Finding Our Way

Proverbs 29:15 “... a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.”

Just a  little over a year ago, I adopted a 16 year old girl.

Lots of people told me to my face I was crazy.  Lots of people thought I would be sorry.  Lots of people thought I would do damage to the children already in my home.

I was pretty wise in my own eyes - or at least, I put on a VERY brave front that I was.  I never felt a check in my soul that I was doing the wrong thing.  I prayed a lot.  And I had raised up 6 children through the teen years already, and had a daughter the very same age as this 16 year old girl.  And I had loved her back when she was 6 to 8 years old, living in my daughter Rachael's group foster home.  And she was the sister of my son, Luke, after all...
And she and Luke had a very cute half sister that was included in the package:

The picture above is the first time we saw Cynthia again after we were called and asked to consider adopting her and Selah (then named Selena).  Cynthia had completely forgotten she had a baby brother, she had not seen him since he was a year old.  Her red eyes in this picture are the aftermath of much sobbing when she brought forth a dim memory of that forgotten baby brother, and remembered him...

So here we are, a year later.  We've done a lot of learning about each other during that time.  And I admit, I really DON'T know much about beginning to parent a child AFTER they are 16 years old.  There's so much I've missed and so much I never got to teach her.  It took me a bit to truly realize this girl was not Mary Susannah and that I could not expect the same behavior from her.
Even if they were only two weeks apart, and we celebrated birthdays both together and separate!

I took 6 year old Selah out of school the very day of the adoption.  I wasn't sure what to do with Cynthia.  She wanted to finish out the year in public school, and since it was more than half over, I allowed it.  When school started up again in the fall, I still wasn't sure what to do.  She wanted to go back.  Because I didn't know what I would do with her all day, I let her, although I never felt good about it.  I felt like I was taking the easy way out, when I should have been parenting her better.
But then Cynthia began to tell me she wanted to stay home more and more.  She would ask to skip school and go do the things we were doing.  I always said no.  If she were going to go to public school, then she needed to go.  If she wanted to stay home, though, I would withdraw her.  Her refusals got less and less strong.
Then she began to have stomach aches.  Finally, one day after picking her up just one hour after school started, and the school nurse had called to tell me she was sick, I said to her, "Cynthia, just come home."
And she did.

But how was I supposed to keep this already 17 year old busy?  Mary Susannah was finished with school and had a job two days a week.  I hadn't schooled a high schooler in a while. I found all the books and gave them to her.  Since she insisted she wanted to go to college, I told her it was her responsibility to take those books and really learn.
So she took them into her bedroom, but I was pretty sure she was not "doing school".

The holidays were upon us, and that kept me busy.  Then just after Christmas, Angel-Leah got sick, and was sick for a whole month.  It was a terrible, scary time for me, and took all my energy, just trying to tend to her and do the minimum for everything else.  School suffered a lot that month.

Then we came out from under that cloud.  But during the time since I had withdrawn her from public school, Cynthia had gotten into the habit of NEVER coming out of her room except to eat meals.  Never.  And laying in the messy room, all day long, tended to make her grouchy sometimes.  I knew it wasn't good, and no matter how much easier it was to just let her do it, I knew I was "leaving her to herself", the very thing the Bible warns us not to do.

So one night, I spent some time just thinking.  How could I change this?  What could I do to make things better?

And I came up with a plan!

I got all the kids together and told them that from now on, no one was allowed to be in their rooms between the hours of 10 to 2.  I made out a schedule:  From 10 to 11 was school time (that had Cynthia working for one hour.  The younger kids did more school in the earlier morning, but from 10 to 11 everyday, I read to them: Bible, character building, history, science...etc)  From 11 to 12, we listened to the younger ones read and then cooked and cleaned.  Cynthia and Angel-Leah could make desserts if they wanted too.  They could make a big lunch if they wanted too. And we got some housework done.  From 12:30 to 1:30, the ones assigned to the dishes did that, and the rest of us worked on a cleaning project.  So far it's been the addition/laundry room.  We have just about filled the dumpster with the cleaning out we've done.  From 1:30 to 2, we work on the outside - right now our project is getting the yard clean, and making a sitting area on the side.  Soon we will plant flowers and tend those.

The first day of this, Cynthia started out a bit grumpy.  But then, she and Angel-Leah made cupcakes.  They were a total flop looks wise, but they tasted alright, so we scraped them up off the tops of the cupcake pans where they had overflowed and put peanut butter in the holes in the middle where they had sunk in and they mostly got eaten.  After lunch, we tackled that addition. We actually had fun working on it.  We talked and sang - okay after a while, the grown up of the house - ME - gets a bit tired of "this is the song that never ends", but I will grit my teeth for the better good of it all.  Then we went into the yard and we picked up and laughed and talked some more.
And I asked Cynthia:  Doesn't it feel better to get out of your room and actually do something?  We did a LOT today!  And she admitted yes, it felt a lot better.  In fact, she might play with the kids for a while after it's done.

I bought her a GED book, and that's what she began to study today.  She was interested in the practice tests.  She is very good at English, which didn't surprise me a bit.  I gave her a choice when school time was over: she could do housework or bath our little Yorkie, and she choose to bath the Yorkie:

Then we worked on the addition once more and cleaned the yard a while, and around 1:45 I told her if she would brush out the little dog now that she was dry, she could be finished and have the rest of the day to do what she wanted.
So she brushed the dog, and then she decided to groom our Pyrenees, Goliath.  And he was a MESS!  She enjoyed it, though, because she is the only one Goliath is affectionate towards.  She did a really good job cleaning him up.

She's a very good girl.  She's a very hard worker.  She is almost always cheerful, and I think she's going to do well in life.  I am so glad I didn't listen to the people who tried to discourage me.  I always have felt like if I stayed close to the Lord and prayed about things, I could trust my gut instinct in everything, because I think that's the way we hear the Lord.

I am blessed she's my daughter.  I'm blessed they are ALL my sons and daughters!  God has been good to me!

