I thoroughly enjoy Ann Voskamp‘s writing at A Holy Experience.  Every one of her posts leave me encouraged and challenged.  Challenged to be a better wife, daughter, mother, friend, and child of the most high king.  A while back she wrote a 10 Point Manifesto for Joyful Parenting.  It is hanging in my kitchen and I remembered one of the lines this morning as my kids went particularly crazy and were not getting along….before we even ate breakfast.

4.  “Today, when stress mounts, I pray to dismount it with gratitude. My stress management plan will be intervention with verbal thanks. I can only feel one feeling at a time, and I choose to give thanks at all times. Fight feeling with feeling!”

Parenting is a daily challenge.  Will I take the shortcut and choose discipline for the purpose of changing their immediate behavior, or will I take the high road and train their hearts toward love and godly character which doesn’t necessarily require much raising of the hand or voice?  I think we will have a free day today.  The house is in a bit of disarray and the boys need to go outside and run free for a while.  School may or may not happen today, but there’s always tomorrow and tomorrow we will have sunshine and Daddy.  The boys love Saturdays because Daddy is home with us all day, uninterrupted.

So today I am dismounting the rising stress level in this testosterhome with gratitude and grace words.  I am thankful beyond words for my three precious sons.  I am thankful that His mercies are new every morning; even for me.  I am grateful for a washing machine, dishwasher, and cleaning supplies that will leave my home clean and inviting when Daddy comes home this evening.  I am thankful that my husband has a job and that I was able to go to the grocery store this morning and fill our cupboards with food, knowing there are people all around me losing their homes, jobs, and livelihood.  Thank you, Lord, for grace beyond measure.

~audrey

Just a little update for Bows for Life.  We now have 18 different 1 1/2″ ribbon choices.  I don’t have pictures of all 18 on the Bows for Life page, but they are all listed under the description.  If you have any questions, just let me know and I can see about posting a picture.  This fundraiser has been a lot of fun for me and has been very successful so far.  Thank you to all who are hosting a party next month and those of you who have placed orders.  We’re almost to $2500!

We did it.  We survived our second year of classical home education.  Today was our last day of co-op until August.  We had a fantastic year and I look forward to the fall already.

Next week is the Masters Golf Tournament here, as well as spring break.  It is the only week of the year that I work like a dog (outside my home).  I’ll have six children, be changing a few beds in a rental house, and will work for a caterer for five nights….while trying to maintain a clean house, preparing three meals a day, and helping Josh finish the addition so the appraiser can come next Friday.  It’s going to take a lot of espresso to get me through the week.

However, I get a little giddy thinking about one week from Friday when Masters week will be wrapping up, the addition will be complete and I will sit on the floor in my new living room and take a deep breath of relief and victory.

Even though we continue schooling year round (sorry boys!), I feel like tomorrow is the first day of summer!  No more Monday prep work (presentations, diaper bags, lunch boxes, snacks), no more Tuesday exhaustion, and no more Wednesday crack down (when we drill, drill, drill all that we learned the day before at co-op).  I’m so excited to get together with these incredible moms throughout the summer and share ideas with where to go from here.  We practically have another whole “school year” between now and the time we go back in August.  It’s about 20 weeks.  That’s a lot of review, and catch-up, and time to focus on fun things like music and sports.

One thing I’m looking forward to most is my garden.  I plan on spending a lot of time in the dirt on Saturday!  I’ll have pictures for sure.

Enjoy your week!

~audrey

We’ve been under a bit of a crazy time crunch with getting our addition completed so we can refinance our house in April.  You see, we started this addition on the back of our home two years ago this month.  Josh is doing all of the work himself and we vowed to pay for the entire thing with cash (no debt).  It is a 400 sqft. addition which will be our new family room so we can turn our current living room into our gym/school room and reclaim our spare bedroom for Zoe.  However, about six months into the renovation, we went through Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University and got on the fast track to getting completely out of debt.  As a result, we put the entire home renovation plan on the back burner.  Needless to say, we’re finally finishing the addition and are hoping to refi to a much lower interest rate next month which will allow us to put more money away each month for Zoe’s adoption.

