Sunday, September 6, 2009

Life is busy

John 1:16
"From the fullness of His grace we have received one blessing after another."

Ahh! I can't believe it has been so long since I have gotten to blog! I miss it! I have so much stored in my head that I really need to get on paper or in this day and age, on laptop, before I forget it all.
But rarely is there anytime during the day and by early evenings, I am too tired to sit and think. I just want to go to bed with Isaiah.
It is Sunday afternoon and I have issued a quiet time til 4pm which I have realized now is only 7 minutes away! Shoot! I got busy ordering school books and other stuff and time has slipped away. Isaiah is sleeping and Daddy is sleeping and it is quiet as I am holed up back in my room! Maybe the kids won't watch the clock and will let me get a few paragraphs typed. :)
As you have probably figured, life has been VERY busy since we have arrived home 3 weeks ago today!
Wow! how time has flown. The first week was spent recooperating from the trip. The second and third week was spent making room to breath in this house. Finally, I can see the floor - in several rooms! Things are finding their proper places and staying there. Yancy, our builder came this week and replaced the ceiling and fixed the floor, so this week I can move Graham and Isaiah back in there! We still have to put some flooring in but now at least I can put a throw rug in there temporarily and get his bed in there.
The kids are adjusting very well. They are starting to miss Uganda though. Little Isaiah keeps us all busy just keeping up with him! He can disappear in a flash! It has been 13 years since a little one has been in this house and I tell you he has livened up things!
We have to do a call out about every 10-15 minutes, "Where's Isaiah?!"
The first week, we found him in the pool ready for a swim! Thank God, Maggie had already put his swimmies on! The next day, he got tangled up in the cords for the blinds, the next he just followed Graham over the neighbor's house and decided the middle of the road was a good place to explore. Yes, I panicked over these happenings and thanked God that he has an awesome guardian angel! I then decided it was time to call a family meeting and get some help.
I told the kids, "ok we have 10 pairs of eyes in this house through out the day, so I need help with Isaiah and his whereabouts. I am pulled in many directions, everybody needs me, so if I am cooking dinner, I need help with watching Isaiah, if I am helping anyone else with a matter, I need help from others to know where he is. We have got to be a team, this is all new for all of us." They agreed and now that we are all on the same page, I have lots of eyes to follow my very inquisitive 3 year old.

Allenni and Andrew begged me for days to give them chores and so finally I typed them up a chore chart and added them to the wall with the other kids charts. They love it! They take great pride in accomplishing their duties and do a great job at it. I think it is making them feel a part of the family. Andrew loves to go on bike rides and take all the batteries out of everything. He has repaired 3 radios and a camera as well. He is trying to find his place in the family and is going from being a first born to a middle child. I see this is hard for him. he feels Allenni and Eli are too young for him, and wants to hang out with Graham, but Graham thinks Andrew is too young to hang with him, so we are working through these things. Allenni loves Seora and of course Seora loves having a little sister that she can dress up and be girlie with. Allenni loves changing her clothes. Yesterday, she climbed up in my lap and told me that she missed her friends in Uganda.
Which by the way, I would like to say a
BIG THANKS to all of you who gave the kids clothes!!! WOW! Were we blessed! Andrew, Allenni, Isaiah and Eli have no lack of clothes right now! I haven't even been aboe to go through a few boxes of Fall and winter stuff yet. This has really helped us and we deeply appreciate it.
Eli is doing pretty good adjusting to all of this. Of course, there has been a little jealousy going on as he was the "baby" for almost 3 years now! He took it upon himself to be "the boss" so Allenni and Andrew would know how to do things the right way, and it didn't go over to well. He is learning to be a team member. He and Allenni have become best buds and most of the time are inseparable.
The activity level and noise level in the house of course have definitely increased. The word
"QUIET" doesn't really exist anymore! hahaha!
As for the four older kids, they have been an awesome help! They have taken their roles as big brothers and sisters seriously and have stepped up to the plate in taking a load off of my shoulders at times and I just want to say publicly to them!
THANK YOU MAGGIE, BEN, SEORA AND NATHANIEL! YOU ARE AWESOME KIDS!
As for me and Duane, well, honestly, let's just put it this way, A lot of days have been overwhelming to us!
And a lot of days, in some moments, we are like, "What in the world have we done???? But then again, we know in our hearts what we have done. We have done what God has asked us to do. To care for his children so they no longer will be known as orphans but as sons and daughters. And when we look at them, we know we are doing the right thing. And yes, it may be hard and tiresome but it is joyous and rewarding as well. We know "All these new adjustments too will pass". All our differences will fade as we eventually become FAMILY in more than just name.
I know for myself, I have to continually hand over selfishness, weariness, irritability, harshness, and unloveliness to Jesus and grasp on to servanthood, strength, understanding, and love that only Jesus can pour into me to be able to do what I have been called to do.
Duane and I cannot do what we are doing without the daily help of Jesus. Only He can get the glory. That is the desire of our hearts, that His glory be shown in us , not ours.
I can honestly say though that with all the adoption adjustments we have gone through that this one has been very smooth as far as behavior issues go. I think my having spent time with them in Africa for the 7 months really has helped. We thank God for this bond already. God is good.