Beautiful children

We went to a funeral this week.  It was a very sweet funeral of a much loved lady who was nearing her 90th year.  She was the mother of Bill's brother in law.  I didn't know her well, but I wish I had - the people who spoke and sang at the funeral obviously loved her much. My son Max remembered that she always made coconut cream pies for him when she knew he was coming.  I heard a lady behind me whisper to her friend, "She never missed a service.  She was there Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday night."  I felt a bit convicted...
The preacher agreed in his eulogy.  He said that after this lady was diagnosed with cancer, sometime other parishioners would call and tell him they weren't going to be at services because they had a headache.  "I'll ask Miss Liz to pray for you,"  he said he would tell them, because Miss Liz would be sure to be there, even with the pain of her cancer.  That was usually enough and the person on the other end of the phone would be at services, he said, laughing.  It was obvious he loved her very much.

After the funeral, we were all invited back to church for a meal.  Our family went, Bill and I and our five youngest children.  Bill's extended family doesn't have a lot of children in it.  I'm not sure why that is, because it is certain that they love children.  But regardless, when this family gets together, my children are usually the only ones there, and they get much attention.  This day was no exception.
One thing I heard throughout the day, both by family and people I had never met before, was how beautiful my children are.  I have to admit, I agree!  Beau was especially fussed over, because he has grown into a man now:

And no, I'm not ready to marry him off, so don't email me pictures of your daughters!!  :o)

But then, they are ALL beautiful, pretty Celeste is the only one missing from the first picture:

Someone asked me how I managed to have ten children, and all of them beautiful!  I jokingly replied it was because Bill and I are so beautiful, ourselves.
Then last night, I was reading a new book after all the kiddos went to bed.  In it, the main character was talking about a family who lived in the hills.  She said there were many children in the family, and they were all ugly.  At least, she thought so until she got to know one of the sisters.  The more she knew her, the more beautiful she became, until this person thought, "Why, she isn't ugly at all!"

I thought about that...

What is beautiful?  Here is a dictionary definition:

adjective

1.

having beauty;  having qualities that give great pleasure or satisfaction to see, hear, think about, etc.; delighting the senses or mind: a beautiful dress; a beautiful speech.

So it doesn't have to just be a perfect face, it is something that "gives great pleasure.. to see" I thought of three things that are beautiful to see in a child:  Good health, nicely dressed, and happy.

As mom's, we are responsible for our children's health.  Healthy children are a joy to look at, and usually, a joy to be around.  If you are pregnant, are you taking your vitamins and eating healthy, well balanced meals?  This is the very start.  Once baby is here, are you breastfeeding?  Again, as a mommy, it is the very best you can do for your child.

Now that they are older, are you being careful to provide healthy meals?  Or are you throwing a box of sugar laden, food colored cereal on the table?  Processed lunch meat on white bread?  Come on, mom, you can do better for your children...

That food is okay once in a while, but it should be the exception rather than the rule.

How about how your dress your child?  Do their clothes fit?  I remember going to a foster care meeting one day and I could almost tell which of the foster children were welcomed into the family by how they were dressed.  Some were wearing ill fitting, worn out looking clothes that obviously came from charity, others were dressed like well care for children.  I'm not saying thrift store clothes are wrong.  We went to Goodwill ourselves yesterday.  Mary Susannah found name brand Aeropostale clothes mixed in with everything else there.  They cost the same amount as the worn out looking shirts.  She found a trendy skirt.  She is turning into the queen of thrift store clothes.  I, on the other hand, don't often have the patience to dig through the tremendous amount of clothes that she does.  I was looking for shirts for Luke and didn't find anything I thought was nice enough for him to wear.  I've sort of learned that to find clothes for Luke, I need to go to the Burleson Goodwill.  I don't know what the difference is, but it's there.  This Cleburne Goodwill, however, is great in the book department!!

And lastly, is your child happy?  A happy, clear countenance is priceless.  A well loved older man who has passed on to glory, Richard Mummau, told me once that a Christian always has a clear countenance.  I could write a whole other blog about that, maybe I will someday.

Do your children have a clear countenance?   What do you feed their minds on?  Are they innocent?

One lady at the funeral told me that Luke was the cutest little boy she had ever seen.  I know what she means.  While Luke may have funny ears and a skinny body and he doesn't talk much in public,  he was born smiling and hasn't stopped since.  He doesn't need to talk, his face is very expressive and  says it all.  He looks like a child who has never seen a bad day.  Yeah, he can be naughty, when he is, it's hard for me to discipline him (although I do, honestly) because I don't like to do anything to make him cry or be sad.  When the church we were attending made it a rule of membership that the children HAD to attend the church school, I knew I would never be a member.  Trying to explain it to them, I told one lady, "I can't imagine that I would have to go all day and not see Luke's smile!"  Her reply?  "Oh, you will get used to it."

Used to it?  I don't WANT to get used to it, I told her.  She looked at me like she could not comprehend that...

So momma's, take stock: are your children beautiful?  

I think I can hear a lot of "yes's" out there!!

Update on Steve

A few weeks ago, my grandson Mikey found a HUGE turtle, and we made a home for him in one of my animal pens. Mikey named the turtle Steve. You can read that story here .

Well, today, Luke came rushing into the house. Steve has laid another egg!!

We sure wish it was fertile.  I guess we need a "Sue" to go with "Steve", so these eggs can bring forth fruit?

Or at least, baby turtles!

snake in the yard...

Tomorrow is my birthday.  Although I have Tommy fully convinced I am "around 25" years old, I am actually more than twice that - I will be 58 years old tomorrow.  Believe me, I NEVER thought it was possible I would be that old.  Not that I thought I would die young, by any means, I just thought youth would last forever...

And after all, I still see out of the same eyes I saw out of at 25 years old.  Yes, they are a bit dimmer, and the contacts are a LOT stronger, but I see the world out of the same eyes, and as long as I stay away from mirrors, I can convince myself that nothing has changed, much...

Yesterday, when I got home from church, three grandchildren were at my house.  Bill had promised them and Luke that we would all go spend the night at the lake house, and they would fish.  Now spending the night at the lake house isn't exactly my favorite thing to do, but I thought Bill would appreciate my help, after all, he was taking a total of 8 children, even if two of them were 15 and one was 18.  Since our car won't fit ten people, I sent Bill and everyone under the age of 12 off in my car, while the teenagers packed up food, and I went off the do the animal chores before we left to join them.

