Not Your Typical "Day After Thanksgiving"

2nd UPDATE: Sorry, I realized this morning I updated on facebook but not here...Mark made it home about by around 7 p.m. last night. He parked at a friend's on the other side of the avalanche who drove him up to it, and he hiked over-pizza for dinner in hand. :) Our neighbor Mona met him on the other side and brought him home. Last night we got about 3 more inches and it's coming down again. Only trouble now is that he has a lot of the materials for the stairs in the van. On the other side of the avalanche that won't be cleared until tonight. This is beginning to look like a comedy of errors...

CORRECTION & UPDATE: We didn't get 8 more inches of snow today. It was 12 more inches. I've never been good at estimating, but a ruler helps.

The avalanche is supposedly not going to get cleared for traffic until tomorrow night. Mark is going to head up there now and see if they're letting people walk over, and if they are, I'll send the neighbors w/ 4-wheel drive down to fetch him. This is why he keeps snowshoes in his car during the winter. But right...he has the van today...
*sigh*

This is my day today...

We were at my parents' yesterday for Thanksgiving, and my mom had asked if they could keep the kids overnight. You know that saying "Give them an inch and they'll take a mile?"
Yeah, you know what's coming...I said sure, they could have them overnight, and could they please keep them till Sunday? :)

But we have good reason.

This is our basement. Yes, I'm embarrassed by it's condition. The couch doesn't even belong here...we're trying to sell it for someone who had to move out of state suddenly. Do you see the far corner, to the left of the doorway? After this weekend, if all goes as planned, there will be a staircase there that leads to our upstairs entryway.















Building projects and holes in the floor don't mix well with children...hence the leaving of them at my parents'. And in order for stairs to be there, the tools and such that are occupying the space now need to, well, move. But where to? There's hardly room to walk down there.

That's where I come in. It's not that there's not room...it's just a horrific mess (which is think what happens when you let an area of your house become the domain of men and children...maybe. I'm just sayin'). While Mark is at work today, my job is to tackle this basement, beat it into submission, and have it ready to get down to business when Mark gets home from work tonight.

And therein lies the snag, and the request for prayers!

See, this is what my day looks like on the outside. Last week we got about 6 inches of snow. It got warm and slushy for a day or so, then froze up again. Then Wednesday night, Thanksgiving Day Eve, we got 7 inches of wet, heavy snow. "Thankfully" it cleared by midnight, so we had no trouble getting to my parents' place.















But then we got another 8 inches of wet, heavy snow last night/this morning. Here is Mark's poor little car in the driveway-he wisely chose to drive the van to work this morning.
















Now it has cleared and the it's a winter wonderland outside. Except for one major issue.















There has been an avalanche about 7 miles from here. South of here. Between here at home and Mark there at work.
Pray that the avalanche gets cleared quickly, or I may be catching up on blogging instead of helping with a staircase!!!

Miracle #3

Okay...I told you about the Miracles we saw last Tuesday. Some big, some small, as I said. Miracle #1 was fantastic adoption news for our friends. Miracle #2 was about some amazing things happening for both someone we know and someone we don't.

I'll confess that for our 3rd miracle, I am a tad reticent to actually tag it as a "miracle." If you want to question my theology, I understand-I'm questioning it on this point myself. But even if we can't call it a miracle, I would call it "something really cool God did for my son."

You see, I had Andrew with me in Costco about a month and a half ago. He saw a "Space Exploration" kit that he desperately wanted. Problem? He had about $10 saved, and the set was $20.

Naturally, he asked if he could get it. I wanted him to have it...he's thoroughly enjoying our astronomy studies this year. He had his $10 with him, earned as commissions for a few of his chores. We don't pay the kids for every single thing they do around here, b/c it's just not realistic-wouldn't it be great to get paid for every chore you do around your family home? :) But there are a few chores for which they get paid a commission, and from that they're learning to tithe, save for college, save for an item they want to purchase, or just have on hand for spending.

The kicker is this: You can't very well expect your children to learn to NOT live on credit IF you keep giving them credit! Would it have been completely painless for me to pay the extra $10 he didn't have and just tell him to pay me back after he got paid out of the egg money? (He gets a cut out of egg money for doing all the chicken chores). Yes, it would have been painless. Would it have defeated the purpose of teaching him to handle money? Absolutely.

So I simply told him that he would get paid from the egg money before we came back to Costco, and he would have enough to buy it then.
"But what if it's not here anymore?" he worried.
"Don't worry...it's here for the Christmas season. They'll be plenty here when we come back." And I wasn't just trying to make him feel better...I really believed it.

