Summer

Stream of consience...

We went to family camp this past week. It was fun, exciting, energizing, tiring, wet, scarey, godly and just plain old GREAT! It was so much fun having uninterupted family time, godly staff that were amazing to us and especially our children. Feeling safe, learning more about our walk with the Mighty Creator God. It was humbling to see and hear about other families and their situations, about what everyone learned at camp. It was a weekend that was well worth it!

The down sides? Having to come home to real life where I have to get stuff done like laundry and cooking and dishes. Oh, and I played Monopoly City again with Brant and Kale. Can you say 3 hours? Ugh... I think I will keep that game to once a month.

My boys love to swim. They were fish at family camp and Kai especially still wants to get in our tiny pool here home. Camden got ear infections from swimming at camp and has tonsilities now too.

In two days I leave with my niece Tessa and my friend Kim and her family to go horse camping. I am excited but have so much to do before then. Right now I am waiting on lunch to cook so I can feed my family. We are having taco salad with lettuce I grew in my garden. What fun! I will have fresh green beans too, but I am the only one that will eat them. Well, maybe Barney will too. We will see. I have eaten a few cherry tomatoes from my garden. Can you say yum? I can! YUM!

We don't have much more time before school starts. The summer is flying by. We still have baseball a few nights a week, but it is slowing down. We had been going every night of the week but Saturday. My two eldest will be going to camp at the same time in July. Right after our cousins wedding. Then in August our thrid son will be going to Trout Lake Camp. I am so excited about this because this is where I went to camp as a kid and where my parents worked many summers! It is fun to see a child of mine go to this awesome camp!

When school starts my youngest will be in Kindergarden. I can't believe my youngest is that old already. People ask what I will do with my time. I am sure I will enjoy a little bit of quiet time, but I am also sure I will find plenty to do or Brad will find plenty for me to do. My boys while I type this are asking when they can date. I told them when they can drive a car leagally they can go on a date. We will see how this goes. My youngest just said, "please don't be mad that I say this mom, but when a girl wants to date a guy she says he is a hot guy. Is that okay to say?" I told him it is okay to say, but not very polite. I said he could tell her she is very pretty or she could tell him he looks very hansom. Much better sounding. I am sure my children think I am like 80 when I say something like that. Okay... lunch is ready, I need to get back to real life. How was my first stream of concience?

15 Years and counting!

My hubby and I went to Kearney last night. We were celebrating 15 years of marriage. I consider myself so blessed! I have a wonderful husband who loves God. 4 great boys I adore. I live on a farm which is the plan I had all along as a kid. I own a horse and actually ride her! My husbands family is wonderful to live near. They are good christian people with hearts for God. I still have my daddie and my big sister as well as have two younger sisters by marriage. I have a very sweet step-mom and some day I will see my mom in heaven. God is so good to me. Thank you Father in heaven for loving me, blessing me and allowing me to come into saving grace because I believe in you. Annie

The excitement at our home!

We have a new family memeber. Want to know his name? You will never guess! He is named by my 5 year old son. Ready for it? Okay... his name is Jr. James Bond. Quite the name for a baby goat that is 12" tall and weighs about 7 lbs! I call him J.J. for short. He is an adorable Nigerian Dwarf Goat with beautiful blue eyes. He has quickly stolen my heart and the heart of the boys. Each morning before school they go out to say good morning. He eats a whopping 3 to 4 ounces of milk at each feeding. Crazy how tiny he is. That is the excitedment in our home these days!

How am I supposed to know????

For three years I have been praying about adoption. In the last year I have never given up the thought of adopting internationally. We just renewed our license to foster/adopt. I also spoke to an international adoption agency yesterday. They said we can not do both consecutively. That means.... we have to choose one over the other. Hmmmm.... Now, Brad is not on board yet with international adoption. I guess that means we keep our license for now with fost/adopt. BUT.... what do I do with this feeling we should adopt internationally. I guess I continue with what I have been doing, praying. I have prayed God would open both my eyes and Brad's eyes to where our little girl is. Where is our daughter? I don't have a clue. Is she a waiting child in China? A child in Ethiopia? Is she in the foster system? I don't know. A friend of mine said recently, "what if God doesn't care where we adopt from but wants us to just get moving on it?" I don't know the answer to that either. Does God have a specific place we are to get our daughter or does he find our daughter when we pick a specific place?

A time line is sort of in effect.... at least in our human brains. Brad and I have discussed adoption but do not want to have a HUGE gap in our kids. That means... the clock is ticking. Kai is already 5. How much longer do we have before a huge gap begins to open up? I know I am rambling. Sometimes it is just nice to get my thoughts out, even if they don't always make sense.

On a perfectly wonderful note, my son B. is officially 13 as of April 5th. My first baby is now a teen. Time just flies! I know when a mom is in the thick of many young children she can sometimes wish that time away. I know I did. Now I wish I could just have each of my children for 4 years alone with no other children to enjoy every last thing they do that is wonderful, new and totally cool to parents. Ah.... life with a teen... so far so good. It has been 2 days!

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter. I know I did. I got to reflect on what God did for us with his son. Oh how much he gave up and Jesus took on so I could find redemption in him. To God be the Glory great things He has done! Annie

The Last, Yet... The First!