I got the chickens and rabbits fed, then took my bucket and went around collecting eggs.  I got them out of the barn, out of the chicken tractors, out of the two former dog cages turned into chicken cages, and then I walked off to the side of the yard.  This is the area I have shown you on this blog before: the spot where we allow the kids to drag trash and build things.  There is a tree house back there, and all kinds of junk.  Discarded swing set ladders.  Old "18 inchers" (anyone who lives in Grandview and is very familiar with Ulrich's barns knows what an "18 incher" is.  Our barn is built out of them).  Old rusty water troughs. Tricycles.  Dolls.  All the things a 7 year old boy and a 4 year old boy would see as treasures, and their 18 year old brother who tries to keep the yard neat would see as junk.
Anyway, a few days ago, Angel-Leah was in the tree house, and looking down, she saw that one of the chickens we just cannot seem to keep contained had been laying eggs in one of the old peacock pens.  She collected six eggs out of there.  So as I gathered eggs, I went back there to see if the hen had laid anymore.
I maneuvered my way around the maze of treasures/junk and stopped at the door of this pen.  I was in a bit of a hurry.  My eyes swept the corners and didn't see any eggs, so I turned to leave.

And that's when I heard it: the buzz of a rattlesnake.

Now if you have lived in Texas for any amount of time, you have been told what to do if you ever hear that sound.  Rattlesnakes are nearsighted (like young ladies who are having their 58th birthday tomorrow, and manage to not notice rattlesnakes as they look for eggs).  So if you hear that sound, you are supposed to remember to freeze.  Since a rattlesnake will only strike at movement, if you don't move, they will not strike.

So remember, it's important: freeze!

I didn't remember.

I ran.  I ran for all I was worth.  I broad jumped over discarded swing set ladders.  I lept over rusty water troughs in a single bound.  I jumped over tricycles.  I flew over 18 inchers.  I kicked dolls out of my way.  I think I might have scaled a tree or two.

And as I ran, I screamed:  "BEAU!  SNAKE!  BEAU!  SNAKE!  BEAU!  SNAKE!!"

Having an grown son who is still young enough to get excited when his motherwhowillbe58yearsold tomorrow screams "SNAKE!!" is a wonderful thing.

He threw open the guest house door as I panted up the steps.
"I think it was a rattlesnake!" I managed to get out.
"Are you sure mom?  How did it sound?"
I do a really mean rattlesnake imitation.
"That's a rattlesnake, alright!" Beau exclaims, and in one swoop, he pulls the gun case key from the drawer, opens up the gun case, and snatches out a .22.  He shoves a box of bullets in my hands saying, "Hold this."
And then he purposefully strides like John Wayne up the drive way towards the peacock cages.

And I realize I've just sent my 18 year old, blue eyed baby boy after a rattlesnake, and I am right behind him, practically clutching at his shirt, crying, "Beau, be careful!!  Don't go in the cage!  We will shut the door and you can shoot it through the chicken wire!"

He totally ignores me, and steps into the doorway of the cage.

"I see him!  Wow, that's a BIG one!"  he says and levels the gun at the snake.

At which point, I start waving my arms like a pinwheel, trying to keep Mary Susannah and Chloe behind me, just in case the bullets bounce off of something.

Four gun shots later, the snake is dead, and our gun-shy Pyrenees dog is traumatized for life.  I still haven't gotten that dog peeled off my body!

Beau tells me that the bag of snake-away he bought a couple of days ago, that I sprinkled around my "chick nursery", costs $13 a bag.  I wonder how many bags it will take to cover my whole 12 acres?

Snake, before Beau levels him:

Snake, after Beau's gunshot.  See that rattle in the bottom left hand corner:

If my heart is strong enough to have continued beating after this, I just might last another 58 years!!

The internet

We had a visitor at church Sunday, and he gave the devotional.  One thing he said really got through to me: I can't remember the quote exactly, but he said that with all our electronic gadgets, God can hardly get through any more.  Our minds are filled with beeping, ringing, flashing screens...

I had actually been thinking it for a while.  It tends to creep up on me, so many fun and worthwhile places to be a part of.  It's not hard to find a ministry of types on the internet, and it certainly fulfills my desire to write.  But once in a while, I need to step back from it, look at what I'm doing, and let some things go.

I've let the computer fill up too much of my time, I knew that before the preacher spoke.  I had already let go of some things - When my small job writing parenting articles for Associated Content was lost in the site's revamping, I decided to quit trying to write articles so much.  It brought a little bit of money, but not enough to justify the time I spent on it.

And then there were some of the sites I've joined.  I have been on three internet groups, and even inherited the ownership of one, an adoption group.  This group has all three members of the "triad" on it: the birthmothers, the adoptive mothers and the adoptees themselves.  But once I became owner, I realized just how much fighting went on on that group.  Because when two mothers - usually a birthmother and an adoptive mother - came up against each other, I was the one that got all the private messages, wanting me to sort it out.  Most of the time, it wasn't clear to me who was right and who was wrong...some groups are private and some groups are open where anyone can see what people write.  Drama or hurt feelings from one group ended up spilling over onto our group.  I just couldn't sort it all out, and that made some people pretty angry...it wasn't long before the group wasn't a lot of fun anymore.
Which made me sad, because this was the group that taught me that all you hear about adoption really isn't true...Birthmothers actually hurt like crazy and never get over the loss their children, whether they voluntarily relinquished them or lost them to the state.  I learned that it isn't good to hide things from adoptees until they are grown, it's better if they just grow up knowing their own 'truths'.  That you don't tell your child their first mothers loved them so much they gave them up, because in the child's mind, what if you end up loving the them that much, too?  That no matter how hard an adoptive mother tries to make a "new" life for her adopted child, there are issues with adoption that just aren't found with birth children, and you need to educate yourself if you want to raise a mentally sound person.
All that was good, but the anger that spilled over at times from this emotionally charged group wasn't good, at least not for me. 
I fit better on the foster/adoption group.  I am also an administrator there, but not the owner, so the brunt of the group doesn't fall on me.  And the emotions don't run so high there; the group is most just foster or adoptive mothers giving support, advice and passing on knowledge and resources to each other.  There is hardly ever a show of anger.  Another good group is 'adoption from adoptees point of view', which I like, because I get to listen too and ask questions of adoptees.

