Has It Been Two Months Already?

Today my neck is sore, so I have skipped my morning at the gym. I should probably clean, but I can’t do much of anything without hurting, so I am seizing the opportunity to blog. Since it has been over two months, there is quite a bit to cover.

I present to you… Bullet Points.

• OYWB officially ended February 1st. Hooray! I expected, as did my children, that there would be a ceremonious trip to the store to make a long awaited purchase. Instead we had snow!

• I love snow days, and I love that my children have experienced so many of them! It definitely didn’t snow this much during MY Texas childhood. That’s okay. I’m sure that I appreciate it more now than I would have then.

• Our church held our annual C3 Conference. It was AMAZING, as always. Andy and I were blessed to host Pastor Shannon O’Dell and his family during the conference and the following weekend. They are beautiful, humble, genuine people, passionately chasing down God’s plan for their lives and their church. I am teary eyed just thinking about them! Truly. I am deeply grateful for the people I have the opportunity to meet through Fellowship!

• Maybe some of these bullet points are going to be long.

• Get over it. You can skim if you don’t want to read.

• I went to a one-day conference for parents of gifted and talented children. WOW. As a gifted person, it was validating. As a parent, it was encouraging.

• My mom and younger siblings came to town for a visit. Much food was eaten.

• We had several opportunities to spend time with people in our lives who we don’t know well. I love the community that I live in and the people of my church en mass, but I feel like I don’t know many of the individuals. Do you know your neighbors? Do you know the people you serve with at church?

• Parker took his pet, Alvin The Biting Hamster, to show-and-tell. Good news! Alvin didn’t bite any of Parker’s classmates… only Parker. Poor baby.

• We were blessed with beautiful weather for Spring Break, and spent nearly all day every day out in the glorious sun. We then spent nearly every evening inside sniffling and sneezing. Allergies.

• We checked out Dinosaur Valley State Park, which was cool. Lots of easy hiking and climbing. And then we ate at Dairy Queen, which is an event in itself.

• Andy spent a night of the Break camping alone at Mineral Wells State Park. The boys were a little bummed that they weren’t going along, so I set up our newest tent in the living room. It required moving all of the furniture, but we could still see the tv from in the tent. And THAT is what is important when you’re 10 and 8 and your allergies have trapped you in your house.

• Jackson’s Fifth Grade Choir participated in our district’s annual Elementary Choir Festival last Tuesday, which consisted of every elementary school in our district plus one high school performance choir. Throw in equipment failure, a rogue bird, a power outage, and some jazz hands... Did I mention that we have twenty one elementary schools? It was much longer than it sounds.

• This year, Andy and I celebrate our tenth anniversary. Hooray! As a part of our celebration, I am having some bling added to my ring. I’ll post an update when it comes back from the jeweler. I’m so excited!

• Speaking of excitement, we have some possibility on the adoption front! We have been included in the selection process for adopting a little boy, and also for a pair of brothers. The truly exciting thing about this news is that soon, these boys will have their forever families. It may not be ours, but I know that God will provide them with the families that they need.

 

So, rejoice and pray with me through the ups and downs of our story, and over these updates about others:

Our friends, the Ballast family of Seattle, have adopted little Z all the way from Ethiopia. He is finally home!

Joanne Heim, who suffered a stroke in January, is recovering quite well. She is a walking miracle!