Forever Young

Halloween!

2011-11-05T05:02:00.000-07:00

We enjoyed a fun Halloween/Reformation Day on Monday! Our friends, the Christensens came and spent the day with us which made it even more fun!

The kids woke up and had cards from Grandmom and Grandpa with a special green treat inside them! (And they got a little bit of candy from Mommy too!)

For lunch we made some fun food. We had Mummy hotdogs and fruit bowl jack-o-lanterns. The hotdogs were wrapped in bread stick dough and then baked to look like mummies and then we added mustard eyes. The fruit bowls were oranges that were carved like jack-o-lanterns and then filled with fruit.

Then for dessert we had ghosts which were frozen bananas dipped in white chocolate with peanut butter chip eyes and mouth.

Daddy helped them carve their pumpkins. Brandon's was Captain Rex from Star Wars.

Bekah made a girl jack-o-lantern that she named Pumpette. After lunch we added our fruit bowl jack-o-lanterns so Pumpette would have some children!

Zach and Ellie went trick-or-treating with us too! Ellie was a fairy princess and Zach was a giraffe.

Bekah was Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz! Brandon decided he was not interested in dressing up and trick or treating this year. He did go walking with us and ended up with a little bit of candy anyway!

The first home was our next door neighbor's house!

Todd got some pictures of the pumpkins at night.

Bekah got a bucket full of candy.

We ended our night as we usually do: watching Luther in honor of Reformation Day. Todd usually secretly posts the 95 Theses on someone's door, but it was too late and he was too tired to do that this year.

The next morning Bekah got all her candy out and had it all sorted and organized by type!

Adoption Update

2011-10-19T12:17:00.000-07:00

Lately, many people have asked me how our adoption process is going. Well, basically nothing is happening right now. We are simply waiting. We are waiting for a match with a child that meets the criteria that we selected. Yes, we are very impatient and tired of waiting! We recently changed our age limit from 2-5 to 2-7 years old, to hopefully open up more options for a match. As long as Bekah gets to be the big sister, the age doesn't really matter to us. If we do end up matching with a child that is 6 or 7 years old, we will have more paperwork to file since we were originally approved for a child from 2-5 years old. Also, our home study agency has closed and has been taken over by another agency which is not certified to work in Indiana. I'm not sure exactly how that will affect us yet, but we have to continue to deal with a home study agency as we have to do post-placement adoption reports for 5 years after the adoption (ugh). We will also need their approval to adopt a 6 or 7 year old since they are the ones that approved us for a 2-5 year old.

We know none of this is a surprise to God, as He has all the details figured out! We are confident that we will bring our daughter home in His perfect timing. However, we are continuing to pray that we will be matched soon! There should be a new group of children coming out sometime around the end of October. I am praying this will be the month that we find a match. We'd love it if you would pray that with us as well!

LID

2011-09-06T08:14:00.000-07:00

We have an official Log In Date from China! Our dossier was logged into their system on August 25th, 2011. Next they do a complete review of our paperwork and hopefully find us a match with a child soon!

Kentucky State Fair

2011-09-06T07:58:00.000-07:00

We recently got to spend the day at the Kentucky State Fair in Louisville. I had planned to take the kids as a field trip for school but had not purchased a ticket for Todd to go with us. Then he ended up working all weekend before the fair, so he got some comp time off. So, he was actually able to go with us to the fair! The weather was very hot, but aside from that we had a wonderful day! It's always nice to do something fun together as a family. Several of our friends also went to the fair that day, so that was a fun treat too! Here are some pictures from our day.

Dossier

2011-08-16T11:11:00.000-07:00

Wow, what a roller coaster ride it has been preparing our dossier to go to China! There have been times that I considered just giving up on it! But, I know that God has called us to adopt from China, so I persevered. Finally, after 7 months of work, we had all our steps completed, and we shipped our package to our adoption agency. Today, I received this email from our agency:

Heather,

It was perfect - congratulations! I'll be sending it to China in this week's package.

Dance Recital 2011

2011-07-12T05:24:00.000-07:00

Bekah had her dance recital back on June 12th. She loves to get up on the stage and get all dressed up and wear make-up for her recital. It is definitely the highlight to her year of dance classes. These are some pictures from her dress rehearsal the day before the recital.

Bekah's class danced to the "Happy Little Cleaning Song" from the movie, "Enchanted."

Bekah's friends, Maddie and Victoria, were also in the same recital!

Maddie and Bekah are best buds!

These pics were taken just before the actual recital!

Afterwards she got flowers!

Bekah was so happy the Grandmom and Grandpa got to come to her recital.

We love our little ballerina!

Addicted to the Sky Trail!

2011-06-27T05:17:00.000-07:00

Last week we were able to go to the Louisville Zoo with our neighbors. They were planning to do the Sky Trail High Adventure Course that day and wondered if Brandon and Bekah would like to do it also. When they were looking at the course trying to decide if they wanted to or not, Brandon decided that he did not want to, but Bekah thought she would like to try it. We decided to eat lunch first and let them think about it for a while. (They don't really like heights and we had to pay extra money for the course, and I didn't want to pay for them to do it unless they were SURE they were going to do it!) After lunch they both decided to try the course. Here they are getting ready to go up!

Once they got up there, they decided it was scarier than they thought it would be. Brandon was very brave and decided to try it (slowly!) anyway! I was able to be right below them and talk to them from the ground.

You can see from his face how he felt about it!

When Bekah got up the stairs, she was terrified and just started to cry! One of the staff members came to help her and walked with her for a while and showed her what to do.

Brandon got braver and braver the more he tried it!

Brandon said this was one of his favorite parts!

There's Liberty way up there! There were 2 levels on the course. Brandon and Bekah both preferred the bottom layer, but both were brave enough to try out the top course also!

You can see Bekah, Brandon and Jacob (above in the red) in this picture!

After staying with the staff member for a while, Bekah was able to do it on her own!

There's Josh!

There's Brandon, Bekah and Liberty!

You could stay on the course as long as you wanted to. They were up there at least an hour. They both decided that it was the funnest thing ever, and they can't wait to do it again! (Thus, the blog title which Bekah insisted I use!)

Here are all 5 kiddos at the zoo having a great time!

16 Years Together!

2011-06-21T05:51:00.000-07:00

Last Friday Todd and I celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary! We thank God that He has blessed us with this many years together, and we look forward to many, many more years together!
We typically make plans to do something special for our anniversary celebration. This year, however, Todd was scheduled to work on our anniversary/Father's Day weekend. We were hesitant to make any plans not knowing when exactly he'd be working and if we'd be able to do anything. We had some friends volunteer to keep our kids overnight if we wanted them to, so we went ahead and made those plans hoping something would work out. Well about a week or two before our anniversary weekend, Todd found out that he would not be working after all (it was postponed to a later date because they weren't ready). So, we started looking around for places to stay and things to do. We never really could decide what to do and didn't want to spend a ton of money, so we just kept talking about what to do but not committing to anything. Then the week before our anniversary I was leaving the house in our van and noticed that the speedometer wasn't moving. Then I noticed that gas tank gauge was empty, and I had just filled up. Nothing on the instrument panel was working. So, Todd tried changing out a fuse, but it still wasn't working. So, we took the car to our mechanic to look at. We mentioned that we had been having some coolant leaking from the van recently also. Sometime on Tuesday afternoon, the mechanic called and said that we needed a new instrument panel which would probably cost $700-800 plus labor. He also explained about the coolant leak, but I do not know enough about cars to explain what the problem was. All I know is that he said it would probably be about a $2,000 repair. Well, our van is a 2000 with almost 189,000 miles on it. The value of the van is less than the cost of the repairs. So, we opted to not get the van fixed and to buy a new one. We were really hoping to pay off Todd's car before we bought a new van so we would only have one car payment. But, that is not the plan that God had for us! Todd had already planned to take Friday off from work for our anniversary, so we ended up spending our anniversary car shopping. Car shopping is no fun, but at least Todd and I got to spend two days together! And the kids didn't have to endure the car shopping since we had made plans for them to stay with our friends for our anniversary! We ended up purchasing a 2008 Honda Odyssey with 43,000 miles on it. We hope it will last for a long, long time! The van needed some work done on it, so we still don't have it yet, but here is a picture of the van we bought:

Happy Birthday, Brandon!

2011-06-18T15:58:00.001-07:00

On June 15th our boy turned 11 years old! He is getting so big! We enjoyed celebrating his special day. Here is his day in pictures:

We typically decorate for the kids' birthdays after they go to bed the night before. When Brandon awoke, he found this on his door!

More decorations in the house!

He got to open some gifts from Mommy and Daddy. This new backpack was one of his favorites. He's been wearing it around the house!

He was also excited to get a pocket knife!

After Daddy left for work, the neighbors came over and brought gifts! He got a GameStop gift card and a DS game.

Brandon wanted to go to McDonalds for breakfast with his friends!

Everyone enjoyed a McGriddle!

Then we went to the Free Summer Kid's Movie at Great Escape which was Megamind! Our friends, the Prestons, also came to the movie.

After the movie, Brandon's friend, Asa, came over for the afternoon. He made Brandon this cool sword and axe out of PVC pipe and duct tape!

They enjoyed playing the Wii together!

For dinner Brandon wanted to eat at Cracker Barrel. He got his favorite food, pancakes!

Mommy and Bekah enjoyed Cracker Barrel too!

At Cracker Barrel they give you a free dessert on your birthday. Brandon chose the multi-berry cobbler with ice cream. Yum!
After dinner, Brandon wanted to do something with Daddy, so they spent some time playing the Wii together. That was the end of his special day! But now he's looking forward to a laser tag party with a few friends on Monday night! I'd say he's a pretty blessed kid!

Success!

2011-06-09T14:59:00.000-07:00

When I first tried to potty train Brandon at age 2, he didn't really get it. So, we stopped and tried again when he was about 2 1/2. After a short period of time he was doing very well, and he had very few accidents. He automatically started staying dry at night and during nap time as well. He was completely finished with diapers and pullups before his 3rd birthday.

Potty training Bekah was much harder than it was with Brandon. She knew how to use the potty before her 2nd birthday, she just decided that she didn't really want to stop playing long enough to go when she needed to. Potty training for her took over a year and included many, many accidents! And, she never could stay dry at night or during naps. Since I didn't have to deal with that with Brandon, I wasn't sure how to train her to stay dry while sleeping. I talked with her pediatrician about it, and he said that some children's bladders develop later, and they really don't even worry about it until about age 8 or so. Eventually Bekah stopped taking naps, so we didn't have to worry about her wetting during nap time any more. But, she still wet the bed at night. We tried different things throughout the years and never had any success. She would occasionally have a dry night but they were few and far between. So, we've been buying her Pullups or Goodnights to wear to bed every night. Well, she is now 7 1/2 years old! Recently I had noticed that she was starting to have more and more dry nights and was hopeful that maybe she would be ready to stay dry at night and stop wearing Pullups to bed. Then, a friend of mine got a Potty Alarm to use with her daughter who was having the same problems. She used it for a few weeks and was amazed that it worked! Then they loaned it to us to use. This is an alarm that has a sensor that clips onto the outside of their underwear and has a cord attached to that which is connected to the alarm which clips onto their pj's. If the sensor gets wet the alarm will make noise and vibrate to wake the child up. After only using it for a few nights, Bekah is now staying dry at night! We had bought her a skunk Webkin probably more than a year ago as a bribe to stay dry at night. She really, really wanted that particular Webkin, and I had to call around to several stores to find this skunk. All this time she has looked at it but could never play with it. We told her she had to have 2 weeks of staying dry, and then she could have it. Well, yesterday Bekah received the beloved Skunky!! At another time we had told Bekah that if she could stay dry we would let her spend the amount that a package of Pullups would cost on whatever she wanted. So, last night Bekah also got to go shopping, and she purchased the Tangled Barbie! We had a great day celebrating with her yesterday! It looks like she has finally figured out how to stay dry at night, and we are so happy for her!