Changing my internet provider last week made it easy to pick and choose which things I wanted to keep and which things I would let go.  There was suddenly a lot less mail in my inbox.
And that was okay, but I decided for even more drastic measures...I decided that I would get up early in the morning, and that would be my time to write.  I would work on my book then, check my groups and anything else I wanted to look at, but once my family began to wake up, I would turn the computer off.  Not just get out of my chair, I would turn it off.  And it would stay off all day until the kids went to bed.  Then, if I wasn't too tired myself, I would turn it back on to write, check emails and my groups.  But for the whole day, it would be off.

I already knew that the computer could be an addiction, but I was surprised to find that I was using it as a stress reliever.  If the house got loud, if the kids fought, if I just finished a big housework duty, I found my eyes looking towards the room the computer was in, and the urge to go check things "just for a minute" was VERY strong.  I was using the computer as an escape, a place where I could zone out and relax for a few minutes - which easily could turn into quite a few minutes...
The second day was easier, although when Gage used my computer a few minutes and didn't turn it off, I did check up on my emails, because I had put my goats on Craigslist and wanted to see if I had gotten an response.
The third day wasn't hard.  I didn't seem to look towards the computer so much.  One thing I noticed, though, was that I had grown used to having all the answers to anything I was wondering about at my fingertips.  So I sat a piece of paper by the keyboard, and if there was something I wanted to know, or something I just remembered I needed to do, I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget when I finally had my computer time.  Often, I find when I sit down at my desk that I'm either not interested in or don't need those things anymore.

I know many people totally live without the internet, and I could, too.  But it does make life for a stay at home mom easier.  I bank and shop online.  It's a good place to find resources for homeschooling.  If I just have a quick thing to say, I can send off an email with a few words, where a phone call will probably keep me tied up for a while once I get talking.  Facebook is nice for keeping up with the lives of some of my grandchildren, and I've reconnected with a lot of people, including some from my childhood and young married years.


I've always said the internet should be a tool, not a source of entertainment.  It's dangerous in many ways if you don't control it, but so are a lot of things.  The state of our hearts with God determines whether we get in trouble or not.  I don't "surf" the web just to see what I can find.  We have a good filter on the laptops the children use.  What I am learning these days is not to use the computer as a way to zone out, or relieve stress.

My mind is clearer and I've gotten more done when I don't run in to check on something "just for a minute"!

Homeschool with Confidence

 When I began to homeschool twenty years ago, I knew I was doing the right thing, but at the same time I was unsure exactly how to do it.  It was fearful, new territory, and a lot of people criticized my choice to teach my children myself.  I did not want to fail at this.

While making sure my children got a good education was a goal, my main reason for homeschooling was that I wanted to raise moral, born again Christians, and after having exposed my first two children to public schools, and even private Christian schools, I had learned that while some children thrive in that environment, the biggest number of children don’t.

Many parents who sent their children to public school told me they wanted their children to be missionaries, to be a light in the darkness.  But how do we expect young children to do what is hard for adults to do?  Jesus trained his own disciples for three years, and then sent them out in twos.  The Bible says “Do not be misled: Bad company corrupts good character.”  (1 Corinthians 15:33)  It also tells us that “he who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm.”  (Proverbs 13:20) We can’t let the enemy fool us that it’s the other way around. 

Let’s train our children first, and when we are sure they are well grounded, then send them out to be missionaries.  The time we spend with the unsaved should be in the context of saving their souls, not joining them with our guard down.  Jesus spent much time with sinners, but when he wanted to relax, he took his disciples and went out on a boat or up into the mountains.

While I felt confident about teaching the moral part, I wasn’t as sure of myself about teaching the “three R’s”.  I had barely passed quite a few subjects during my own schooling.  I truly had not liked school.  How was I going to not only instill a love of learning in my children, but also learn to like teaching something I had never enjoyed or excelled in as a child?

I was quite surprised when I took my second daughter out of the sixth grade at a pricey Christian school, and found that she could not tell me what a noun or a verb was.  She had always made very good grades. 

Maybe this wasn’t going to be as hard as I thought.

And it wasn’t.  And then again, it was.  In the beginning, I tried to imitate the way public and private schools taught.  We had lots of expensive textbook for every subject.  I thought I had to make sure my children completed them.  We struggled through a couple of years, and I burned out quickly.

The burnout was what saved us.  I was still determined that even if my children never learned another thing, I would not send them back to a public school.  So I began to rework my thinking.  Number one, I had to know that I was not only a homeschooling mother, but I was also the mother of babies and toddlers, and they needed my time and attention, too. I also had a house to care for, meals to cook, laundry to wash, and groceries to buy.  So I decided that our formal school day would only last two hours.  If my children were balking at finishing up their work, then something was wrong.  They were not enjoying learning, and if it was taking them all hours of the day to finish up their assignments, they were probably not really learning anything, either.  

Did they really have to struggle through a dry grammar book once they had the basics?  Wouldn’t they learn to speak and write well by the example of quality reading?  Was it necessary that they trudged through boring history books and take tests, when there were amazing novels and biographies to be read?  Couldn’t the library, nature magazines, National Geographic magazines, the museum, Botanic Gardens, and our own small farm take the place of Science textbooks? 

I soon found many more profitable ways of teaching my children than slaving over textbooks.

