Apple Picking Time

Since most of what I'm posting right now is catch up, I thought I'd go ahead and share what we did this weekend in a timely manner.

In our Kindergarten curriculum, we are on Unit 4: A is for Apple. So on Saturday, we loaded up the family and headed out to Martin's Hillside Orchard in Ceresco. Sometimes I feel like the effort it takes to get everyone organized and out the door for a fun time is hardly worth the fun you have. I was pretty grouchy by the time we were loaded in the car (I'm beginning to wonder if Saturdays as a stay-at-home mom don't bring out the same pressure-y issues that New Year's Eve does for me.) But once we got there, it was really fun. It is so beautiful out there, and fun to be outside on a beautiful (if warm) fall day.

The kids LOVED getting to use the apple picker (and stopped fighting over it after just a little bit). And you can't ever go wrong with a hayrack ride.

Capture Gratitude: August

 Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name.

 Despite my blog silence, August had much to be thankful for...

161. MY TEXAS FAMILY
 We spent the last week in July and the first week in August in Texas with my family. When we were there in March, we saw LOTS of non-family and it was a really quick trip. This time we stayed for as long as we could (trying to be there for my niece's birth...which did not work out, sadly) and spent almost all of our time with family. It was SO GOOD.

OK... So this isn't actually a gift: For a little while this summer, I experimented with uploading my pictures from my phone using dropbox. I didn't like it: it leaves copies on your phone, and you can't sort or organize them as you move them, they just all go into one big folder. But now this is the ONLY picture I can find of our time in Texas. Oh dear. I know they're here somewhere. I PRAY they are here somewhere and I didn't delete them, thinking I'd moved them over. Eek.


162. PICTURES
So thankful for these beautiful pictures Mandie Joy took of our family (if you missed them, click here to see more.)

163. BABIES
My baby niece Finley Rae was born, Michael & Leslie's first.

 She is a BEAUTY and I can't wait to get my hands on her.

164. SUPERMEN
We found a working telephone booth. I don't know why this was so exciting to our boys, maybe Superman?? What would Superman even do now that there are no telephone booths?

165. Family Fun
We got a Groupon for a local fun city place, so we spent the day before Luke's first day of school riding Go Karts and doing other awesome things.

 Of course by the end of the day, it was obvious that Luke was sick. He'd seemed to have been fighting off a cold, but that morning I probably shouldn't have believed him that he was feeling better. I think he didn't want to give up the go karts... But that meant that once we got back from Omaha, I went straight to the urgent care with Luke, where they confirmed he had strep throat.

166. FIRST DAYS OF SCHOOL
Since he was sick, here's what Luke was actually doing on the first day of school:

And here's his first day of GOING to school. I can't believe we have a 7th grader. I have lived in fear of middle school for years now, but Luke loves it, and as it turns out, middle school boys are HILARIOUS. At least mine is.

Tobin had his first day of Kindergarten a week later.

 

And here's Micah, on the first day of "sort of homeschooling preschool" AKA trying to build up Micah's tolerance for structured activity:

167. SPEAKING OF HOMESCHOOL...
I am going to talk more about this, but I am a reluctant homeschooler. I spent the night before public school started not rejoicing that I get to keep my baby with me, but freaking out thinking, "WHAT HAVE I DONE??"

But as it turns out, I love homeschooling (Kindergarten, at least.)

More on this coming soon...

168. BROTHERS
 How many times has this shown up on my gift list? A lot. They fight and I spend a fair amount of my time (more than I should, I think) refereeing. But we do have our moments of brotherly love. I never get tired of seeing this:

 (They are reading Sandra Boynton's Blue Hat, Green Hat, which as you can see they all love. That silly Turkey.)

 What they're doing while I do my Bible study/devotional.

169. SURVIVING AND THRIVING THROUGH DENTAL SURGERY
I should probably do a whole separate post for this... But praise the LORD for how well Micah did through his surgery.

Here he is on the way to the hospital, in the wee small hours of the night.

 Goodbye front two teeth!
He liked the hospital because there was a TV, with many channels we don't have at home. See how he's smiling for me, but not actually taking his eyes off the television?

 Micah did just fine when they took him from us - lucky for us, he got to just be rolled off on his bed. If they'd carried him away, I think that would have been a problem, even with the drugs they gave him ahead of time. But as it was, he was pretty amazed that his bed was a car.

Coming out of the anesthesia was no picnic, but it didn't last long. And it was actually a really sweet time for me. They let me go back in the recovery room, so he woke up in my arms. He was super upset and really out of it, unable to be comforted, for 30-45 minutes. Then he collapsed asleep in my arms, and I held him as he slept for another 45 minutes. Then he woke up just himself again and was super excited to have a Popsicle for breakfast. It was not fun to see him so out of it and crying - but as I held and comforted him, and told him over and over that "Mommy is here!", I was really touched. I kept thinking of the hours I would have spent doing that if I had been able to have him as a baby. So it felt like a privilege to get to do that for and with him, even though it broke my heart.

