Long day…

I have a sick little one again today, but we still went to a birthday party, for my nephew Evan, they are all snotty over there too so why not continue to share the germs? :-) Joshua isn’t running a fever though, just a very snotty nose, and a cough, a glaze to his eyes…poor Pooh Bear. I wore him in the Ergo for a lot of the day, and he was very content there. I am finding it to be more and more comfortable all the time, my body did have to get used to lugging my 28 pound boy around! Now we both love it!

Hubby spent most of the day at his mom’s house doing our taxes, and I’m so excited to announce that with our adoption tax credit we are going to be out of debt! A car and house payment only! Pooh Bear told Daddy he is hoping for a pony out of the deal, but Daddy wasn’t buying! Shucks! Just think of all the benefit of our own hippotherapy we get out of a pony! What a huge blessing, we are so thankful!

Mee Mee and Bubbie (my mom and dad) are in town and Christine is spending the night over at my sister’s house with them tonight. The cousins were thrilled! It’s quite exciting when your big cousin spends the night you know! Speaking of Christine, on Friday she began her volunteer position as my nephew Eli’s aide at the homeschool co-op that my sister’s family attends. Eli is 4, with special needs and still non-verbal, so he was having to attend the baby nursery with his mom and little brother all last semester and he was soooo bored in there. I suggested to my sister that Eli should have an aide to help him to be in the class with his peers, and my Christine volunteered to be the one. They both had such a great time, she came home so excited, telling me all about Eli’s teachers and who played with him and how he likes to eat crayons but she helped him to color like the other little ones. It is going to be so good for both of them, I just thank God for her servant’s heart for her cousins! I had wonderful big cousins who were awesome to me too when I was little so I really know how much she means to all those little guys.

I always end with “Love one another”…I just want you all to know that all your words of encouragment and your prayers for my Violet make me feel so loved! Thank you all! I will personally respond to all of you as soon as I can. I would have liked to have done so already, but recently I have been buried in Violet’s case file, which is only about a foot high!

Love one another!~Yvonne

Funny guys!

My sister just e-mailed me this picture of two of my nephews. Evan is on the left and his brother Sam (Alfalfa) is on the right. I laughed so hard when I saw it that I just HAD to share it!

Sam lost another tooth today…

He lost it here at our house this morning while eating cinnamon rolls. He just about swallowed it after feeling something “crunchy” in his mouth and thinking it was only “crust from the cinnamon rolls”. I am soooo glad that didn’t happen here!

The week, in pictures…

 

My nephew Jeremiah, the clown of the family, washing his hair.

Jeremiah, Josh, and Eli in the tub at my sister’s house, Sam and Evan are at the other end. 5 boys in a tub at once!

Josh now likes to walk up the stairs instead of crawling. He really gets those little feet going fast! His therapist, yesterday, showed me how to let him hold the railings as he goes, so that when he does do it on his own, he will already know how.

After trying just about everything else, moving furniture to block entries, and many other things…Hubby installed a sheet of plexiglass over the entrance to the fireplace to keep Joshua OUT of it! He is not too happy with the new arrangement that has spoiled all of his fun! I on the other hand am giddy with joy everytime he tries to get into it and finds the plexiglass still there. Ha,ha!

We had a fun time visiting with “old friends” whom we haven’t seen in TOO long this week! My friend Elaine and her girls, Alison and Mallory.

My nephew, Eli, had his evaluation at the NACD this past Monday. I went along, since Josh will be the next one to go! The NACD organization “teaches parents how to utilize a multitude of therapies to create new neurological pathways in the brain of their impaired child thereby circumventing the injured or malfunctioning areas of the brain”.

It has been an extremly busy week, and now I am off to spend a few hours by myself, thanks to dear Hubby!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Sam lost his first tooth!

I love when kids don’t have their front teeth, I can’t wait for the other one to fall out too! It is just the cutest look to me. He is spending the night here tonight, so the tooth fairy is visiting him over here. Can you believe this kid gets $5.00 a tooth!? I told Christine that I guess Sam’s teeth should be worth more to the tooth fairy, with all of those caps on them, plus he did go through an awful lot of pain and suffering getting those caps. Now that I think of it, he should probably get more! He,he,he!

Monday’s musings…

 

I had been trying to make my own corn tortillas by rolling them out with a rolling pin…not too easy, at least for me. My sweet Momma bought me this very cool tortilla press from World Market and I love it!

All I have to do now is take a ball of Masa mix, put it between 2 pieces of plastic wrap, and then close it and press the handle down, and then you get the flat tortilla that is all ready for the skillet.

You just stick it on the skillet for a minute on each side and they are all finsished! Yummy!

Joshua already can’t wait until he can cook! Here he is enjoying his cousins’ kitchen set yesterday. I think he was washing up some dishes. :-)

This was a hilarious sight from yesterday at my sister’s house…I walked into the living room and found Eli and Jeremiah having a Goldfish feast on the living room floor. Eli looks like he’s thinking “Oh no, we’ve been caught!”

I am researching the curriculum Tapestry of Grace right now, and I am really looking forward to the homeschool book fair in a couple of weeks, where I can see it for myself. Anyone reading used it before?

