveway and got himself all scraped up. She figured it he couldn't navigate the driveway than it wasn't the house for them!:) I guess it was divine providence though since it has been the perfect house for us. God knew all along that the neighborhood would be full of girls and that would probably drive their boys nuts! So I feel like I have known them forever and is always difficult to say goodbye. The bonus is that they are moving to NC which is about 1 1/2 hours from my brother's house in SC so I hope to have many visits with them in their new home! So thank you Pachs for the many amazing memories we have formed! I personally wouldn't be the same person without your influence in my life. Our girls wouldn't be the same without your boys either!! We will miss you dearly! And Darcy...you SOOO need to move to the dark side. Get yourself a facebook account!! But just in case you don't, I will try to be better about updating our blog...

Here are two pics from today...

Crazy year

2010-05-20T04:59:00.003-05:00

I know it has been months since I have posted. This has been a crazy year here for me and posting was just off my to do list. But as things slow down and I have a little more "free" time, I decided to try to pick it back up again.

Mackenzie is almost finished with her first year of homeschooling and more significantly my first year of homeschooling. I can honestly say I have learned a lot this year. A lot about her and a lot about myself. I have loved the time that I have had to spend with her at home and learn more about how she learns and processes and about what she loves and doesn't love. I have also learned that homeschooling isn't my favorite thing to do. I wouldn't have known that without stepping out and giving it a shot though. We are hoping to send Mackenzie back to school next year. We hope not to send her back to Burlington however. She will be testing this coming Saturday for a local independent public school called Beechwood. Beechwood has a much better academic school district and it is our hope that for now she can get in there for school. If she doesn't, than it probably will be back to homeschooling again next year. I love public schools. I love seeing kids eyes light up when I volunteer and seeing the kids learn and grow each and every time I come in their class. I want to help build and train my kids to be the difference in someone's life. But it is a year by year choice for us, evaluating each of our kids and how they handle their academics and choices. At some point, we may need to look at different choices for each of our children, based on who God created them to be. So for this coming year, we are looking at Beechwood for Mackenzie and Burlington for the other two kids.

I am hopeful this will free up more of my time to be outside my own home meeting people that need an encouraging word, a smile and/or a listening ear. I hope that in all my day to day interactions that I remember my job is not to save people but to point them to the One who does save-Jesus. I am hopeful that I will make more of my time with my own kids and that when they get home from school, I will be there with the same thing for them.

I am also looking forward to summer. Though some families dread summer and all that time with their kids, I actually love it. I love having lazy days that we have little to do and can just hang together playing games, going to the pool with friends and hanging out at the park (until it gets too hot to do that:) We are looking forward to some time spent with the cousins in SC and 2 weeks home in Maine this summer. The older two girls are doing an educational camp at the Dinsmore and will be learning about the late 1800's I believe. Lewis and Clark meet Laura Ingalls Wilder. Sounds like fun to me! So a fun, relaxing but busy travel summer planned. Hopefully it won't be time for school before I post again!

Time to post

2009-12-17T05:27:00.004-05:00

I have no idea how people have the time to keep up their blogs! I myself have been struggling with time management or getting done everything I need/want to get done in a given week. But I do realize that I haven't posted in ages and thought I better update everyone before heading down to the treadmill for my 4 1/2 mile run. Right now I am training for a half marathon. I will be heading down to Florida (Walt Disney World to be exact) to run the Disney Princess Half Marathon the first weekend of March. I will be running with at least two of my friends..possibly more. My friend Jaime from Maine will be joining me and my friend Jane from Colorado will be joining me also! I am very excited to see both of them but I haven't been able to see Jane since they flew the KY coop over 4 years ago! I am looking forward to this time and obviously preparing to run the half marathon takes quite a bit of my time since I am not an overly fast runner. I run about a 12 minute mile though I do hope to get it to the 11ish mark.

Homeschooling seems to take a LOT of my time also. I am really enjoying the time that I have with Mackenzie and love to see how much she is learning. She is doing well and it makes me happy to see her growing and being challenged. I don't have the answer to how long we will do this...though I am leaving that up to her at the moment. If she wants to homeschool again next year, than I plan on doing it again next year. She is pretty proud that she got a question right on "Are you smarter than a 5th grader."

Ainsley is loving being in school and when I am available I volunteer in her class. Sometimes that is every week for a couple of hours and sometimes it just depends on whether I have a sitter. She loves her teacher A LOT as do I. She is a great teacher and the kids in the class are pretty good. They just had a Polar Express day yesterday which involved LOTS of cool things like hot chocolate, wearing pajamas to school, getting bells on their desks and watching the movie:)

Ellie is doing ok. We have had a few health issues and concerns in the last couple of months. She has been complaining of headaches so we finally got an MRI of her head last Friday. The doctor called to let us know that everything turned out fine, except that she has some opacification in her maxillary sinus'. She put her on an antibiotic to clear up any possible sinus infection that she might have and has sent us on the the ENT. She will see the ENT this afternoon after school. She has been having quite a few tantrums, enough that I don't like to take her out very often. So that has been difficult for me. She has speech weekly, OT and PT on a every few months rotation and various other doctor's appts, so she keeps me hopping. She is doing pretty well with preschool though starting up with the tantrums a bit again. Not sure if she is regressing or if her behavior is cyclical based on the fall season...we really have no idea. She had been doing really well at the end of last year and the very beginning of this year. Hopefully, it is just a developmental stage and she will move out of it.

Jeff has been traveling quite a bit also, which in the past hasn't been a big deal, but in the last few months has become more stressful for me. I don't get a lot of breaks from the girls what with homeschooling and not having a lot of reliable sitters to call. I am in the process of trying to hunt down more sitters but once again it is one of my most difficult challenges!

Me...I am hanging in there. Depends on the hour/day/minute you check with me. Overall things flow along smoothly, but I am looking forward to the Christmas break and having Jeff home for a while and the girls off school!

Sickness is following us

2009-10-24T13:00:00.002-05:00

So we are sick again. Or should I say, the girls are sick again. Mackenzie and Ainsley woke with a sore throat Friday morning but didn't have a fever so I gave them Motrin and sent Ainsley to school and Mackenzie, Ellie and I to our Friday co-op. Mackenzie still didn't feel well after co-op and since we were having guests in this weekend, I thought I should take her to the doctor. So what do I do but call the pediatrician. Of course I have to then wait an hour for them to call me back. They finally call me back to tell me they have no appt times available though I can schedule an after hours appt at 5:30 and pay $50. I turned them down and said thanks, but no thanks! I ended up taking her to an Urgent Care, waiting 3 hours in the waiting room with her and Ellie and finally getting in to see a Dr. She had strep which I already figured she had and he wrote her a prescription. So off to pick up her prescription at Walgreens. We finally get home at 5:45 in time for my neighbor (who was watching Ainsley for me after school), to call and tell me that Ainsley had just vomited and she probably would want a ride home. Seriously?? And I had to be at worship practice at 6 for the Women's Morning of Praise rehearsal. I get her home and in the house and have to decide what to do. So long story short, our friends wisely ended up not coming to see us and our germs, I dosed both of the girls, which is probably illegal, but since neither Jeff and I were up for 5 hours in Urgent Care again, that's just how it goes. They are both feeling better today which is par for the course and worship went well this morning at Morning of Praise. We will be going out tonight for our annual Jack-o-lantern walk later tonight. Hopefully none of us get sick any more and we stay on the road to recovery!

Swine flu...H1N1..pigs flying..whatever you want to call it..