Just Stuff

2011-05-25T15:51:00.001-07:00

The kids started their achievement tests today and will be testing tomorrow and Friday also. Then we will be officially finished with school for the year! We are all very excited about that. We are planning to have a family fun night on Friday to celebrate. Soon I will have a 6th grader and a 3rd grader! Wow! I must be getting old. Well, I am planning to attend our 20 year class reunion this summer, so I guess it's true. I am old! ;-)

We are still making progress on our adoption paperwork, but not as quickly as I would like. We thought we sent all our documents to the Indiana Secretary of State, but found out that each document needs to go to the state it originated in to be certified. So, we had to send stuff to 4 states. We have done that and received everything back from 3 states but we are still waiting on Georgia. The problem with Georgia is that they would not certify the state-issued birth certificate that I ordered because it did not have a pen-in-hand signature on it. So, I had to return it to Vital Records and have them ship the new one to the Secretary of State. Hopefully I'll get that back sometime soon. I also started looking into where to send the stuff for the Chinese Consulate to certify (which is our next step). There are several consulates across the US and since we have stuff from 4 states, we have to send the documents to 3 different consulate offices. I know all this work will be worth it one day, but it sure is a pain now!

A new list of adoptable children was published this week, but we didn't find any matches. We are confident that God will lead us to our daughter, and we can't wait to find her!
We had another yard sale on Saturday and raised another $579.66! We took almost everything that was left to Goodwill after the sale but kept a few things to try to sell on Craigslist. So, hopefully we'll make a little more money from that stuff.
Last week Todd took some documents to the county clerk to be certified and it cost him $45. The next day I mailed them to the Kentucky Secretary of State along with a $45 check. The shipping via UPS cost me $10 and some change. That day when I got home we had a $100 anonymous donation come in the mail. It completely covered our expenses for those 2 days. We know that God is working things out and confirming our call to adopt, and we are so thankful!
To date our expenses have been $4,195.36 and we have raised $2,896.53!

Unavailable

2011-05-03T15:28:00.000-07:00

The child that we were hoping to get a picture of is no longer available. It's a great thing that all these children are finding homes, but I am so ready to be matched with our daughter! We know it will happen in God's time and are praying for patience while we wait!

Adoption Update

2011-05-01T17:10:00.000-07:00

Well, we've had a lot going on since my last update on here! We finished our home study and were recommended for adoption by our agency! Our social worker had to type up the report, send it to her boss to review, send it to us to review and send it to our placing agency for review. Then we received the official report in the mail last week. I took one copy and sent it in with our application to the US Department of Homeland Security - Citizenship and Immigration Services and the other copy will go with our dossier to China. We also finished up all our documents that need to to to China with our dossier. Todd scanned them in the computer and emailed them to our placing agency for review before we begin the next step of getting them certified by the secretary of state. She suggested a couple of changes so we are working on those things, and then we'll be ready to get them certified in Indianapolis. Then the next step is to send them to the Chinese Consulate to have them authenticated. Then they will be ready to send to China.

In the meantime we finished up all our special needs paperwork and education so we now have the ability to look at available children. We have tried to "lock in" 2 girls but both were unavailable by the time we requested them. There is a big pool of orphans and many different agencies around the US are looking at the children. So, when our agency went to request a hold on a child, they found out that another agency had already done that. So, we are looking at another child's file, but there is no picture with it. We have requested that our agency see if they can find a picture before we decide if we want to pursue that child. Pictures are very helpful because sometimes you can see needs that are not written up in the child's file. We have been informed that the child's needs will not always match with what is written about them in their file. They do not have the best medical care and sometimes they are diagnosed incorrectly. Their needs can be easier or harder to deal with than you expect, and we are prepared for that. So,we are still waiting to see if this child is still available or would be a match for us.

We have received our passports in the mail so that is very exciting and one more thing marked off our list.

We are also working on fundraisers for the adoption. Todd has been making lots of paracord bracelets! We also held a yard sale yesterday. We have some great friends and family that donated lots of stuff to us and some friends who let us use their basement to store it all and then use their yard for the sale. They live in a much more visible location with more traffic than we have at our house. Also, the BBQologist cooked BBQ to sell sandwiches during the yard sale and another family baked some muffins and brownies to sell. (Have I mentioned we have awesome friends?!?!?) On Friday when I sent in our application to Citizenship and Immigration Services I had to mail them a check for $890. Then on Saturday between the yard sale and the BBQ we raised $891.87!! How cool is that?! God is meeting all our needs! And we are so thankful!

To date we have raised $2,026.87! We are so very blessed and so thankful for everyone who has contributed!

And I will end with a "funny" story from our yard sale....

We had lots of donations from different people for our sale. On Friday night before the sale me and a couple of friends were getting everything unpacked and sorted and I came across 3 sets of handcuffs. Some of the kids who were there saw them and wanted to play with them that evening. I assumed they were toys (who would have real handcuffs and who would donate real ones to a yard sale anyway?) so I let them play with them. At some point that night the handcuffs got put into the kids toy pile of yard sale stuff, and I never noticed them again. Well, during the sale, a boy found the handcuffs and promptly put them on his sister. After a while they went to take them off and could not get them removed. So, Todd and some other guys tried to help out and get them off. All kids toy handcuffs can be removed even without the key, right? Well, Todd quickly realized that these were not toy handcuffs and they were not coming off. After trying some tools, the only thing anyone could figure out to do was to call the police to come and let her out. So, yes, the police arrived at our yard sale to remove the cuffs. There were 3 pairs of handcuffs and the cop's key would open 2 of the pairs but not the particular pair that was stuck on this little girl. So, the cop called for the ambulance to come and help out! So, the EMT showed up next to cut the cuffs off this girl! It took them some work and a couple of tools, but they finally got them off of her. She was probably stuck in them for about an hour. She was such a good sport the whole time and didn't seem to get upset. Her wrists were scraped up and red because they were on pretty tight, but she seemed okay. Todd made her a pink bracelet and we told the family they could have BBQ or whatever they wanted from the sale! The cop took the extra 2 pairs of handcuffs to use at the jail! We definitely had our excitement that day!

School Days!

2011-04-13T18:01:00.000-07:00

We had a fun school day this week! While we were studying dendrochronology for science, we decided to get out of the house and study it for real instead of in a book. I'll give you bonus points if you know what that is.....
Here are some pictures that might give you a hint.

Dendrochronology is tree-ring dating. We studied archaeology in science club so this was their project for the month. They learned how tree-ring dating can help archaeologists determine the age of log homes and can provide information about the climate, floods, droughts, etc. for certain years. It was very interesting!

After that we went to our local library. They have an exhibit that we have walked past hundreds of times but never really studied. This week in school we studied about Lewis and Clark and their journey west. One of the men that went on this journey was Charles Floyd. We live in Floyd County, Indiana, thus the reason they have this exhibit at the library. Charles Floyd was the only member of the party to die during their long journey. He died from a ruptured appendix. The kids had a good time learning more about him at the library.

These were some pages from his journal.

And while were at the library, we noticed that Brandon and Bekah's art teacher had made a display in one of the display cases and Brandon and Bekah each had a drawing on display!

It's so nice to be able to get out of the house and do fun things for school!

Visit with Friends!

2011-04-09T17:57:00.000-07:00

This past week we got to visit with some friends that we hadn't seen in a while! The Bradfords live in Georgia and were in the area visiting friends for their spring break. These were some of our neighbors when we lived in Village Manor in Louisville. They were also seminary students, so we spent lots of time together. Kathy and I were pregnant at the same time and had the exact same due date for Bekah and Kate. I've seen Kathy a few times through the years, but it had been a really long time since we'd seen her kids.

Here are my 2 kids with her 4 kids having a great time together!

While they were here we took advantage of the seminary pool (which is now free for alumni). My kids were thrilled to get to swim since it had been such a long time! Our time passed much too quickly, and then they had to leave to head back home. But we were very thankful for the time we got to spend together!

Farnsley-Moreman Riverside Landing

2011-04-09T17:40:00.000-07:00

I am finally getting the pictures on here of our trip to the Farnsley-Moremen Riverside Landing. This was a field trip that we took with our science club on St. Patrick's Day. Our study for the month of March was on archaeology, so we took a trip to an archaeological dig site in Louisville. Here is a picture of one of the sites where they had been digging.

The kids got to dig and look for artifacts also! After they dug up the dirt, they got to participate in the sifting process. While sifting, Brandon found a piece of flint which was likely a piece of scrap from Native Americans making arrowheads. At their science club meeting they got to perform the next two steps in the process which were washing the items and then studying the items to figure out what they might have been used for.

Our friends got to come also!

The Farnsley-Moreman house was built with hand-made bricks. So, the kids also got to learn how to make bricks by making their own!

Here is the historical home from the 19th century that we got to tour.

We were thankful for the beautiful weather and the hands-on learning experience for the kids!

Fundraisers and Home Study

2011-03-28T12:52:00.000-07:00

Along with the key chains we are selling, we are also selling these bracelets that Todd is making. He has ordered several different colors of paracord so he can make them in team colors or whatever color you like! We are also selling these for a $10 minimum donation. We are also collecting lots of donations for a big yard sale. We are so thankful that our friends Scott and Liz have allowed us to use their basement to store our stuff in, and they will let us have the sale at their house. Their home is in a much more visible location with more traffic than we get at our house. Plus, we have nowhere to store the donations aside from the middle of our living room floor! We are hoping to have our sale one Saturday in April, depending on the weather. We are so blessed with so many supportive friends who are willing to help us. Our friend Allison has offered to have her girls and Bekah make some baked good to sell and our pastor, Roger, even offered to cook some BBQ to sell! We are praying that God will use all our efforts to allow us to bring home our daughter! Wednesday evening will be our home visit by our social worker. We have been preparing the best we can, but don't know really what to expect. I've talked with one friend who recently had a home visit and done some reading to try to find out what to do. We have checked to make sure we have working smoke detectors, I went through the medicine cabinet and threw out any outdated medicine, we made sure we have fire extinguishers within easy reach, we purchased gun cases and locks and locked up the guns, we moved Todd's knife collection to a higher shelf, we purchased child safety locks for the cabinets (we don't have to install them since we don't know when we'll get our daughter but we have to show that we have them available), we made sure we have outlet covers in our outlets, we have cleaned and organized, and I'll clean some more on Wednesday before she comes. She is planning to arrive around 5:30 and she said we can eat dinner while she is here. She said we can expect the visit to last at least 3 hours. So, we are preparing and praying and look forward to being one step closer to meeting our daughter!

Adoption Fundraiser!

2011-03-23T06:35:00.000-07:00

We are having our first adoption fundraiser! We are selling these three different keychains. For a minimum donation of $10, we will give/ship you one of these 3 options! I know the pictures are small and hard to see. The first one says, "I helped someone adopt!" The second one says, "Support Adoption," and the last one just says, "Adopt." Please let us know if you are interested in one and we'll get it to you! Thanks!