I feel like as soon as the addition is finished, we close on the refinance, and finish up co-op for this school year, I’ll finally be able to breathe and start planning some bigger fundraisers.  We will certainly be doing a big yard sale sometime in April, I have three Bows for Life parties planned for next month, and we’ll be getting six new chicks soon, so when they start laying, we’ll be able to sell the extra eggs as well.  Bet you’ve never seen a sign that reads:  “Selling Fresh Eggs for our Adoption”  Haha!

Our friends, the Digsbys, are in China RIGHT NOW and had their little girl placed in their arms just 24 hours ago.  I can hardly wait to meet her and kiss her sweet face, knowing all the miracles that occurred on their 467 day journey to China.  I cannot wait for our day to come, when I post our Gotcha Day video at Hannah’s Hope orphanage with sweet, little Zoe in our arms at last.  Oh I can’t even begin to imagine what that day will be like.

I can’t thank you enough for all that continue to donate, buy puzzle pieces and bows, and send notes of encouragement and prayer.  God has blessed Josh and me with the most incredibly amazing friends and family and we love you more than you’ll ever know.

~audrey

We are wrapping up our third year of homeschooling, which is really quite hard to believe. It has gone by so quickly and to be quite honest sometimes I sit back and am amazed at how much we’ve accomplished in the past three years, with it rarely ever feeling like school.

It’s such a joy to watch my children live, learn, and grow right before my eyes each and every day.  They’re finally at an age where accountability is expected of them and I’m going to start printing their own Student Planners from the computer so they can be responsible for making sure each of their lessons and tasks are completed each day.  They’re looking forward to that big kid responsibility….we’ll see how long the excitement lasts!

I had the privilege of attending the South East Homeschool Convention in Greenville, SC last weekend.  There were a few of us who simply couldn’t get away for the full three days (Thursday, Friday, and Saturday) so we went up on Friday afternoon.  I don’t know about you, but often times, the car ride is one of my favorite parts of the trip.  Just being able to converse and laugh with your girlfriends is so refreshing.  We arrived at the convention center around 5:30pm and still had a few hours before the Tim Hawkins concert began.

I guess I should preface this with the fact that this was my very first homeschool convention.  I had no idea what to expect.  It far surpassed anything I could’ve pictured in my mind.  I could’ve spent a week walking through all of the booths and browsing through books and curriculum.  I was in homeschool heaven!  There were five or six session times throughout the day in which you could choose from 8-10 speakers on various topics and sit in on an hour long session.  These sessions ranged from academic lectures to parenting and beyond.  The cool thing was, many of the families attending the convention were literally there as a family; mom, dad, and five or six kiddos.  It was fun to watch, but also fun to relax knowing our husbands were two hours away taking care of ours.  Thanks babe!!

I was able to purchase all of our curriculum for the summer and fall while saving money I would’ve had to spend on shipping.  One of the greatest things about Classical Conversations in the early years is that you really don’t have a whole lot of consumable products to purchase semester after semester and year after year.  Most of my resources can be checked out from the library or borrowed from friends.  The only things I needed were new math workbooks for the fall and our cycle three memory work resources since this will be our first time going through cycle three with CC.

I also purchased the first two books in the Explode the Code series for Owen.  He’s only three and a half, but he loves workbooks and he actually sat at the table with me Monday morning and completed six pages on the letter F. Then when we finished I turned back to the letter “f” on the page and said, “Now what letter is this Owen?” and he smiled and said, “Number!” As I said, he’s only three and a half.  Ha!

We ended our little weekend getaway with a big dinner at Applebee’s with seven of the ladies from our area who rode separately but all attended the convention.  We had great laughs and shared some of the highlights from the convention.  It was a fantastic weekend and I look forward to going again next year.  Kelli, I wish we had taken a few pictures!

~audrey

It seems we’re just destined to have two babies in the next year or two.