And then they released us.

We went home and he ate a normal lunch, took a great nap, and spent most of the day relaxing. He was back to his wild self the next day. A lot of people asked about him in the following weeks. I told them I feel like he recovered faster than I did. Between our travels the weekend before surgery, and the sleeplessness the night before, plus the stress of the day, I ended up getting really sick by the end of the week. Micah, on the other hand, was awesome by the next day.

And we like his new smile.

Our first Party-Of-Five Photo Shoot

We are still alive! I knew I'd taken a break from blogging...but I hadn't really realized that my last post was TWO months ago! Hopefully now that school (including our home school kindergarten) is underway I will be back to normal, blog-wise. I have so many blog posts written in my head, I'd love to get them actually posted. And I just moved over THREE HUNDRED pictures off my iPhone. So you know, I'll be sharing some of those.

But for now, I have MUCH better pictures to share.

During our year of adoption waiting I was able to make a lovely blog/facebook friend named Mandie Joy. Mandie and her also-lovely friend Rachel were in Uganda last year, and through a God-ordained set of crazy events, ended up being foster Mommies to a beautiful group of children (all of whom are home with their forever families now, praise the Lord.)  I love Mandie's heart, honesty, and willingness to trust the Lord, and I enjoyed following her foster-mommy adventures. I was thrilled to run into her in real life in Kampala, and even more thrilled to be stuck in the embassy waiting room with her. It sounds so heroic to love children as your own until their forever mommies can get there - and I know that Rachel and Mandie gladly handed their babies (and big girl) over, knowing for sure it was the Lord's plan. But I also know they loved unreservedly, and I know that following God's will doesn't exempt us from pain. And y'all know I'm not that great at surface-y. So I was happy the embassy gave me a chance to ask my hopefully-not-too-nosy questions about how her heart was doing.

Mandie spent part of her childhood in Nebraska, and has family in Omaha, so in addition to sharing a love for Uganda, she shares my love for the Nebraska sky (and loves seeing my little Ugandan Husker). She is back in the states now, and in addition to many other things, has been able to further develop her already stunning photography skills. She has MAD skills, I love her photography. Imagine my joy when in response to a joking comment on one of her photo shoots ("Hey, if you're ever in Nebraska, I'll let you take our picture!"), I found out she was going to be in Omaha in August and was willing to do a photo shoot with us. What a gift!! It was super fun to see her again (in real life), again hear the real deal of how she was doing, AND get some really stunning pictures of our family - the first as a family of 5. Check it out:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I really love these pictures. I think what I like best about Mandie as a photographer is that she seems to have a gift for seeing people - for capturing their personalities. I saw it in pictures she has taken of people I don't even know, so imagine how much I love it in my very own people? So some of the less formal pictures she took are my favorites.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 She got a lot of really adorable shots of Micah. I mean, he's a cute kid, so it's hard to go wrong. But these next three pictures? Priceless:

 

 And these peek-a-boo (or as he calls it, "pook-a-loo") pictures make me smile:

 

 

Micah has started to notice the number of pictures of the other boys, and pictures of us as a family that he's not in. So I'm super thankful to have so many good ones of him to scatter about. You can never have too many pictures, right?

However... some of my favorites are not really print-and-frame worthy. If you are facebook friends with me, you may have heard this story: When we were getting shots of me with the boys, Mandie tried to get one of me holding Micah, with the older two kissing me.

 Micah was having NONE of that. We didn't even get close to getting a good picture of that because he wanted to kiss me too. And then he wanted to have a turn kissing me all by himself. My favorite picture is of him trying to push the other two away so he could get me to himself.

 So then we let him have a kissing picture all to himself. How cute is that?

We got some fun feet pictures, which I love (I don't know what my thing is with feet pics, I think it comes from seeing the cute pictures on my friend Amy's blog, which is called "Feet to our Faith." Love it.

 

 That's probably plenty to share, but I can't stop. We had so much fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thankful for every one of these beautiful pictures, and that the kids had the stamina to enjoy it almost right up until the end. We did the feet pictures last, which is probably good. Because by the time we were finishing, and talking to Mandie and her awesome aunt and cousin, this is what Tobin looked like:

Finished. In case you're wondering, that expression is called, "Mom, will you PLEASE stop talking and take me to Sonic for a slushie like you promised?"


You really should check out Mandie Joy's blog, it is GORGEOUS. Just like her heart.