St. Patricks Day and Adoption Update

2011-03-22T09:33:00.000-07:00

On St. Patrick's Day, the kids had their traditional breakfast of green eggs, green toast, and green milk. (Bekah always opts for white milk, though.) The kids got up and put on green shirts and then ate in the living room while watching the Veggie Tales - St. Patrick Story. It's a fun treat for them to do something a little different before school! This year we had a field trip with our science club on St. Patrick's Day, so that made it even more fun. We went the the Farnsley-Moremen Riverside Landing. I'll post pics of that soon!

In other news, we have completed all of the paperwork for our home study!! We had our first round of interviews at the home study office yesterday, and next week they'll be coming out to our house for our final set of interviews! Then, we'll hopefully get our approval from them to adopt! We also have applied for our passports and are awaiting those. Now, we need to work on our dossier and apply to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services office! We are making progress!

Why China?

2011-03-01T14:46:00.000-08:00

I have had several people ask me why we are choosing to adopt from China, so I just thought I'd answer that here. When we first decided to adopt we looked briefly at domestic adoption. I'm not sure I really gave it a fair chance though, as I was apprehensive about the birth mother issues that could arise in the future. I didn't want to be fearful of a birth mother changing her mind or coming to find her child someday or even of my child finding her birth mother some day. I'm sure we've all heard horror stories, and I'm sure that things like that don't happen often. However, we just decided we'd rather pursue an international adoption and not ever have to wonder about any of those issues arising. So, then we looked online at many different countries and their programs. Each country has its own set of regulations and criteria to adopt from there. So, we basically decided to search for the country with the lowest costs for adopting and the shortest in-country stay that we qualified for. Through this process we ended up narrowing it down and trying to decide between China and Ethiopia. Originally we weren't sure if we wanted to adopt 1 or 2 children, which can make a difference also when choosing a country and a placing agency. Things can be different when adopting siblings or 2 unrelated children versus just adopting one at a time. So, finally we decided we wanted to adopt one little girl, and since China as a whole does not really value the life of females, it just seemed like the right choice. So, no, there was no voice from the sky telling us to choose China! Really it was just a process of elimination and following the desires of our hearts! We can't wait to meet our daughter from China!

Marengo Cave

2011-03-01T06:51:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we went on a field trip to Marengo Cave and had a great time! We went with some of the other homeschoolers at our church and had a group of 4 moms and 11 kids. We took 2 tours in the cave and also had an indoor picnic lunch. The first tour was an hour long and the second was about 40 minutes. We also took a short walk outside to the site where the cave was first found. Then we all left for home with some happy and tired kids!

We saw lots of cool cave formations.

We also saw several bats!

This was a wet part of the cave. These are actual cups that the original explorers used to collect water to drink!

The whole gang in the cave!

The whole gang outside at the original cave entrance.

Adoption!

2011-02-16T13:09:00.000-08:00

Well, the news is out.....we are in the process of adopting a little girl from China! We are so excited! I hope to document this process on here so that we can remember everything and so that others might also see how the process works and might get excited about adopting also. At some point I'll write about our decision to adopt and how we came to this point. But today I want to talk about the process that we have gone through so far. When we tell people our news we often get asked, "how far into the process are you?" So, that is what I am going to answer today! When we made the decision to adopt, we did not know much about how things worked. So, we began by making some inquires to people we knew who had adopted. And we also started searching online for information. The first thing we had to do was pick an adoption agency to use. This was not an easy decision as there are many to choose from. And you hear both good and bad things about people's experience with different agencies. We almost used AWAA (American World Adoption Association) but ended up choosing FTIA (Families Thru International Adoption). Our main reason for choosing them was that we know 3 families locally who have used them and they were pleased with them. And their fees were a little lower than some other agencies. Once we chose the agency we filled out an initial application and waited for approval. After we got that approval, we needed to begin our home study process. This was another big decision as there are so many places to choose from. Because we chose to adopt from a Hague Convention country, there are additional considerations in choosing a Hague approved agency or not, etc. Well, after much searching and talking we finally chose AHSS (Adoption and Home Study Specialists) in Louisville. We filled out an initial application for them and then received a 50 page document to begin working on. Many people don't realize that a home study is much more than having a social worker come out and look around your house and ask you some questions. Here is a list of many of the items you have to send them:
Certified Birth Certificates for all family members
Certified Marriage Certificate
Medical exam reports for all family members
Individual photo IDs for mom and dad
Family photograph
Complete autobiographies for mom and dad with specific questions to address
References from 5 people
Letter from employers
Animal safety statement (if you have pets your vet has to fill out a form)
Child Placing license from your placing agency
IRS tax return
Account verification for checking, savings, loans, mortages, investments, retirement plans, etc.
Life insurance verification
Health insurance verification
National criminal background check
State criminal background check
Local criminal background check
CPS abuse and neglect investigation
Sex and violent offender registry check
Child abuse out of state check for all states you have lived in since 18

Many of these forms have to be notarized as well which can be difficult. For instance, we had to have our medical exam forms notarized by our doctor. They do not have a notary in the office so do you think it would be easier to try to get your doctor to go to see a notary with you or find a notary who will go to the doctor with you?? Well, it's not easy either way. But thankfully God worked all that out for us at the last minute and we were able to find a notary to go to the doctor's office.

Along with all the paperwork, you have to complete adoption education. We have purchased this online so we can view the classes at any time. Once all this is complete then you go into the office of your home study agency for interviews. Because we are adopting from China they require 4 face to face interviews. So, Todd will be interviewed individually and then I'll be interviewed and then we'll be interviewed together. Then they will come out to our house and Brandon will be interviewed as well since he is over the age of 10.

So, right now we are working on finishing gathering all the paperwork above. For instance, today I went to the bank to get a money order and then to the post office to mail in a form for one of our criminal background checks. I also started my education course today and completed my first test.
While we are working on all these things for the home study I am also working on items for our Dossier. If you don't know what that is, it is basically a big stack of paperwork that goes to China to tell them all about us. There is much information that is the same stuff needed for the home study, it just has to be a little more official. For instance, once you get the certified birth certificates you then have to send them to your secretary of state for some kind of seal/certification. Then you send them to the Chinese Embassy for another authentification seal.

I'd love to get all this paperwork completed for the home study within the next 2 weeks! I am staying very busy and am thankful that the kids have a week with their grandparents this week so I can focus more of my time on getting things done. We just want to hurry up and get to China to bring our daughter home!

Christmas in Columbia

2011-02-08T14:01:00.000-08:00

Our final Christmas celebration was in Columbia, Tennessee! Here are some pictures of everyone except the camera man.

Todd and I got lots of stuff for our newly remodeled bathroom!

We all went in together and suprised Dad with a blu-ray player and surround sound speaker system! I think he liked it!

Brandon

2011-02-07T18:20:00.000-08:00

Today was Brandon's quarterly endocrinologist appointment. He got a very good report. His A1C was 6.6, so we were very excited! That is the lowest it has been since his diagnosis! We talked with the doctor a little bit about the insulin pump today. Brandon doesn't want one at all, and at this point he doesn't need one. She forewarned us that once he hits puberty his blood sugar levels can be very difficult to keep under control, and we might need to switch to a pump at that time. But, for now, all is well and we will just keep on keeping on!

Sick Update

2011-02-04T05:12:00.000-08:00

Well, Bekah was the first to get sick, then Mommy, then Brandon. We had a yucky few days, but everyone seems to be getting back to normal now. Brandon went a whole day and ate nothing. I had him check his sugar periodically throughout the day. It slowly went up all day long even though he was not eating and throwing up. Crazy, isn't it? It just proves there is much more than food that affects his sugar levels.
Hopefully since Todd was out of town, he has missed his turn at getting sick! He did make it back home last night and we were all very happy to see him!

My sick girl

2011-02-01T13:57:00.000-08:00

I am pressing pause on the catch-up of photos to tell you about our day today. My girl is sick. She has the stomach bug that has been going around like crazy around here. I don't know many households that haven't been hit with it. This morning around 4am she came into my room and said, "I don't why, but I just threw up." Well that was just the beginning of more throwing up and diarrhea. Fun times. And Todd just left this morning for a 3 day work trip. At least he will hopefully not get the bug, but I won't have any help either. Bekah has spent most of the day lying in the living room floor. She fell asleep for about 2 hours this afternoon which is a sure sign that she is sick, because I couldn't tell you the last time she took a nap.

I just hope that Brandon doesn't come down with this, as it could likely put him in the hospital. He has complained of a stomachache some today, but he has eaten normally and is acting fine. We'll see......

Christmas at Home

2011-01-28T11:31:00.000-08:00

It was nice this year that Todd was off for Christmas Eve! We spent the day cooking for Christmas dinner and just hanging out and enjoying the day. Our tradition has been to eat Papa Murphy's pizza for dinner so that we don't have to do any extra cooking for Christmas Eve. Before bed the kids always get to open their new Christmas pj's from Grandmom and Grandpa!

Here they are showing off the new pajamas!
Christmas morning always begins with Todd reading the Christmas story. Then the kids get to look in their stockings!

Then they get to open gifts! We try to get them each 3 gifts as a symbol of the 3 gifts that the wise men brought to baby Jesus!

This year was a little bit unusual as Todd and I did not fill stockings or buy any gifts for each other. We got this new TV, stand, speakers, and bookshelves for Christmas this year. We got money from Todd's family to pay for part of the expenses, but the rest of it was our gift to each other. It looks very nice!

After a yummy french toast breakfast made by Daddy, the kids were ready to try out their new DS games!

We had some friends come over to share Christmas dinner with us and watch The Nativity Story. And, of course we had our birthday part for Jesus which included this red velvet cake!

Christmas in Maryville

2011-01-26T14:54:00.000-08:00

Here are a few pictures from our Christmas in Maryville!

Grandmom and her elves!

Ty hugging Mommy after opening the first gift of the evening!
Trey is just chillin'.

Travis and Jackie are chillin' too.

All the kids went in together to get Pops a smoker!

The grandkids made this lovely gingerbread house!

We are always thankful when the whole family can be together to celebrate special occasions!

Book Club

2011-01-26T07:07:00.000-08:00

The kids belong to a book club that meets about every 4-6 weeks. The boys and girls are separated into different groups and read different books. (Mommy is the leader of the girls' group.) For their Christmas party they were supposed to dress up as their favorite character from a book they had read. We had a hard time getting a costume together for Brandon, and although we did finally come up with something, we got no pictures of it. But, Bekah knew right away that she wanted to be Laura Ingalls, and we were able to find some clothing to make it work. Here is our beautiful Laura!

The "real" birthday!

2011-01-25T12:32:00.000-08:00

Bekah woke up on her birthday at Grandmom and Grandpa's house. Per her request, we had cinammon rolls for breakfast.

She also got her gifts from mommy and daddy. She was convinced her gift was tap shoes, but was very pleasantly suprised to find out is was the pink DS she had been wanting!

And she got a Zumbuddy!

Mommy and Daddy always decorate the bedroom door for the birthday kid so the celebrating begins the minute they get up! Here is Bekah posing with her birthday decor!

After breakfast we drove to Algood to celebrate with Todd's family at Travis and Jackie's house. Here is Bekah with her 3rd birthday cake! This one she got to share with Aunt Jackie!

And there were still more presents to open!

And thank you hugs to be given.

We are so blessed to have been able to spend the last 7 years with our daughter, Bekah! We are so thankful that God gave us such a wonderful blessing!

More birthday celebrating!