Well, Duane and I got to go on a date last night! It was really nice.
After being away from each other for three months, we haven't really had a chance to reconnect since being home with his work schedule and all that has been going on in the house.
Duane and I can hold some pretty good conversations, but last night when we were seated at the Olive Garden, waiting for our bread and salad, we just sat in silence and looked at each other. Then it hit me as funny. "Well, here we are and we don't even know what to talk about." We both like to write and I said, "You know, we should have brought our laptops so we could write a few complete thoughts without interruptions." After our few moments of silence, we definitely found things to discuss and enjoyed a great dinner. We then decided to go to a park by the river and chill out as it was too early to go home and after a while of there discussing deep subjects, we headed home so I could show him all of my 2000 African pictures on my computer that we haven't even had a chance to look at.

We head out for a conference/vacation on Wednesday and will be gone for 10 days. We booked this last year with timeshare points we had available and am so glad we did. Duane and I will be attending a conference in VA Beach to become certified trainers for the "Beyond Consequences, Logic and Control" Therapy for attachment disorder. I love this approach to the healing of traumatized kids as it is based on "There is no fear in love" concept. After that we head out to Williamsburg, VA for vacation! We are looking forward to this downtime with the whole family together. It also will be the kick off to our home school start as we will visit Historical Williamsburg, Jamestown, Yorktown and The Virginia Aquarium. Graham will benefit mostly from these as he is taking Early American History and Marine Biology in our co-op classes.
I've been scouring online for coupons and discounts for our trip, so if anybody has any tips just let me know!

Well, this is about it in a large nutshell of what is going on. I haven't forgotten about all the other stories that have led to our coming home from Africa so I promise not to leave you hanging from those, because I am sure you definitely want to know, how many more trips we made to the embassy to get those visas and .... how to keep a toddler happy on a 9 hour flight as well as what happens when a 9 year old decides not to sleep on a plane.
Blessings to all of you for blessing me!
oh, P.S. For those of you who have asked, Yes, we heard from the casting crew of EHM last week and they thanked us for the pics of our house we had sent. They said that this is all preliminary and if they did decide t proceed with us, it could be months before we hear back. And if we do hear from them, all is confidential so we have to keep MUM! So if we do hear, we CAN'T tell you til they do!
Even if we don't hear back from them, then we know someone else needed help more than we and we are still in God's hands. So... no worries.
P.S. 2
Pics are on my other computer so I will add some later.

1 comment:

Joy Portis said...

Melissa!!!! Congrats on your three newest blessings! They are beautiful and you all look so happy! What a joy to see!

Many Blessings
Joy

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