It took years, but my fruit finally began to show to the people who were so sure I was ruining my children, and that they would never amount to anything because I had sheltered and homeschooled them.  My first child, who only spent a couple of years homeschooling, is a paralegal and has also gone on to homeschool her own children.  My second daughter is a stay at home mother who has not homeschooled, but has children in gifted programs in the schools they attend.  My third child, and the first one who was totally homeschooled, just finished law school at the University of Virginia and is off to Japan in October with a full scholarship for an advanced law degree.  My fourth child works in an organic butcher shop.  My fifth child was accepted into the University of Texas in Austin and completed a year there, although, for various reasons, is not going back this fall.  My sixth child, who is not quite 18 years old, is going to the local community college as a high school student.  My seventh child, a girl, is still homeschooling, excelling in spelling, writing and photography, and a child I get many compliments on for her ladylike appearance and demeanor.  Refreshing is a word people often use to describe her.  My eighth and nineth children are just starting to homeschool and my littlest one will start in a couple of years.    I expect them to flourish, too.

In the Bible, God tells his people often to “be strong, and of good courage.”  As a homeschool veteran with nearly twenty years and several grown children under her belt, I want to encourage others who are just starting out with the same words.  The Lord is on your side.  The Bible assures us in Galatians 6:7 that we will reap what we sow, and verse 9 says if we do not give up, we will reap a harvest.

Sow good things into your child, sow bravely, sow deliberately, sow without growing weary, and you can enjoy the harvest.  It will take time, but it WILL happen, and it will be well worth it.

Ordering Our Lives

Psalm 119:133  Order my steps in thy word: and let not any iniquity have dominion over me.

  Is there such a thing as a second menopause?  Or is there no excuse for the grumpiness I've been feeling lately?  What's been going on in our house that makes it seem kind of...out of control?
Especially Luke.  Luke is happy, healthy, cheerful and full of energy, and his energy has been stepping all over everyone else's toes, making for lots of cries of "Luke!  Stop that!!"
I felt like all I've been doing lately is fussing at him, and he's so sweet, I just hate that.

So two nights ago, I went to bed determined to pray and pray before I slept.  Tired mommy that I am, that prayer time didn't last near as long as I wanted it too.

But God is faithful, and I woke up knowing what was wrong.

We weren't ordering our days.  A scipture was going through my head, and while I had some of the words wrong, it was still the right answer.  I was misquoting Psalm 90:12, saying it this way:  "Teach us to ORDER our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom" when actually it says to "Teach us to NUMBER our days."

But still, that was the problem.  We were just getting up and doing whatever we felt like doing at the moment, rather than having a plan.

So I decided to order our days.  Now these two are not problem:

Beau works full time in the 115 degree heat building barns, and yes, he deserves that frappie.  Mary Susannah runs the kitchen, cooks most the meals and bakes everything AND cleans up the kitchen when she is done.  She could probably MAKE a frappie as good as any Starbucks could.

It was ME and the little ones who needed help.
And yeah,  I do work.  I clean the bathrooms and wash the clothes and sweep the floor and buy the groceries and change the sheets and feed the animals and ...well, I'm a homemaker.  You get the idea.

But that's not enough. We needed a plan.  Proverbs 29:15 says "A child left to himself brings his mother to shame."

And what God revealed to me was that I have the perfect setup to order the kids days.  I'm a stay at home mom on a minifarm.  What more could I want?

So I dragged out the "Family Friendly Farming" book by Joel Salatin (see my book review blog to read about and buy that book!) and I started planning.

It seemed to me that the perfect thing to do is give the boys, and maybe Angel-Leah, an animal to raise.  I talked to the boys, and right away they wanted ducks and geese.  Now get this: Tommy wanted geese!!   Check out past blog posts to refresh your memory of Tommy and the goose!  I guess he's a glutton for punishment, but right now, I'm planning on taking my boys to First Monday at Canton, Texas in September and getting those ducks and geese for them.  In the meantime, I told them we will also expand our rabbits.  I lugged them out behind the barn, and we pulled out cages and took inventory of what we already had.  Then, I said, every morning, we were going to cut some hay for the bunnies and baby chicks.  So that's one thing we've been doing:

They had a lot of fun the first day we did this, but this morning, after one basketful, Luke wanted to know if I didn't think I could do this by myself.
Nope, sorry...

Then we lug the hay over and feed the rabbits:

My plan is to build rabbit tractors eventually (maybe soon, since son Gage is coming home for a while THIS WEEKEND, and he always builds me something while he's here?) and we will put the rabbits on pasture to raise.  Then my boys job will be to move the tractors a time or two a day.  We'll see how that works.
The geese and ducks, I want to put under my fruit trees and see if they will eat enough grasshoppers to keep my trees from being eaten down like they were this year...

Angel-Leah has been a bit easier to work with.  She likes being inside, and she is learning to crochet:

We redid the floors in Mary Susannah's room while she was gone earlier this week, and that bonnet was uncovered.  It's been on Angel-Leah's head ever since.  Fits her, doesn't it??

So, crocheting, ducks, geese (in our imaginations), rabbits and cutting hay with scissors...that's been our last couple of days.  We'll start homeschooling soon - maybe sooner than I planned too, and that will take up some more of our days.

I would love to hear how you order your children's day?  Or how you used to, when they were young!

Tommy's fourth birthday party

I sat the date for Tommy's birthday party with his birth family before I knew Bill was going to take my big kids off on a trip the very same weekend...

I thought about changing it.  I couldn't imagine having a party without Mary Susannah, who has become my right arm...and left hand...both feet...and my mind as well...

Then I thought: Hey, I used to do this kind of stuff all the time, all by myself!  I can do that again.

And with that thought, I called another daughter, Rachael and said, "HELP ME!!"

She promised to come.

Bill, Beau and Mary Susannah left on Thursday.  I should have gotten my first clue when it literally took until dinnertime to do the breakfast and lunch dishes.  The kitchen has been Mary Susannah's domain for a while now.  If it weren't that I had to go in the kitchen to eat the wonderful meals she makes, I'd probably forget where the kitchen is.  Good thing I haven't forgotten...yet...
Max saved the day by coming over and bringing pizza for dinner.  Otherwise, I'd probably STILL be doing that day's dishes.

