We want to thank everyone who has been praying for the adoption!  I received a call last night from the lawyer that the birth father signed to deny paternity last night!  This is such an answer to prayer!  Thank you God!  Thank you to everyone who was praying for this.  Not only will this make the process shorter but it saved nearly 1,000 in costs if we had to pursue him with searches and newspaper notices!

The Next Step

We have our first homestudy visit this coming Saturday.  We are looking forward to meeting Candace, the one who will be completing the homestudy and writing the proposal for the judge to recommend we be named as adoptive parents for Olivia.  Then there is a provisional period following the court appointment.  I believe it is 3 months long.  At the end, Candace will write a second report, and the court will grant us full parental rights, and we will change Olivia's last name to Atkins. 

We are very thrilled and are just so thankful that she has been with us already.  I know many other adoptive parents have to do this part while still waiting for their child/ren.  Olivia is fitting right in with the family.  We are so thankful God has answered our prayers!

Here is a picture I took of the girls before church this morning. I forgot how hard it is to get a 1 year old to stand still and smile on cue!  LOL  Then of course when I get her, one of the other ones has gotten distracted or is trying to help by doing something to make the baby smile!

Here is another one that I think is so sweet!

She must be thinking, "What are you all doing just standing here!  Our shoes are on; let's go!"   I won't show you the other five shots where she is either making a break for it or demonstrating her dislike for the whole operation!

We know God has granted us many blessings!  We are so thankful for the latest answer to our prayers!

In Christ,

For pastors, Mondays are typically the day off.  He has poured out all that God has given him for the people, and he is ready for his own day of rest.  Typically we try to sleep in on Mondays and take it very easy.  If dh has things to do we sometimes go ahead and do a day of school.  It really helps for the days when Mommy unexpectedly needs a day off or when the girls are sick and we get so behind!  Some Mondays my dh spends much of his day working here:

This is our expanded garden this year.  I didn't get a shot of the other small garden on the other side of the yard.  As you can see dh has been spending a lot of time working hard on his days off to produce some delicious food for our family! We enjoyed fresh green onions the other day.  I am really looking forward to green beans too!  You can also see our corner of flowers here!  We just love the way this has grown so beautifully!  The girls enjoying picking flowers for special occassions to put on the table.  We (mostly Mamaw) have planted more around the house.  I will share pictures when they are blooming. 

Psalm 127:4-5
 Like arrows in the hand of a warrior,
So are the children of one's youth. 
How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them;
NASU

We have been blessed by the Lord to receive another child.  We are seeking to adopt a precious little girl named Olivia.  We have known her since she was born. Her grandmother, Rose, has been a faithful member of our church for several years now.  We praise God that this family has chosen us to be the parents for this precious girl!  We love her so!

Here is a picture of her with us on my mom's birthday. 

 We were taking a picture to post for Grandmom Short's birthday surprise and I asked if I could snap a few of Olivia with the girls. (This was the best out of the bunch even with the glare and the strange face by Mary! )  Nearly a month later adoption began to be discussed.  Now she is living with us and we are completing all of the required paperwork for this adoption! 

Olivia Rose is one year old now (March 1st).  We were able to be with her on her birthday, but I forgot my digital camera!   Hopefully I will have some new pictures to post over the weekend.  Resurrection Sunday was so busy I didn't get any of the girls in their pretty new dresses.  They love to dress up though so as soon as possible we will do that!

Please pray that the birth father ( who has not been involved in her life at all) will terminate his rights so we can proceed with the adoption quickly.  Thank you so much!

In Christ,

My friend over at Mason Moments asked what we did before becoming stay at home moms.  Most of you have heard me mention from time to time that I used to teach in public school, but I thought I would go back further than that.

During high school, I wasn't allowed to work.  My parents believed that it would affect my grades, and I am sure they were right, but during the summers I did volunteer at the day care center where my mom worked. I also did other jobs with children such as counselor at church camps and nursery teacher during camp meeting weeks for which I was paid.

After high school graduation, I got a summer job working at the local Hardee's.  I was a cashier.  My twin brother worked the grill.  We rode together to work.  Many days we would work two shifts because we had the time and wanted the money.  In the fall we both quit.  He went into the army and I went to Florida to a small Christian college called Warner Southern in Lake Wales.  I was so homesick!  I hated the heat and bugs and sand and flat land!  I hoped to find Mr. Right and when that didn't happen, and I received notice that I owed more money unexpectedly, which I couldn't pay, back to VA I headed!

I once again got a job at the same Hardee's and began taking classes at the local community college.  After a year, I decided I wanted to work at the daycare again for pay this time.  I worked at both Hardee's, the day care and took classes one sememster.  That part is really just a blur!   The Hardee's offered to train me for the job of office manager, but I knew that I didn't want to spend my life in that business!  I also could have had full time work at the daycare, but by this time I had decided to go to Radford University and be a school pyschologist.  So I ended all my off campus jobs, entered dorm life, and was assigned to work in the financial aid office with the lady who did Pell Grants.  This turned out to be one of the best jobs that I had.  The people were so wonderful and I learned a great deal about how to be organized and work in an office environment.  I was also offered a chance to become a loan officer here but declined.  I now realized after a few sememsters of pyschology that what I really wanted was to work with "normal" kids and be a teacher.  So in December of 1994 I graduated with a teaching degree and by January I was filling a full time substitute position at Dublin Middle School for the remainder of the school year.  This was a very difficult situation in this 7th grade class for math and english, but it really taught me how to swim as a teacher!  The next fall I had offers from two schools and accepted the one that was 4 hours from home. 