Love one another!~Adrienne

Nephew news…

I am looking forward to seeing signs of fall around here, the leaves turning, a crisp feeling in the air. We are not very close at this point though, regretfully. Truthfully, it is improving though. My sister, daughter, nephews and myself actually enjoyed relaxing in the swing in our yard this evening for the first time in a while, a divine breeze was blowing.

I was given wonderful news this week; my little brother and his wife and two boys have moved backt to the DFW area from Austin! My brother Zac was transferred back to this area, and I couldn’t be more thrilled! They will all be coming over tomorrow evening. I haven’t seen them in about eight months. Sad isn’t it? Not any longer though! Nephew number two and four are back and this Auntie can’t wait to spend LOTS of time with them! Here are their pictures:

This is Myles

This is Zion

I bought the Bluedorn’s book The Fallacy Detective today, so I am off to bed now to get started reading!

Love one another~Adrienne

Weekend…

Nothing new to report on our adoption, except that I submitted our homestudy for a little girl also this weekend. Her name is Madison and she is one year old.

I am home with my nephew Sam, Christine and Hubby have gone off fishing at Grandad’s house for the day. I am sure they will have some great “fish stories” when they get back home, which may not be until tomorrow. Hubby’s dad lives on a lake in east Texas, they like to go there every couple of months for a fishing day, and if the fishing is really good they will stay and do it again the next day. Sometimes, I go with them, but most of the time I stay home because while we are there I am usually all alone in the house all day while they fish, the boat only seats three.

I doubt that Sam and I will try to go anywhere today, they left us with Hubby’s car, which has no air conditioning and today the heat index is supposed to be 105! I think I am in for a day of building lots of things with Kids Knex and Magnetix! Sam’s in the tub right now, playing with all of the foam letters and numbers that stick to the wall. He can stay in an inch of water for hours with those things! UPDATE: That was yesterday, I didn’t have time to finish the post because Sam had finally decided to get his little raisen body out of the tub! He took three baths while he was here so that he could play with the letters and numbers, and as soon as his brother Evan came with Dad to pick him up today, he took him upstairs to show him the tub! :-) They were a hit!

Hubby and Christine are on their way home right now, should be here within the hour, I missed them! I have been trying for the past hour to make heads or tails of the school schedule and payments that I have gotten us into! Christine will be taking Math, Latin, Language Arts, U.S. History, and Mechanics of Writing elsewhere this semester, and I still need to be able to afford piano lessons somehow. I am sitting here trying t figure out if I need to do anything at home still? I do plan on doing the KONOS Explorers unit with her also, full semester, but I thought it would go very well with the history she will be taking. I will think of it soon, I hope!

Okay, I am off to ponder the school schedule again, we will be starting everything on the 29th of this month so I don’t have much time left. I think the adoption has been taking up all of my brain space the last month!

Love one another~Adrienne

Sweetie Sam

My nephew, Sam, lies in my bed asleep right now; not well, because of a cough. His brothers weren’t feeling well so I took him hoping to give my Sis a break, but it looks as if he may be coming down with something himself. I pray that all the little guys get well soon.

Sam’s birthday is tomorrow, he will be five years old, amazing! Here he is on our camping trip to the Texas State Railroad in April:

This one is taking a bath in my sink when he was 2, I love this one.

This one is Sam being Sam; a pest! LOL! Poor Zoey had to put up with a lot when he was that age. :-)

Sam lived with me until he was three years old, so in many ways I consider him to be as much like my own as my own daughter is. I am extremely thankful for this little guy.

He and I are the “2 Sweetie’s”, that is what we call each other, “Sweetie”, except he has now changed his name to Tinky Sweetie for some reason. :-) Of course not long ago he told me the story of how he wants to have a baby in his tummy to have his “own baby”, (why a five year old boy wants his own baby, I have no idea) and that he was going to name his baby Tinky Sweetie, and feed it with a bottle because his b##bies are too small. Where does he come up with these things! In July he attended a t-ball camp and when one of the teens taking him to the restroom asked his name he said “Sweetie”, she said “Honey, I am sure that is what your mommy calls you, but what is your name?” He said, “Sweetie”. I think he likes our little nicknames for each other!

Now, I shall go cuddle up with my Sweetie. Happy Birthday Sweetie Sam! You are a gift of the Lord to me!

Live at The Wiggles!

 

Rachel (sis) and Eli (nephew), HAPPY to be at The Wiggles!

The Wiggles live on stage!

Too much stimulation + hunger + just plain tired = The Wiggles Aftermath! (I just found out it took Eli over an hour to fall asleep last night, he was too “Wiggled Up”!)

Either The Wiggles are just plain insane or these guys really love their jobs! They were very entertaining to watch and I loved how interactive they were with the audience filled with small Wiggles fans. Eli seemed to love every minute of the show, he was swaying, clapping and bouncing with all of the songs. I am so glad that I was there to watch him enjoy it and be a part of it with him. He doesn’t get to do movies and stuff like his brothers do because he doesn’t know that you can’t say “ahhhhhhhhhhhh………..” (done in a monotone and doesn’t have an ending) during the whole movie and people hear it, but a crowded, singing audience is just the right place for a guy like him to express himself in ANY way that he likes! :-)

An update from that previous post is that Eli is now able to walk short distances unassisted! He also has a walker to aid him for longer distances, and he is a CRAZY driver! LOL!

Love one another~Adrienne