KEEPING IT LIGHT

I have so much swirling around in my head right now ~stuff that is more "heavy"...so I will save that for another post....I think I need more time to process it all anyway.

But for now ~here's a little update from around here!

please ignore the pile of laundry in the background! :)
Biruk has really taken a liking to Becca's baby doll "Matthias". :) He doesn't carry it around or anything, but every once in awhile you'll catch him holding it or playing "mommy and daddy" with the girls and all of their dollies.

He is VERY sweet and nurturing with the dolls~sweet to see.
I know...you're thinking "what?"...the teeny bud in the middle is a budding pumpkin plant.
We decided to let each kid plant 2-3 pumpkin seeds...in different soils...to see which ones would grow best...and hopefully, by Fall, we'll have some homegrown pumpkins to decorate!

just had to include my summer obsession.
Sun Tea.

It's addicting.
I do 1/2 plain decaf tea and 1/2 Good*Earth original tea

I go thru this much tea in 2 days by myself!

last week was my b-day...nothing special...just another year older. :)

John and I were able to go out to dinner ~just the 2 of us ~then back to my parents to open presents.

The big present was Twist*er!

John and I thought it would be a fun game to get for the family. :)

If you don't have this game ~you need to go get it! It's not only fun but helps the kids with right/left...and is helping Biruk with his colors.

MY FRIEND'S BLOG AND HER GIVEAWAY

I just wanted to give a quick shout-out to my friend Wendy and direct y'all to her cooking, kitchen tips, giveaway blog .

Right now she's running a give-away for a $25 grocery certificate, but she also has some AMAZING recipes and cooking tips.

Go check it out!

MEET THE NEWEST MEMBER OF THE FAMILY

go to my sister's blog to see our newest niece/nephew and cousin!

we cannot wait to meet him or her!!

SLEEP, LOST TEETH, GRANDMA & WHO KNEW?!

so ~a little update on our "stay up as late as you can"....the girls slept in 'till 7:30 and the boys 'till 8...not terrible considering they're usually up by 6:30

BUT ~ this is how we found the girls around 5pm Saturday as we were getting ready for dinner. :)

AND everyone slept 11+ hours 2 nights in a row...YAHOOO!!!

yesterday Biruk had me pull out his 2nd loose tooth.
I'm glad he did cuz it was SO loose I was afraid he'd lose it while eating!

He's still a bit freaked out that he's missing teeth and doesn't quite understand new ones will be growing in. :)

this is Becca waiting for Grandma to arrive.
If they know grandma, grandpa, or their cousins are on their way ~they hang out by the door until they arrive.

Last night grandma came over to watch the kids while we attended our new Bible Study ~THANK YOU Grandma for coming (and for Grandpa who came last Wednesday). We are so thankful for grandparents who are so willing to help us out ~and who love spending time with their grandkids!


and lastly ~

who knew Wii Golf could be so exciting?!

HOW LATE CAN WE STAY UP?!

A few weeks ago friends of ours let their kids stay up as late as they could. At first I thought "what were they thinking?!"...but then as I saw they had planned the whole evening out with fun things to do, I started thinking "hey-that's actually a cool idea!"....I pitched it to John and without hesitation he said "sure!"

sooooo.....we decided to have our "stay up as late as you can night" last night to celebrate being done with school. yeah -I know, most schools are either already back in session or about to start....but that's the beauty of homeschooling ~we're on our own schedule! It's so stinkin' hot here in the summers that I school thru the summer so we can take more time off when the weather is nicer. :)

We actually had 2 of the cousins over Thursday and part of Friday ~so we celebrated our first day of school being out by going to Kri*spy Kre*me donuts for breakfast!

we normally get quite a few stares anyway, wherever we go since we have a multi-racial family AND all 4 kids are so close in age....but we got LOTS of stares walking into the donut shop as now we had 6 kids ages 4.5-6.5 yrs old ~I'm sure people thought we were either crazy or running a day care! :)

Our day was fairly normal with regular "life" stuff....but the "night o' fun" started after dinner.

we piled in the car and headed over to Wal*Mart.

My Aunt Carol had graciously gifted each child with a gift card to Wal*Mart to celebrate Biruk coming home ~so our "night o' fun" seemed like the perfect night to go spend the $$!

here they are with their loot!

what each picked out is SOOO them.

Andrew picked out play/trick handcuffs (he's a future police officer!) and a bow/arrow
Biruk picked out that mask and a Road * Ripper car ~it makes LOTS of noise and even plays the "oldies"....I'm afraid it's going to magically lose its batteries soon. :)
Becca picked out a little purse with 2 miniature puppies that fit into it ~*sigh*this is SO Becca.
Elizabeth picked out Princess Sleeping Beauty and a horse.