2009-10-07T16:37:00.002-05:00

I think we have it! Ainsley was sick last weekend with a cough and high fever. It broke Sunday and she said she was feeling better so we sent her on to school Monday and Tuesday. Tuesday she came home with a low grade fever and was lethargic so I made an appt to take her in to our pediatrician's office this morning. I did end up taking her even though she woke up and seemed ok. She is fine and her lungs sounded clear according to the Dr. Now I am sick and feeling miserable. Shouldn't moms get a pass on sickness? I mean I understand that when sin entered into the world it was through Eve and we all have to deal with the effects of the fall. But seriously?? While attempting to care for my sick kids, I get sick...blah!

On a positive note though, Ellie seems to have the immune system of a Vitamin C tablet because she is almost never sick. She started with some symptoms but they have been very mild and not caused her to miss school and now I notice nothing. Mackenzie so far so good. And then there's Jeff. Apparently he's sick too but with his oh so superior immune system, it is hard to tell! He's not feeling top notch but certainly not as sick as I am. So I have learned I am a very bad patient and melodramatic sick person...and I wonder where they got it from?:)

Anyway, we have a long weekend trip planned for Indianapolis so I am hoping we all feel better by then which is really only 2 days away. Please pray because we are all looking forward to getting away for a bit!

Sunday and sickness..one didn't cause the other..

2009-10-04T13:43:00.004-05:00

Apparently I need to update my blog.. :)

We have been doing well here but busy. I find that doing three different things with three different girls takes a lot of advanced planning. I am still a work in progress when it comes to this...but then I probably will be for the rest of my life!

Mackenzie continues to love homeschooling and is really thriving. It continues to be a lot of work for me but I enjoy it a lot also. Classical Conversations has been a really great opportunity for us and provides us with the basis for what we do most days. While I add a math curriculum and Spanish, that's about it because CC provides everything else that I think she needs. It makes for a very LONG Thursday for us since that is when we meet but we are still loving it.

Ainsley is thriving in school and I love being as involved with her class as I can. I volunteer once a week on Tuesday for 1 1/2 hours and then eat lunch with her. She loves this as much as I do. She missed school this past Friday because she was sick and though I have no idea, my guess is swine flu. She is now finally starting to perk up but was sick Friday-today with a cough, sore throat and high fever. It got up to 103.9 several times and though Motrin is great when the fever is high it only brings it down a couple of degrees. At least that's our experience. It was homecoming weekend at Cedarville and we had lot of plans that we had to miss. Jeff took Mackenzie with him and went to the parade and his 10th reunion luncheon. They had a blast which was cool. I however stayed home with a very sick Ainsley and a bored Ellie since we couldn't do much:( Jeff stayed home from church today and thankfully when Mackenzie and I got home she was feeling better. Hopefully she will up to school tomorrow!

Ellie is doing well. She had a Occupational therapy evaluation last Wed and that went well. She gave me some ideas to work on and the option of setting up regular therapy sessions. Not sure what we will opt to do as adding another therapy takes a lot of time and not sure where I can fit it in but at least I have some ideas of things to work on with her which is good.

The girls have a fall break this weekend so we are planning a trip to Indianapolis to have some fun:) They are all looking forward to it. I can't believe how fast time seems to fly though. It is already October! We are now enjoying some great fall weather and I LOVE it! What could be better than having it cool enough to wear a sweater but not too cold? I can't think of anything! So until my next post, enjoy fall!

I will try to post some pics soon!

Wow..how the time flies..and flies..

2009-09-12T20:23:00.002-05:00

I can't believe it has been so long since I have updated our blog. Sorry for all of those who actually use it to keep up with us! We have been so busy the last few months and I just haven't taken the time to update.

We had an amazing summer. Relaxing and fun and refreshing which was awesome. The girls had lots of time to just hang out with their friends but also plenty of time with the family too.

School has been in session for almost 4 weeks, I believe so I should probably update on that while I am at it!

We opted to homeschool Mackenzie this year. She has been asking to homeschool for a while. So to give her more of a challenge and keep her love of learning growing, we are homeschooling her. She is LOVING it. She is doing a homeschool curriculum called Classical Conversations. It is a Co-op that meets in our area on Thursdays. We get most of her curriculum from this classical site and base most of all that we do on what she learns on Thursdays. I have also added additional things such as a math curriculum and Spanish, etc. So she is loving the challenge that she didn't get at our public school. She is taking gymnastics, playing soccer and doing theatre again this year.

Ainsley is loving school. She is still at Burlington Elementary and LOVES her teacher. She has a really great teacher. I am still able to volunteer every Tuesday morning for a couple of hours so I love that too. Ainsley really enjoys being with other kids and is enjoying all that she is doing in the first grade! She is also taking gymnastics which she loves..and she takes on the same day as Mackenzie which is nice.

Ellie is in year number two of preschool at Burlington Elementary. She is really enjoying it and doing even better this year which is really encouraging to me. She is sitting better at circle time and improving on all of her skills which is great! She has also started pre-tap/pre-ballet class at one of our local studios. She LOVES it and is in class with 5 other friends from China. So cute...so fun!

All in all the start to our fall school year has been great! I am looking forward to lots of fun this fall. We will be going to King's Island next weekend for our annual King's Island trip with P&G. The girls will have a blast. And I will have a blast watching them...and riding no roller coasters:) Early October is a trip to Cedarville for homecoming and then possibly a trip to St. Louis. Hopefully I will be better at updating in the near future. Finding time on the computer with curriculum prep for Mack, helping Ainsley with homework, etc seems to be more difficult but I am sure I will get better with my time management soon...or hope so!

Eyes

2009-07-31T21:15:00.001-05:00

A few more pictures

2009-07-31T20:56:00.002-05:00

Since arriving back from SC, we have been busy having fun as a family. Some bikes rides, some parks, and lots of pool time! The girls love the pool and Ellie getting more and more comfortable in the pool. She is actively kicking her legs and has started using her arms to swim. Though I don't think she will be without floaties by the end of the summer, she is making loads of progress. We celebrated Ainsley's birthday by spending the day at Coney Island while Jeff's mom was in town. Ainsley was able to invite her friend Ashleigh to go with her and they had a lot of fun. It was a great day together and Mackenzie said this was a great idea..better than any birthday party! So I guess they are now big fans of picking one friend and doing something they choose.

Jeff's mom was in for 5 days and we had a great time with her. The girls were sad the day she left. We love having family in town to visit!

We went to one of the library programs tonight with a traveling children's theatre. It was cute and the girls enjoyed it. Then off to UDF for ice cream..yum!