At that school I taught 5th , 6th and 7th grades in all subject areas for the next six years.  I also sponsored and directed a drama club for three years, and served in various curriuclum writing assignments, and taught a voluntary afterschool tutoring program for two years.  When I was married the last two years of my time at this school, I had two baby girls and knew very quickly that I could not do either my job or family justice.  I began praying and a month later my husband asked me to stay home and be a fulltime wife and mom.  I happily agreed!

I am so thankful for the past 7 years of being home full time!  I wouldn't trade it! I do look forward to one day possibly being a secretary again for a wonderful pastor I know!  That is if I am not too busy being a stay home grandmother!

I would love to know about some of you too!  What did you do before now? 

A friend was asking about our family worship time.  I thought I would describe a little of what we do now and what we would like to do in the future. 

Setting:  Daddy sits in the recliner (sometimes with a little girl on his lap!)  Sarah and Hannah sit in their child sized rockers that they received as infants, and Mary (when not on Daddy's or Mommy's lap) sits in her great- great Papaw's rocking chair.  Mommy sits on one end of the couch so Mary can have Mommy's  rocking chair!   Mary has a child sized recliner but she hardly ever wants to use it!

As of now we read, pray, and sing.  Daddy reads a small portion of scripture (a parable or a chapter) and then paraphrases it while asking the girls questions. If we have time we also use our Children's Catechism (not Catholic) questions here.  A catechism is basically as set of questions and answers which describe the basic teachings of a body of information.  In our case we are using these questions and answers to help the girls learn how to answer basic questions about our faith.  For example the first question is "Who made you?"  The answer is of course "God."  As the girls learn the answers we can discuss where in the Bible this question is answered.  This has been a great way to teach them truths.  For example when the girls misbehave I may say,  "Where is God?"  They can answer "God is everywhere."  Then I remind them that God knows about their sin and they know they will be held accountable even if Mommy didn't see them! A few months ago Alpheus read a book called Girls and Boys Playing by J.C.Ryle.  It was actually a set of sermons from this minister from the 1800s for children.  This was a nice change too.

Then we pray together holding hands.  Usually Daddy prays alone but sometimes we open it up to the girls to pray if they want.  

Last we sing. This is definitely their favorite part.  It is good for me too because I am accountable to practice the song for the evening sometime during the day.  Sarah's favorite is Trust and Obey and it is in a key I can play so she loves to ask for that one!  They love this because they get to run around too!  While Daddy plays guitar for the fast songs the girls literally run around the path through the living room into the kitchen and back in the living room. On the slow songs they sit and sing. We have some old hymnals from the church so the girls can hold their own hymnal to read the words. One of the girls favorite songs is "He's Got the Whole World In His Hands"  After we sing the names of the people in the room then we move on to animals and the girls pretend to be those animals.  We have done as many as 20 different animals one night!  They are so funny to watch!  I love to hear them during the day starting to sing the hymns and praise choruses we do together!  They are all going to know all the words to "I Saw the Light" because that is one of the "fast" ones and also one of Daddy's favorites!

After Family Worship Time, I take the girls to bathroom to brush teeth, etc. and then when they are tucked in the bed I read Pilgrim's Progress to them.  They have really been enjoying this book.  It is a slightly modified edition and I still slip in easier synonyms for some of the words.  We have a video on the life of John Bunyan from The Torchlighters: Heroes of the Faith series (VOM).  We want the girls to see it after we have finished reading the story!  I would like to get an audio set of this, I think I saw it in Vision Forum.  Anyway, this is such a good book!

In the Future:  I would like to see the girls do more of the reading of the scripture. I also hope that they will start asking questions of their own about the reading!   We also look forward to when they can play an instrument or sing harmony during song time!  I also look forward to the day when the "Whole World" song is a happy memory!

The girls will sometimes look bored or get out of hand but they really are listening and they are learning that it is important for us to spend time together as a family studying God's word!  I also look forward to the future when the girls may have friends over to the house who will share in our worship time!  I pray that their future husbands will spend many happy evenings with us getting to know our girls and our family and worshipping God with us!

One of my friends who asked me about this expressed a concern over not knowing the answer if his/her child asked a question.  Do you stop eating just because you don't know how to cook every type of recipe?  Don't stop reading the Bible to your children just because you can't explain everything!  Go to the parts of the Bible you do know and understand and make sure they know it too!  If they ask a question you don't know, be honest and tell them you will have to find the answer to that!  Write down the question and do it!  Find the answer.  What a life lesson you will be teaching then!  The Bible really is important enough to try to understand it!

I hope this has been an encouragement for everyone!  Oh and lastly, if you miss a few nights don't give up!  Just say, "Okay it is time for family worship" and go right to it!  For the glory of God! 

In Him,