Thank you aunt Ruthie.. The children LOVE their new quilt. That was so thoughtful of you to put their names on it!
And Maddie LOVES her new dress, just like on the Vision Forum American Girlhood's Colonial Girl, she has drooled over that dress for at least 2 yrs in their catalog. That was so sweet of you to design it with her. She adores it!
Well.. here we are, February 13th! It is hard to believe. Today is one of those surreal sunny warm and cool days all wrapped up into one. A day when a nice hammock and a blanket with a cup of hot chocolate would suffice. For now, I will settle for warm soapy dish water and some breakfast dishes. ;) Anyways, here are a few pictures of what was going on here a little earlier this morning...
Sammy has been sick, you can still see it in his eyes. He had pneumonia. But, he is definately on the mend.
Maddie is in training for window washer for some future home of hers :) Thanks for the sweatshirt V.. er.. S ;) She is finally over the edge of her pneumonia she has had over the last 2 weeks.
A few weeks ago she made 2 birthday cakes. One gluten free casien free cake with store bought frosting (blech), and one lemon cake for her daddy's birthday. Nothing fancy but not bad for a 10 yr old. She really wants us to take the Wilton classes to learn how to decorate properly.
Jaden is just hanging out.. Hes been doing good. He helped read and sound out some of the Bible this morning. We had a great discussion about Genesis one. Like, what does it mean that God created light on the 1st day, but he didn't create the Sun, Moon, and Stars until the 4th day. Jaden is working on his handwriting, and making it legible still. He loves his math but we are working really hard on that reading and writing and comprehension.
Here is Savannah, 5 (note new name!)
We are still wearing name tags to get used to these new names! She is doing good tracing some letters. We are coordinating her schoolwork with where her occupational therapist has her doing things on Mondays. Her OT is a really sweet lady that really encourages Savannah. We REALLY have to wear nametags on Mondays for a while especially to help the therapists out.
Here is Sophia, 4... One of the most exciting things in her life is the fact that she has shown a few signs towards being potty trained. I made peace it may never happen with her, but I still pray. She still is non verbal, which is sort of an oxymoron. She can perfectly carry the tune to I have decided to follow Jesus with a bunch of perfectly spaced and pitched hums. And she has gotten a little commanding to Micah and Liliana, its cute to see her get bold enough to assert a little bit of herself occasionally. She really craves our attention, climbs up into our laps, and runs to us when shes hurt. She really has bonded well with us.
And Liliana... can you tell she is a little mischevious? She is one smart little cookie. At the age of 2, she is the smartest one we've had yet. She knows many letters (thanks to a little regurarly scheduled time on Starfall) and knows most colors, she is in a pre-reading stage of learning letter sounds. She talks so fluently it amazes us. And to think I was worried before the adopted children came that autism and non verbal babbling children might delay this little one!
Here is little Micah... he is still the same size as when he came to our home. The pediatrician, geneticist, nutritionist, endocrinologist, gastroenterologist, neurologist, and developmental pediatrician are moving forward towards him getting a feeding tube. Their not in a huge rush, but hes been having extra labs done, was cleared by the cardiologist earlier this week for a murmur that is benign, etc. So maybe in a couple weeks if nothing changes with him, he will get a little button that might make food not such an issue in his life. The neurologist also confirmed that he too (so does Sophia) have a mitochondrial disorder. He is very deficient in a few key amino acids which do affect brain cell funtion, brain development, and muscle building. He is very week, and the supplements and physical therapy haven't really helped him at this point. Now we know, its not something we can fix, its just the way he is.
He really is usually a ham..
Isaiah is missing.. I'll add him later. He is with his daddy right now working on the car. :)
My husband has been home a lot lately! I just adore having him here. He is such a sweetie with the children and umm... I'm jealous of all his time spent at work! For now, I just wanted to update that all is well in our little house hold. God is so good blessing our family with His children that come hold us up so that we may continue walking in the work he has layed before us.