We are getting ready to take the older two girls to SC on Sunday. Mackenzie will be going to camp with her cousin Madelyne and Ainsley has been invited to spend the week with her cousins while the older two are at camp. Though Janice is just getting back from vacation and may change her mind! They are both really looking forward to the time with their cousins! Tomorrow is a day at the park with Cedarville grads as we have a Cedarville Alumni reunion. The girls are looking forward to the park, but not sure they care about anything to do with Cedarville...:)

Pictures from South Carolina

2009-07-31T13:58:00.004-05:00

Pastor Jon Basner

2009-07-31T06:56:00.003-05:00

I know that it has been a while since I have posted. We have been busy in the last few weeks just hanging out and having fun as a family. And hopefully I will update the blog with some of those activities in the next few days. But I wanted to take a few moments to remember a friend who passed away recently. My friend, Lisa Basner, lost her husband last week to cancer. Jon and I weren't close but Lisa and I were good friends in college. I knew Jon primarily because he dated Lisa. Though we haven't kept in close contact over the years, there is a bond that stays forever it seems with friends that we make in college. At least that is the case for me. My heart goes out to Lisa and the pain and loss that she is going through right now and to their two kids, Jillian and JJ. If you want to take the time to look over Jon's blog I will post the link. I have followed it for a while through the struggles, trials and triumphs of his journey with cancer. He modeled what is means to follow Christ even through his death. Praise the Lord that he is with his Savior. If you think of it, and even if you don't know them, please pray for Lisa and their kids as they learn to live their life here on this earth without him.

http://pastrjon.blogspot.com/

South Carolina

2009-07-14T06:34:00.002-05:00

We have returned from our trip to South Carolina. And I have at least some pictures to prove it! I haven't downloaded the rest from Jeff's computer but hopefully I will do that in the next few days. We had a really great time with my brother and his family. The girls had a lot of fun playing with their cousins and really did a great job getting along. Each year seems to get a little bit easier as the kids get older. We had lots of fun celebrating the 4th of July. Mark and jackson purchased fireworks and some of the neighbors in the cul-de-sac got together and set off all of their collective fireworks. It was great fun! The night before the "official" 4th of July, we went to a community celebration at a nearby church. It was a free event and it was a blast! We all got tickets and we were able to redeem them for free food! I love free family events:) Free hot dogs, popcorn, drinks, snow cones and nachos. There were lot of games to play for the kids, inflatable to jump and play on and live musical entertainment. And of course once it was dark, there were fireworks. This is where I found out that Ellie would not be staying up for our own "official" 4th of July fireworks the next night! She hated the fireworks. I am pretty sure it was the loud noise of the fireworks but she clung to me and refused to even look at them. Needless to say I took her back to the van before they were finally done and we waited it out in the van. Saturday night saw her going to bed well before fireworks officially started. But the free night was a hit with everyone involved. Another exciting and fun part to our trip was that we got to spend some time with our China friends the Smiths. We don't get to see them very often since they live in China but they are home this summer visiting. So we planned our trip around getting to see them too! The last time we saw them was when we were in China adopting Ellie so it had been 19-20 months. It was great to catch up and spend time with them and get to meet their second addition to their family! They have a little boy, Moyer, whom we got to see in China and then Keturah, who is 6 months old. She is also a cutie:) I did get some pictures of them so I will post those once I download them. Needless to say we had a great vacation! We also got to meet the newest addition to the Moody clan on this trip which was pretty cool. Melia is about 2 1/2 months old, I believe, and cute as a button. Hopefully I spelled her name right! I just loved holding her since it has been a while since I have held a little one. I think the whole Moody clan is good looking but Jackson mentioned Melia being the cutest baby of all of them several times...I am not sure if that was because he really thinks so or if it is because I mentioned that she looked like him as a baby:)

Now we are settling back into KY life and enjoying the rest of our summer. There are no more "official" trips though I am sure that we will do a few shorter trips here and there over the remaining weeks of summer.

I have tried twice to upload pics and I haven't been able to so I will just try again later!

Water, water and more water

2009-06-29T05:47:00.002-05:00

We have been spending a LOT of time at the pool. Pretty much every day last week we spent multiple hours at the pool. The girls are really enjoying their summer vacation and every morning when Ellie gets up she looks at me and says, "baby soup"? You might wonder what exactly baby soup is? Well, it is her version of bathing suit! We have been working on this for a while and I think we aren't getting closer but still not quite there. Oh well...baby steps are good too! She has made a ton of progress in the water and though she would still prefer to be in the baby pool, the fit throwing has at least subsided some if she doesn't get to always be in the baby pool. She can now "swim" with her floaties!! Last year it took her swim vest and floaties just to keep her head above water but now she is able to kick her feet and kind of move her arms. Wouldn't it be cool if by the end of the summer she could actually swim without them! I think that might be a bit lofty of a goal but we shall see. Mackenzie and Ainsley are like fishes in the water and they love going to the pool. My summer sitter took them to her pool on Thursday while I worked. Apparently her pool is pretty cool. It has a water slide, a diving board and big rafts that you can lay on and float around the pool. However it has some bugs in it. They were debating which one they liked best. Hers would have one hands down if it didn't have any bugs:) So that's how we have been spending our summer vacation the last week. In addition to going to the fun of the pool we have seen lots of friends at the pool too which is always a blast!

Today we have speech and Ainsley is hoping to have a friend over for a few hours. Then it will be time to get her ready to go to summer camp tonight! Since her camp is only 1st-2nd graders, she will only be gone till Wed morning which is just the right amount of time for her. I will be picking up Ainsley and two of the neighbors on Wed. I will be working on Thursday and then we leave for SC on Friday! Yea!! Can't wait to see my brother and his family and the girls can't wait to hang out with the cousins! And as an extra cool added bonus we get to see our friends Patrick and Kim and their two kiddos, Moyer and Keturah. They are in the States for the summer from China so we made plans to meet up in SC. I am pretty excited! This will be our "first" time meeting Keturah in person though we have followed her pretty faithfully on their blog. I believe she was born in December though I guess I would have to check their blog to make sure I am accurate...so we have never met her. But I am guessing she's probably as cool as her older brother Moyer:)

So those are our last few days in a nut shell. I don't think I have any new and recent pictures to post but I am sure we will have some cool ones when we get back from SC!

Happy Father's Day and Anniversary!

2009-06-21T07:26:00.002-05:00

Jeff and I celebrated our anniversary last night by going out to Boi Na Braza Brazilian Steakhouse. We had a great time and the food was great! It was a cool experience and I am pretty sure I ate enough meat to cover me for about 3 weeks and eat vegan for the next 3 weeks. We walked around down on the levy in Newport and back home where Jeff fixed root bear floats. I didn't sleep well since I ate too much food so I got up and watched the West Wing on DVD for a few hours and played around with our budget. I am pretty sure it was after 3:30 this morning when I got to sleep. Ugh! But the girls and I are now up and need to get Jeff cards and gift together before he gets up. Happy Father's Day out there to all the wonderful dads!

Amazed

2009-06-19T06:17:00.006-05:00

I continue to be amazed by all those who are able to keep up with their blog more faithfully than myself. Once I get behind on things catching up seems to be more difficult. But I will try to catch everyone up on the last few weeks. School finished up well for the girls. Nothing major happened but we seemed to keep pretty busy the last week of school making sure they had everything turned in and up to date. They missed their last three days of school because we left for the beach so I wanted to make sure they were ok to go. Mackenzie had her end of the year drama recital and I got a couple of pictures that I will post. It went well but it was very long. I have learned for next year that I probably need to find a sitter for Ellie because she just isn't ready to sit through a 2 1/2 hour recital.

We left for the beach on Saturday morning, May 30th, I believe. We spent the day driving and stopped at a hotel outside of Philly. The girls of course enjoyed our hotel stay. The next morning we stopped at Target on our way out to pick up a few things that we forgot. As we were backing up, we hit another vehicle backing up and spent the next hour plus giving our statement to the police officer. Jeff was looking and didn't see anyone so who knows. But that took some time out of our schedule. We did still drive into Philly to see some of the historical things that the girls have never seen. We did the tour of Independence Hall and took some time to see the Liberty Bell. We also took a carriage ride through the area and they gave us all the historical information on the area. The girls loved it but not sure they paid a lot of attention to the history part:)

Then onto the beach later in the afternoon. We spent a few hours down at the beach that night in our clothes. I need to learn that anytime we go to the beach my children lack the ability to just play in the sand and they must get completely wet. Even though it wasn't that warm I should have just put their suits on them because they ended getting wet anyway! The weather this year wasn't nearly as stellar as last year. We never had any days where it was really hot and I didn't actually get into the water all the way at any point. We did have a few nice days to enjoy the beach and the girls got in the water. Ellie didn't like the water the first day but Rachel came in and saved the day and after that we couldn't keep Ellie from the water! As a matter of fact she seemed to lose all fear of the water and I had to be constantly on her to not go out too far or wander off. Mackenzie did some boogie boarding while we were there and I think Ainsley got to see the very beginnings of going out a little deeper. I don't think she actually did any boogie boarding though. We unfortunately did get a few days of constant rain. We took that time to hang out inside and play games/read/watch tv. Denise and I took the our two older girls to see Up since the older kids had seen it a few nights before. I thought it was pretty good and they seemed to be entertained. Though I didn't think it as funny as some and thought it had several really sad moments which I wasn't expecting.