Friday, church friend Igor called and said he had fixed Bill's car.  Thrilled to have a car that didn't break down every few miles, I went and got it, and the kids and I loaded up and went shopping.  Check out my last blog for details about that.  Coming home, I cleaned up the laundry room, my bedroom, and worked on the porches, because I figured those were areas that wouldn't get dirty again.  Then I went to bed, confident that I had everything in order, and party day would go off without a hitch.

In the wee hours of the morning, I dreamed that Luke was messing with my computer as I lay asleep, because I kept hearing a beep noise.  It finally woke me, and I soon realized the beep noise was real, and not only real, but it was the electricity going on and off, and the beep was my window unit as it came back on each time.  I fretted as I lay there, wondering if it would fix itself so I could bake Tommy's birthday cake?  Once the sun was up, I called the electric company and reported the blinking.  The nice lady assured me it would be fixed by ten.  Okay, that didn't sound too bad, I thought.  And it didn't - until the power went completely off a few minutes later...
Frantically I called the electric company back.  I'm having a party in a few hours!  I moaned.  Again, I was assured it would be fixed by ten.  SIGH...

Not having power meant not only was there no electricity, but also no water!  I just began to clean as well as I could without it.  I could dust, pick up, sweep and use my spray cleaner to get a lot done.  But Texas is having a heat wave, and in no time, it was HOT.  My back was wet and if my adrenaline hadn't been flowing, I'm sure my energy would have been lagging, too.  I decided I would wait until noon, and if the power wasn't back on, I'd have to call the party off.  I felt a little discouraged: for the past two years, I had planned Tommy's party at the Splash Pad here in Grandview, and both times, it had been broken, and we had had to move the party back to my house.  So this year, I decided to skip the Splash Pad all together and plan it at home in the first place, and now the power was off and I couldn't even bake Tommy's cake!!

But thankfully, at 9:30, everything came back on with a bang of glory!  I began to cook - FAST!!

But I was behind...I didn't have time to decorate...I handed the kids the balloons and the crepe paper and told them to decorate for me.  Oh, how their faces lit up.  They could not believe I had actually said that, and they went to work with three bags of balloons and four rolls of crepe paper.
Perfectionist Mary Susannah would have been mortified at the results, but hey, she had left me...

The party was due to start at two, and daughter Rachael showed up just before, cookies and camera in hand (Mary Susannah took my/her/our camera, too!)  I handed granddaughter Chloe a carton of heavy cream and the mixer and told her to whip it for me.  As the birth family began to pile in my door, I pulled the beautiful blueberry cake I had made from the fridge...and promptly dropped it on the floor.  Blueberries slip off, but thankfully, the cake was intact!  I hurriedly cleaned it up and put new blueberries on it, and topped it with Chloe's whipped cream.

Daughter Rachael and Granddaughter Chloe:

Grandma Joan brought lots and lots of drinks and fruit.  Those were attacked quickly - remember it was about 115 degrees outside!!  The pool and sandbox was a huge hit with the kids:

Angel-Leah got to show off her many kittens, which are a necessity to her happiness:

After Tommy blew out the candles, I handed Grandma Bonnie a knife to cut one of the cakes (I had made two).  She pressed the knife into the cake...and the knife promptly bent in two.
It does not bode well when a knife bends in two while cutting a cake...
What in the world, I wondered.  Rachael and Grandma Bonnie kept reassuring me the cake was frozen, but I knew it wasn't.  A butcher knife finally cut a piece, and some brave soul took a bite and pronounced it absolutely wonderful.  Not quite sure they weren't just being polite, I took a bite, too, and wow, it was pretty good.  Uncle Ronnie, who has been to chef's school or something, even asked for the recipe.  (If you were just being polite, Uncle Ronnie, just don't even tell me!)


Aunt Rachel and Uncle Ronnie:

 Next, we opened presents:

Tommy got lots of wonderful things, including a slip and slide, a bag full of bug catching equipment, and a remote control train from his birth mother.  Grandma Joan took this picture to send her.  I love it, because Grandma Joan was having a bit of trouble with the camera, but Tommy continued to stand there and smile, even if the smile did get a bit strained after a bit:

And so, the party was a success.  I had a lot of fun once I started to breath again.  Tommy is very loved by everyone, and they are loved by us:

Luke and Grandma Bonnie:

Angel-Leah and Grandma Joan:

Angel-Leah and - HEY!  IS THAT SANTA CLAUS??
No, wait, it's Poppy, or Grandpa Grant, who Tommy is named after:

Handsome Grandson Mikey came:

The slip and slide was a great success, and Tommy was just hilarious on it.  He couldn't figure out how to slide, so he ran, dropped and crawled:

And so another birthday has come and gone, and my baby is four years old now.  It's birthday time around our house, we have ten birthdays in the space of about two months.  We will busy, and I'll write lots of blogs.

Don't I have the cutest kids and grand kids?

Home Alone...

...sort of...

Bill took Mary Susannah and Beau off to a Rock the Desert Christian concert and then to Big Bend for a short vacation, and I was left home alone with the three little kids.

Which is fine, except for one thing:  Mary Susannah keeps her scatterbrained mother grounded.  I don't know how I managed before she became a teenager.  I do remember struggling to keep the house clean.  And I'm not sure if it's just that as I got older, I learned how to do it to a degree, or - and I think this is what really happened - Mary Susannah wanted it neat and clean, and so, because it was actually important to someone, we figured out how to do it.  Not that it's clean all the time - it's not.  But it's so nearly always in order, that we can get it neat pretty quick.

Then she went off, and I woke up in the morning with the full responsibility on my shoulders, just like it was for years and years and years before Mary Susannah turned teenager.

I sure miss that girl...

The last thing she said to me as she went out the door was "Take care of my kitchen!"

Baw ha ha...

Well, I did sort of have good intentions.  I thought it would be fairly easy, anyway, with half the family gone.  So I started to do the morning dishes, but I got distracted by my chickens when I went out to get them into the coop to lay their eggs, and I decided to put some of the chicks into an outdoor pen.  Came back in a long time later and started again, but Tommy needed help getting dressed.  Started again, and Igor called and said the car was ready.  And wow, it has been a while since I had a car that didn't break down every few minutes.  And yeah, this was Bill's car, but still, it's mine until he gets home, right???