Fast forward six weeks. Andrew eagerly waiting through all of our appts. and errands to end the day at Costco. Striding through the store to get to the book section. Eyes wistfully scanning the displays, worry etched into his features.

And then he spied it. One solitary Space Exploration kit left. No sign of the display. No other items similar nearby, or anywhere. Just one battered and torn box cast off to the side, containing one precious space kit.

Did we get our own miracle that afternoon in Costco? It sure felt like it. Thank you, Lord, for being faithful in your concern for the details of our lives. Andrew is so grateful. And so am I.

P.S....

On a more interesting note than the discourse on allergies below, we have some excitement on the adoption front!

On the allergy front

We're making some long-awaited changes on the allergy-front here at our house. When we had Anna at the allergist recently (everything came back negative) I learned that the allergist doesn't take a lot of stock in IGg allergy testing (the type that we have had done on the boys, which alerted us to their sensitivities). Her questioning of the testing sent me doing some more research, but it only confirmed what we believed from the beginning...immune system dysfunctions can arise from food intolerances.

Almost a full year ago, we had both boys tested for IGg food allergies, and they are both allergic to wheat, dairy, eggs, and citrus. Jacob also to peanuts, Andrew to lima and kidney beans.

Let me just make the understatement of the year: Feeding my family has been the ultimate challenge of the past year.

(If you're new here, and have nothing better to do than watch snow fall, you can get the background story here. And some follow-up to it here).

The recommended time frame for removing culprit foods was 3-12 months. Just about to 12 months, so we had planned on having them re-tested. Due to combined factors, we simply don't have the extra $500 we need to have them tested.

SO...we've decided to go ahead and start the rotation diet. (Side note: In looking at the paperwork from their test results, we realized that Jacob really didn't have enough of a reaction to tomatoes to pull them from his diet. But in our zealousness to rectify health situations a year ago, we removed tomatoes. We're sorry, Jacob. May you always continue to take the same enthusiastic delight in your ketchup-consumption as you have this week).

A rotation sounds so simple. And it's so NOT. I have a spreadsheet that I've been working on, with a full-month menu plan. First, as a family, we created a list of meals that we've missed and would like to rotate back in. (Top of the list: Pizza!). And I created a list of all the stuff I've made up over the course of the past year. I could publish a mini-cookbook. Then, I plugged in meals that I wanted to have in the Crock-Pot based on schedules, and other easy-meal nights based on evening activities. Then I started plugging in the allergy-laden meals...no more than one meal in each restricted food group every four days. I basically went with once a week, taking into account church pot-lucks, etc.

I color-coded the allergy foods, so I could see at a glance my spacing. Okay...we want REAL pancakes on Saturday? Make sure there's no meal with wheat, eggs, or dairy after Tuesday. Oops...let's shuffle these around-can't have pizza on Monday and then breaded chicken two days later. You get the idea. Finish filling in the spaces with the allergy-free recipes, and add in b'fasts and lunches.

There are a lot of things that won't change around here...dairy was relatively easy to do without, and the substitutes work well. They'll still have rice milk instead of regular milk on cereal. I'll still use coconut oil to bake with instead of butter. If I don't have to include one of their trigger foods for a recipe to make it work, then I won't. But I can plan for holiday gatherings, too...just don't feed them from any of their groups the week before a holiday meal, and they should be fine eating like "normal" people. We just need to be vigilant about keeping track of symptoms like ear-aches, sleeplessness, and constipation.

All in all, I'm very excited to have this done. I've been wanting to be more on top of our grocery budget and time anyway, so this was the final nudge. Tomorrow night I'll tackle the month's grocery list.

And is this not the longest excuse for not blogging that you've ever read? Hello, anyone still there? *sigh* Can't blame them...even I'm getting bored by this drivel, too. Back to my list...

Too smart

Anna has lately gotten into the habit of getting up after she's been put to bed to go potty. I know it sounds like despite the fact that she's our 3rd child, we're falling for an old trick. We're not, trust me...there are not-so-good goods delivered by the time she's done.

She's a smart one, though. She will try to stretch it out beyond doing her business. Mark warned her that she could look at one more book, and then she was going to be done.

So she picks up one more book to read. Guess which one?

The Bible.

Who Knew?

On occasion, Jacob will ask if he can bring to church with him one of his most treasured possessions: his little stuffed Elmo. The answer is usually "No," sometimes it's "Sure, but he has to stay in the van so he doesn't get lost."

Apparently that request no longer needs to be made, as there is a new development in this household that I was informed of tonight.