We did take our bikes this year for the first time and did go on several long bike rides which was fun. Mackenzie and Ainsley did well on one bike ride and then they stayed home for the second ride with Rachel. I was glad we took them and were able to enjoy them. We had a great vacation and had a fantastic time as usual with our friends.

Since returning home we have been catching up on just general what not and enjoying our summer vacations. We have gone to the park several times and I have taken the kids on one bike ride. Jeff was gone a week and a half and he got home this past Tues night from Italy. He took Thursday and Friday of this week off to hang out with the fam. Yesterday he watched the girls for me so I could work and today we are off to pick Mackenzie up from camp. Mackenzie has been at church camp all week and I have really missed her. I can't wait to finally pick her up! Well that has been the last few weeks in a nut shell and hopefully it has caught everyone up.

Springtime Fun

2009-05-20T09:19:00.004-05:00

We have been busy over the last few weeks. I thought it was finally time to update some new spring pictures. I took Ellie and Ainsley with the rest of our Asian play group to the butterfly show at the Krohn Conservatory in Cincinnati. I took Ainsley out of school last Friday since mackenzie was at the theatre all day for her performances and it was going to be too complicated to be in too many places at once. She thought skipping a day of school without being sick was awesome! The girls had a lot of fun looking at all the butterflies. Ellie seemed to think it was cool but didn't want to hold the butterflies at all. She was pretty tired and it got pretty hot in the room where they keep the butterflies so she really just wanted to have me hold her most of the time. Ainsley on the other hand was all about holding every butterfly she could get her hands on and wanted me to reach daredevil heights in order for me to get her a few of them! It was a lot of fun. I may take the older two girls again since it is here through June and I think Mackenzie would really enjoy it too. After the show we went out to lunch and let the girls play at the McDonalds play area. They had a really good time and so did I.

Mackenzie had her musical performance for Suessical Jr. on May 8 and it went great! Unfortunately my camera batteries were dead. I did take a couple of pictures off of my phone my of course I can't find the transfer cord for my computer. And honestly the pictures aren't very good. I thought there was a video made but there wasn't so I have no real proof that after all the hours transporting Mackenzie to drama and the theatre that she actually performed in anything:( Poor girl and poor scrapbook!

I spent this last week catching up on all the things I was too busy to do with the week before. I did some cleaning in the house, picking up around the house and just generally catching up with e-mails and bills. We spent this past weekend doing some work around the house and celebrating Mother's Day on Saturday evening. We opted to not go out on Mother's Day since it is usually busy so Jeff took us all out to Outback Steakhouse on Saturday. We had lots of run and I love Outback:)

This week has been fun because the weather has been nice and sunny! So we have done some walks while the older two ride their bikes and spending a lot of time outdoors. We haven't been too busy and it has been nice to relax. We are trying to do some summer planning so that we have things to do this summer in each month that are fun but not be too busy. We leave for the beach in a little over a week which seems crazy! We have a trip to SC for a week over the 4th of July. We will also get to see Patrick, Kim, Moyer and Keturah Smith while we are there which is really cool! This will be our first time to meet Keturah in person! They are spending some time in the states this summer and since I didn't think we would get a trip to China anytime in the near future it will be fun to catch up!

Jeff's mom is coming later in July which will be nice and we are looking at a few other options. Jeff gets an additional week off starting this year so we have more vacation time! I am trying to plan a few trips to visit friends in the Columbus area, some activities at the library, and hopefully some VBS for the two older girls. I think that will give us enough to have fun but not too much.

Here are some recent pictures of the girls over the last few weeks.

Sunny Days and Cloudy Days..

2009-05-06T09:28:00.002-05:00

We have had some sunny days and cloudy days the last few weeks. Both physically and mentally for me! I just function so much better and have so much more energy when the sun it out. All I feel like doing on cloudy days is watching a movie or reading a book. So I am ignoring the fact that it isn't sunny today and trying to get some "things" accomplished. I am doing laundry as I type and my list is pretty long for the day. Hopefully I get it all accomplished:)

Last week I spent Wed-Saturday at an amazing conference. Some of our Children's Ministry team went to the Orange Conference in Atlanta. It was amazing and I learned some new cool things and some tips that I hadn't thought of before. We of course had a blast and I am looking forward to thinking through more of what we learned soon. However, since I came back we have been going at warp speed! Mackenzie has had drama every day since last friday. Saturday afternoon, Sunday afternoon and now we are into "tech week." Which essentially means she lives, eat, breathes and sleeps drama. Ok...not really but it seems that way! I have to pick her up early from school at 3:30 to get her there on time. Practices run from 4-8 and by the time she gets home, grabs a little to eat and does her homework it is closer to 10 than 9. It is however only for a week as their performances are all day on Friday. She will miss school that day but is looking forward to it! I can't wait to see it either. They are performing Suessical so it should be good:)

So between getting her to practices, picking her up from practices and everything else in between we are hopping. But next week looks like a MUCH slower week and only 14 more actual days left of school for my girls!

Beautiful

2009-04-27T04:08:00.002-05:00

The weekend weather we had here was just beautiful. We had a busy last week so it was nice to have a fairly relaxing weekend. Mackenzie drama practice Sat afternoon and Ainsley and mommy went on a mommy date. Ainsley decided to get her ears pierced again with her own money, then decided not to, and then decided to..well you get the picture. She ended up not doing it and when we finally told the girl that was going to pierce them that she wasn't going to get it done, she was surprised and said most of the moms just make the kids do it. My response was that it wasn't my idea in the first place and it is her money. So when she's ready, she can get it done. We also went to the bead boutique that our neighbors own because the girls like going there and buying random things. Then off to pick Mackenzie up. We also went to the park in the back of our subdivision for a little hike Saturday morning. The girls love going down to the creek. Jeff found a salamander and we say two snakes! In addition to that, there were was a group horse back riding through the park and we got to see 13 horses. I thought that was pretty cool.

Yesterday was spent outside a lot and then we just hung out as a family inside later in the afternoon. We made roll-ups and went for a walk and then off to bed for the girls. We of course stayed up to watch the Red Sox Yankees game. I am pretty sure that the coolest part of the game was when Jacoby Ellsbury stole home! I couldn't believe it. Still in shock...what a bold cool move.

Very busy week this week so probably won't blog much. I am going with Ainsley on a field trip today while my neighbor watches Ellie. Tomorrow another visit for Ellie's medicaid program. On Wednesday I leave for a 3 day Children's Ministry Conference outside Atlanta! I am pretty excited. Jeff has the girls Wed-Sat so I can go. I am going with two other women and I think it will be a lot of fun.