I left the dishes, grabbed up the kids, and off we went!

A very sweet Nanny had given us a gift to buy what ever I wanted with, so our first stop was the shoe store, where we spent it all on new shoes for the little ones.  Angel-Leah was the main one, but Nanny didn't want the boys to feel left out, so I got them flip flops and sandals, too.

 New shoes on our feet, we headed off for Home Depot.  We had a party to get ready for, and we needed sand for the sand box.  We loaded up four big bags into the car...well, actually, the man that worked for the store loaded it, and I began to worry how in the world we would ever get that sand out of the car and into the sand box.  But Luke has had good teaching by his big brothers, and by the time I had gotten the sacks we got at Walmart unpacked in the house, Luke, without my knowing it, had unloaded the sand from the car into his wagon, ready to haul it to the sandbox!  I was very impressed!



 The sun was glaring in my eyes, and I didn't realize I actually cut the sand itself out of the picture, but doesn't Luke look proud for doing such a man's job?  I've worried every time I go into the chicken coop, wondering what I will do if I find a snake in there, and Beau isn't here to help me.  But it won't be long until Luke will take over that job too, I guess!

 Hot and sweaty, the kids put on their new bathing suits and headed out to play, only to find the dog in their swimming pool...They didn't seem to care too much...

The heat is terrible here in Texas this summer, 115 degree days have wrecked havoc on everything.  The cracks in our yard are so deep, I joked to an email friend I would need to tie a rope around Tommy so I could haul him in if he falls into one.  She said she would like to see that, so I took a picture!!

Anyway, the dishes are done, the house is clean, even though we just had a birthday party with Tommy's birth family over.  My daughter Rachael took pictures for me since Mary Susannah took off with my camera, so I'll write about that when she sends them to me.

In the meantime, my next few days should be pretty relaxing.  I have lots of things I want to do, most of them require quiet time to think.  I did stay up extra late last night since the house is quiet after 9 o'clock, but I sure will be glad when my big kids back!

I So Happy

Friar Laurence to Romeo:  "There art thou happy."

This week, on Tuesday, Tommy turns four years old.
He was five months old when I met him, a fat, sad little baby still suffering from the effects of drug addiction in the womb, and from having had three other mothers before me in his short little life.

I was grieving so much over having to give little MiMi back to her biological family just a couple of weeks before, that it was hard for me to function in those days. 
Lord, have mercy on me - I missed MiMi with everything in me.  And yet, MiMi was MiMi, and Tommy was Tommy.  And God choose to send MiMi to someone else (yet AGAIN...) and to give me Tommy.  Who am I to argue with his wisdom?

I was going to love him, and I was going to make him smile.

And so, Tommy and I began the process of getting to know each other.  He was sad and a sick baby.  I was sad too, but I was an adult.  And Tommy was pretty cute, and had floppy blond hair that really appealed to me...

And he DID learn to smile:

And I learned to smile again too:

We like each other.  A lot!

So Saturday, my daughter Rachael gave my son Gage a graduation party (something else I will blog about when Mary Susannah gets the pictures downloaded and "fixed up").  My car is having a terrible time, and I decided that while I was in Fort Worth for the party, I would get Tommy's birthday present, and not have to make that trip again in an 'iffy' car.  We headed to PetSmart, thinking we would get a lizard.  Once inside,I pulled up a little step stool to a stack of aquariums, high enough to let him look at most of the reptiles, but not high enough for him to see the snakes.  I draw the line at snakes in my house.  I have, however, been known to stick my hand into a box full of 500 crickets when son Gage was ten or so and going through his own reptile stage.  I was young back then, though, and my heart was stronger...

Then, my soon to be four year old son and I walked around PetSmart to see what else was there.  We looked at hamsters (which I thought he would pick, but sure hoped he wouldn't - they STINK!) and then we found the birds.
Tommy is VERY attracted to birds, second only to snakes, and before long, we were walking out of PetSmart with a new cage, a nest, two bags of seed, and two boxes containing a male and a female finch.  Tommy carefully loaded them into a safe place in the car, and climbed into his car seat.  As I buckled him in, he looked at me with his sweet brown eyes and sighed, saying quietly, "I so happy."
My mommy heart melted.  Because that was my goal, three and a half years ago when they placed a sober, sick, sad baby in my arms.  I wanted to make him happy.

Ever since Tommy said that, I have been thinking about "happy".  We are spoiled in America, and think we have to have lots of stuff to be happy.  The more we get, we think, the happier we will be.  I call this when/then thinking:  "WHEN I get (a new car, new furniture, a new house, a better job, a better education, more money, married...) THEN I will be happy."
But do material things really make us happy?

I've been worrying over lack of money and car troubles, but those are such temporary things.  The money problem was resolved last week with a settlement Bill won, and that will also solve the car problem soon (I hope)  So why did I spend a minute of my short life worrying over that?  The bills were paid, we had food (too much food, in fact, the scales have been telling me) and all my children are safe.

A call from CPS asking me if I would considering adopting the three siblings of one of my children, and the trouble that has surfaced for them since that phone call, had me really thinking about "happy".  There are people in this world who have really made a mess of things, and that mess has an amazing rippling effect.  Lives are taking a tragic turn, and helpless children are being hurt over and over.

Who am I to think I have troubles?  And who am I to think I live in a vacuum, and I shouldn't reach out and help?  I have so much, and I have the added benefit of knowing the Lord.  And he says we are supposed to be happy because of that fact.

So what does the Bible say should make us happy?  I decided to look and see.

The first one I thought of was this one:
Psalm 127: 3-5  "Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.  As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth.  HAPPY is the man that hath his quiver full of them."

Psalm 113:9  "He maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children.  Praise the Lord."

Okay, I've got that one covered.  What do I have to complain about?

Here's a few more:

1 Timothy 6:6 & 8  "But godliness with contentment is great gain...if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that."
Just food and clothes?  What about a house?  What about a reliable car?  A bigger TV and nicer furniture...?