"Mommy, tomorrow, Elmo and my other stuffed animals are going to stuffed animal church, so they don't need to come with us."

As I said, who knew? Glad to hear they getting their priorities straight...no more hanging around in bed all day.

Miracle #2

Well, it's actually two amazing things, but they didn't actually happen on Tuesday like Miracle #1 and #3 (forthcoming), I just found out about them on Tuesday. So I'm lumping them into one...hope you don't mind.

First, there's an elderly gentleman with whom we are friends. He's been estranged from his daughter for about 40 years. And he's been hospitalized recently. Someone tracked down his daughter, and she actually sent him a card, offering her forgiveness for the past. And he cried. And cried. And cried. "My little girl still loves me." She's not little anymore...she's in her mid-forties. But there's been one small step of restoration, and we're in awe.

And then there's Stellan, over at My Charming Kids, who had a risky heart procedure done this week...I think they said it was a 20% chance of the procedure being successful. But our God is 100% God, and they made it within their 20%...God answered the prayers of many!

These miracles aren't anything that has a profound effect on our family personally, but they are still reminders of God's power, and we're in desperate need of that reminder right now. So I'm writing it down so we won't forget. God is sovereign. He is the All-Sufficient One. He's the Provider. Amen.

What did you do?

For Orphan Sunday, that is?
I tell you what, I may be biased, but my husband can preach!
Here's a bit about ours...

Miracle #1

Yesterday was a day of miracles. Some big, some small. But all a reminder of God's presence and power.

We were in Anchorage the entire day yesterday...we were supposed to leave at 7:30 a.m. for Anna's allergist appt. Well, I hadn't yet heeded my note to self regarding my alarm clock...so it was going to be a stretch to get all four of us out the door in the dark and in the snow on time!

I was more than a little frustrated that I was going to be away from my computer, because my friend Jen was expecting big news, and I didn't want to miss it! If you don't follow Jen and Jim, I encourage you to check out their blog! Jen and I went to high school together...not the closest of friends, but we did share our closest friend, Darlene. My perspective then was that Jen and I were just complete opposites, and I sadly did not take the time to really get to know her. The last time I saw or talked to her was at Darlene's wedding, which we were both in. Ten and a half years ago.

I started following her blog two years or so ago, when they were in the process of adopting their daughter from Kazakhstan...I was interested partly b/c I knew her from high school (and we're actually second cousins or something-go figure), and partly b/c my mom had recently gone on a missions trip to Kaz. And bit by bit Jen and I began to communicate-at first just through comments on each other's blogs. But when Mark and I began to think more about adoption, then we began emailing each other more frequently-Jen was tireless about answering my questions! She has shaped so much of our perspective on adoption, and is one of those powerful behind-the-scenes forces in our whole adoption process!

Well, then our connection grew even stronger as we both were in the process to adopt from Ethiopia! We have shared each others' ups and downs over the past year. My perspective now? Jen is one of my dearest friends, and there's not a week that goes by that I don't wish that we lived close enough to get the kids together to play or to go out for a cup of coffee and talk adoption stuff!

Well, yesterday was a big day for them. Very big. Their petition to adopt the baby boy with whom they'd been matched (the most gorgeous little boy, I might add) was to be heard in court. Lately, adoptive families have only had a 60% pass rate...usually due to missing paperwork. If for some reason a family does not pass, their case is heard again in about 3 weeks. Can you imagine having picture after picture of your baby, knowing he's sitting in the orphanage waiting for you, and then having to wait almost an extra month to hold him in your arms just because some paperwork is missing? The very thought of it was enough to keep many of us on our knees for them yesterday! Crying out to God for mercy, knowing it was in his hands.

They expected to hear back, yeah or nay, around 10:30 am Eastern. I had high hopes that they would have heard by the time I needed to leave at 7:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m. Eastern. I quickly checked their blog in the rush to get ready. No new post. I left a quick comment, then finished getting the kids ready. By 7:55 we were loading up the van...I checked one more time, with no new update to reward my anxious heart!

A few minutes after 8 a.m., I had to run back into the house to grab just one more thing...and I heard a voice I didn't recognize leaving a message. For some reason, I thought perhaps it was the allergist's office calling about our appt. So I quickly picked up the phone mid-message...when I heard both "Jen" and "court" in the next sentence, my mind started racing to try and think if I had seen a "Jen" who comments on their blog, to try and figure out which friend she had given a list of numbers to in order to share their news! :)

I didn't recognize her voice...it had been ten and a half years since we had last spoken! All of this flashed through my mind in the five seconds it took me to grasp that is was Jen herself, and she was calling to share the news that they had passed court!!! I just have to laugh at it all now...but oh, the rejoicing!!! I laughed and cried my whole way to Anchorage, trying to explain to the kids how great this all was. And had my alarm clock gone off, we would have been out the door at 7:30...and I would have not gotten the news for another 12 hours.