The weekend

2009-04-19T06:15:00.002-05:00

Mackenzie and I went on a date yesterday afternoon. I took her to the mall and we had Auntie Anne's pretzels and then she wanted to ride the carousel. There were several older children riding it and she got in a teacup with them and spun around until I thought I was going to be sick! We did little shopping since we needed to...but we are apparently cut from the same cloth because she hates shopping too! I got her some black jazz shoes for her Suessical performance which they requested she have and then got her some sandals and flip flops for the summer. Now I just need to get Ainsley some sandals and I think we will be good for at least a while. Then she requested Starbucks hot chocolate so off we went to Starbucks. My friend Amber was working and let us use her discount. She is just the best! And what I can't figure out is how she is always working when I go in there!! I go VERY infrequently and at VERY different times and she seems to ALWAYS be in there. Craziness but I love seeing her smiling face and since she knows a lot more about what to order, it is even better:)

Then off to the park to walk around and play a little bit before heading back home. A fun time with my oldest girl. She is getting so big and growing up so quickly. I can't believe how the time flies.

We had a leadership huddle in the morning and then the counter top guy came and measured our counter top to replace it. We just need to go to Home Depot today and pick out a sink fixture and then go to NK Stone and pick out a sink tomorrow and they can start work on our counter top. Jeff mowed the lawn since it is supposed to rain for the next three days. Mackenzie ended up going out with one of our neighbors for ice cream and we went on a walk with the other two. Ainsley rode her bike the whole way with no complaining and did great. I was proud of her and I let them have ice cream once they got back home since we had a little left.

Not much planned for today except church and getting a faucet fixture for the kitchen.

Forgot

2009-04-13T19:16:00.002-05:00

I forgot to post one of the funny things Mackenzie said while we were on vacation that just cracked Jeff and I up. On Sunday night we ate at the restaurant in the hotel. It was Scottish food. Monday night it was off to the Italian restaurant. So on Tuesday night when we headed out to the restaurant she wanted to know what kind of food we were going to be eating. Actually, her exact question was "are we going to be eating KY food?" KY food?? What kind of food is that...oh, you know, the kind of food that you eat in KY! Hmm...is that anything like American food, mayhaps?

I love the way our kids can make us laugh!:)

Pictures from St. Louis and Easter

2009-04-12T15:30:00.012-05:00

Ellie in her swim vest and floaties. She needs both to stay above water.

Ellie in her little bed between the beds...she never sleeps on a high bed because she still rolls quite a bit and I would be concerned with her falling off the bed..she gets the floor with extra padding:)

The girls in our rental as we are getting ready to leave

Our rental van

The girls in the park near the arch

All of us at Max and Erma's

Ainsley and her new build-a-bear (or lamb:)

Mackenzie and her new build-a-dino

Mackenzie at the pool

This is taken from the top of the arch and is a shadow of the arch on the ground...

This is Ainsley's writing...gotta love it! We were playing tic-tac-toe while waiting for our lunch at Fitze's

Ellie in the small cart that takes you up to the top of the arch

All of us in the little cart that take you to the top of the arch

The bottle making process at Fitze's..they were making strawberry cream soda

The family at Fitze's minus me...since I am taking the picture:)

Jesus is Risen

2009-04-12T15:13:00.002-05:00

Happy Easter to all who read our blog! I love Easter because it is the reason for our ultimate hope. If Jesus had not risen there would be little to celebrate. He wouldn't differ from many other gods who claim to be gods. But He did rise and that's where our hope lies and I am so thankful for his death for my sins and His resurrection that brings us hope.

We went to church this morning and had a great Sunday morning time. Then we took the girls out to our favorite Chinese restaurant. Mackenzie and Ainsley like it because they have amazing fruit smoothies. They don't like chinese food so they get American food and fruit smoothies. Ellie of course likes anything you put in front of her but we usually get her chicken lo mein and she eats it up. I branched out and had beef lo mein. I think I like veggie much better but it was still good. I shared some of Ellie's fruit smoothie because they are fantastic but jeff got his own which means he got more because I wouldn't drink after Ellie started blowing bubbles into hers!

We stopped and got some candy and we will do an Easter egg hunt later this afternoon with the girls after Jeff is done mowing the tropical rainforest that is our yard! Hopefully early to be tonight as I am still under the weather and coughing up a lung. I should probably take some cough medicine before I pull a muscle....

I will catch up with pictures sometimes soon...maybe later today or maybe tomorrow!

Spring Break is almost over..

2009-04-11T09:14:00.003-05:00

I can't believe how fast spring break has flown. I spent thursday doing load after load of laundry and cleaning the house. Oh and of course another trip to the medicaid office. While we were in ST. Louis I got a call from our case worker checking up to see if I had applied so I thought I had better get it done. Apparently she needs the medicaid number to progress any further. So I hauled all three girls over to the office. Brought in my application, answered a few questions and sat down to wait..and wait...and wait. About an hour later, I was taken back, to answer more questions. We were in that little office for about 30 minutes and by this point Ellie is getting antsy. By Antsy I mean fussy, irritable and grumpy. It is getting close to lunch and they are all hungry. She graciously told me she had about another 20 minutes that she needed to work on this application so I could back out to the main waiting room and wait some more! By the time we waited some more and went back in the office and I signed a bunch of papers I was pretty much done. She then explained that I have to essentially fill out yet another application, submit all of financial records for banks, life insurance and paychecks for the last 3 months and then write down all the doctors that she would need to send forms too. I can bring that in at my convenience but the quicker the better since they can't move forward without it. Apparently they use these forms to send all the doctor's yet another form they have to sign off on saying she has a disability. Her case then goes before the Medicaid medical review board for them to make a determination. By this point, I just wanted to leave and never come back!! This is harder than actually adopting which is insane! I am still working on the application and collecting all the necessary documents that are needed. I am hoping to turn it in by Monday but seriously wondering if it is worth it. I guess time will tell.

St. Louis Day 4

2009-04-11T09:02:00.002-05:00

Today was out last day in St. Louis. Jeff took most of the day off, meaning he had a conference call at 1:30 that he had to take but other than that he was off. We packed up our stuff and took some of it down before breakfast. Then after breakfast, we were off the arch. We didn't have to technically check out till 12 so we left some stuff there so that we didn't have to pay to park at the arch. A beautiful day today! Mid-60's and sunny! We walked from the hotel to the arch and I took some pictures of the girls. We bought tickets for all of us to ride up the arch and it was actually not nearly as scary as I expected. The cart that brought us up was really small but didn't go too fast up or down. Mackenzie was a little scared but did fine. It didn't seem to phase the other two girls. Once you get to the top, you get out and there are little rectangular windows that you can lean out onto and look everywhere. Very cool! I got 1-2 pictures before the battery I had just changed went dead. I must not have charged it long enough! Then back down to the ground. Everyone thought it was great. Then back to the hotel to pack up the rest of our stuff and drive around the suburbs, just in case we ever have to move here. It is bigger than Cincinnati but still feels pretty midwest. No plans to move but thought it would be cool to check out. I co-worker of Jeff recommended this restaurant for lunch that bottles their own soda. You can watch it happen while eating and they are known for their root beer floats. It was fantastic and the girls LOVED watched how the soda got bottled. Our last stop of the day was the zoo, which is free to go to though you do have to pay to park. A great zoo! Lots of things to see and do but lots of walking. Ellie of course loved the monkeys! By 4 pm we were ready to head home. We didn't end up getting back to KY till close to 11 pm. Ainsley and Ellie napped on the way home so it wasn't too rough and went right to bed when we got home. Thanks Grammie and Grampie I for the Easter flowers that were waiting for us! Our neighbor actually took them in concerned that it would rain but when he saw us pull in he brought them over to us. Such wonderful neighbors! A great trip with lots of fun family memories.

