Hey, you wanna know what's fun?

Packing up a house with 9 years worth of stuff in it, while planning and packing for a 2 week long vacation, while doing laundry and keeping the house a little clean, while keeping a 1 year old and 3 year old alive and happy.

You should try it sometime! :)

Cute Kylynn and her quote

Kyle walked in on Kylynn the other day and she was reading on the potty, too cute! He managed to get a picture before she saw him.

Kylynn quote of the day: After my stomach growled,
"Mommy your belly button is talking to Jesus"

black is brown is tan

I love to read, so I am amazed sometimes by how much I do not enjoy reading books to Kylynn. Some days I feel like if I have to read another story about Elmo or Clifford I'm going to throw up, and often I've started to summarize the pages instead of reading them because they are the most unoriginal stories I've ever read.

So when I find a children's book I love, usually from the library, because the stores seem to only sell more of the same, I feel the need to share it, just in case you've gotten a case of the Elmo blues too.

black is brown is tan, by Arnold Adoff, is a beautifully written book. It is written as a poem and I love listening to it being read out loud, once I find the rhythm of the book it sounds like a beautiful song. The pictures are like wonderful paintings. My favorite line from the book is, "this is how it is for us, this is who we are." It makes me very emotional to read it so by the time we get to the end and I read Kylynn the paragraph about the background of the book I have to keep myself from crying.

I won't give too much away, but I highly recommend you check this one out of better yet buy it for a gift. What better gift to give a child than the opportunity to learn that God makes families all different and that it is nothing to be alarmed by to see a family made up of different races.

It's just a house

It's official we've sold our house, the inspection is done and we have all agreed.

I'm not good at this next part, moving on, saying goodbye.

It is a house, just a house, I know that's what you're thinking, and besides you're getting a new house in the process.

I am happy and excited about the new house, about the new adventure, but a sorrow hangs on me when my mind wanders to leaving this place.

I asked Kyle if he was sad, "Of course I'm sad, this house is ME". Yes, that is it exactly this house is us. This house has been meticulously and purposely changed into a home we love. We spent the vast majority of our weekends before Kylynn was born and many since making it our home. When we move out this month we will leave behind a home that is different on almost every surface inside and out than when we bought it. And I will miss it like a dear friend.

But really I'm sad about the memories that will be trapped here, because no matter how hard you try only some memories live on in your head, most of them are left behind where they were born. Without the sight of that tree, the mark on the door, or the smell of the backyard, they are lost to you forever.

God loves Kyle and I, and so He blessed us with a woman buying our home who said she fell in love with it. It brings me unbelievable comfort that she will love this home and living in it. I hope these walls have many more wonderful memories to witness and joy to hear.

And who knows someday when we're old and no longer need the space maybe this house could be ours again, at least that's what I tell myself to ease the sadness.

What if every person prayed?

I was so excited to see this on someone's blog today, it is what I hope is the beginning of a movement in the Christian community that has been on my heart ever since we began our adoption journey.
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Entire article below copied from the gender blog...

SBC Messengers Enthusiastically Support Moore's Resolution on Adoption

Jeff Robinson
June 26, 2009

Messengers at the 2009 annual meeting of The Southern Baptist Convention in Louisville on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed a resolution proposed by Russell D. Moore promoting adoption and orphan care.

The resolution encouraged every Southern Baptist family to pray about whether God wants them to adopt or provide foster care for a child or children. It also called on Southern Baptist and other evangelical churches to devote a Sunday each year to emphasize "our adoption in Christ and our common burden for the orphans of the world."

Moore, who serves as senior vice president for academic administration and dean of the School of Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, knows well of which he proposed; Moore and his wife Maria adopted two of their sons from a Russian orphanage a few years ago.

Moore hopes the resolution will provoke deep thinking that leads to action among Southern Baptists regarding the Gospel significance of adoption and orphan care; all who are saved by God’s grace were once orphans who were adopted into the Kingdom of Christ.

The number of adoptions among evangelicals has steadily increased in recent years, yet the need is profound: in the United States alone, more than 500,000 children were in foster care system in 2005, the last year for which federal statistics were available. About 115,000 were waiting for adoption.

“Something is a foot among Christian families and churches of virtually every kind,” Moore said. “God is calling the people of Christ to see the face of Jesus in the faces of orphans in North America and around the world. Southern Baptists have affirmed our belief in the authority of Scripture, and the Bible tells us pure religion is defined by care for the fatherless.

“We’ve been defined by our commitment to evangelism, and there is no greater field is 'white unto harvest’ right now as children in orphanages, group homes, and the foster care system, children who don’t know a parent’s love and who don’t know the name of Jesus. When Satan wars against children, we should be the ones who have compassion on them, even as Jesus did and does.

Moore authored a deeply personal and compellingly theological book on adoption that was published in May by Crossway books, “Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families &Churches.” In it, Moore argues that the church should view the adoption of orphans as a crucial part of its mission precisely because God has adopted helpless sinners to be His sons.

“The resolution by itself isn’t going to spark an orphan care movement among Southern Baptists,” he said.“Neither is my book, and neither are a thousand manifestoes. Only the Holy Spirit can do that as local churches start to embrace a vision for orphan care.

“The resolution though was meant to prompt some questions. If one messenger in the Convention hall is moved to simply pray, ‘Lord, how would you have me minister to orphans?’ then the resolution is a success, in my view. If one pastor is prompted to ponder how he could preach on adoption, or lead a foster care ministry among his folks, then the work is starting.

During the introduction of the resolution, Moore appeared on stage with Timothy and Benjamin, the sons he and his wife adopted seven years ago. More than 8,000 messengers met the resolution and its unanimous passage with lengthy, enthusiastic applause.

“I was overwhelmed with emotion on the platform to see my sons, two little ex-orphans, looking out on a sea of yellow ballots as thousands of Southern Baptists affirmed that we want to be the people who love fatherless children,” he said.

“I realized that, in an alternative story, my boys would still be in an orphanage, not knowing even the name of Christ Jesus. But here they are, at the Southern Baptist Convention, calling by their very presence the world’s largest Protestant denomination to recognize there are hundreds of thousands of children as helpless and alone as they once were.

“My prayer is that twenty years from now there are thousands of Southern Baptist pastors, missionaries, and church leaders who started their lives as orphans, now preaching the gospel of God their Father.”

Sike!

I think we should bring back the word Sike, it was quicker than, I'm kidding!

If we brought it back then the people who signed a contract to buy our house could of just called and said, "Sike!"

Instead they had to say all these long sentences that essentially meant, Sike :)

The house is back on the market, I hope it sells quickly I'm so tired of cleaning in circles like a crazy person while Jack and Kylynn mess it back up quicker than I'm cleaning. I'm too uptight for this!

Do you want the best house in the world...it's for sale and for much less than what it's worth to me (apparently our realtor thought 2.5 million was too high of a price :)

The cruise...

If I'm going to have to be thirty, and I've not yet decided if I am, I might as well enjoy it right?

Right, so my sweet sisters, took me on a cruise to celebrate, or maybe to soften the blow.

It was wonderful, it was restful, it was peaceful.

I realized that my sisters are not 17 and 15 (the ages they were when I last lived at home). They are beautiful women who are intelligent and articulate, dependable and thoughtful.

It was nice to figure out how we fit together now as adults with our own families.

It was nice to say things to each other that needed to be said, to confirm that ours is a relationship that will always be, birth to death, and one that we need.

At the end I was anxious to get back to my husband and children, but sad to not wake up in the same room as my sisters. I have been given such gifts in this life.

Oh and I laughed really really hard and got so close to throwing up, but I didn't, I mean after all we are adults now.