First it was the call last Tuesday about the girl who is half way through her pregnancy with a little girl and is giving her baby up for adoption….found out she’s already picked a family for her baby, but we were going to say YES if she offered her baby to us….all while still pursuing Zoe in Africa.

Then I got a call from our foster agency this morning. Keep in mind, I submitted my resignation almost a month ago! My case worker said that my (former) boss insisted that she call us with this foster-to-adopt placement.

First let me back track a little…

…Ten months ago, I was sitting around the pool and I got a call from the agency about a preemie, a one, and a two year old. The preemie was nine weeks early and still in the NICU. He would be released from the NICU into our custody. These children were from a different county a few hours away and the final decision was made to keep them where they were because the preemie was simply too fragile to travel back and forth for weekly visitation. I was devastated. I really wanted those children. For some reason, losing that placement felt like a miscarriage. There were about five days from the time they told me we’d be getting them until I was told that they were indeed not coming.  I’d had five days to prepare and plan, tell our family, and get very excited.  I cried off and on for two days.  I still remember their names…

Imagine my absolute shock when just this morning my case worker said she was told to call me and inform me that there is a placement of three children, ages 10 months, two, and three from said county who are now eligible for adoption out of the foster system.  The two year old is slightly behind developmentally due to a mild special need, but other than that, all three children are healthy and normal.

Then she told me their names.

It was them.

Deep breath.

I called Josh and gave him everything I’d been told.  Much to my shock, instead of a resounding, “Are you insane??” He simply asked me to call her back and ask for a few more details while we prayed and considered the possibility of saying yes.

After talking back and forth between Josh and our case worker, we decided we simply do not have space for six permanent children at this time, and saying yes to three foster-to-adopt children would mean saying no to Zoe and we’re not going to do that unless we hear the Lord clearly say so.  The baby has been in a separate foster home from his older two siblings since he was born, so we did however, tell the agency that if they end up having to keep them separated in order to find a permanent home, we’d be more than willing to take the baby.  Of course it would be terrible to keep them separated forever, but I know we’d be highly encouraged to keep up sibling visitation, to which we’d happily comply.  The chances of this happening are very slim, because they’ll likely search and search until they can find a family who can take all three.  I’m praying they find that and the family is perfect for these three children.

But it sure does leave me wondering what in the world God is up to.

Two babies placed right at my fingertips within six days of each other?

We’re willing Lord, bring it on!

As always, I’ll keep you posted.

~audrey

You know, the entire time I’ve been reading about the bad news regarding Ethiopia and their inter country adoptions and cuts of 90%, blah, blah, blah, I never ever felt like we were suppose to go anywhere else. I never felt the Lord release us from Ethiopia.  And just today, I got this fantastic news:

Ordinary Hero Blog: Encouraging ET News Plus…Give Away And Online Au…: “There is some encouraging news coming out regarding ET adoptions…The Joint Council posted… Since announcement, the Department of State …”

Just click on the link to read the full post.  We WILL still be pursuing Ethiopia with all our hearts and cannot wait to continue on with the process of bringing Zoe home!

This news just makes my heart skip a beat.  God is so good.

I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you!!    John 14:18

Have a great weekend everyone!  I’m off to the homeschool convention in Greenville tomorrow; SO excited!!

~audrey

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now and I really hope it speaks to someone out there.

I often get convicted of my poor use of time at home. Yes, I homeschool but my children are young so that doesn’t really take but about two or three hours of my day. The fact that I am home pretty much all day, every day, means there is absolutely no excuse for having three or four loads of clean laundry piled on my bed when Josh gets home at 5:30 or 6:00pm. There’s no excuse for dust that I could write my name in on my living room furniture. Or how about a nasty kitchen floor that desperately needs mopping but I just can’t seem to get it done until the weekend?? It would be one thing if I had a baby (or two) that required much of my attention, but I don’t. My children are at a wonderful stage in life where they are very much self-sufficient in day-to-day tasks and even complete several chores of their own in a daily and weekly basis.

