FINALLY FRIDAY

Today was a lot of fun! A bunch of us carpooled to a free zoo about 30 miles away. I had a friend's 7 year old and Moses. There was 2 other families, 3 moms and 4 daughters, 1 dad and his daughter, and 1 mom w/2 kids brought a friend. Altogether there were 26 of us!! It was awesome to see everyone helping watch out for each other's kids. We are so blessed to have such great, like-minded friends who we consider brothers and sisters in Christ! At lunch the big kids played and barely ate a thing while the temps climbed to almost 70*! We were all sweaty...Water didn't last very long on the ride home. Mostly the kids were good but I could tell they were getting tired out by the end. It was a relatively quiet ride home =) I should really be inside doing housework right now, but it's way too nice out here. You know it's summer when you can hear the motorcycles rumbling and the birds chirping! This is one of the first weekends in a while when we won't be going out of town. It will still be busy but I hope to be outside for a bunch of it. I have some pepper plants and cilantro seed that needs to go into the garden. I'm not sure what else I'll put in...we'll see. Hope you are all kicking off your weekend w/some sunshine!

Is it March already??

Hoo Hah. Is anyone else disoriented? Between huge snowbanks and frigid cold (in March, for crying out loud!), daylight savings time and the school year whizzing by, I'm still not sure what's going on. At any rate, we had a good week/weekend! I did 2 workouts (thanks Jason for power walking in the mall!) and we took a Friday adventure to a neighboring burg. It was a little bit of a dud for the kids, but we had a good lunch! I watched some friends' older boy and Mo loved doing things w/him, but hoo hah, it was crazy how they had this evil plan to go in different directions at the library! It was practice for having more than one, I guess. Well, I don't have a lot to talk about today - just a question...we are hoping to have a family night dinner at our house on St. Patrick's Day. Any cool ideas for a green/Irish food? Keep in mind that I don't really cook! K.I.S.S!

FINALLY FRIDAY

It's been a tough week for me...I haven't been getting much sleep and just stressing about stuff. I still haven't gotten back into the groove after Christmas. With that said, I thought today was going to be awful...but it wasn't! Moses and I met up with the parents group at the art museum and did some projects in the kids' area. It was so much fun and the kids were really good! Mo's buddy (recently adopted from Russia) was there, and we had a couple of good laughs working on the bubble machine. Then a bunch of the kids were in the play house and I sang them a lullaby - they started fake snoring - too cute! I felt so blessed and uplifted by my friends and they probably didn't even know it. The fact that we have people here who are family to my son is beyond what I could have asked for. Then we went out to lunch w/another family and both kids were well behaved. It wasn't too messy, they weren't too loud and they ATE what was served! Ok, it was pizza, but hey we're counting that. I got home, got Mo to bed really easy! I guess he was wiped. I was able to clean a little and the begin preparing dinner. I made chicken dinner for us, our adopted daughter Beatrice and another family. It seemed people liked the chicken =) and the boys played relatively well together. We enjoyed the conversation and laughed at the boys as they played toy guitars and sang. All throughout the day, I kept having moments where I felt I was happy. Not even tired, just happy! I am so grateful for my friends...so to all of you, even those that I am not in regular contact w/, please know how much I appreciate you being in my life! Love, Mel

Weekly review

Phew! Sorry it's been so long...with these foster care meetings and the holidays I sometimes feel like we are just keeping our heads above water. Anyway - we're excited that our last class is next Tues! So this Monday we were making a family album. We plan to make copies of the pages for our own family, so if you ask us some time we'd love to share it! Wednesday we didn't work out. Too tired. Still trying to get our rooms in order upstairs. Progress is being made! We have the one bed taken apart so we could move it. The small room needs a few things removed and the twin bed set up. We'll get there - this weekend both rooms must be photo ready. Tomorrow I'm meeting some other parents at the mall's new indoor play place. Mo loves going there!! It's really not that big, but it's just a great indoor place to burn off some energy. Most of the time we go and we're the only ones there...I guess he might be the only kid who is up that early and I'm the only momma who gets us out the door!! Oh well. No complaints. Well, I was planning to eat a banana split, but the Packers are not doing too well. It's hard to eat when you're nervous or agitated! But banana splits (minus the cherry!) are on my list of favorite treats. What are some of your favorite treats?

Friday Fun

We're going to the ARTery today at the JMKAC! They have all these craft projects you can do and it's all free! Mo would much rather use someone else's stuff anyway. This quarter you can put pompons on a mannequin, use wire and buttons to make a sculpture, paint, color, play w/a huge bubble maker, etc. They have this cardboard house (much nicer than you could make at home!) w/beanbags and books. Last time we had so much fun and were the only people in there! I have called a bunch of other parents to invite them so we will see who all comes. If we do anything cool, I'll be sure to report back...tomorrow we're going to Family Weekend at Lakeland w/our 'adopted' family of Beatrice from Malawi and Minhee from Korea. It will be fun to share that w/them =)