3 BIRTHDAYS IN 4 WEEKS !

If it seems like all I blog about is birthdays, your right ! I have this span from January to February where more than half of my kids birthdays land.

Ethan just turned 7 years old ! I cannot believe it ! He is such a precious sensitive kid. He is so passionate for the Lord , I cannot imagine what God has for him one day. He is one of the most creative kids I have. He is a builder and artist and an inventor. He love to serve others and is very patient with his siblings, especially the younger ones !

We are so blessed to have him as a son ! We love you Ethan !

Where did my little girl go ?

Grace just turned 12 years old ! Wow ! She has grown up so fast! I cannot believe she is 12 and almost a teenager.

Because I know she reads this , I wanted to tell her how blessed we are to have her as our daughter.

Grace Elizabeth,

I could never have realized 12 years ago that I would have a child like you ! Your heart is amazing ! I love your passion for God's children and especially Africa. I love your passion for serving your family. You are an amazing blessing! One day you will be an outstanding mama. I am excited to see where the Lord takes you in this life.

Your devotion to our Lord is amazing. You spend most of your free time seeking Him and getting to know Him better. I am so proud of your knowledge of the Bible, I pray you will always have that fervor for His word. I pray that you will always want to obey Him and serve Him. I pray He will always be first in your life.

I love you precious girl, I would not make it through most days without having you with me !

All my love,

Mom

QUINTON JAMES TURNS 3

My sweet boy Quinton is 3 years old this month.
One of my reasons for this blog is to remember what the Lord has done in my family.

These are a few of Quinton's favorite things:
His favorite phrase is ,Whatcha makin mom ?He is serious about his food !

He loves Elmo and especially the Elmo from Poppy and Grammy ( this furry monster toy can sing and dance)

He loves Hockey and wears his helmet all the time !

He loves to be held and cuddle.

He loves pie ! We had so many party's over Christmas and many of them contained Grammys Pies and so for his birthday he did not want cake , he wanted pie ! A new tradition?

He loves to play outside !

He is sleeping in the big boys room and he get so giggly at night because he is so excited to be a big boy !

We have preschool time every morning with the little ones and we sing songs and he loves the song, The Lord is my Shepard. While the rest of us are singing one part of the song, he interjects , THE LORD IS ! My future Worship leader.

He is good at anything he tries.

Overall, we are completely humbled that the Lord has chosen us to raise such a precious, sweet, loving little guy !

Happy Birthday Quinton !

HAITI

Such horrific devastation ! We have tried to use this disaster as a teachable moment in our family . We are not in control of anything ! Our life is but a mist! There are people who have it bad , real bad ! We are not those people .We cannot complain about anything ! We are richly blessed ! And today, we have no disaster facing us .

We continue to pray for the people of Haiti ! We pray for the hearts of the people that have lost everything. You cannot turn on the news without your heart breaking. Their faces say it all.
We pray for those people that God will be real in their lives and that they will come to know Him.

There are many places to donate money at this time . If you are a Christian the best donation would have the gospel attached ! Know who you are giving to and how they allot the donations .

Happy New Year !

OUR WHITE CHRISTMAS !

I hope you all had a joyous Christmas and a great New Years !We had a great time visiting with Family and friends over the holidays.

I love Christmas time ! Everything is prettier when it is sprinkled with Christmas. We took our holiday decorations down last week ! I am always a bit sad when we box everything up and put it away until the next year . I usually use this opportunity to reorganize or redo a particular room or area. See, I am a knick knack girl ! No, I do not have collections of precious moments or miniature ceramic dogs . But, I do have stuff ! Too much stuff ! I am such a bargain shopper that usually if I find something that I like I buy it and then find a place for it. I am clearly out of places for things.

Needless to say, we (as a family ) have been on a radical cleaning spree these past 2 weeks ! Yea ! I have 7 black trash bags full of stuff to donate and I am just getting started. I have found that having all these people under one roof, encourages the habit of decluttering ! It is a do or be buried , kinda thing ! We have very limited attic space and so last week I cleaned out our attic. It is a great feeling and while it is not fun to do these kinda "projects" on our vacation, it is hopefully teaching all of us ( and by us , I mean me ) to acquire less stuff.

We as a family are trying to focus this year on the little details. In our relationships with one another, in our "jobs" at our house and mostly to be faithful children of the Lord ! I have been reading a great devotional by Elisabeth Elliot called "Keep a Quiet Heart" on this day she talked about Luke 16:10-12. The verses about "He who is faithful in a little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous in much. "

I do desire to be faithful in all my "roles" this year !

We know what Ethan wants for Christmas !

A NEW SON !

While there were many great things that happened on National Adoption Day, the greatest in our family was the adoption of our son !
Quinton James !

This day was again surreal ! Volunteers were all over the courthouse to welcome the families. There was a balloon arch ( like at the prom ) that we entered under. There was food , family pictures and all the kids received a sweet teddy bear. Our courthouse has very long pew benches that lined the hallway and our courtroom was at the end. The benches on that day were filled with families and kids. If I had to guess I would say 90 % of the families were African American. It was a precious scene all of these parents taking these children into their homes. There were families with 8 kids in them . There were families with several teenagers. I was so moved I could not help but tear up at what was taking place in this building on this day. I know some of these kids will not have to live in the cycle of sin that their parents were raised in. Like our babies many of these kids were removed from horrible situations and placed into families that love and adore them. I am so thankful for these people who have opened their hearts and homes to these children. Who like most of us just want to be loved and accepted. But , who unlike most of us have experienced awful situations .

We had many sweet people celebrate with us on Quinton's special day ! Matt's sister and her husband and their kids , our favorite worker at our agency and Quinton's sweet CASA worker who drove in from out of town . As well as Poppy and Grammy , Aunt Ann and Uncle David, our pastor and his family who had been at a sporting event all day and came over anyway, my closest friend Tiffany (who has prayed over all the kids we have been submitted on, probably 75 ?)and her family, and many other sweet friends who came over to celebrate our adoption.

We are so excited and we really cannot believe we get to have this little cutie in out family. We are of course thrilled to have all the paperwork, visits, and caseworkers over with for now.

People have asked us , if we will continue to open our home to kids. We are open to however many children the Lord would bless us with ! We do pray there will be more, we would of course, like to even out the 5 to 2 guy /girl ratio in the house.

Thank you for all of you who have supported us so faithfully on this long, bumpy road.
We feel blessed and totally overwhelmed at how good the Lord is to bless us with people like you !