Some other things I found that we should be happy with:


1 Corinthians 13:6 the truth
Psalm 89:15 walking in God's light
Psalm 16:6  our godly heritage


Galatians 5 even tells us that being joyful is one of the fruits of the Spirit.  Can we have the Spirit of God, and not be joyful?                                                                                      
Philippians 4:4  Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice!
How simple is that?

The Lord is my strength and my song; he has given me victory. This is my God, and I will praise him—my father’s God, and I will exalt him!
Exodus 15:1-3

So take the words of my little boy as your motto!  The simple things are all the reason we need to be happy:

Food and clothes, our salvation, and sometimes, we can throw in a couple of birds for a birthday present:

 
SMILE

life goes on...

I love the Beatles song, "O Bla Di, O Bla Da".  I think it's the happiest, most cheerful song ever sung.  If I weren't afraid of shocking my more conservative friends, I would have it playing on my blog for you to listen to while you read about our life here on Raley Family's Farm.  After all, what could be more cheerful than a song that sings about being "happy ever after" with a "couple of kids playing in the yard"? o bla di, o bla da, life goes on, brah! plays in my head quite often.  It helps me keep a perspective on the sometimes chaotic happenings around here.
So this morning finds me sitting at my computer while Beau and Mary Susannah are off to church.  Angel-Leah was pretty sick yesterday.  Her health is fragile at best, she's prone to catching things, and when she does, she goes down with a bang.  Her temp was around 104 all day yesterday.  And since son Gage is due to come home to take the bar exam this week, and in fact, is going to arrive TODAY, I was quite stressed over the whole thing.  I wanted to see him so bad, but there was no way we could expose him to the flu during one of the more crucial weeks of his life.  We waited to see if Angel-Leah would recover in time for him to stay with us, or if he would have to go on to the hotel he already had booked in Dallas for the rest of the week.  Waking up at six this morning to her throwing up didn't bode well...  We cleaned it up and got her in a cool tub.  She got out of the tub with a normal temperature, and now, at nearly ten o'clock, she is feeling well enough to be outside!

Whew!!!

So, with that cheerful thought, and the day looking up, I will now post a much requested picture:
Angel-Leah, in full dress up mode.  Drum roll, please!

She does make life interesting, anyway...

I recently read a book called "The Explosive Child" to try and help me make sense of Tommy's rages, and to maybe provide some insight into how he is feeling.  One thing the book said was that children who tend to do this usually have delayed language skills.  Tommy does fall into that category.  I hadn't done anything yet, because I enjoy the way he talks.  It's really cute.  There's the pirate talk, which means a lot of his words have "ar", almost like a pirate says "argh!"  "There" is pronounced "thar".  "Here" is pronounce "har".  Recently, when he was mad at Luke, he was telling me Luke had bopped him on the head.  He said with great distress, "He alway do's that, and you don't even car!"  I assured him that I did "car", in fact, I car'd very much, and I demanded that Luke not bop his head anymore.
He also starts most his words with "L".  This week, he stepped on something outside and came in with a bleeding foot.  We don't immunize our children, although I'm not against tetanus shots if they are needed.  However, CPS DOES believe in shots, and Tommy was required to get them until I got him adopted.  I was just a bit relieved, I admit, that we didn't have to make a trip to the ER, stand before a doctor who doesn't approve of the fact we didn't do shots, and make Tommy get a tetanus  on top of being hurt.  Instead, we soaked the foot in salt water and tea tree oil:

He was very sad as you can see, as he sat with his foot in the water and a bullet shell in his hand...
As I questioned him about what he had done, he kept insisting he had NOT stepped on a nail, he had
"leppt on uh loo."  He was quite frustrated with me because it took me a while to finally catch that he had "stepped on a screw."  Oh, well, the treatment was the same...
As I mulled over all this, I just happened to run into my friend Patty, who runs the day care center here in our small town, and is a fellow foster/adopt mom.  Somehow, the conversation turned just right, and she gave me the name of a speech therapist she uses who will actually come to your house to give speech therapy.  Patty's gushing about how great she was was only slightly more important than the words I was stuck on: she will come to my house!?!?  Visions of having to take Tommy to a public school, or haul everyone off to Fort Worth several times a month vanished, and I eagerly took the lady's phone number.
She has now been called, and we are making arrangements for her to come (TO MY HOUSE!!) and work with Tommy.
This is a big step out of the comfort zone for this out of the mainstream, homeschooling mommy.  But doing the out of the comfort zone stuff in my own house will help so much, and I hope make it easier for Tommy, who doesn't like people he doesn't know talking to him.

One more thing that has happened in our house is that Mary Susannah is finding her stride.  She is in her mid teens now, and has the antsyness of any teen who wants to go and be doing exciting things all the time.  I keep telling her she must learn to be content at home, because that is where God calls women to be.  I turned the kitchen over to her, and she has done wonders!  Everything she does is pretty, including making an outdoor picnic for the kids on a day when a lot was going on in my life:

They loved it, of course.  I would have just thrown the cupcakes into a bowl and sent them outside.  Mary Susannah made a picnic pretty enough for a magazine, even though it was just for her little brothers and sister.

Then, a young girl at church began to teach Mary Susannah to sew at the monthly sewings.  Mary Susannah was not looking forward to it, but I insisted that she at least try it.  She agreed, and she was hooked.  Who knew it would be so much fun to sew?  Next, a lady from church offered to let her spend a couple of days with her while she helped Mary Susannah make a dress.  Mary Susannah was determined to wear the dress to a wedding coming up that weekend.  I tried to soften her enthusiasm, telling it would be amazing if her first dress turned out that well.
How wrong "I" was!  Her dress was beautiful.  I think she's going to be a natural at this!

So, like I said, here I sit on a Sunday morning, wishing I was at church, but still happily anticipating Gage's arrival in a few hours.  The house is clean, Angel-Leah is so much better (isn't it amazing how quickly they can get well?) and I have a few hours to indulge myself until son number one gets here.  I've got lots of blog ideas, so maybe there will be more than one today?  But maybe not, my crochet hook is calling me too.

Everyone say a prayer for Gage this week!  This is the culmination of several years work!!