2011-01-24T10:08:00.001-08:00

Bekah's birthday party was held on the Tuesday evening before Thanksgiving. She had one friend spend the night with her after the party. Here's Bekah the next morning with her balloons from the party.

And here is a picture of her and her friend with their matching hairdos!

Later on that day, we dropped off her friend and then drove down to Tennessee to Grandmom and Grandpa's house. Grandpa's birthday is just a few days before Bekah's birthday, so they had a party together that evening.

Bekah got another artist's palette cake and Grandpa got a cream cheese pound cake.

This was one of her gifts.

Here are Grandpa's gifts.

And Bekah's gifts.

We are thankful that we live close enough to our family to be able to celebrate special days with them! The following day was Thanksgiving so we enjoyed lots of good food and hanging out with our family. The day after Thanksgiving was Bekah's actual birthday. So, there was still more celebrating to come!

Bekah's Birthday Party!

2011-01-20T17:12:00.000-08:00

So, her party was 3 months ago, but I am just now getting the pictures on here! We held her party at a local make-your-own-pottery place. It is called Earth and Fire - Pottery By You! This was our first birthday party that we've ever done for the kids at any party place. And, I loved it! I showed up with a cake, drinks and some plates and cups and that was it! I didn't have to clean my house before or after the party or come up with any party games, etc. I think we may have to do parties this way more often!

Each girl got to select the piece of pottery they would like to paint from a selection of appropriately priced items (the cheap ones!). Here they are hard at work.

Bekah chose a cat!

When they were finished they each got a face painting from Todd!

Then Bekah got to put her hand print in the special birthday girl plate. Each of her guests put their fingerprint and name around the edge of the plate. The fingerprints were turned into flowers by the pottery store staff. Bekah will always have the special plate to remember her special day!

Then it was time for cake. Bekah chose the rainbow sprinkle cake mix so it would look like paint in the cake. I made the cake into an artist's palette.

Of course she got lots of presents too!

Here is the whole crew! Unfortunately one family was out of town, but everyone else made it!

Super silly girls making a crazy face!

Tea Party

2011-01-18T06:27:00.000-08:00

Well, first please get up off the floor now. I know you fell over when you saw a new post on my blog! I can't believe it's already 2011 and January is over halfway over! We enjoyed our Christmas break from school, but now we are plugging away again. In history we have just gotten to the Revolutionary War! When we talked about the Boston Tea Party, we made some tea and scones. Here are the kids enjoying their own tea party.

Yes, Brandon is wearing his snow pants. For some reason he loves to wear them around the house. Maybe he thinks it will make it snow??

Update

2010-10-08T06:39:00.000-07:00

So, I'm finally getting on here to give a little update on what we've been up to lately. Well, Last Saturday, Todd and I ran the Down Syndrome of Louisville 5K together. My goal was 30 minutes and I ran it in 30:15, so I was pretty happy with that time. There were no mile markers along the way, so it was hard for me to gauge if I was running at a good pace or not. Todd set a new record for how far he could run without stopping to walk! He finished the race in 31:15 which is very much improved from the one we ran together last spring. Now we're talking about possibly trying for a 10K next year! We'll see....
Last night we signed a contract with a remodeling company and we are getting a new bathroom! We are so excited! We've been wanting to have this done for a long time, and we have finally saved up enough money to get it done. They said since our bathroom is small, it will be a quick job so they might be able to fit us into the schedule if they have a few off days, but at the latest it will be the second week of Dec. when they come.
Brandon pulled two teeth out a few nights ago. He had some wiggly teeth, and then one night after he went to bed he was wiggling one and decided to just pull it out. So he came out of his room to wash out his mouth. Then a little while later he got out of bed again to check his blood, and it was low so he had a snack and went back to bed. Then a little while later he came out of his room again because he had pulled out another tooth! After washing out his mouth again, he was finally back to bed for good. (Todd was in bed with a migraine during the whole time, so Brandon had to wait until the following night for the tooth daddy to bring him some money.)
We are doing report cards for the first time this year and my kids recently completed their first reporting period. They both did very well and were excited when I told them about report card rewards. Several businesses offer free stuff to kids with good grades, so we had report card rewards night and took advantage of them. We started out with dinner at Chuck E Cheese, where they give free tokens for good grades. Then we stopped at Krispy Kreme for free donuts which we took home to have for breakfast the next day. Then we went to Graeters and the kids got free ice cream for dessert. And then we went to Blockbuster Video where the kids got to rent a free movie! We had a fun night and hopefully it will be good motivation for the kids to continue to work hard in school and get good grades.
Well, that's about all the news I can think of for now!

Before and After

2010-09-16T05:55:00.000-07:00

In 2008 I lost about 30 pounds. I am finally getting around to posting before and after pictures! I am committed to making exercise a priority in my life and have kept off the weight for almost 2 years now. I want my kids to grow up thinking that exercise is just a part of life, so that they might continue with it after they are on their own. I didn't drastically change my eating habits to lose weight, but I did quit drinking any calories. There are plenty of good tasting calorie-free drinks, so I made the choice to eat my calories instead of drink them. I didn't give up any particular foods, I just try to make wise choices most of the time. I eat plenty of desserts, because I couldn't live without those! I just try to do so in moderation and make sure that I work out to burn off the calories! The picture on the left was taken June 8th, 2007, and the one on the right was taken September 1st, 2010. (I cannot get the pictures to line up side by side, but that is what I was trying to do!)

2nd Black Belt

2010-09-12T04:53:00.000-07:00

I'm sure you've quit checking to see if there is any news on here, since I do a terrible job of updating this blog! Here is some news from this past week: Brandon received his new 2nd degree black belt! He had already earned it, but it takes a while to have it made. Here it is!

Saddle Ridge Ranch

2010-08-16T07:09:00.000-07:00

The last week of July we held Vacation Bible School at our church. We took a trip out west to the Saddle Ridge Ranch!

Cowboy Steve was our leader!

I was the music/motions teacher!

Todd taught the Bible story one night.

Crazy kids!

Here is our preacher and his wife, the Van Fleets!

More songs and motions

Bekah's class during game time

We all enjoyed our week of VBS!

Our Karate Kid

2010-08-13T10:18:00.000-07:00

On July 17th, Brandon tested for his 2nd degree black belt, and he did a great job! He scored a 3.5 out of 4.0. He has been practicing about twice a week for a little over 4 years now. It's hard to believe it has been that long already. I ask him periodically if he is finished going to karate and wants to do something else, but he always says that he doesn't want to quit karate! He still loves to go to class and learn new things. Todd got some pictures of his warm up practice right before his test! We are very proud of our little karate kid!

His face shows he is working hard!

Looks like the floor was a little dirty!

Back to School Party

2010-08-11T06:50:00.000-07:00

We had our party on Monday evening after the first day of school. We were babysitting the three Preston kids that night, so we thought it would be a great night for the party. We also invited our neighbors, the Russells. That made 8 kids and 4 adults for our celebration! We started out with a dinner of hot dogs, beans, chips, slaw and watermelon. Then the kids went on a treasure hunt. Todd did a great job of taking pictures and telling the story of our party on Facebook. Instead of posting it all again, you can click on this link to see the pictures from our party. We all had fun and it made the first day of school a bit less painful for everyone!

Back to School

2010-08-10T07:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was our first day back to school. Bekah is now in 2nd grade and Brandon is in 5th grade. It's crazy that my kids are that big! We definitely enjoyed our summer break, and it was a bit hard to get busy with school. Once we got started the kids seemed excited and enjoyed their first day. This year we are continuing to use My Father's World and we will be going through the Exploration through 1850 curriculum. The kids will be doing more subjects together this year (Bible, science, history and fun activities). Of couse they will each do their own math, spelling, and grammar. We are continuing with our science club and art classes this year. Brandon will also continue his boys' book club, and Bekah will be starting a girls' book club which is for the sisters of the boys' book club and meets at the same time and place. That works out well for our schedule! Bekah is also still involved in her Keepers Club. And we are continuing karate lessons for Brandon and dance class for Bekah. Wow, that sounds like we'll be busy! Thankfully our clubs meet only once or twice a month, so it's not as bad as it sounds.

We finished off our first day of school with a Back to School Party which was lots of fun! I'll post those pictures soon!

July 4th (one month late!)

2010-08-04T05:49:00.000-07:00

On July 4th we attended the Van Fleets annual cookout/pool party (but Todd didn't take any pictures this year) and enjoyed spending the day with our church family. We arrived home just before dark to attend the annual Summer Place fireworks show!

Here are the kids playing in the smoke bomb!

Chris was the pyro guy for the evening.

Cute Abby!

The kids are all enjoying the show!

Time for sparklers

Having a great time with sparklers

Chris put on a great show!

The kids enjoyed cleaning up the mess afterwards,

while the mommys sat back and relaxed!

Anniversary Part 2

2010-06-30T12:58:00.000-07:00

Here are a few of the many pictures that we took on our anniversary trip in Indianapolis:

This is us at the White River Gardens.

This is me inside the butterfly exhibit.

Todd at the zoo

This is what the bear thought of us!

This is me waiting for the dolphin show, which was very cool!

Here is Todd petting a shark.

Downtown Indy

This is where the Colts play!

Father's Day

2010-06-28T10:49:00.001-07:00

Our family tradition is to start out Father's Day with some cinnamon rolls!

After church we took Todd to eat at one of his favorite places, Buffalo Wild Wings. Then we came home and he got cards and a gift from the kids. They put their own money together and bought him this coffee mug.

Silly Brandon!

Looks like Daddy is enjoying choking Brandon!

Then we took him to the store to pick out a bicycle! He's been wanting one for a while and it will be something fun he can do with the kids. (Especially when it's not as hot as it has been lately!)

He rode it around for a little while.

Then decided it was way too hot!

We ended the day by going to our friends, the VanFleets, house for some BBQ and swimming. It was a wonderful day!

Party!

2010-06-28T10:29:00.000-07:00

We had Brandon's birthday party on Monday, the 21st. Two of his friends were gone to boy scout camp the week of his birthday, so he decided to wait until they were available to have the party (although one of them ended up being sick and couldn't come). Brandon chose to have a karate party and to go see The Karate Kid movie.

Here are the boys at the theater!

After the movie, we brought everyone home for pizza and cake. We had 2 more families join us for that part.

I baked and frosted the cake, and then Todd turned it into a karate robe and belt.

I ordered the plates, cups, napkins, etc. since I couldn't find any of that kind of stuff at the local party stores. I was kind of surprised there wasn't more available with the new movie coming out. But I am thankful I found stuff online!

I even found candles that were white with black stripes around them!

Present time!

One of his gifts was this huge watergun so after they ate they went out to try it out. All the boys went home soaked (and hopefully happy!).

Brandon is very blessed to have lots of great friends! We are so thankful for each of them!

15th Anniversary

2010-06-25T05:00:00.000-07:00

On June 17th, Todd and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary! My parents took the kids home with them for a few days so Todd and I could celebrate. When I awoke that morning, Todd had roses and breakfast for me.

He worked that day, but was able to leave early. We took a trip to Indianapolis, Indiana that afternoon. We had dinner at a Carrabba's, one of our favorite places.

Todd got his all time favorite - Spiedino di Mare.

After dinner we went to the mall for a while, and then stayed the night at the Hilton Garden Inn.
The next day we spent at White River State Park in Indy and then headed home that night. We had a wonderful anniversary celebration. We thank God for his many blessings upon us and our marriage.

