Psalm 139

I am a momma in happy reflection at the moment. Andrew was asking a lot of questions about how God could see everything? He is also into playing hide and seek and wanted to know if he could hide from God. I said no of course but I said that the Bible in Psalms tells us that there is nowhere we can hide from God. I ask Andrew if he wanted me to show him. He said yes. So after reading from his Bible story book, we got out the Children's NIV(I think they have changed the name recently but you get the point) and turned to Psalm 139. I read it to him and he thought it was amazing the places God was able to know where we were. When we finished he asked if we could read another so we did we flipped the page to 141 and it was titled for us A prayer for Safety so we read that as our prayer. A pretty awesome way to end a good day.

Thank you God for little boys who ask questions and may my prayer be that I can give him the answers that lead him to You. Amen

In Honor of Cafeteria Ladies

About a week ago I made a food that reminded me of my 12 years of eating cafeteria food. I don't know what most of your experiences were but mine was good. Our cafeteria ladies cooked real food and cared about the students. As a child I ate breakfast school cause you could have pancakes, french toast, eggs or cereal depending on the day. Not only that but before the schools combined if you ate the two pancakes you were served you could come back for a 3rd. Also you could ask for double open. We weren't charged extra. They knew some kids liked Peanut butter on their pancakes and they would have some out. They did the little things they didn't have to do. The head cook at our little school was Mary Ellis who has passed away many years ago at this point but my good memories are linked to cafeteria ladies that cared. Later when the schools combined we were convinced that on the days that Mary did not serve that the food was better because she had cooked it. Probably crazy but if nothing else we knew she cared.

But what sparked this memory was chili. I know that sounds strange but at our school you could have your chili with or with out rice scooped on the bottom before the chili was put on top. I suspect that this was a way to make the chili go further but it tastes great. Now my 5 year old wants rice with his chili. The other distinct food memory was cinnamon roll day which is probably not allowed anymore. But on the day that ham green bean and potato stew was served(yes this is regional), there was always homemade cinnamon rolls with sticky icing not the white stuff. This only happened every couple of months. It only got better. The next day if you ate breakfast you got the rest of the cinnamon rolls. I am sure that schools now have food catered in but I would not trade the love and the care that went into the food for all the premade pizza in the world.

So with this blog I want to say thanks to all the people who work hard in non glamorous jobs that make a huge difference. Cafeteria ladies are the best.

Getting Ready

I am sure every family has their getting ready for school routine but here are a couple pictures from ours. Aaron wants to go to school so he and I have school on days that we don't go swimming and sometimes we have it more than that. He is beginning to recognize his letters and loves to color and trace.
The deep thought of the last couple weeks is this. Mom I have two heads. What says mom. Aaron says I have a head and a forehead. Can't argue with that to easily. He is pretending some now and he says he has a teacher named Mr Rouseo and kids which vary but sometimes include a Micah and an Abigail. Also he is trying to figure out why Anthony doesn't always live in the apartment of Aunt Cindi's. Andrew is still loving school. He is beginning to recognize words. They are doing phonics so our magnet letters on the fridge have found new life. We have also started Book it. Don't know if this is a regional thing or not. But the child is read to or reads a certain number of books. The number assigned by the teacher and they earn a certificate for a free personal pan pizza at Pizza Hut. So we have begun that adventure and he likes it. Movies still make Andrew nervous - he said he asked the teacher to turn off the Lion King because he was scared *note even so veggie tales scare Andrew*. We have parent teacher conferences in a couple of weeks and it will be good to get the teachers perspective on how he is doing.

Wednesdays are chapel day and Andrew must wear a shirt and tie. It is really hard to find short sleeve dress shirts for little boys but we succeeded.

Announcement

Queue music...Announcements announcements what a horrible way to die, what a horrible way to talk to death, what a horrible way to die, announcements announcements...

On a serious note about 5 years ago we started this blog to keep people informed about what was happening in our adoption of Aaron. Since then we have brought home two boys that have changed our lives forever. And this is a good thing. So we have decided to do it again.

We have decided to go to the Philippines for our 3rd adoption. When we began to look again we initially thought we would go where we could ask for a girl. The more we got into the more Perry and I felt we were to go to the Philippines. Why this matters is in the Philippines you can not declare gender. So we could be adding a boy or girl to this adventure or maybe even a sibling group. Our one request is to maintain birth order which we did not do last time.

