Kids Rooms!

We just moved into our new house! It is perfect for our family and I feel so blessed everyday I wake up here in our own home! God has been so good to our family. 

The kids are excited that they get to choose how to decorate their room. It is a work in progress but I KNOW the end result will be just AWESOME! It already is awesome! 

My SIL, known around here as "Elly Kelly" (when H was little she could not say Auntie Kelly and it came out as Elly Kelly and it has stuck), has a tremendous amount of talent in the artistic department! So she offered to paint for our kids in their new rooms! How neat is that! 

The girls share a room, but are still getting just what each of them are into. 

H chose the new Brave movie for her paintings! She will be getting Merida, her horse and the Three Naked Bears. (that is what H calls Merida's three little brothers that get turned into bears).  Elly Kelly has almost finished the Three Naked Bears! Here they are...

 H LOVES them! They are under the window! I just know Princess Merida and her horse will look just as awesome as the Three Naked Bears :)

R is very very very much into My Little Pony. So on the other wall of the girls room Elly Kelly is  going to do three ponies. Rainbow Dash is the first one. R has said she wants Twilight Sparkle and Shutter Fly...but she is a female and her mind changes often ;) Here is Rainbow Dash in stages.

Elly Kelly is doing a great job and it is fun to see these characters come to life! It is a lot of work!

Ben is All boy and chose a Super Hero room!  I think the plan is to have Elly Kelly paint Spider Man, Iron Man, Batman, Thor and Captain America. This will take time, but will be so great when done! She finished Spidey today! Here he is!

Here is a shot from where your head lays down on the top bunk! So cool! 

My kids sure are blessed with an Aunt who is spending so much time for them! What a neat gift to have their rooms one of a kind! I will post more as the rooms come along!  

And a huge great big enormous THANK YOU to Elly Kelly!

Never Say Never

I can't stand cats! I am allergic to them. They make me feel so miserable! My eyes swell up and water, I  start sneezing and running nose and just plain yucky! I have to take allergy medication whenever I go to someone's house who has cats. If I don't I pay for it! So to say I don't like cats is a HUGE understatement! My husband is not allergic to cats, but shares my deep dislike for them. I have more than once said "I will NEVER let a cat inside my house!"   

We use to have a neighbor who had several cats. When she moved she left them. And so they have multiplied and live all around and in the back field.  The other day, I took the kids swimming after church. We heard a "meowing" coming from the shed. It was loud and I could tell it was a young cat. So when Dan came out I asked him to go check it out. 

He came out of the shed with a little kitten in a box. There were two kittens in the shed abandoned and only one was still alive and he was not doing so good. 

Hannah got out of the pool and asked if she could look in the box. I said ok and the kids went and looked. Hannah started asking about the kitten. She asked why it was crying so much. My husband, was answering her. He explained that the kitten was probably hungry. Hannah asked where the mommy cat was, and Dan told her that the mommy cat was not there and was not taking care of the kitten like she was suppose to.   Right after Dan explained that the mommy cat was not there taking care of her baby like she was suppose to, Hannah said-

"like MY birth lady?"

 We realized our daughter was identifying with this little kitten.  We  had to help this kitten. Of course it was a holiday weekend, so the humane society was closed. So I wrapped up the little guy in a towel and brought him into my house. I could NOT believe I was bringing a CAT into my home! But Hannah's brown eyes and connection with the abandonment of this animal was too hard to fight against. We talked with the kids about how each one of them went to an emergency foster home before coming home to mom and dad. How the emergency home was where they were taken care of, fed and loved until we could get them.  How at Ben's emergency foster home they nicknamed him "Bob".   Ben thought that was funny! And so we were that emergency home for this little kitten.  For 48 hours we took care of the kitten.

Again we were taken by surprise by our girl and how much she thinks about her adoption. She is a very curious 5 year old and she likes details about everything. Right now she is working out her own story in her own mind. By the time we took the kitten into the humane society, I was sneezing and feeling pretty yucky, but my girl felt good about how we "helped the kitty". So it was worth it. She felt connected to this cat. He was not cared for by the one who birthed him...and neither was she. But she felt good about taking care of him and taking him in so they could find him a  new home! 

Just another life lesson we were able to use in teaching our children about adoption.  And lesson for mom... NEVER SAY NEVER!!!

Just looking at this pic makes me feel like sneezing :)  It is a pretty cute little kitten though!