St. Louis Day 3

2009-04-11T08:48:00.002-05:00

Today was a fun day. Jeff left for work a little bit earlier but we lazed around and finally got up at around 8. We went to breakfast and then back to the pool for lots of swimming. We then went back up to the room after swimming and Ellie and I showered. The other didn't want to so I just let them get dressed. We watched Princess Diaries 2 on Disney and then ate some lunch. My plan was to take then to the Science Center in the afternoon. I thought I had done sufficient research on the metro and I thought it would get us there. But when I asked at the front desk they told me the closest it came to the Science Center was still a 3 mile walk. Needless to say, we opted for a taxi. They called him for me and then gave me his name and number so I could call when we were done. Not a cheap venture out but a fan one:) The girls had lots of fun at the Science Center. The two older ones got Build-A Bear's as there is one in the basement of the Science Center. Awful idea in my opinion but I bet they think it is brilliant! That was there one thing they go on the trip with their spending money. There was a Science Woman doing experiments on Peeps and yes I mean the little yellow chicks. She was testing different hypothesis and it was really cool. She had a control peep, whom of course she named but I can't remember it:) Then she put one in a vacuum, one in a boiling pot of water, one in the microwave and one she covered with liquid nitrogen. It was so cool:) Ellie was overtired of course and ready to go to bed which means she threw lots of fits but we took a snack break and that helped her out. Food always helps Ellie out:) She actually doesn't eat that much but eats so slowly it seems that eats a lot. Then we called the taxi and they came and got us and brought us back to the hotel shortly before 5. Jeff came home and we were off to dinner at Max and Erma's right down the road from the hotel. On the way back, I stopped at the Visit St. Louis shop and bought all of us sweatshirts, except Jeff. I don't think I have ever seen him wear one and he wasn't about to start now! Off to do some more swimming in hopes that they hot tub was open..but alas something must have been wrong with it because there was no water:( Very sad for me but we did have lots of fun swimming. Then off to bed!

St. Louis Day 2

2009-04-07T07:07:00.003-05:00

I don't think we brought the transfer cord for our camera so I think I will have to wait till we get home to post pictures of our trip. After spending about 2 hours in the pool yesterday morning we came back up and I took a warm shower. The pool wasn't cold but after that long I got cold. The girls had a blast though. We watched a little Disney and then ate some lunch in our room. I brought a few food items to try to save money. Bread, peanut butter and jelly, raisins, goldfish, yogurt and granola. Mackenzie really wanted to go to the park so I said sure...after being out for about 3 minutes they were cold since we didn't bring coats. So back inside we went. We walked around the hotel for a while and then went down to the lobby and played some checkers on the big checkerboard. While we were there, they were popping popcorn so we got some of that! Yummy butter covered unhealthy popcorn...so good! Then I took them to the game room but the machine that converts money to tokens and they wanted to go into the pool area. I let them roll their pant legs ups and stick their feet in the pool. They wanted to get their suits on again but I said no. I decided maybe we could try to get out and do something. It has warmed up to a balmy 38 so we put on our sweatshirts and sweaters and walked over the the park that surrounds the arch. By the time we got there we were a little cold and decided to go check out the museum at the base of the arch. Pretty cool and it warmed us up. We checked out the gift shop and then went back outside. The girls wanted to see the geese so we went down but apparently they didn't like out because they hopped out and were trying to chase us. We hightailed it out of there pretty fast! Then back to the hotel. It was a nice break. We watched a little disney while I tried in vain to get Ellie to take a nap.

Jeff came back around 5:30 and we made reservations to go to Cunetto's House of Pasta. Apparently they are a fantastic Italian restaurant here in St. Louis. The food was fantastic and we loved it. I think even the girls liked it though they aren't big on Italian. Of course Ellie will eat anything but Ainsley and Mackenzie are much pickier. We have a lot of leftover food in the fridge right now! Jeff took the older two girls back to the pool when we got home while I put Ellie down to bed and watched the beginning part of the game between Michigan and UNC. By the time they got back to the room , I was ready to go to bed and Ellie still hadn't fallen asleep. We did end up all having a pretty decent night of sleep and are all awake now. Jeff left for work around 6:30 St. Louis time...7:30 our time.

There's a lot happening here in St. Louis this week so the hotel is pretty busy. Yesterday was opening Day for the Cardinals. A pretty cold day for opening day but there are people here for opening day. And then the women's Final Four has been here too. The first game was Sunday night and we watched some of it on the big screen at the restaurant. The championship game is tonight right down the road from our hotel. Pretty cool.

I think we need to get ourselves ready and get some breakfast. I am not sure the plan for the day. I think we will get some breakfast, go to the pool, get ready for the day and then either take the metro or grab a taxi to go to the Science Center. Spend the afternoon there and then head off to another great restaurant for dinner with Jeff.

St. Louis Day 1 1/2

2009-04-06T07:21:00.003-05:00

We left for St. Louis yesterday after church. Jeff picked up our rental and we loaded it up and off we went. 5 hours later we arrived. We made good time, despite stopping once for a bathroom/candy break for all of us and having to drive slow through some seriously rainy weather. We got ourselves unpacked and then went down do the hotel restaurant to eat. The hotel's restaurant is called Tigin and has a generally Scottish pub theme. I had a chicken pot pie that was awesome! The girls of course split a chicken finger and fries appetizer because when we go out that seems to be all they eat! Before heading back up to our room, we stopped by the hotel's pool and workout room. I hope to run while we are here and the girls hope to do LOTS of swimming:)

After a pretty good night of sleep, everyone is up and watching cartoons. We don't have much planned today. This is a business trip for Jeff and since I honestly am not to keen on driving around St. Louis when I have no idea where I am driving, we are going to stay at the hotel. Oh and it is supposed to be a high of 38 degrees today and we forgot coats! So pretty sure that will keep us in for the most part too! But that's ok. The girls are looking forward to going to eat breakfast, hanging out in the room and doing lots of swimming at the pool. I look forward to the same thing and watching Opening Day for the Red Sox on ESPN at 2 PM!

We will probably go out to some of the local attractions tonight when Jeff gets off work and then grab dinner.

And on it goes..

2009-04-01T19:49:00.003-05:00

Just wanted to update with another quick post about my medicaid experience. So today I go to the medicaid office closest to me. I have previously been told to go there and pick up an application for the adult medicaid waver program because kids also fall under the same program. I go to the front desk and there are already like 10-15 people sitting in seats in this room. I walk up to the desk and she asks if she can help me. So I explain exactly what I need. She tells me to sit down, fill it out and wait till they call me up. Call me up?? What on earth...I just want to fill it out and send it in. Well that's now how we do it. You have to fill it out and then we have to interview you. Can I make an appointment for that? Nope...you need to sit down, fill it out and then we will call you up. I ended up taking the paper and leaving, having not been prepared for a 3 hour jaunt to the medicaid office. I am now no longer a fan of medicaid...at all! And am definitely wondering if it is worth all this!! I am not sure when I will have a 3 hour block of time to go into the office without kids any time soon. But I will keep you all posted....

Life has a way....

2009-04-01T07:26:00.006-05:00

Of preventing me from posting. I mean I have VERY good intentions. I actually have sat down on two separate occasions to post and voila..no post!! I sit down and start typing and then I hear.."mom, can you..." and it is all over. 20 minutes later I have forgotten what on earth I was posting and have started on dinner. And so it goes every time I have sat down to post in recent days.