I began to think about how we (stay-at-home moms) can get all bent out of shape because our husbands don’t do much around the house, or we constantly have to remind them about the trash, or “could you please put your laundry IN the laundry basket”?? Then I thought about Josh’s job and the amount of stress he is often under due to deadlines and increasing work loads.  I imagine him coming home from a nine hour day at the office and saying, “Hey babe, I really need you to respond to these client emails for me and wrap up this project from earlier in the week.”  My response would likely be, “Are you crazy?  You’re at work 40-50 hours a week.  Why can’t you get it done in that amount of time at the office?  What do you do all day?  Watch a movie?  Check your facebook?  Blog?  Play outside with your friends?” Of course this is a huge exaggeration but there are certainly days when I do those things.  I wonder if my husband ever gets tired of seeing laundry baskets in our room, or digging through them in the morning to find clean jeans or socks?  Because the reality is, it doesn’t take me that long to complete my laundry chores.  If I do laundry two days a week and finish it to completion, it’s not a huge task.  Or, what if I began waking up a little earlier so I can do some of the mundane things like clean mirrors, counter tops, or dust before anyone else wakes up….and it would take me all of five or ten minutes.

On Monday I decided to stretch myself a bit.  I wanted to see just how much I could get done if I simply went from one task to the next without stopping to read or sit at the computer.  It was amazing how much I accomplished.  It’s Thursday, but here is what I can remember:

*made four loaves of bread, which should last us for three to four weeks.

*changed the sheets on the boys beds

*two and a half hours of school work with the boys including a sweet devotional time and presentation preparation for Tuesday.

*put nursery reminders in the mail

*Sam’s Club for fruit and Tractor Supply for oyster shells for the chickens

*cleaned out the chicken coop (yuck.)

*put dinner in the crock pot (southern living slow cooker meatloaf….Yum!)

*managed to tidy every room in the house before Josh got home.

It was wonderful.  And I think about the many things I’d like to do today:

*clean out the fridge and freezer

*clean out the pantry in the kitchen

*laundry (yep, it never ends does it??)

*once again, clean out the chicken coop

*change the sheets on my bed

*straighten the book shelves in the office

That’s not too much for one day at home!  And the advantage of Thursdays are that Josh has worship rehearsal at church tonight so I have all the way to 9pm to get the house looking (and smelling!) spiffy!

So that’s my little challenge for you stay-at-home moms.  What are you doing with your time; each and every minute?  Is our use of time honoring to God?  Does it give Him glory and praise for the privilege of staying home with our children?  Just a few thoughts.

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I’ve been making these sneaky little smoothies for my kids for about two weeks now and I’m thrilled that they have never walked in on my making them or the cat would be out of the bag!!  As I tried to think of ways to get more whole food nutrition into their diet, a friend suggested green smoothies.  I laughed as I tried to picture my kids sipping green goop out of a straw with a smile on their faces.  Ha!  But, she said if I’d just add a small handful of blueberries, the smoothie would always be purple and never green.  It works!  They request these smoothies each and every day and so far they’ve gone through two large boxes of spinach in about ten days.  Raw.  In their smoothies!  Here was yesterday’s smoothie.  There is no recipe.  Simply add what you have.  Frozen blueberries are great because they make the whole smoothie cold and turn the green into purple.

First, I fill the blender half way up with spinach.

Then I start adding fruit. Bananas first:

Then frozen strawberries:

Blueberries:

And finally some crushed pineapple:

The finished masterpiece, loaded with nutrition! Mommy gets the small glass of whatever is left after I pour the kids’ cups.

Give it a try!

~audrey

Someone told me that dehydrated kiwi tastes kind of like sour candy so I headed over to Sam’s Club and picked up a small box of kiwi.

I washed, peeled, halved, and sliced and then spread them out on my drying sheets to be placed in the dehydrator. The worms will love the peels!

Ten hours later (at 130 degrees), here is the finished product and sour they definitely are! They would also be a nice addition to any salad.