Some medical updates and prayer requests:
Our 2 yr old son has been diagnosed by many Dr's with many with autism, fetal alcohol syndrome, psychosocial dwarfism, mitochondrial disorder of the DNA, etc and he is going to the neurologist and endocrinologist next week. They are considering using some hormones to trigger his growth. For now he is 2.5 and the size of a 9 month old. He has not really developed at all in the last year. He has not met any goals with his therapists for 15 months. He also has crossed eyes (strabismus) and has gone through a fare share of glasses. He needs a new prescription, we are praying we can obtain that and not a recommendation for surgery (their recommendation last time, we went with the glasses)
Our 4 yr old son with epilepsy has been becoming even more sensative to light. It is hard (now in Janurary) for him to play outside, for us to drive from sun to shade constantly (with trees) etc for his face turns bright red and his eyes tear up. They are considering using a prescription strength eye glass for him . Hes a smart little guy.. he is already reading pretty well!
Our adoption is literally DAYS away. Our court paperwork was filed November 15th. The court has 90 days from then to get the paperwork to us. That would be Feb 15th. We check the mail daily in anticipation of the black and white legal proof that WE are the parents to these children! Unfortunately in our county we don't get a court date and hearing before a judge.. but.. its the way it is!
My husband has been transferring his blog stuff over to www.psalm-127.blogspot.com :)
He envisions a "family blog" so I may be moving my stuff over there soon! We will see.
Should have a man that will don his daughters apron and cook the kids some burgers. My man barely never ever cooks.. or other "womanly" things so this is special
He was being super silly when I came home from the hospital with Elijah. Elijah was being tested for cystic fibroisis and there were lots of sick children around us as we were up in the Childrens Oncology lab (yikes!)
we should get the results tomorrow... in the mean time, coming home to this was fun!
Dec. 27, 2008 - It was a "pinch me" too good to be true day... but it really happened!
So we had to park undergound... that is a clausterphobic experience! I thought this shot of us looking up into the ceiling mirror tiles in the elevator was funny.
Laced up and ready to go!
The oldest three get on first.. their so excited!
Maddie gets going pretty good!
Gilbert gets on and the oldest ones stop for a family picture:
I promised the little ones a snack!
Then Daddy and Isaiah head out on the ice...
As the night came on the white lights turned on and the fog came down and made the night so special!
(who thought sitting in a stroller was *so* much fun!) (Liliana is snoozing behind her and Elijah next to them since we only had the triple stroller)
As we are away from our family this year we had to rest in the fact that we are big enough to do our own thing and would probably take up so much room at someones house anyways so we had a nice dinner on our own today.
All 3 older boys got a sword and shield set, they haven't hardly been put down!
Gilbert does not enjoy preparing the bird, I promise ;)
Liliana and her big brother Micah
Isaiah
Maddie and Sophia
Yes we still dress up, do you have a problem with that?
Isaiah has camo too, and his sword tucked into his back pack loop.
Maddie got an audio book she had been wanting!
The neigboors gave us a doll house they had gotten for their granddaughter and she did not want it. Our favorite Aunt Ruthie made us some sweet modest clothes for the dolls! Their so sweet.
Jaden got an MP3 player and a backpack for it too!
Thank you grandma Sue for the camo hat!
Micah got a neat wooden drum!
Savannah and Sophia got pretty wooden kitchen toys!
Sep. 16, 2008 - Update on my bowl of cherries. We are unable!
You know that saying, Life is like a bowl of cherries, its the pitts?
Well, the pits are being removed, Praise God!
I am so giddy at realizing how the Lord has taken care of us, his sheep.
We are so often asked "how are you able to take care of all these children"
and I often hear as walking by with all 8, "wow, your husband must make a lot of money". I don't know how to be a good testimony in these situations because the reality is we are NOT able we are only willing.. God is the one that is bringing the "able" to us. When they say my husband has a lot of money to afford this, I want to laugh and have them ask me how long they would be willing to have eat rice and beans .By the time this year is over we will probably end up at 1/3 of his old salary by the time the year is over which is a 60% income loss. God is so good, our family has doubled the mouths of babes and our income has gone down so much. It just literally makes me laugh out loud with joy that he has provided. It is not in our strength, nor the governments strength, but God's mighty provision that has carried us through. We are so weak but he is SO STRONG! I now see a benefit to being weak, you can't hold yourself up and you HAVE to lean on the Lord! (got this out of a great message that we got to go hear at church this past weekend) because we are all better from the belly aches that the children had. God provided a washing machine literally left on my doorstep. He is amazing. He is able.