Happy Birthday, Brandon!

2010-06-16T06:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my baby boy turned 10 years old! Grandmom and Grandpa Brooks were in town for Bekah's dance recital, so they got to spent his special day with us. I cooked his favorite breakfast, pancakes filled with peanut butter chips! Then we were off to the free summer kids movie at the theater, which was Ice Age - Dawn of the Dinosaurs. Some of our friends met us there to watch with us which was fun. Then we were home for a while before taking a trip to the library and Brandon's karate class. After Todd got home from work, Brandon got plenty of birthday gifts including a set of golf clubs and golf bag from the Grandparents. He decided he wanted to eat in Corydon, Indiana at Culvers for a butter burger and frozen custard. Then he wanted to go putt-putt golfing. Golf Shores in Corydon has an outdoor course as well as an indoor course. He had played the indoor course before, so he wanted to try the outdoor course this time. There was a storm coming in, but the lady at the desk checked the weather and said it would hit in about an hour, so we should have time to play before it got bad. Well, we only made it a few holes and then the storm came, but they let us switch and play the indoor course. It is a black light, 3-D course, so it was lots of fun. Then it was time to head home and put an end to his fun day!

Flood

2010-05-25T06:12:00.000-07:00

We happened to be in Nashville, Tennessee on Saturday, May 1st, which turned out to be the weekend of the terrible flood in that area. We were trying to get home on I-65 North and because of the flooding our 3 hour trip home took about 8 hours. There were 2 places where the interstate was closed and we had to get off and take other roads to get back onto the interstate farther north. We were very thankful to get home safely, and we feel so badly for all the people who lost their lives, homes, cars, possessions, etc. Here are a few pictures we took during our adventure.

This was the Cool Springs Mall parking lot.

And another in the Cool Springs area - that is Lifeway in the background.

Notice the fence in this picture.

Now, notice that fence again.

This wasn't supposed to be a lake house!

This was a golf course that became a rushing river. If you look close you can see rapids!

School

2010-05-24T06:27:00.000-07:00

Friday was our last day of school! Me and the kids are sooo excited! The kids have achievement tests this week Wednesday through Friday, but they said that doesn't count as school because it is fun! The kids planned a suprise celebration party on Friday night all by themselves. They decorated with streamers, balloons, signs, flowers, etc. They had planned activities for the evening which included playing "School's Out For Summer" on Guitar Hero. They made gifts for Todd and me and wrapped them also. They did a great job of party planning all on their own. Todd has pictures in his camera, so hopefully I can post some of those soon! Today and tomorrow we are enjoying no school and then after their testing we'll be ready for summer!

Friends

2010-05-24T06:17:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we got to visit with our friends Kara and Kyla! Kara had booked a wedding to shoot before they moved away, so she came back for that. We got to keep Kyla for the day while she was gone to the wedding. We had so much fun with her!

Bekah is showing off her muscles. She loves to pick up other children to show how strong she is.

On Friday night when they arrived Kara did pictures for 2 families from our church. We met them at the photo shoot so we could all go out to eat together afterward. Here is Bekah with Kyla and Hannah.

We really enjoyed our visit, but it was too short and made us miss them even more!

Concert

2010-05-05T08:14:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday the local Christian radio station, WJIE, held an anniversary concert in Louisville. Todd decided on Tuesday to try to get tickets so we could attend, and it all worked out. We have friends who kept the kids and even let them spend the night since the concert was over later than their bedtime. There were 4 performers at the concert: Phil Stacey (from American Idol), Britt Nicole, Natalie Grant, and the David Crowder Band. Todd is a big fan of the David Crowder Band, so that is why he wanted to attend.

Here we are before the show!

Todd didn't take his camera, so we only had the point and shoot. So, the pictures are not great, but here they are.

Natalie Grant

David Crowder Band

Friends!

2010-05-05T07:53:00.000-07:00

My friend, Kathy Bradford, came up to Louisville April 23-25th. She used to be our neighbor in Louisville, but I hadn't seen her in several years! It was so good to catch up with her. Kathy is celebrating her 40th birthday this year. She called me last year and said that she was wanting to celebrate her 40th by running in 4 races with 4 friends. So, we got to run a race together while she was here! She came up to Louisville that particular weekend because she was singing in an anniversary celebration for her church that she attended up here. Well, that particular weekend was the weekend of the Derby Marathon and Half Marathon. Neither of us were ready to run that long of a race, so the only other option we found was a 2 miler. It was not a long race, but it was fun to run it together! I was happy to finish in 18:11 especially consindering there was a hill in the course!

Here we are after the race!

We got cleaned up and were able to spend some more time together driving around in Louisville and having lunch at The Grape Leaf.

Another One Bites the Dust

2010-04-24T14:41:00.000-07:00

On Friday afternoon Bekah lost her other front tooth! She was having a snack in the car just before dance class. As she was biting on her chip her tooth was twisted in a funny position and she kinds of bit her tooth. It started bleeding a little bit so I told her to take a drink. She really didn't want to take a drink because she is afraid of tasting blood. But, since we were in the car, she really had no other option. After taking a drink she looked at me and I noticed the tooth was gone! I asked her if she swallowed it and she said she thought she had. Then she took another drink from her straw and then quickly spit out the drink along with her tooth. Her tooth had gone down in her straw and came back up with the next sip! She was very excited!! My big girl is growing up!!

Toothless!

2010-04-20T08:58:00.000-07:00

Bekah's top front tooth has been very loose for quite a while. Daddy pulled the first 2 teeth she lost, but she did not want him to pull this one. Yesterday Bekah and Brandon were playing karate together and somehow he accidentally hit her in the mouth. It knocked the tooth so loose that she just reached in and pulled it out! She was excited to put it under her pillow and get $1 from the "Tooth Daddy!" The tooth right beside it is pretty loose too, so it won't be long until she gets another dollar!

Happy Easter!

2010-04-06T05:35:00.000-07:00

We had a very nice Easter weekend. My parents were able to come up on Thursday afternoon to spend the holiday with us. Todd took a day off from work on Friday, so we were able to all be together. My parents took the kids to see a movie at the theater that afternoon, and Todd and I did some shopping. Friday night Bekah had dance class and then we all went out to eat together. On Saturday, we had our annual egg hunt at church followed by our neighborhood annual egg hunt. So, the kids now have their fill of Easter candy! (Although Brandon gave away all his candy from the egg hunt at church.) Sunday we went to church together and then came home and had our Easter dinner and then my parents headed home. We spent the rest of the day just hanging out and relaxing and trying out the kids' new Easter gift - Mario Kart for the Wii!

Saint Patrick's Day Pictures

2010-04-05T13:58:00.000-07:00

Here are the kids in their costumes they made pointing to the pot of gold! They played a game where one of them would hide the pot of gold and then lead the other one to find it.

Here is Brandon eating his green breakfast with the books we got from our library about St. Patrick's Day.

Update

2010-03-24T10:26:00.000-07:00

I thought it was time for a little update from our house! We have been staying busy with all the regular stuff: school, dance, karate, Keepers club, science club, Boys book club, etc. We enjoyed a fun day on St. Patrick's Day. The kids had their green breakfast (green eggs, green butter on toast and green milk). We spent some time reading books about St. Patrick and making some fun crafts. I took pictures on my camera and was planning to put some on here. However, the cord that connects to the camera to take the pictures off the card is not working. Todd has ordered some kind of card reader that we can use to get the pictures off the camera, but it hasn't arrived yet. So, hopefully, I'll be able to post those pictures soon.
Todd has been really busy at work working on a big project. On Monday he worked about 16 hours and got home after midnight. He'll be working all this weekend as well. The good part about that is that he will get comp time off to make up for working all the extra hours! So, it's kind of like getting a few extra days of vacation!
We had a fun visit from my Aunt Sharon and my cousin, Kristy a couple of weeks ago. They didn't get to stay long, but we sure did enjoy them while they were here! We all went out to dinner and then spent time playing games at home and just hanging out.
We are excited that spring has arrived and we have been outside enjoying the weather. The kids have been playing with sidewalk chalk, jumping on the trampoline, playing on the swingset and running through the yard. By the way, our swingset is about to fall apart. I'm afraid it might not make it through the summer. I hate to lose it since it gets used so much, but I don't want the kids playing on it if it is not safe. If we get rid of it, I'd love to replace it with some type of fort or something for the kids, but I have no idea how much that will cost.
We are starting to look forward to Easter, and Todd is looking forward to the Together for the Gospel conference coming up soon also (and a visit from Justin!).
I guess that's it for now.

Leavenworth Inn

2010-03-14T13:26:00.000-07:00

Todd and I really enjoyed our recent trip to the Leavenworth Inn Bed and Breakfast. The room we chose was located in "The Cottage" which was this huge house. No one else was staying in this house, so we had the whole house to ourselves.

The living room

This was the den with several hundred movies to watch and a 52" flat screen television.

We chose the "Sweet William" room.

We drove to Corydon, Indiana to eat and hang out for a while. We came across this place:

I told Todd it looked like a place that someone on TV would be commenting on. When we got home Todd found this video.

We thought it was funny that someone put a toboggan on this guy, so I decided to sit down and chat with him.

More Snow!

2010-02-24T05:35:00.000-08:00

The day after Valentine's Day, it snowed again. We got another 7 1/2 to 8 inches on top of the other snow that had not melted from when we got 7 inches just a week earlier.

We had lots of giant icicles on the house!

Todd's footprint shows how deep the snow was.

Brandon did some "trust falls" into the snow!

Then he got buried in the snow!

Every time the kids went out to play they came in and warmed up with some hot chocolate. So, as you can imagine with that much snow we went through lots of hot chocolate at our house! Here is Bekah getting warmed up.

We still have remnants of from the big piles of snow hanging around at our house. We are thankful for all the fun snow that we had this winter, but now we are ready for spring to arrive!

Happy Valentine's Day!

2010-02-24T05:25:00.000-08:00

Valentine's Day fell on Sunday this year, so Todd and I celebrated on Saturday. We had a friend who offered to come over and babysit for us so we could go out on a date Saturday afternoon. We gladly accepted and then traded out and kept her little one so she and her husband could go out as well. Todd and I ate at Red Lobster and did some shopping. Todd got me 2 pairs of new shoes, and I got him a fire pit for the back porch. Then we stopped for coffee and a card game before heading back home.
On Sunday morning, the church leadership cooked breakfast for the church during the Sunday School time. We ate some yummy food and Todd gave a devotional about love and ways to show love to our church family. Here is the yummy food:

After church we came home and gave the kids Valentine gifts.

The kids made cards for me and Todd and gave those to us as well.
Daddy getting some love from his kiddos!

These are the flowers Todd got me for Valentine's Day! Hopefully I'll get to enjoy them all summer.

Snow Fort

2010-02-21T06:02:00.000-08:00

This was a beautiful snow!

And here are the promised snow fort pictures:

Mommy and Daddy worked hard to build the fort!

Brandon is adding his touch to the fort.

Liberty and Bekah are hanging out inside!

Brandon playing in the fort several days later. They played some kind of game where they stockpiled food (made of snow) and weapons in there. They used the fort for snowball fights and lots of other fun games.

Snow!

2010-02-12T06:01:00.001-08:00

On Monday night it started to snow. It snowed most of the day on Tuesday and again on Wednesday. We got a little more than 7 inches. The kids have been having a blast playing outside in it. Mommy and Daddy helped them build a snow fort (pictures to come). They made snow angels, had a snowball fight, etc.