So here I sit now with the same intentions. I started to post, got distracted by one of the kids needing something and now I have my two little friends over that I watch on Wednesdays. If this post actually gets posted I will be amazed. I have had to put Ellie in time out 3 times already this morning and it is only 8:40. 3 tantrums later hopefully she will be able to come out and function with Jonah in the house. They have days when they do soooo well. And then there are the other days. I am thinking that today might be one of those "other days" since as soon as she saw Jonah sitting on what she terms "her bench" it was all over. I don't know if she hit him or not but he was crying and off to her room she went. I am thinking that at this rate maybe she should just stay there till she goes to school and things might flow a bit smoother. But then again a 3 hour timeout might be a bit much even for me.

She is now out of time out and talking about her bench...hmmm.

The first time she was put in time out was because she asked for a waffle for breakfast and then didn't eat it but wanted yogurt. My policy is that you can absolutely have yogurt but you can waste food. So you need to eat the waffle and then I will get you yogurt. She proceeded to throw a fit about not getting yogurt and refusing to eat the waffle. I can't stand wasted food. I feel like there are kids everywhere without food and you are wasting the food you were given. It just should not be happening. A crust on the pizza is ok, or a little crust from a sandwich is ok but an entire peanut butter covered waffle??? Too much...so she is now back downstairs from picking up her books and she is whining again about yogurt. After carefully explaing that she still will not be getting yogurt unless she eats her waffle for the 3rd time, I think she has given up and is moving on. For the time being that is...

We are in the process of applying for medicaid for Ellie. There is a program that a friend of ours mentioned called the medicaid waiver program. She thought Ellie might qualify and gave me the info a while ago. I finally got phone call back and was originally told she didn't qualify. 3 days later I received a call saying after checking some things out she thought Ellie did indeed qualify and we made an appointment for someone to come out an do an assessment on Ellie. The assessment happened last week some time and I got a call from them saying she received a LOC (level of care). Now it is up to me to call and get the financial part of medicaid rolling. Her LOC was for a year which means she gets evaluated every year to see if she qualifies. I feel confident that in a year she probably won't qualify. But I am going to take advantage of every service I can to get Ellie the necessary services to progress as much as possible. Now we are dealing with the medicaid office. What I am finding out is that dealing with medicaid is definitely not for the faint of heart. I called yesterday to start this process and the first lady I talked to had NO IDEA what on earth I was talking about. She of course transferred me to yet another woman who had NO IDEA what I was talking about. The natural choice would then be to transfer me to yet another person who had NO IDEA what I was talking about. After 15 minutes of being on the phone with people who obviously had no idea about the medicaid waiver program but worked for medicaid, I was about to pull my hair out! Then finally the 4th person knew what I was talking about..thankfully! So now I need to go in to the office in person and pick up an application. I am going to try to do that this afternoon. Just from my 15 minutes of experience with the office, I am confident that I am going to be in for a long process. I will definitely keep you all posted as a go along. I hope this isn't an indication of the future because if it is this complicated and I make it to 69 or 75 or whatever age it is when I can actually use medicare services, I will be doomed. Maybe Medicare will be radically different than Medicaid!!

So here are a few recent pics of the girls from when my mom visited last week. We had a good visit and the girls have missed grammy since she flew back to Maine. I have a lot of Ellie since she is one of the only ones who wants to get her picture taken. Ainsley doesn't like it and Mackenzie doesn't mind but often is at school when I think to get the camera out.

We are looking forward to going to St. Louis over spring break. The girls are so excited! Jeff has a business trip and we are joining him for it. The hotel has a pool and they are really looking forward to swimming. St. Louis apparently has lots of free things to do so we will partake in as many of those things as possible. They have a free children's museum, zoo and multiple other attractions. The only one that I think we may need to pay for is to go up the arch. But of course we can't pass that up!

Ainsley experimenting with the camera

Ellie

Ellie hanging out in the laundry basket

Reaching for the camera!

Ellie and Ainsley at the computer

Mom and Mackenzie making pizza

Making pizza take 2

Ellie

Mackenzie eating pepperoni

Mackenzie a mess after helping with the pizza

I love my new kitchen paint color...a much grayer and softer blue. I just got new kitchen curtains to go with the new paint color. They are a chocolate brown suede and look great. We also got new darker wood blinds for the windows and love those too. The next purchase I think will be the countertop. We are still not certain as to when we will do this but I can't wait to have it done! We dream of stainless steel appliances but that will probably be a long time in the future. I will keep you posted if anything new pops in to our kitchen:)

My new kitchen curtains..chocolate brown suede and I love 'em

More new paint color

Spring!

2009-03-20T06:21:00.002-05:00

The last few days here in NKY have been pretty amazing and I am looking forward to spring! A time when we can get outside more and see the neighbors and just enjoy the beautiful weather. Grilling out on the grill will also be a highlight since that frees me up to actually having to prepare dinner:) Ellie has been having an awful time with accidents. She has barely had any since getting potty trained over a year ago and now accidents left and right it seems. I can't figure out what is causing them. Jeff thinks it is her fear of falling in the potty but that doesn't make a lot of sense unless she had some recent bad experience. I am trying to figure out whether to bring her in to the doctor or not since it seems pretty sudden. Maybe she has a UTI in which case I would want to get it treated. And she is still having lots of tantrums. I have been consistent with her but that doesn't seem to be helping. I haven't heard back from the social worker at the International Adoption Center so I guess I need to call her again. Why does it seem I am either calling a doctor, trying to connect with a doctor or at the doctor???

Mackenzie and Ainsley have been enjoying the beautiful weather and are happy for spring. I haven't taken any new pictures so sorry! I picked my mom up last night from the Dayton, OH airport. She is here for a week so we are looking forward to spending time with Grammy Moody. Enjoy the first day of Spring!!

You can only wish you were here..

2009-03-08T13:26:00.003-05:00

So yesterday we experienced our first really warm day of the spring season here in KY. It was sunny and 74 degrees. I am loving it!!! So I bet you are all jealous unless of course you live in Florida. In which case I am jealous of you..but only in the winter:) Today is overcast and looks like it could rain soon but it is still warm in the high 60's. I love the spring in KY. Last year we didn't get much spring as it moved from 40's to 80's it seems. While that might be a slight over exaggeration, it went from cold to hot quickly. We didn't get much of the 60's. This week Mackenzie had her Student of the Month recognition at the monthly PTA meeting. The plan was for all of us to go but Ainsley came home from school not feeling well and had a fever so it ended up that only Jeff was able to go with her. She was a little nervous beforehand but did fine once she was there. She walked up with her friend Taylor and all went well. I will post a few pics of the event but none of them came out that great.
Other than that we have had a pretty low key week. The girls had Awana on Wednesday night and I spent the time while they were at Awana looking for brown valance curtains for our kitchen. I was unable to find any that I liked and so we are still curtainless. I have looked at all the stores I can think of so I think maybe it is now time to venture online.
We had the girls spring festival at school yesterday afternoon. It is the major PTA fundraiser and it looked to be a great success. They had a ton of silent auction baskets. I of course did not win the one I bid on but that's ok. I think every class did a basket with donated items based on a theme given to them by the PTA. It as a great idea and the girls had fun playing the games, jumping in the bounce house and wining prizes. I volunteered my time from 3-5 and had a good time helping out with doling out bags of popcorn. I even learned how to make it with the fancy popcorn stand. Pretty cool I say:) I unfortunately didn't get any pictures of me at the popcorn stand so sadly you will all have to use your imaginations:)
I have been reading a parenting book this week to try to help me get a handle on Ellie's tantrums and I also have a call in to the Social Worker at the International Adoption Center. Hopefully between those two things, I will get a better idea of how to best work with Ellie to minimize her tantrums.