This is the last boy I am going to talk about, but the first one born to me. I too love this boy. He is fast becoming a teen, is smart, respectful (most of the time), love Jesus, is not afraid to be himself, is not a follower of men, but of God. He is a boy I rely on, he actually helps me clean without me asking! He does make me feel old as my first baby is growing. He has a love for golf and fishing, loves his Grandpa Frank because they share these loves. When told he may not be able to go to Minnesota this spring because of baseball his answer was, "uh, mom, I have like 14 baseball games, I only see Grandpa and Grandma E. 4 times a year. I am going to MN!" I guess that takes care of that! I am sad to see B. grow, but am excited to see the man God is creating. 13 is a big number, bless him Dear Lord as he turns 13 in just a few short days. Bless all my boys with the knowledge of Your love, grace, and an eternal life in You!

Can you pray for us?

Even though I did not go to Kenya or Hatti or Ethiopia, I feel as though I have. My heart aches every day and I get teary eyed every day thinking about the kids in Kenya I read about. I have many thoughts go through my head. I wonder if Brad and I are doing enough with our abundance. I wonder if we are sitting stagnant when God is calling us to adopt outside of our country. I read yesterday on an international adoption site called CCI. My friend Amy in her blog, "Building The Blocks" talks about CCI. It is who they went through with their latest adoption of a beautiful baby girl. They say most kids in Ethiopia are in orphanages because their parents died or have such poverty they can't take care of them. Is God working on my heart towards international adoption? If so, how is he going to work on Brad's? I don't have the answers. I wish I did. Could you pray for us? Pray for answers? Ethiopia is a country where the wait is nil. Once your dossier is submitted you have immediate placement or just a 3 month wait. I don't know. :(

I look at the difference from Ethiopia to America. American kids need love every bit as much as the inter country adoption kids do, but American kids circumstances are so different. The kids are in care because parents do drugs, drink alcohol, abuse them, let others abuse them. It is sad, it is not right, but it is so different than other countries. So many of the American children are so traumatized, it is heart wrenching, yet we have waited a year to adopt our daughter and it just isn't happening. I don't know what is right or wrong, which route we should be considering. Please pray for us and a decision. Please pray for all the children needing mommies and daddies throughout our country and the other countries around the world. Pray and ask God what you can do to help. Not just help and forget, but help and remember. Help so you might have to tighten down on spending that is not necessary. Remember to thank God for the blessings he has given you. If you were to go to this blog, http://www.wearethatfamily.com/ and read about her Kenya trip you would see how blessed we truly are, even if we live paycheck to paycheck. Thanks for bearing with me as I hurt and put my feelings out there. They are not easy feelings for me to deal with and it feels good to write them down. Ann

Today My Heart Broke

Today I was reading this blog; http://www.wearethatfamily.com/. Kristen is in Kenya with Compassion International. She is blogging her experience. She stated she vistited a part of hell yesterday and I have to say I agree with her. The conditions there are heart wrenching. Kids litterally live in cardboard, metal or mud huts. They may or may not have a mother and father or even one of them. They may find food in the rotting stuff they walk on call ground. The live on a heap of garbage. It broke my heart, it made me uncomfortable, it made me ache in side and made me cry. I sponsered one of those kids today. It seems so small and insignificant. I have had a letter waiting to go out to our little girl we sponser in India. It has been sitting on my desk for 2 weeks now. To me it was a letter I had to get done some day, but wasn't important. After today it means the world to me! I saw how much it means to the kids that get those letters. I am so ashamed. I never thought how much it could mean. I had to go outside and take a couple pictures in the cold and muddy weather. As I went out I thought... man it is cold, I need to hurry so I can go back in and find something to eat. I am hungry. Once again I stopped and thought about how blessed I am and how easily I just have to walk to my cupboard and just grab something that looks good. I don't have to go to the rotting trash pile and find fruit and vegetables that are rotting away to eat for my breakfast.

I hurt today. It is good for me to hurt. I feel guilty today for gluttony. That is okay to feel guilt for that. I pulled my head out of "my world" today and found it looking into God's world.

Amazingly enough there is hope in Kenya. God IS there. You have to look in the children's faces that are smiling despite their circumstances and you will see Him. You have to look at what Compassion does and you will see him. Do you know that every dollar you send goes to the child. It may cover food, school, clothing, a roof over thier head. All $38 dollars goes to that child and their family benefits from it. Did you know Compassion has three sites in the middle of one of the most dangerous slums in Kenya. They have school going on there for kids in the program. They have outreach ministry. Did you know they train Kenyans to teach and lead these programs? I never thought Compassion did so much. I guess I never took the time to find out. I just figured they were one more place asking for my money and then used it for making themselves bigger. They are making something bigger, that is the number of kids they can care for. Here is their link.
http://www.compassion.com/sponsor_a_child/default.htm Maybe you could go sponsor a child, or read Kristen's blog and your heart will be changed and then you will sponsor a child. It changed my thought process and heart. I am ashamed at my lack of nothing, my squadering of money on worldly things. I know I can enjoy the blessings God has given me, but today I will truly look at these as blessings and not things I deserve or am owed. I have so much, thank you Lord. Bless the girls we sponsor Lord!

Sorry, I have tried to make my links so you just have to click on them and I haven't figured that out quite yet. :)