One of the best things about snow is that everything gets cancelled! We have not had anywhere to go all week! It is wonderful! The roads have pretty much been cleared now, so I am assuming Bekah will have dance class today (Friday). Todd was able to work from home some, and he took one day off from work. He helped push a couple of cars up the small hill on our road one night and it nearly killed him. The next night the UPS truck got stuck, but he wasn't up for pushing that up the hill! (The truck finally made it up the hill after 20 minutes of trying the same thing over and over and then following some advice that someone on our street went out there and gave him.)

3 Less Teeth

2010-02-09T12:04:00.000-08:00

Here is Bekah after losing her first tooth!

Then Daddy got a hold of that second tooth, and this is how she looks now!

Brandon's missing tooth is hard to see, but here he is showing off his empty spot!

Medieval Inn

2010-02-08T17:00:00.000-08:00

We have been studying the Medievel times in school lately. One day we had dinner at a medieval inn. We ate chicken pot pie with spoons (since forks had not been invented yet) by candlelight. They used large pieces of bread for plates, so we had our pies on texas toast instead of plates. We drank ale (diet ginger ale) out of mugs. And we played a game that was popular during that time called Nine Men's Morris. It was lots of fun!
(And by the way, the word medieval irks me so much. Who invented that spelling?!?! I think it should be spelled midevil!)

Kids

2010-02-05T07:29:00.001-08:00

Here are a couple of recent pictures of our kids:

It's really hard to catch Brandon sleeping. He is a light sleeper like his Mommy, so usually when you go into his room he wakes up immediately. One morning, he just could not wake up, so Daddy snapped his picture!

This is what Bekah looks like when she gets up in the morning! Now do you see why we usually do her baths in the mornings instead of at night? Trying to untangle and brush that mess is really hard unless it's freshly washed! And on those days that she doesn't take a bath in the morning, you will see her hair pulled back into a ponytail that day. It's way too much work to make this mess look nice! And if you notice closely in the picture, she has one tooth right in the middle of her mouth on the bottom. She had lost her first tooth and the second one was so loose it was falling over into the middle of her mouth!
I feel so blessed to have 2 wonderful kiddos! Although there are many days that they drive me crazy, I love my job of spending my days teaching and training these 2 kids!!

What's Up?

2010-02-03T12:44:00.000-08:00

I know, I know, I never blog. So, what's been going on with us? We are thoroughly enjoying the fact that Southern Seminary is in session, but Todd is not attending!! He comes home at night and we can decide to do whatever we want! We have been trying to get together with church members more often, and Todd has been able to help out with some of Brandon's school stuff in the evenings. We've also had time to just hang out and play the Wii or watch movies, and we spent one warmer Saturday hiking in the woods!

I have also been preparing to teach a women's Bible study at church. Our pastor's wife usually teaches, but she is due to have a baby right in the middle of the session, so she asked me to teach this time. We'll be studying a book by Cynthia Heald called, Becoming a Woman of Freedom.

This weekend Todd and I will be starting a 3 weekend training session for Biblical counseling. This is one step toward us becoming certified NANC counselors. This is something we have had interest in doing for a while, but never could because of Todd's schoolwork. So, we are excited to be starting this process. We will see how God will use this counseling training in our ministry in the future. The conference meets Friday nights from 5-9 and Saturdays from 9-5 every other weekend. So, I have been busy trying to arrange childcare for these three weekends. I am so thankful that God has blessed us with so many great friends up here to help us out!

Todd and I are also looking forward to a stay at the Leavenworth Inn B&B at the end of February. Our great friends gave us a gift certificate to stay there for Todd's graduation/our Christmas gift. Thank you Chris and Sonja! And the kids are looking forward to spending some time with Grandmom and Grandpa while Todd and I are there. This will be an early spring break from school that will make us all happy!

Bekah lost her first 2 teeth! She lost the 2 middle bottom teeth just 4 days apart. She lost the first one and the second one was falling over in the middle of her mouth, so it looked like she just had one tooth right in the middle. Finally, Todd decided it was time for it to come out and he pulled it out! We do have pictures, but they are still in Todd's camera, so hopefully I can post those soon.

Brandon also lost a tooth recently. He lost his first molar and the new tooth is already about half way grown in. It had been a long time since he had lost any teeth, so he was quite excited. We have been keeping the tooth fairy busy at our house!

We did have about 3 inches of snow last week when the big snow hit Kentucky and Tennessee. It didn't last long, but it was enough for the kids to get out and enjoy it. Here is one of the pics Todd took of the kids sledding with the neighbors.

Louisville Mega Cavern

2010-02-03T12:35:00.000-08:00

During the month of January, our science club studied geology. We got to take a field trip to the Louisville Mega Cavern. We rode through the cavern on a tram, and all the kids got flashlights to use so they wouldn't be scared. It was interesting to learn about the history of the cavern. (It's not a cave, and we found that out too!). It was prepared to be a safe shelter during the cold war, and so we learned a lot about that too. They had dummies placed throughout the cavern showing what it would have been like to have lived in there in case of a nuclear attack. Bekah said she was scared of the dummies and was afraid they would start moving. Thankfully, that didn't happen, so she survived. I would definitely recommend the tour for anyone who is considering going there.

Snow!

2010-01-15T04:57:00.000-08:00

Last week we got a little more than 4 inches of snow at our house. So, of course the kids were thrilled! It was a great sledding snow, but not so great for making a snow man. Some neighbors across the street have a great hill in their back yard, so all the kids on the street hung out in their back yard with their sleds. Bekah enjoyed spending time with Liberty because the schools were closed on Thursday and Friday. We drank lots of hot chocolate, hot tea and hot apple cider because it was verrrrrry cold! And we got to make some yummy snow cream to eat also! We also enjoyed eating snowflake Ritz crackers and reading books about snow from the library. Fun times!!!

I didn't have any snow pants for Brandon, so he just wore lots of layers. I did later find him some snow pants, so we're hoping for more snow this winter so he can try them out. His snow boots are officially too small for him now. He's worn them for several years, and this year after wearing them he couldn't get them off and I couldn't get them off. Thankfully, Daddy was able to get them off him! So, he got some new snow boots to use next time it snows too!

Christmas Giving

2009-12-24T06:40:00.001-08:00

Bekah's Keepers Club collected money all year, and for Christmas they made a donation to the Ronald McDonald House in Louisville. Bekah and a couple of the other girls went over to give their money and got to tour the facilities. It is a very nice place, although I hope I never have a reason to stay there.

Christmas Letter 2009

2009-12-24T06:29:00.000-08:00

Ladies and Gentlemen…..We are pleased to announce that Todd is a GRADUATE of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary! He received a Master of Divinity in Theology on December 11th, and we are so excited! If you count the semester he took a class in Tennessee, this has been an 8 year long process. Todd has persevered through so much and worked so hard, and we are so proud of him. Also, Todd was ordained as an elder/pastor this past March. It was a great service and celebration, and he is currently serving as an elder at our church in New Albany, Indiana. He also continues to work full time in the IT department at Baptist Hospital.

Brandon turned 9 in June and celebrated with a Ben 10 party! It’s hard to believe that in another 9 years he’ll be all grown up! He is in 4^th grade this year and is studying Rome to the Reformation in history. We recently had a Roman feast and ate fish, figs, artichokes, etc. while reclining on the floor. We have been happy with our homeschool curriculum, called My Father’s World, and we enjoy these fun little projects that make history come alive! Brandon is still doing karate 2 days each week and still enjoying it. He will hopefully be able to test for 2^nd degree black belt next year! Brandon’s blood sugars were running a bit high for a portion of the year, so he got to wear a continuous glucose monitor for a week. It provided us with some helpful information, and we made some changes and his numbers have been better. Brandon continues to be very brave for all he has to go through.

Bekah turned six years old in November. She had another sleepover like she did last year, but this year it was a Barbie themed party. She is in first grade this year, and she says math is her favorite subject. She really loves the art classes that the kids take from another homeschool mom. She is involved in a Keepers of the Faith club that is similar to Girl Scouts, and she has earned lots of badges. She had her first dance recital in June, and of course she looked beautiful and did a great job. She is continuing to dance this year and is getting better at tap and ballet.

I am busy, as usual, with homeschooling and church activities. And I continue to try to make it to the gym as much as possible. I finally ran my first ever 5K in October! It was a great experience, and I hope to do it again next year! I have been looking into getting certified as a personal trainer, so we’ll wait and see what happens with that. I also graduated this year from the Seminary Wives Institute at the seminary. I received the Advanced Certificate during the graduation ceremony for Boyce College in May.

In August of this year, my Pap Paw died, just a couple of weeks after his 95^th birthday. It is a reminder that even with 95 years on this earth, life is so short! We need to spend our days thinking about where we will spend eternity instead of focusing all our thoughts on this brief life we have on earth. In 1 Peter 2:11, we are called pilgrims or strangers or sojourners on this earth. It is not our home; we are only here for a little while!

Todd took a class over the summer, so we did not take a vacation this year. We are saving up his time off to spend some time in Tennessee over the holidays, so we are really looking forward to that!

Many people have asked us what is next now that Todd is finished with school. At this point we are planning to stay right here where we are until God leads us somewhere else. Todd is excited about having time to spend with our family and to be able to spend more time ministering to our church family at State Street Baptist Church.

We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas celebration and a blessed 2010!

Love,

Todd, Heather, Brandon and Bekah Young

Ruth's Chris Steakhouse

2009-12-08T04:55:00.000-08:00

Todd has always loved eating at good steak restaurants. Somewhere along the way, he heard really good things about Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, and he always wanted to eat there. Many years ago we were on vacation in Atlanta and went to check out the Ruth's Chris there and considered eating there. Then we saw the menu with the prices and we decided it was not in our price range! So, Todd didn't get to try out this long anticipated restaurant. So, then in 2002 when we moved to Louisville Todd saw that Louisville has a Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. He got excited hoping maybe we could try it out sometime since we'd be so close. I laughed and said yeah, right, we can't afford that. I told him that someday when he graduates from seminary I would take him there. Well, 7 1/2 years later, I had to keep my word. So last week I took him out for a dinner at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse.

The food was really , really good. But we decided it was not worth the price. I know you are paying for the service and the atmosphere, etc. But we're just not fancy people. We'd rather go to Outback for a steak! We ordered off the "cheap" menu and only got water to drink. And we still spent $115 for the two of us. Ouch! But, It was a memorable one time experience and I'm glad Todd got to fulfill a long awaited dream!

Bekah's 6th Birthday Party!

2009-11-24T10:11:00.000-08:00

Since Bekah's 6th birthday falls on Thanksgiving, we celebrated a week early this year. She wanted a Barbie party complete with a Barbie "stick-in" cake! Thanks to my neighbor, Sonja, she was able to have this beautiful birthday cake!

Her party began at 6:30 last Friday night. She wanted pizza for dinner. I think she thinks pizza is the only acceptable birthday party food!

After dinner the girls watched the Barbie-Nutcracker movie, kind of. They alternated between watching the movie with getting up and playing!

Then it was time for presents and cake! For some reason, Bekah had a very hard time blowing out the candles.

Here are are the girls in their serious pose.

And the ballerina pose (since they were all dancing to the Nutcracker.)

And the silly pose!

Bekah just showing off for the camera! Yeah, she's cool...she's 6!

And they all got ready to sleep. But mostly they talked and played and didn't do too much sleeping! (But, hey, it's only one night a year, right?)