We are suppose to have gorgeous weather for at least the next ten days, with the only chance of rain being in eight days. I’m going to head over to the nursery after breakfast to pick up my soil ingredients and get my twenty strawberry plants in the ground.  Also, several of the seeds I started are not doing well after being moved to small pots for more room to grow, so I’m going to have to start more seeds today, with four weeks left until our last average frost date.

Happy Wednesday!

~audrey

It sure was an exciting weekend for this relatively boring momma.

My parents came last Friday and spent the day with us.  It was a lot of fun.  I always enjoy seeing my dad with my boys; it’s just precious.  My dad leaves for Iraq in a few weeks so this was his last visit to our house.  We had dinner together that night and then the boys (out of nowhere) had emotional meltdowns at the thought of not seeing grandpa until the end of the summer….so my dad said, “Let’s go pack your bags; you’re coming home with me for a few days.”  It was priceless and I think it really did the boys good.

Saturday, the Pioneer Woman was in town!  The reason she was in Georgia was because she had just come from Savannah where she filmed a show with Paula Dean.  I missed the morning talk she gave to homeschooling moms because we were childless for the weekend which meant sleeping in and Chick-fil-a biscuits.  However, a friend picked me up and we arrived just in time to get FRONT ROW seats to the evening event!  In fact, we were sitting so close, I couldn’t even see half the pictures in her slide show because she was literally two feet in front of my face as she talked about each picture.  I had a blast.  It’s so strange to meet people in real life when you’ve been reading about their lives (and cooking their recipes) for so long.  I loved the stories she had to tell and I especially loved that she had her boys and her husband with her, so when the “talk” was over, her boys played around with the computer and microphone while she signed books.  I got my cookbook signed by both her and her husband; such a fun treat.

Sunday night was a Girls’ Night Out event with Anita Renfro and Mandisa (remember her from American Idol?)  It was wonderful and absolutely hilarious.  I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time!  Ashley and a friend from her church were there as well.  The whole event was sold out, but we found each other at the end for a picture.

And the strangest event for my weekend would have to be this:

Yep, that’s an egg with absolutely no shell, no membrane, nothin’!  This is Henrietta, who we also call Big Bossy (because that’s what she is!). I mean, if I would’ve known she was gonna do that, I would’ve just perched her over the fryin’ pan!  lol!  The bad thing is, I don’t think she’s the only one doing it.  We’ve had four shell-less eggs in three days.  The solution should be adding calcium through ground oyster shells in their diet.  We started that yesterday.  We’ll see how it goes.

Lastly and probably most importantly, as we’ve been praying about what to do and where to go in regards to our adoption (after all the changes that have been made with Ethiopia), I’ve just had an overwhelming peace to just stay put.  However, I can’t help but also yearn for a baby.  A pink, soft, good-smellin’ newborn.  Thoughts crossed my mind like, “Well, if it’s going to take two or three years to get our baby from Ethiopia, maybe we can just have another baby of our own in the meantime.” But of course that’s just me being impatient and desperately wanting another baby.  Then, I received a phone call this morning from a lady I go to church with.  She informed me that she has a family member who is pregnant, has given at least one previous baby up for adoption, is having a girl this time, and is giving this baby up as well….do I want her phone number?  Wow.  It was a lot to process, but Josh said I should definitely call her and get some details and we’ll just pray that if it’s meant to be, everything will fall into place, and if not we prayed God would close the door right away.  I’m waiting for the lady to call me back.  But don’t be mislead, if, by a great miracle, we end up adopting this baby, we would still continue to pursue our Ethiopian baby.  It is all in God’s hand.  Our hearts are for the orphans, regardless of where they’re from.  God knows who each of our children are and will be.

**UPDATE** The girl who is pregnant has actually already chosen a family for her baby, through the agency she’s working with. She didn’t want her baby to stay in our area so it will be out of state. But, at least I now know that we’re certainly open to however the Lord wants to send us babies!

~audrey