Yes, Jen and Jim and Gigi had a miracle yesterday. But so did I. The miracle of friendship. I don't think I will ever be able to adequately explain what it meant to me to receive that phone call, but it has touched me and changed me- Glory be to God!

Snow!

We finally have snow, so we slowed way down today to enjoy it! I tell you what, the boys were excited this morning about the snow as they are about Christmas morning!
Jacob woke me up excitedly (note to self: figure out why alarm clock is malfunctioning and fix it already!), letting me know I wasn't going to believe how much snow was outside! His perceptions of how that would change our day-to-day lives was amusing to me:

"There's so much snow, mommy! Now we won't be able to play on the swingset, we won't see out the van windows anymore, and no more animal chores!"
Oh, Jacob! I quickly clarified that he can still play on the swingset, that we'll brush off the van windows, and that the animals have to have food and water whether there is snow out or not!

Needless to say, the boys were out sledding by 9 a.m.! Even though we had to get into town to get a new driver's license for me (mine has gone missing), I let them play out for a few hours. A quick trip to town, deliver some eggs, have a very late lunch, and now we're off to do farm chores and try and squeeze in an hour of school before Mark gets home!

Treadmill

Can I just say I'm a bit overwhelmed by my back-log of blog? I was so encouraged by catching up through July, but it burned me out!

I would get on August already, but it's got a lot of big stuff in it. VBS. Mark's parents' visit. Chicken butchering. The state fair. Big stuff means lots of pictures. Lots of pictures means lots of time to choose and edit and post.

Okay...so chicken butchering wasn't that big of a deal, and has only a few photos. I suppose I could do that first, but then my chronology would be all off. Okay, bad excuse from someone who posts three months after the fact.

I might have just talked myself into blogging about our first chicken butchering experience. Just to oil the wheel and get me going again. That's all.

PS: If it helps you any, my sisters (here and here) both have new stuff about my kids...esp. Jacob's birthday!

Read for Orphans!

Hey, Everyone!
I just posted about our Read for Orphans campaign over on our adoption blog.
It starts November 8th...so if you're interested, it's time to get started! If you're not interested in having your kids participate, we appreciate your prayers for our financial needs to be met for this adoption-thanks so much!

One Smart Casted Cookie

Maybe this is completely normal for a 2 1/2-year-old, but we're pretty impressed by her memory! For the sakes of those who aren't accustomed to "Anna-ese," I translate after each name she lists. :) I'll post later about the actual removal of her cast!

Today is the day...

that this little girl...





















...gets off this little pink cast! Hooray!


































I will post later the video of her going over the names written on her cast-she knows who wrote each one!

Goats Great with Child Kid

Okay...the long-awaited pregnancy update on my goatie girls.
First of all, I was thankful I had this comparison picture from this past March.
Anna and the girls were enjoying some unseasonally warm spring weather. The girls still have their heavy winter coats on, but are looking almost svelte otherwise!


















Fast forward to last week! Now I suppose their size could be chalked up to enjoying too much alfalfa...



















But a back-end picture puts it into perspective a bit better!
Pardon the unflattering rear shot (don't tell the girls I posted this...they would be so embarassed)! People will often ask if a goat is pregnant simply because sometimes they just seem so, well, w-i-d-e. But what they are most often mistaking is a full rumen. A goats' stomach system is on their left side. If they have been eating recently, their left sides can bulge-quite a bit, even! But if you look at Butterscotch here, her right side is also rotund, and is actually almost angular! And Sally is just a little barrel on legs! She doesn't have the protruding look that Butter has, but she is also due a month after Butter. They say that there is really no way to tell if a goat is pregnant just by looking at them...but I'm pretty convinced. And unless I totally missed it, I'm fairly certain they never went back into heat-for over a month I took them up to visit Pete, and they were not interested AT ALL!



















Now about due dates. A goats' average gestational period is 150 days. I've heard of as few as 142, but never on a first freshener. Some will go even to 154 days. (Any of my goat-world friends reading this, please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this)!
My family has been wondering about plans for celebrating Christmas together, and I kept saying I had to check when Butter is expected to kid, as I didn't want to be away when she's due. So I finally checked the calendar in the barn, where I record all this stuff, and counted 150 days from the first time I bred her to Stinky Pete. Guess when she's expected to kid?
CHRISTMAS DAY!!!