Bekah chose Cinnamon Life cereal for her sleepover breakfast. And then we treated them to another piece of cake after breakfast. (Because the more they ate, the less Mommy has to eat!) Then it was time to get everybody dressed and send them home. I think Bekah had a very enjoyable birthday party.

Oratorio Chorus Concert

2009-11-19T11:27:00.000-08:00

Tuesday night was Todd's Oratorio Chorus concert. They were accompanied by the Seminary Orchestra and presented John Rutter's Te Deum, Gerald Finzi's Magnificat, and Gabriel Faure's Requiem. Of course they did an excellent job! The kids enjoyed seeing all the different instruments and Brandon enjoyed trying to follow along with the Latin words that were printed in the program (along with their English translation).
Before the concert I was talking with Bekah about it. She was asking about what instruments she would see and she asked how many people would be singing. I told her about some of the orchestra instruments and told her there might be about 50 people singing. Then she asked, "will they me movin' and groovin'?" I laughed and said, "no, not really." Then she said, "So, it won't be like Metallica?"
So, it was not at all like Metallica, but still good! Here are some pictures:

Todd is right in the middle beside the conductor's hand!

Here's a closer up shot! Yes, it's blurry, because I know nothing about how to use Todd's camera!

After the show!

We're all proud of Todd and all the hard work he put into this!! We even went out for dessert afterwards to celebrate!

Keepers Club

2009-11-09T15:49:00.000-08:00

Today was Bekah's monthly Keepers Club meeting. Here is a shot of the whole group.

The badge they worked on today was painting. Of course this was something Bekah loved!! They painted little treasure boxes.

Here are Bekah and Maddie's finished products.
I am thankful that Bekah gets to be a part of this group of girls to make some great friends and have lots of fun!

Halloween

2009-11-04T08:46:00.000-08:00

I like it when I don't have to spend any money on Halloweeen costumes for the kids! This year Bekah decided to wear her dance recital outfit and be Shirley Temple. Brandon wanted to be an army soldier, which he had already been before, so he had all the stuff already. I had bought him some camo pants just to wear, so we added the new pants to the stuff he had from last time and he was ready to go!

This was Bekah getting her hair curled for the evening!

Bekah is showing off those curls!

Here is the whole Summer Place gang ready to go trick or treating!

Getting candy!

After trick or treat we had dinner with Steve, Carl, Sara and Ellie. Ellie was the cutest little lion!

And Carl was a cowboy. We had a belated birthday celebration for Carl's birthday with some yummy pie Sara made!

Finally, as is our family tradition, we watched the movie Luther in honor of Reformation Day!

Pumpkin Carving

2009-11-03T06:35:00.000-08:00

We try to make Friday nights family night at our house and come up with an activity or something fun for us all to do together. Last Friday night the perfect thing to do was to carve pumpkins together!

While we were carving pumpkins, our doorbell rang. When the kids went to the door, there was no one there, but there was a bag of treats and a sign that said "You have been boo'd!" The treats in the bag included these silly glasses!

Everyone is hard at work!

Brandon is designing his pumpkin face.

Bekah is designing her face, complete with eyelashes!

Oooooh, pumpkin guts!

Bekah is picking out the seeds. The kids had never tasted toasted pumpkin seeds, so we did that this year. They both decided that they taste okay, but not great.

This is the master carver hard at work!

The end results! This is Brandon's pumpkin along with Todd's fish.

Bekah's pumpkin and Todd's cross.

We all had a fun time working on our pumpkins. We talked with the kids about how pumpkins are like us. We are filled with lots of yucky stuff. When we become Christians, God takes our yucky stuff (sin) away and He places His light inside us. We get a new "face" or a new life in Him! Then we are to shine His light for all the world to see!

Trick or Treat

2009-11-01T05:40:00.001-08:00

I have more pictures to post, but here is a quick one of Shirley Temple and an Army soldier!

Happy Birthday Maddie!

2009-10-27T10:01:00.000-07:00

Bekah's friend, Maddie, turned 5 last week and she had a Build-a-Bear party! I don't know if Bekah has ever been so excited about a birthday party. She got to make her own BAB and she was thrilled!! Brandon came with us to the party and helped Maddie's brother make his BAB. Brandon also was very excited about the party, and when we got home he pulled out his BAB (the one Uncle Clint and Aunt Cat got him when he was 2) and now he wants some new clothes for his bear!

Maddie was happy when Bekah arrived!

Here are the kids marching with their animal "skins" on their heads! I think all the girls chose the bunny rabbit, except Bekah who chose a puppy dog. (This girl really wants a dog for a pet! She asks all the time if we can get one!)

After you stuff your animal, put his heart in, and sew him up, you get to wash him!

Then you get to pick out clothes for your animal.

Bekah also got hairbows since her animal was a girl!

The whole crew!

They each got a "house" to carry their animal in, and they each got a birth certificate. When we got home I had to find Brandon's birth certificate too. He realized that his bear is now 7 years old!

Then they got a hot dog lunch at Costco!

And of course there was yummy cake!

Happy Birthday Maddie! We are thankful that Bekah has such a good friend!

Friends

2009-10-23T07:05:00.000-07:00

Recently our friends Justin and Kara and Kyla moved away. We are excited that Justin is now the pastor of a church in Missouri, and he is following God's call on his life, but we were sad to see them go. They have been gone about 3 weeks, and we are adjusting to life without them around! But, we are very excited that Kara and Kyla are coming to stay with us this weekend! Kara had already booked a wedding (she's a photographer) so she is coming back for that this weekend. They should be arriving sometime this afternoon and will be here until Monday morning. Bekah has been counting down the days, and now today is Kyla Day! We are soooo excited! I thank God for the blessing of good friends.

My First 5K

2009-10-19T04:52:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, I got to run my first ever official 5K (that is 3.1 miles). I know that is not a long distance to a real runner, but I had to work hard to be able to do it. It's been about a year and a half since I first started trying to run. I've been wanting to try a 5K for the last 6 months or so, I just never could find a good Saturday to try it. It seems like whenever there was a race I wanted to participate in, we were out of town or had plans or something. So, I was excited to finally have one scheduled on the calendar for October 17th. Of course I wasn't planning on it being 40 degrees outside when I signed up! So, I had to purchase some new warmer running clothes, but hopefully they will get lots of good use.
I was very excited when my friend, Debbie, decided she would run it with me. It was also her first 5K.

Here are me and Debbie freezing before the run!

Now we are in line getting ready to get started. We lined up close to the back of the pack so we wouldn't be trampled by all the "serious" runners! I did a bunch of reading online before the race, so I knew we needed to not start out too fast. I had read if you start out in the front of the pack you might try to keep up with the faster pace and then have a hard time finishing the race.

It took forever to get the race started. I'm sure it wouldn't have been bad if it wasn't so cold outside!

Finally, we are getting close to the start line.

And we're off! We were about 15 seconds behind the start of the race clock.

Todd and the kids hung out at the start/finish line during the race. They had a bouncy house for the kids to enjoy. I think there were other festivities thay got cancelled due to the cold weather. Todd snapped this picture of the finish line.

Here I am getting very excited that I can see the finish line!

I sprinted in as fast as I could at the end. It was nice to pass all those people that I had been trailing most of the race!

The time on the race clock was 33:20, but since I was about 15 seconds behind the clock, my time was 33:05. My personal goal was to run it in no more than 34 minutes, and to not stop and walk any at all during the race. I was very happy to make it in under my goal time and without walking any during the race!

My friend Debbie made it in at about 38:15.

We survived! We were so happy! We hung around after the race for the awards and door prizes. Well, I never win anything so I was shocked when they called my race number for a door prize! I won a $50 gift card that is good at several restaurants - Outback, Carrabas, etc. I'm looking forward to using that!

Now I am ready to run another one. Todd says maybe he'll start running and do it with me. That would be great!

Cornucopia Farm

2009-10-14T10:54:00.000-07:00

Last week we got to go on a field trip to Cornucopia Farm. They had lots of fun stuff for the kids to do there. The kids also got to learn a lot about how to grow a pumpkin and about all the different types of pumpkins. It was a rainy morning, and we were afraid we might not get to go on our field trip. However, the rain pretty much stopped while we were there, other than a little bit of drizzly rain occasionally. The kids wore boots, old clothes and jackets and we made the most of it. We especially enjoyed getting to hang out with our friends Merideth, Roger and Victoria at the farm!

This was like a big sand box, only it was filled with corn instead of sand.

This was our wagon ride out to the "pumpkin patch". The real pumpkin patch was too muddy to get to in the wagon, so they prepicked a bunch of pumpkins and just laid them on the ground in the corn field.

Showing off their pumpkins!

They got to learn about farm animals and actually fed a calf!

Brandon learned that pigs are used in diabetes research.

Weeeee!

Our friends, Roger and Victoria!

Happy Fall!

Rubber duck races!

They also had a big corn maze and a soybean maze, but due to the weather, we opted not to do that. It looked like fun, so I was a little bummed, but it was still a great day.

Hidden Hill Nursery

2009-10-12T16:08:00.000-07:00

In the kids' science club, we studied botany last month. Our field trip was a visit to the Hidden Hill Nursery. The kids had a great time, and we learned a lot about plants. We'd like to go back again and take Daddy so he can get some good pictures. Hopefully we can do that next spring when everything is in bloom. Here are some pictures from our day.

This is Brandon sitting inside a tree!

Listening to the tour guide

A cool tree - all the branches are curvy and twisted.

It's kind of like Narnia - a door to another world!

School Days

2009-10-05T07:29:00.000-07:00

Here are the kids working hard on school. They typically do not work in the same room together because they are distracting to each other, so this is a rare occasion. We have been plugging along at school and are now in our 9th week of the year. Brandon has been learning about ancient Rome and what the world was like at the time when Jesus was born and growing up. He really does love learning about history and recalls history facts very well. In math, he has been mastering fractions this year. He can now add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions. The kids have science together, and we have been studying the 5 senses. Last week they learned about sound waves and the inner workings of our ears.
Bekah has finally decided that reading is fun, and she wants to read all the time! She is working on adding and subtracting in math. She still loves to color and do art projects as often as possible.
On a typical day, Brandon gets up at 7:30 and gets ready for school. He has school time with Mommy first and then goes to his room for independent work while Mommy does school with Bekah. We break for lunch, and that is when Mommy reads aloud a chapter book to the kids. We are currently reading The Bronze Bow which is a fictional story about some children who were alive during the years of Jesus's earthly minstry and how he impacts them. We usually do science together after lunch, and then the kids do chores. Then Brandon has to finish up his independent work, and Bekah and I take turns reading. I read a picture book to her, and then she reads one to me! At 4:00 Brandon goes to karate on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Fridays we have art class or Boys Book Club and then Bekah goes to dance class. Bekah is in a Keepers club on one Monday afternoon of the month, and we are a part of a science club that meets two afternoons a month. We stay very busy and the time passes quickly. I haven't planned an official fall break, but we may have to take one soon!

Apple Pickin' Time

2009-09-14T16:33:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, we got to go on a field trip to Huber Orchards! We got to meet Johnny Appleseed and learn all about the process of picking, cleaning, and bagging apples.

This is Johnny Appleseed telling the kids all about apples!
This is an apple ladder. At Hubers, all the apples are hand picked.

This is the huge refrigerator where they store the apples. Yes, it was cold in there!

This is part of the apple cleaning process.

This is a guy sorting bruised apples to be used for apple cider.

These guys are bagging up the good apples to be sold.