Here is a random picture of Ellie this past week

Ainsley and Ellie with an entire strawberry in their mouth

why this is cool...I am not sure but they sure thought it was:)

Mackenzie waiting to receive her award for student of the month

Mackenzie and her friend Taylor who is right in front of her..

Fun times

2009-02-28T09:34:00.002-05:00

So Mackenzie ended up going to school on Thurs even though she still said she had a headache because she wanted to go on their field trip. All of the second grade classes went to the children's theatre to see High School Musical 2. She had already seen it with me but of course going again is always fun especially if it is during school! She has still been complaining of a headache and I ended taking her in to school late on Friday because of it. I think she is just dehydrated so I pushed the fluids and sent her in to school. She was none too happy about this though and I am pretty sure the Vice Principal wondered if I was the meanest mom on earth. I just might be but I didn't want her to miss more school and she was ok when she got home and was able to go to Drama. Apparently her drama teacher gave her several compliments which made her day! She was so excited so things are looking up in the drama department. Her big performance is May 8th and tickets go on sale tomorrow. They are performing Suessical Jr and I have told her teacher about it. There are two day performances that are open to area schools and I thought it would cool if Mackenzie's class could go. The tickets are free so the schools just have to pay for transportation to the Carnegie. We shall see if we can work it out o or not but it is pretty fun. The week before sounds like a crazy schedule as they have practices for the performance Monday-Thursday night from 4-8 pm. That's going to be tricky for us since Mackenzie barely gets out of school that early. I think I might have to get her dismissed early every day. And then the day of the performance she has 4 of them. There's a 10 am, a noon, a 6 pm and 8 pm. Wow! But she really seems to be enjoying it so I am glad that I got her involved.

So hopefully we are all on the mend and no more sickness for a while. We are having a Wii party tonight and Ainsley has a friend's birthday party to go to today. I am taking her out soon to look for a present and pick up a few things for the party tonight. I may take her to Starbucks and get her a hot chocolate. She loves their frappuccino too so maybe we can split one of those:)

Home today

2009-02-25T17:10:00.005-05:00

Mackenzie ended up staying home all day. I thought about taking her in for a half day but she wanted to stay home so I let her. I had her do some work on math facts and work on some Awana homework too. She is working on learning the books of the Old Testament. I don't remember learning them myself. It seems I have just always known them. But it is pretty funny to listen to her say some of them. Even though they give a phonetic pronunciation on the side of each of the book names she still managed to make me laugh. I should record her but then that might end up embarrassing her so I guess I shouldn't:) Then she and I played tanks on Wii play. We love that game but she is much better than me because I don't often find time to play:) She was pretty gracious though and didn't taunt me too much:) I had a dentist appt at 2 so she went with me to that and I got 2 fillings. Yuck! I got my mouth numbed at 2 and it is 5:15 and it is still numb. Jeff and I are supposed to eat out tonight at our regular date night with Ellie. Hopefully I can feel my mouth by then or I could do some serious damage. The girls have Awana tonight and when Jeff is in town we usually do a "Date Night with Ellie." It used to be our date night before we brought Ellie home but we decided Ellie wasn't ready for Awana (or they weren't ready for her that is..:) So we have changed it to date night with Ellie night. TGI Fridays for dinner because we have a BOGO coupon and gift cards so it's free!! And then on to Home Depot. Could it get any better than that??:) Jeff is going to try to haggle them down on the cost of a new counter top. It should be fun. Hopefully he can get the price down!

We almost dodged a bullet

2009-02-25T07:44:00.002-05:00

But not really...Mackenzie got strep yesterday. Or at least I took her to the doctor yesterday. She has been complaining of a headache for 3 days or so and I figured I ought to have her checked out. Sure enough, it was strep. So I stayed home with her yesterday and will send her back today around lunch time, since that will be 24 hours from her first dose. We had a good but busy weekend this past weekend. We were out late Friday at our friend's house but apparently not nearly as late as some! We came home around 10:30 or so but some of our friends stayed till 3:30. I contemplate why anyone in their right mind can possibly want to be up till 3:30. It perplexes Jeff and I who are not late owls. I can do 11 and even midnight if I HAVE to but later than that and I just miss any kind of fun that would be. That probably explains why I go to bed early and get up early:)
On Saturday I had to work for a few hours in the morning and Mackenzie had practice for the Family Worship Service this Sunday at church. She is helping lead worship with some of the other kids on the stage. I think she will enjoy this as she has been asking to be more involved on stage. In the evening I took Mackenzie and Ainsley to see High School Musical 2 on stage at the Children's Theatre. It was very well done and they loved it of course! I even splurged this time and bought them cotton candy. In addition to why people stay up late, cotton candy perplexes me. I don't think I have ever liked it. I tried it again and am still confused. It just doesn't taste that good to me but the girls seem to love it. I can think of MANY fair kinds of foods that I love. dough boys, pretzels, caramel apples, and the list goes on but cotton candy has never been one of them. But they got to choose so cotton candy it was...
I had a purse party at a friend's house on Sunday and I took the two older girls, while Ellie was napping, over with me since it was at a neighbor's house. They had lots of fun and I got a free purse so it was great! Since then we have just been busy with school and repainting the kitchen. I will post some pictures once it is finally done!

So far...So good

2009-02-20T07:34:00.002-05:00

Well we have managed the last few days with daddy being gone and I think we are all healthy now. Of course I haven't yet gotten Ellie up so that may not be the case but I am hopeful! We have a busy weekend with a party celebration tonight with friends MUCH older than us...he turned 43:) That should be a of fun as we love hanging out with friends. Tomorrow, barring snow, Jeff has flag football and Mackenzie has practice at church for our family worship and I think I will try to get a few hours of work in while she practices. That means finding something to entertain the two younger ones in the basement. Hopefully I will up to the challenge. The highlight of the weekend for the two older girls will be tickets to see High School Musical on stage at the Children's Theatre. I will be taking them to this while Jeff will be hanging out with Ellie at home. I am also hopeful that Jeff might have time to paint the kitchen this weekend. I will take some before and after shots to show you the results! We are doing some work in the kitchen as money allows or sales allow that is....we are going to get new Corian countertop but only when they go on sale. Jeff is going to attempt to put in a stone backsplash also. Once it is completely done it will look pretty cool I think. But it will probably come in stages so we shall see how long it takes!

Recovery

2009-02-19T20:32:00.003-05:00

So after Ellie's party I started to feel sick! Originally I thought it was just allergies but started in with a fever so since Jeff had Monday off for President's Day I took myself off to the doctor. Of course I had strep throat and felt pretty awful. I did elect to get the shot though and started to feel better by Monday night which was good. We had a day and a half of decent health and then Ainsley proceeds to throw up just 20 minutes before I was going to cart her off to school! I guess that was fortunate for all of us because I called and made her an appt and she had strep too! Fortunately or Unfortunately, depending on whose perspective you ask, Jeff was out of town. Ainsley threw up on her way to the doctor and on her way back. Let's just say I didn't prepare very well. All I had in the car was an empty twizzler bag which didn't manage as well as I had hoped and Ellie's backpack. Let's just say that neither fared very well and I cleaned out the car today really well! But I felt really badly for Ainsley! Poor sick girl:( However after several more vomiting sessions and keeping down three doses of Amoxicillin, we are good. She had felt much better this afternoon and will definitely be up for school tomorrow, barring anything else. So far no one else is sick so maybe it will just be the two of us. We have quite a bit planned for this weekend so if someone need to get sick they are just going to have to wait!! Here are a few pics of Mackenzie with Ellie dress up that she got for her birthday.