First a couple little ones start with belly aches and all that comes with that in both directions.
Then a few of the older ones.
So your missing out on all the special meetings at church.
And then your headlight goes out in the van and the brace that holds it cracked when your husband tried to install it, so you can't drive at night.
And the washer machine broke.
And the shower pipe broke.
And the vacuum broke.
I won't even get into all of the other things going on here..
Ok, a couple friends have asked me and so I took a few pictures at lunch the other day to show how you can eat corn tortillas. If you just take them out of the package you will find stiff breaking tortillas. If you follow the instructions you will have YUMMY soft corn tortillas.
First here is three ways of doing it, my favorite way is the comal on the left wiped with a tiny bit of olive oil. I also have out a SS skillet and a cast iron skillet, along with olive oil, shortening, and oil spray. I did all 3 at once so I didn't pay attention to which pics I took. They all turn out, about the same. I like the comal because if you make tortillas a lot when you are flipping them you sometimes burn your wrist on the cast iron skillets, but that isn't an issue with a comal. I have 3 ;) I just wanted my friend to know you can use a skillet too. :)
Here I take some dish cloths and lay them in a dish. I will put the tortillas in between the cloths to keep them warm. They do make tortilla warmers for this, but I don't know one person that finds it necessary.
Here my tortilla is just starting to soften and shows little bubbles forming within it. When the tortilla has soften and just starts getting a bit of brown spots it is ready.
Then it will look like this. They keep each other warm and soft. They love company.
Now, enjoy a yummy chicken taco. Our kiddos on GFCF diets love these tacos,
they just do without the cheese. Can you say YUM???
So now we can update on the neurological appointment that was this past week. Our 3 yr old son had over 100 generalized petit mal/absence episodes on his EEG. This makes it official. All of the small seizures make it much more likely for grand mals to occur more often. The Dr. said that we could have expected his seizures to damage his brain, lower his IQ and overall body functioning because after his seizures started 2 yrs ago he showed significant delays, loss of gross motor skills and speech, but because we made the huge turnaround on the diet he has been on for the last 2 yrs he feels he is a good candidate for the ketogenic diet which does cure 1/3 of all epilepsy. Isaiah is strong. He is healthy, besides these seizures. In this picture below he has a dish towel around his neck, cowboy style rubber boots, my old cell phone in his pocket.. safety goggles on, and he thinks he can fly. I just love little boys. They have amazing faith! God has been good to us, he led us to this diet even when I didn't want to do it. It is amazing to have a Dr. confirm where I son would be had we not done this. The work has been hard but we are so thankful for the amazing livlihood our son has had over the past two yrs since recovering from his first onset of grand mal seizures. We are also looking at an organization that helps families with epilepsy get a seziure alert dog, it is actually a medical dog that goes with us everywhere. I imagine with a dog that would alert, I might have more peace about Isaiah sleeping in the boys room or playing more than a few feet away from me. There is a differet "watch" I have over him, always on alert because of seizures. I imagine I could sort of relax if we had a dog like that that would alert me to a seizure. We are praying about applying for a dog for him.
Jul. 13, 2008 - A few days ago, about an hour from home... UPDATED with more pics
We went to a little lake near our house and took the kiddos on a ride. Here we have another sweetie with us, he is the birth sibling of our 3 adopted children. Hes the older blond boy ;) And FYI, we were actually up at the end of the water on dry land but I chopped the pic off for the older ones, they wanted a picture of us in the water and this is the closest we could get.
I have lots of picture catching up to do.. I will try and post some soon. Thank you to everyone that has kept us in their prayers. We sure appreciate it.
Here is a pic from last week when our 3 yr old son was in the hospital for seizures. He was having some testing done and they did find nocturnal seizures and petit mal seizures. We will be at the neurologists office this Tuesday morning to discuss this.
Feb. 3, 2008 - Another step towards our vision, A New House-Pics As Is!