We also enjoyed the petting zoo and playground at Hubers.

Then we got to ride the wagon out to the orchards to pick our own apples!

There's nothing like eating a fresh apple right off the tree in the orchards!

We picked red delicious, golden delicious, jonagold and mutzu apples. We really wanted fujis, but they were not ready yet. I guess that means we'll have to go back in a few weeks!

Our Little Reader

2009-09-09T11:12:00.000-07:00

Last week Bekah completed the book, Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, so she is now an official reader. She could have actually completed it sooner, but I have been letting her get easy readers from the library to read and not read the lessons in the book every day. But since she finished the book, we celebrated her accomplishment! I made a chocolate frosted peanut butter bar cookie and we invited the neighbors over to share it with us.

Of course they all had to do some jumping on the trampoline also!

The next morning Daddy took her out for breakfast on a Daddy/Daughter date to celebrate some more! They ate at Chik-Fil-A which also has a playground for even more fun!

I think she was very happy and proud of her accomplishment!

Keepers Club

2009-09-07T17:50:00.000-07:00

This year will be Bekah's 2nd year to be a part of a Keepers of the Faith Club. It is similar to Girl Scouts in that they earn badges for different things, but it is biblically based. Last year she earned badges like manners, scrapbooking, cookie baking, stenciling, etc. To kick off the year this year, the girls had a beautiful tea party with lots of yummy snacks and plenty of tea. There were lots of little girls there, and about 25 of them signed up to be a part of the group this year. We are excited about another fun year of making friends and learning new things.

Science Club

2009-09-07T17:38:00.000-07:00

This year we joined a science club as part of our homeschool curriculum. We meet twice a month and study a different topic each month. The first meeting is for the lesson and some type of experiment to go along with it. The second meeting each month is for a field trip which also goes along with the topic of study. Then the children are supposed to do some sort of further study at home and present what they have learned at home to the other students the following month. Our first month was zooology and during our meeting the kids got to dissect owl pellets. Then the field trip was a night time hike to look for nocturnal animals. Here are some photos from the owl pellet dissection.

Although it was kind of disgusting, the kids really enjoyed it and learned a lot!

My Pap Paw

2009-08-26T15:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning around 12:30 am, my Pap Paw passed away. He had just turned 95 years old on August 5th. He was at home in his living room, and I think his heart just finally quit working. He has had some heart probems and had a pacemaker put in back in July of this year. He also had a heart attack just before his birthday and was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. He had been a widower two times, and was blessed to live a long, full, active life. I will always remember him being outside working hard on some kind of project for his house or yard. He also loved to take us on a car ride and show us interesting places all around the area. He always enjoyed when we visited him, and we always wished we lived close enough to see him more often. These pictures are from his 94th birthday last year, and I believe it is the last time we saw him.

We'll be heading down to Ringgold, Georgia on Friday to attend his funeral on Saturday.

Quotes

2009-08-20T09:57:00.000-07:00

I haven't put any quotes from the kids on here lately, so I thought I'd share what Bekah said today. Brandon was trying cottage cheese for the first time that he can remember today. He put some in his mouth and said it was disgusting! So Bekah said, "it's not as bad as going to Hell." Yes, Bekah, you are right, Hell will be much worse than cottage cheese!

Brandon's Glucose Monitor

2009-08-14T07:38:00.000-07:00

At Brandon's last endocrinologist visit, his A1C numbers were a little high. His doctor recommended wearing a continuous glucose monitor to see if we could figure out why his numbers were high. The monitor will check his blood every 5 minutes so we will find out what is going on between the times when Brandon pricks his finger to check his blood. So, this past Wednesday, we went back to the doctor to have the monitor put on. Brandon had decided that he wanted to wear it on is belly, but they recommended him putting it on his back instead. They mentioned that it would be out of sight and out of mind back there. Also, they said some of the monitors that they have put on other people's stomachs have come off and had to replaced. Well, Brandon was already dreading this procedure, and when he found out he'd have it on his back he was very upset. But, we managed to get through all the tears and get the monitor put in place. It was about a 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 inch needle that inserted a tiny straw into him. Then the needle was pulled out through the straw. We had to wait 5 minutes for it to settle into place and see if it was getting blood readings. Well, it didn't work. So, we waited another 5 minutes and it still didn't work. So, they had to pull it out and try again. This time Brandon got his wish of having it in his stomach, and it worked this time! The straw is hooked up to a compter chip, and then it is covered with hard plastic. Then they put a piece of waterproof tape over the whole thing so he can take a shower or swim or whatever. He says it hurts every once in a while, but for the most part he goes on with normal life and forgets about it. He will wear it for a week and then we'll go have it taken out and find out the results. Here he is with his new robotic part....we tell him he's kind of like a transformer!

Back to School

2009-08-11T14:51:00.000-07:00

On Monday, we started school! Here is my 4th grader!

And my 1st grader!

Bekah is watching a math video.

Bekah took over the camera and took a few pics. I thought her self portrait turned out pretty good!

We had our annual back to school party. This year we went to the Fun House for pizza and games.

Then we went to Dairy Queen for ice cream. (Thanks to the summer reading club at the library the kids got free ice cream cones.) Yes, Brandon has an eye patch on his head. That was one of the prizes he chose at the Fun House with the tickets he earned.

This is the cell model that the kids made on the 2nd day of school! It's really jello for cytoplasm in a ziplock bag for the cell membrane with a grape for a nucleus and peanuts for mitochondria.

Todd will also be starting back to school next week. He has 4 credit hours this fall, and then he'll be graduating in December! Yeah!! This will be his last official back to school party. But, I guess we'll let him come with us in future years!

No Kids

2009-08-11T12:18:00.000-07:00

Last week our kids spent some time with Grandmom and Grandpa in Tennessee. Todd and I took the opportunity to have a belated week long anniversary celebration! We spent one night in Nashville, TN before coming home. We shopped at the Opry Mills mall and ate dinner in the Rainforest Cafe. We also wandered through the Opryland Hotel and visited the Nashville Zoo. On the way home we stopped in Bowling Green, KY and saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and did a little more shopping in the Bowling Green mall. Unfortunately, Todd still had to go to work each day but we enjoyed our evenings together. One night we drove over to Corydon, IN and ate at Culvers restaurant for the first time and then played a round of putt putt golf.

On our way to Corydon.

Putt putting...

They had a small arcade inside the place where we went putt putting. We also enjoyed a game of air hockey before heading home.

The kids got to do lots of fun stuff with the grandparents also, but we all enjoyed being reunited after a great week!

Take Me Out To The Ballgame!

2009-07-30T09:07:00.000-07:00

Last week a group of us from church attended a Louisville Bats game. The weather was not too hot and it only sprinkled a little on us. We enjoyed the $1 hotdog and coke night! It was lots of fun!

Our friend, Steve, even caught a foul ball. He had everyone in our group sign it to remember the fun evening!

Date Night

2009-07-22T16:50:00.000-07:00

Last Friday night was our date night (we are blessed to have friends that we swap kids with once a month). Since it was my birthday weekend, Todd surprised me and took me to the Spaghetti Factory for dinner. I love the mizithra cheese and browned butter spaghetti, and I even get dessert included, so I really enjoy eating there! After we ate dinner, we took a walk across the 2nd Street bridge. That is something we've never done since we have lived here. After that we walked down to 4th Street Live and browsed in a book store. It was a very nice evening out! Thanks Todd!

Zoo

2009-07-22T16:31:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the pictures from our trip to the zoo with Ty!

Silly Safari

2009-07-16T06:32:00.000-07:00

Each summer the kids enjoy a Silly Safari show at our library. This is a group from Indianapolis that brings down a selection of animals to show the children. They teach them facts about the animals and let the kids pet some of the animals. Yesterday they got to see 2 rabbits, a tortoise, a skink, a millipede, a tree frog, a chicken, a snake, a baby alligator and a dog.

Here is Bekah petting a baby tortoise.

When it was Brandon's turn to pet the baby alligator, the lady said, "here, hold out your hands and you can hold him." After a moment of panic, he got brave and tried it!

Bekah's turn to pet the alligator

And, of course my pet-loving girl wanted to spend lots of time petting the dog!

Cousins

2009-07-15T06:59:00.000-07:00

Last week Brandon and Bekah got the pleasure of having their cousin, Ty, come for a visit. We spent one day at Lapping Park:

And we spent another day at Waterfront Park:

We also spent a day at the zoo. Todd went with us on that trip so he took "real" pictures! I'll try to post some of those also. One night Todd took the kids to the dollar theater to see Monsters vs Aliens. The kids also spent lots of time at home playing Legos and Transformers and Bionicles. We always enjoy our time with Ty, but unfortunately Travis and Jackie came up and took him back home with them.

Visit with the Webbs

2009-06-29T05:25:00.000-07:00

Last week the SBC was held here in Louisville, Ky. Our friends, the Webbs, came to town for the convention, and we got the pleasure of keeping their 3 youngest children! Here are some pictures from their time together.

Bekah and Anna Laura colored shaving cream and then finger painted with it!

Isaac and Brandon enjoyed jumping on the trampoline!

Swinging is always a fun thing for the kids.

These 5 kids are ready to get wet!

We somehow managed to get this poor broken down pool to last one day before going out with the trash. The sides did not hold air very well, so I had to keep pumping it up all day long.

Sprinkler fun!

They are "painting" the fence!

Our visit with our friends was over all too soon and they left us. The Webbs lived right across the hall from us when we lived in our apartment in Louisville, and now they live in North Carolina. We are always thankful when we get to spend time with them. We are already looking forward to the next visit....maybe next summer.

Fun with Friends!

2009-06-24T14:15:00.000-07:00

Our friends, the Holcombes, came up from TN to spend a week with us and we all had a blast! We spent one day at the Louisville Zoo. I think the kids posed on every animal statue in the zoo! (Just in case you are wondering, there is a water park in the zoo which the kids enjoyed. That is the reason my kids are wearing towels in all the pictures. They wanted to wet the towels and keep them around their necks to keep themselves cool.)

Me and Michelle

We all had a good time feeding the lorikeets at the zoo!

We spent one day at the seminary pool and another day we stayed home and the kids played the Wii and enjoyed the back yard and we went out for ice cream. We also made a stop at the candy factory while they were here. Michelle and I enjoyed playing games together in the evenings and just catching up. We are blessed to have such great friends!

One last picture before they left of everybody on the trampoline plus Liberty our neighbor! Fun times!!

Happy Father's Day!

2009-06-22T11:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we enjoyed a good Father's Day celebration. Actually we celebrated Saturday and Sunday! On Saturday, Todd wanted to go to the zoo. He hadn't been since he got his nice camera, so he had been itching to get some animal shots. (You can check out his Flicker site to see how he did.) After the zoo we enjoyed some BBQ at a BBQ competition made by the famous BBQologist (AKA Pastor Roger). Then we stopped for some yummy dessert at the Homeade Pie and Ice Cream Kitchen. Sunday morning we had cinnamon rolls for breakfast and Todd got a couple of gifts. The kids got him this photography book:

And I got him a new 50 mm lens for his camera. (Which will necessitate another trip to the zoo!!)
After church he chose to eat at Buffalo Wild Wings for some boneless Honey BBQ and Asian Zing!
We spent the afternoon at home awaiting guests who were arriving for the SBC convention in Louisville. We met up with them Sunday evening around 7:3o or so and I snapped this Father's Day picture while we were waiting for them to arrive:

Thanks for being a great dad, Todd!