Why announce this today. Well today we sent in our Dossier. For those who are unfamiliar with the process of international adoption. This is a large amount of paperwork that has to be done and then you begin a period of waiting. You are done with the part you can control and must learn to trust others to take it from here. With Aaron it was almost 2 years and with Andrew it was only a few months. With the Philippines it somewhere between 18 months and 3 years generally. So it may be a long wait but we feel this is right for us.

So what do the boys think. Andrew said we should have 5 more but doesn't want another Aaron. I take this to mean he wants a sister. Aaron likes the idea but wants to know how long. To help Aaron get an idea we use kindergarten. Aaron knows he has to 5 to go to kindergarten so we are telling him his brother or sister will probably come when he is ready to start school. Andrew wants to make sure the house is big enough. I think this might be due in part to Grandpa Barbee getting a new house. Andrew wanted to know if we have to get a new house to have a new brother or sister. We answered no but he now wants to know where Abuela is going to sleep. Our present spare bedroom is called Abuela's room because Abuela has sometimes slept there.

So we begin again. I don't expect this process to be fast. I must reset my mind because Andrew was so quickly. So I must learn once again to be patient and trust God's timing. So adoption updates will probably be infrequent but we just wanted to share our big day.

We begin our wait...

...Announcemeeeeeents.....

This and That

We have been working on finding a routine. I think that we are getting close to finding it in a new year. Aaron has started back to swimming and I am actually getting more of my house work done. Andrew is loving school. He is taking soup everyday and still likes his pink lunch box. He likes school but when ask he usually tells you about recess and lunch. Every weekend he asks when he can go back to school. At least for now this is the match for him.

One of the kids in Aaron's swim class is Andrew. I introduced the boys and Aaron on the way home informed me that he wanted to keep the old Andrew. This led to talking about the fact Andrew would always be his brother and other Andrews would just be friends. Also he is telling everyone that when he is 5 he will get to go to school.

We have been talking to the boys about things on TV that are pretend especially cartoons. As result Andrew was watching a car race and said it was pretend. We then had explain that this was real because you could actually go to the place and watch it and it just wasn't on TV. Andrew was not convinced.

Both boys have had headers recently. Andrew joined the fun with a fall. Somehow managed only to scrap his forehead and lodge a small stone in there for good measure. Perry successfully removed it and after convincing me that no stitches were need, it has healed nicely.

So this is this and that from the Barbee house.

Part 3

We checked out the Aqurimum. Here is Aaron checking out the sea lion. We did do one day at the amusement park. Aaron loved this ride and was allowed to go by himself since he was big enough. He wanted to try the roller coaster like Andrew but was too small.

Both boys loved the bumper cars and Andrew was allowed in the "big" ones with and adult. As you can see I am the passenger on this ride.

We ended the night with fireworks which Andrew loved and Aaron thought were loud. We had visions of the boys sleeping in the next morning. Nah...

We ended the week with two visits to Uncle David and Aunt Kim's. We were glad to see them and the boys were so excited. We checked out Uncle David's work one day and the boys had fun running airplane to airplane. Yes this was a mommy plot to burn energy. We enjoyed some pizza back at David and Kim's. The next day after a traffic delay we had a whirlwind trip to the zoo and a picinic. It ended with a trip for ice cream. Grandpop would have been proud.

To end the retelling of vacation here is Andrew on one of the rides. He loves rides and the shows as well. Uncle Gabe in a few years we are going to need you to take this boy upside down.

Part 2

The next few days we checked out some sites in Norfolk and at Jamestown. This is Andrew at the Nautilus trying to steer a boat. We also took a two hour cruise but we didn't end up on Gilligan's Island just back where we started.

The boys on the boat. Aaron napped through a greater portion of the cruise. Uncle David waved to us from work. Andrew was thrilled.

As I mentioned earlier, we made another visit to a historical site at Yorktown. The boys enjoyed the boats and watching how they made canoes. It was a nice morning. It should be noted both boys were free at the historic sites and Perry and I got a reduced rate for doing both.

We only ate out one meal a day so we tried to avoid fast food. But we also wanted kid friendly. This was a place called Jungle Jim's. The food was good and the boys got a kick out of their menus.

Besides site seeing the boys enjoyed swimming. We probably could have done nothing but swim and they would have been happy. Oh yes and play at the parks around the place we stayed.