Thank you Aunt Carol!!! This was actually the highlight of their evening. :)

and every parent knows, if you want to help your kids stay up late, you load them up with sugar...so we headed to Cold*Stone*Crea*mery after Wal*Mart for ice cream. It was 9pm when we entered the place. :) John and I couldn't decide if we were being super cool or super stupid!

yep-almost 10pm so what should we do?

go night swimming!

she's thrilled isn't she?!
She's thinking "what are these kids doing up?! shouldn't they be in bed?!"

we dried off, got in pj's and then fired up the Wii.

We bought 2 extra remotes at Wal*Mart so all 4 kids could play at 1 time

Becca wasn't so into playing the Wii so she colored. :)

next up -popcorn and watching their favorite movie "Beverly Hills Chi*hua*hua".

We were hoping 1 or 2 would fall asleep during the movie
since we didn't start it 'till 11:20pm...but nope -they ALL were still awake by the end.

BUT -mom and dad were getting tired (cuz we're old!) AND all 4 were yawning....so we told everyone to get ready for bed and if you still wanted to stay up we'd figure out something to do.

Andrew and Becca wanted to try to stay up.
Biruk wanted to go to bed.

and while everyone was brushing teeth and getting ready, I found Elizabeth like this

she was READY for bed. :)

we decided we have everyone "try to sleep" and if they couldn't we could play more

I tucked them into bed at 1:03 am...John went to say his good nights about 3 minutes later and everyone was already sacked out. :)

We all had a ton of fun so I think we'll be doing this every summer! :)

OUR SWEET ELIZABETH

Since we arrived home from Ethiopia, we've had many people ask how Elizabeth is handling all of the change. I have been meaning to blog about it and kept forgetting, until a week or so ago when someone posted a comment asking about her.

Today is a good day for me to blog about it since we're heading to attachment therapy this morning! :)

For those that are fairly new to following our blog, Elizabeth has been officially diagnosed with "attachment disorder"...though I HATE the stigma that carries. I've talked with countless people -some adoptive parents themselves and some just associated with adoption ~and they talk about "those kids" who have RAD and how they could never handle a kid with RAD.... it makes me...I don't know...sad. angry. frustrated. It's kinda funny to then say "yeah -Elizabeth has attachment disorder"...and they are shocked and surprised.

When you hear "attachment issues" you automatically assume rage, anger, a child who cannot connect with you.

Certainly there are children whose RAD manifests in that manner.

But then there are MANY children whose issues manifests as Elizabeth's....as insecurities.

I actually prefer to refer to her attachment issues as "security issues". Because that is what they are and that is what triggers her.

Elizabeth has always had great eye contact and given and received love ~which is how we missed her attachment/security issues for about a year.

On the right, under "labels", you can click on "attachment" and find a few posts I've done in the past about the behaviors that were symptoms of her attachment/security issues....like forgetfulness, indiscriminate affection, manipulation, etc.

Soooooooooooo -back to how she is doing. :)

I won't lie, the first 2 months after Ethiopia were a bit rough and we knew it would be. We ALL had a lot going on those first few months and so Elizabeth struggled...but not as much as we had anticipated. She was definitely a bit more clingy and needing attention and even gave us a bit of trouble in the food arena...but nothing terribly exhausting.

I'm not sure what changed, but the last month has been AMAZING with her.

Seriously.

John and I had a date night last Saturday and we both commented on how we are experiencing the absolute best time in nearly 3 years with Elizabeth.

She is "normal".

She is SECURE for the longest time we've seen since coming home in November 2007.



1 HUGE benefit of her being secure is "school time" is going wonderfully for her. Things are finally "clicking" with school stuff.....things we've been working on for MONTHS she is now repeating and recalling ~like sight words. I've been patiently trying to teach her "the" "and" "a" and "of" for months now and she just couldn't remember them.

In the last few weeks, she's not only learned these words but is ready for new ones AND is starting to sound out easy words.

This is HUGE HUGE HUGE for us and Elizabeth!!

and just so you can see how well she is doing, here is a video of her reading.....this is the 3rd time she's read the book so she had it a bit memorized by the time I video'd it...but still, you get the picture of how well she's doing. :)

We are praising God for the healing on her heart that we are experiencing. It's truly amazing to see her doing so well ~and an answer to prayer.

ZERO RHYTHM - BUT HAVING FUN!

John was in our office/school room putting together our new bookshelves from I*kea when he came out and told me Becca was grooving ~turns out they ALL were grooving...on the "stage" of bookshelf boxes. :)

notice even Biruk is grooving! the first 6-8 weeks he really didn't show any interest in music or dancing...and then slowly started getting into music -but looked at us like we were nutso for dancing crazy around the house (we dance to made up songs, real songs, commercial songs...whatever!).....now he is constantly humming, whistling, singing AND you can even catch him dancin' a bit. :)