Birthday Girl Pictures

Apparently only purple paintbrushes would do, so she went around to every jar of paintbrushes and took out the purple ones.

Blowing out candles on a My Little Pony Cake...

Her brothers managed to have some fun too!

Public School

Yesterday, my youngest son and daughter found out who their teachers would be for kindergarten. I was excited to know that they will have the teachers I requested.

Today, I told my daughter that her teacher loves Jesus. When she acted as if that was no big deal, I explained to her that some of the teachers at school do not worship God. Her face twisted up in perplexed shock as I explained that she would no longer have a weekly chapel time in school to learn about God and sing praises to Him.

Strangely, in all my emotion about her becoming a kindergartener, I had never really dwelled on the fact that she would no longer learn about God in a formal setting at school. Although I never considered anything other than a Christian preschool for her, the basis of my decision on where to send her was made on curriculum and scheduling, not the quality of chapel time (although I did make sure our theology was similar). I have always assumed that as her parents, my husband and I have the primary role in teaching her about who God is and why we worship Him.

I do not love everything about the school she is attending, but I am 95% happy with it...about as much as one can be, I think. They did a phenomenal job teaching my son last year. He was also blessed to have a Christian teacher who talked about the meaning of Good Friday and encouraged art work depicting nativity scenes. Then again, I did see kindergarteners singing a song about how much they love money and can never have enough...an ungodly view of money.

For the first time in five years, she will have relationships with those who do not believe as we do. We have constantly taught her the importance of sharing about Jesus with those who do not know Him, but this will be her first opportunity to do that on an ongoing basis. Now, instead of simply talking about not hiding your light and shining for Jesus, she can it into practice.

Is it good for her to be in this situation? I believe she will be fine, but I certainly understand the desire parents have to shelter and ground their children more before exposing them to the world.

Birthday Girl

Today, my daughter turned five. While we were celebrating her birthday, I found myself oddly sad. She came to us as a beautiful gift of God at the age of six months. Tiny for her age, yet feisty in spirit, we were told by adoption workers that we would need a lot of energy to keep up with her. Other than an odd refusal to sleep, which one can understand after six months of little stimulation, she has been quite an easy child to raise.

I will never forget the first time her cousin, 10 months older than her, came to see us after our daughter arrived. With a ten month old and a twenty month old, things are bound to be interesting, yet our little one took everything, including my niece's desire to love on me, take her toys, and have my attention, pretty well. Finally, when she could no longer handle this other person talking over her and gaining my attention, she pulled up on me, drew in a huge gulp of air, and out of this tiny body came the most unimaginable roar--she was like a lion.

My father bonded with her immediately, which exasperated her grandmothers who were momentarily left in the cold. In fact, he could not believe she would ever have a frustration tantrum as my husband and I claimed, so I finally video taped one showing that she had incredible lung power. She still has her first present from him...the first thing she "picked out" in a store at just 7 months of age...a worn out, patched together, pastel colored Moo Cow who has seen better days. Just in the last few months, though, her tastes have run to other stuffed animals. Moo Cow no longer is by her side every night.

Last year, she needed help opening her gifts and cutting her ice cream with a spoon--this year, she is a big girl...no help wanted unless absolutely necessary. She has always been a Mommy's girl, but Mommy's presence at her side is no longer as necessary as it once was.

In a few weeks, she exits babyhood, toddlerhood, and preschoolhood in the biggest way possible--she starts school. She is smart and excited about learning. I am happy for her and know she has the potential to be amazing to more than just her daddy, mommy and other family members (she is already more than amazing to me). I want her to grow and learn, to be more like Jesus, to love and serve Him more, to be in the process of growing more beautiful on the inside. Yet, part of me is sad that this period in our lives is over. I can honestly say they have been the best years of my life. I pray the next years are just as special.

To my wonderful daughter, Happy Birthday!

The Dress

Here are a couple of pictures of the dress I sewed. It orginally had two flowers, but she managed to get one off before church. The other did not handle laundering well, so it is now flowerless. Oh well, live and learn!

Real People

In another time, before I was a parent and a homemaker, I spent part of my summer in the beautiful country of Indonesia.

This week, we have heard about 546 (?--the number keeps climbing) people killed by a Tsunami there. It obviously was not as devastating as the Tsunami in 2004, and it seems as if the news blurb rushed by, with little attention given to it as we deal with war in the Middle East and tensions in North Korea, not to mention politics, the economy, and whether the U.S. has any leverage in foreign policy.

Still, we cannot forget that these are real lives...real families devastated. The children pictured above represent countless others whose lives were as a vapor. Of these 546, I have to wonder if any, even one, knew the Savior.

What are you and I doing about that? Does anyone besides me wonder if we will wake up one day and believe we have wasted our chances to be purely devoted to God, to be a difference maker?

Mission Possible

I finally completed a project. After a crazy year of constant interruption, a year with little commitment to anything other than family, a year where everything has spun wildly out of control, I have finally finished a project I set out to do. Today, I completed my first sewing machine project--a dress for my daughter. Granted, it took me six months from the time I started on it, but the satisfaction of finally finishing something is indescribable.

Infinitely more satisfying was my daughter's reaction. She didn't notice that the zipper didn't exactly match up or that the ribbon wasn't precisely flush when it met. She just twirled endlessly in the dress with a full skirt, reveling in the fact that mommy made it just for her. She felt beautiful and wanted to wear it the rest of the day.

To make my daughter's heart happy while accomplishing something serviceable felt useful to me.

It is amazing how good it is to feel useful.

A special thanks goes out to a dear friend who helped me learn where to begin with patterns and helped me make it to the end of the project. If you get some wild, wacky, crazily sewn gifts from me in the near future, you can thank her!