Today at church the brother that preached spoke on sanctification. It was a great message. He gave an analogy of a man that walks into a newly built house that is fully furnished and ready to move into, yet looks for things that need to be done because in his eyes, it is not complete. Dh and I couldn't help but giggle to each other. Just over the last few days we have been spending time at "The Brown House". We are moving here pretty soon to a house with bigger closets and some more living space. It truly is a big blessing for us. We are very excited. This house keeps us in our plans that we believe the Lord has for us of not getting into debt! Praise God! Well, story goes that a man around 88 years old (we did meet him) has been widowed for a few years and just needed to get back to his family in another state. He just wanted to walk away from everything. We are basically making an even trade with our current landlord for this house and its contents. This blesses us financially and physically. Literally, there is "stuff" still in the drawers (oldest daughter found 5 aprons!). We will need to do a lot of cleaning, 88 yr old widowed men usually aren't the best housekeepers ;) That's ok. A little muscle and hard work will get this new place spic n' span. He truly has blessed us leaving the furniture and some of his "things" will become things we will also soon cherish (like that Bavarian china set in the dining hutch that compliments our bavarian tea set that my oldest daughters great grandmother gave her- score!) Here are some "as is" pics. We will have to go in and clean and remove a lot of stuff we just can't use, but it will give you and idea of where we will soon be. :)
Pic 1. A great climbing tree in the front yard!
Pic 2: Side View
Pic of the front:
Pic of Front Porch
Pic of view from front porch to the west
Pic of front porch view to the East with big camelia bush
Pic 6: Living Room (Gilbert LOVES that golden glass hanging lamp- help!) This room will have our couch and piano. There is a fire place all the way to the left in the picture.
Here is our new dining set. We are VERY excited. We haven't ever had a "proper table and chairs" however, we will have to alter things a bit. We will probably have to get some more leaves or get a bigger table top and put benches on the sides. The doorway to the right is open to the kitchen area. Also, we are going to have to lay some lanoleum flooring in this room, I can't imagine feeding 7 children over carpet, yikes! View from eat in kitchen area into den, which will be the study. There is a fire place on the right side of the room (it is a big open one in a wall that separates the living room and den. We are finally excited to get our school stuff out of the living room again! Has anyone ever painted wood paneling? eek! This eat in kitchen area is sort of an extension of the stove island. It comes out from under it and goes out and probably seats 4. Also, that is a sofa sleeper, who is coming over first? LOL Here is a picture of the fireplace in the den. The entry way is to the right, and the living room is on the other side of the fireplace.
Here is standing in the dining room looking into the kitchen. There is sort of a half area here with a little shelf and cupboards on the other side. We think we will probably put a second fridge here. Also, in this pic you see the stove hood coming out of the ceiling, it is to the right of that where the eat in kitchen area is.
Here is another pic of the same area facing the other way towards the living room, with yours truly.
Here is the furniture in the girls room. Obviously, it will not all fit when we get in here!
The other view of the girls room:
Here is standing in the hall looking into the boys room. Hall bath to the left. Den to the right. Funky mirror to Goodwill. ;)
Here is the hall bathroom. Another place we HAVE to put lanoleum down before letting 7 children use it! And this room will be the boys room:
Now, onto the master bedroom. Bedspread and curtains has to go. Love the old dressers and night stand!
Another view of my new dressers! We will be moving furniture around a bit!
You may see an older house with old granny furniture from the 60's-80's. We see this as a blessing the Lord is giving us so that we may continue on the path he has shown for us. It would be our dream to eventually move this house in a couple years onto some property thus continuing the vision he has given our family. This blessing is just another step in that journey! Praise the Lord!
Here all the children are enjoying the snow in the morning....Sorry its so whited out!
How about you come on over and we grill some chicken and zuccini for lunch, what do you say?
.By the time this year is over we will probably end up at 1/3 of his old salary by the time the year is over which is a 60% income loss. God is so good, our family has doubled the mouths of babes and our income has gone down so much. It just literally makes me laugh out loud with joy that he has provided. It is not in our strength, nor the governments strength, but God's mighty provision that has carried us through. We are so weak but he is SO STRONG! I now see a benefit to being weak, you can't hold yourself up and you HAVE to lean on the Lord! (got this out of a great message that we got to go hear at church this past weekend) because we are all better from the belly aches that the children had. God provided a washing machine literally left on my doorstep. He is amazing. He is able.