To Tell Or Not To Tell. That Was Our Question

Our Ben was Star Of The Week this week in his little Kindergarten class. He has been BEAMING and LOVING it! He talks about being first in line, and getting to dismiss the rows and it is neat to see him feel so special. He was the second to last student to be Star Of the Week, so he has had all year of watching the others get to be the Star and was really ready to be it himself.
Ben is our first one to start school. At the beginning of the school year, Dan and I wondered about how and when and how much to share about his adoption. We felt the teacher needed to know that he was adopted. Just the basics, so that if the topic came up she would know that he was adopted and be able to handle it with the correct information. We decided to let the rest play out on its own. 
Last week the teacher gave me all the information we needed for Star of The Week and she asked if we wanted to share about his adoption. I told her we would leave that up to Ben and see what he was comfortable with.  
What we want is for the children to feel good about their adoption, to have pride in how God made our family, but to not be defined by it. To have a healthy balance. To know they are special and God  loves them, but that there is SO much more to them than just being adopted. 
At home while going through the "tell us about your family" part I asked Ben if he wanted to share about being adopted or not. He looked up at me with big wide eyes and a big smile and said "YEAH!!!!!"  So when it was time to pick out pictures, he picked some from his adoption day. I was happy to see how proud he is of his story, but wondered how it would be explaining it and sharing with his peers. This would be a first. I wondered if there would be questions from the other children, and how Ben would feel about the questions. So far, he has only had supportive, positive things said to him about his adoption. To him, it is just normal. But for his classmate it will be something new and different than what they know. (he is the only student in his class that has been adopted)
When I picked him up from school I was anxious to ask him how sharing went. But was pretty much shot down. You see he is MALE. ALL MALE. So to him there is no need for details or talking in depth about what everyone said and if they had  any questions. (this IS how Hannah will be for sure. I bet she will even tell me what kind of shoes each person was wearing! ) So pretty much all I could get from Ben was that it was AWESOME sharing and that he told everyone he was an Indian. It seemed to have gone well, but I am a female and wanted details :)   So the next day I asked the teacher how it went sharing about his adoption. She said he did great and that he was completely comfortable sharing. She said that when he shared the picture of adoption day standing with the judge, one of the students asked "what that big black thing in the middle was", and she told him it was the robe that judges wear. She said they wanted to know what the Judge did and she explained that she signed a paper that said Ben would be in our family forever. That was the extent of the questions. I am so glad it went so well. I am more glad that my boy was comfortable sharing about his adoption and not afraid to. But I am also glad that it has not been all about his adoption all year. That we let it play out the way Ben was comfortable with. I know as he gets older it may change and he may go back and forth with how much he wants to share if he wants to at all. But for his first time sharing with peers. I am super glad it was positive and great for him. 

On a funny note,  when the teacher read his full name including his middle name which is Sioux,   he said "thats my name because I am an Indian...I can't remember right now what kind of indian I am, but I am an indian". The teacher then said "well I think you might be a Sioux indian, does that sound right?" Ben answered "YEAH THATS IT!!!!!"  LOL.  I am so glad I asked his teacher for the details!!! 

All Of Me

When adopting from the Foster Care system, there are no guarantees. You go through training that makes it VERY clear, it will be a tough road. A road that has more than just bumps in it, it is full of great big boulders. Ones you can see and ones that fall right in front of you without warning. You understand that it is not a sprint, but a marathon. One in which you receive this blessing of a child LONG before you have the assurance that you will be able to keep them and raise them. It is not an easy road. It is a road well worth traveling though, for how ever long you can.
When we brought B home, I got some questions from others about whether I was able to fully accept him or if I was "holding" back just incase we lost him. This would have been the easier way, to protect my heart and go through the motions until everything was for sure. But as we were handed this precious baby...

...it quickly became all about him and no longer about us. We were the adults, and he was a helpless precious life that needed ALL of our love and ALL of our hearts. No matter if we had him one day, one month, one year or 18 years  he was worth giving our whole self to him. How could we hold back from this little one? He deserved nothing less than our best.

And so did she... 

 ...and so did she.

I heard Matt Hammitt's song "All Of Me" and instantly felt that it described just how it was for us. I know that his situation was different, with a seriously ill baby and promising to not let the fear of losing him steal the time they had together.  But it was the same with us. We had these precious, wounded babies, who needed us and we had to choose to look beyond the fear of losing them, and cherish the time we had with them. It was not easy. We came close to having our hearts broken, but the Lord saw fit to keep these little ones with us.  I am so glad we did not hold back. I am so happy we bonded and became their mama and daddy from day one. We loved them with all of ourselves and put the future in God's hands. The long road from having your child placed in your arms to when the papers are sign takes a lot of time. And I am glad we did not miss one moment of it!

 "I wont let sadness steal you from my arms, I won't let pain keep you from my heart".
"I'll trade the fear of all that I could lose, for every moment I'll spend with you".

Homesick

It has been almost 3 weeks since my Mamaw went on to Heaven.  She was married for 63 years to my papaw. They were so in love and dedicated to each other. He was her world and she was his. Since her passing, although I live so far away, with updates from my mom and phone calls and conversations with him, you can tell he is truly heart broken. How could he not be. In one conversation my papaw said to me "He took my second best friend" (his first best friend being Christ).  My papaw got sick and was in the hospital for close to a week and my mother was with him. She shared that he was crying and a nurse came in and asked him if he was ok. He said "just missing my partner".  It breaks my heart to know his heart is so broken and hurting. So many wonderful years together and the pain that must come with being the one left behind. I heard this song and it made me think of my papaw.  I pray the Lord's strength will surround him and give him some relief from his pain. He is truly HOMESICK for Glory.