Sarah's plan

Tonight the kids were talking about where they were going to live when they grow up and Sarah said that she was going to move to Bora Bora. She has stuck with this "plan" for the past year or so thus far. This time I asked her what she would do since the island is very small and there aren't many employment opportunities. After thinking for a few seconds she says, "I can be a tourist there and make lots of money that way. That would be easy."

Wouldn't we all love to make money traveling and being a tourist? I sure would! Sarah didn't quite understand what the word meant.

BTW, Malakai is going to live in Yemen, Isaiah in India, and Judah is Madagascar. Alana never could make a decision; that's just like her.

Climbing trees

On Saturday we worked on the house with a short break for roasting hot dogs over a fire. Jonah decided to climb a massive fir tree and only stopped climbing after I reminded him that I would be left alone with 6 children if he fell;) Sarah decided to try her hand at climbing it too and did really well until her fear kicked in. She says next time she is going to go higher since the picture doesn't look like she went that high.










Justus decided to get in on the action too, but on a much smaller scale.

The house is coming along...

And I must put in a picture of my ginormous freezer that I am SO excited about. This puppy is much bigger than I thought it would be with a whole 25 cu. ft. of space. Finally, I will be able to buy frozen items in bulk or when they are seriously on sale. Yay!

My computer's back

And it is so nice! There were major problems with it but they were able to pull the hard drive, recover my pictures and get it running fine. My problem is that now I have NONE of my stuff saved. All my favorite blogs are gone along with all my favorite sites! So, if you read here and want me to check out your blog will you please leave me a comment with your blog addie so that I can add it to my favorites? I would really appreciate it!

Pure sweetness

Don't let that sour face fool you. This boy is pure sweetness, well at least this morning he was. :) I heard him calling my name from his room at 5:30 a.m. and went to find him with his PJ's off and freezing cold. This is something he does almost every night so that he can scratch(eczema) and wakes up cold every morning. I brought him in to my bed, got him cuddled in my arms and wrapped in lots of blankets to get him warm. As he starts to doze off to sleep again he takes this big sigh and says, "Cuddle Mommy make Justus happy." I went back to sleep with a huge smile on my face:)

Dreams come true

Today, a mysterious envelope was in the mailbox. It had no return address and on the front was Sarah's name typed out with our address. It looked so strange that I decided I should open it and not tell Sarah, thinking it may be something from her birth mom(who we have NO contact with) that I wouldn't want her to see. I was surprised. In the envelope was a piece of yellow paper, inside of which was $20. Sarah's face when she saw that money was beautiful to see. First thing she said was, "Can I buy my doll tonight?!"

And yes, we just finished making the purchase of Sarah's new American Girl Doll. She is beyond excited and can't wait for it to come.

So, to whoever you are, mysterious money giver, Sarah thanks you over and over and over again. And I thank you to, for making my sweet girl very happy tonight. ;)

God's creation

Tonight on our drive home from town the kids were quieting down as it was past their bed time. All of the sudden Malakai bursts out and exclaims,
"Moooommmyyy! Look at the Bee-oo-tiful stars! God's cray-ation is soooo amazing, isn't it Mommy? I just love all the stars up there in duh pretty sky and them are SOOOO wonderful." Then he gave a big sigh and didn't say anything else.

I love his passion, don't you?

The dream of 2 little boys

Today I listened to Malakai and Isaiah having a discussion about what they were going to do when they grow up. Here are their plans.

- They are going to move to Liberia and go to the grocery store to buy lots of rice for all the people so they won't die from being hungry.

- They are going to buy lots of sinks so that the people can have good water and not die.

-They will tell the people about Jesus so that they can go to heaven.

- They will search the villages to find Isaiah's birth mom and pray for her to get well.

Oh, the dreams of a child. Can you imagine 2 brothers(one black, one white) going to Liberia with a dream to help make Liberia a better place and help people live? I pray their dreams only get bigger as they get older!

God is in the little things

Don't mind Malakai, I tried cropping the picture but it wouldn't download that way.


For Christmas Sarah was fortunate to receive $50. She has been saving for 7 months now to buy herself an American Girl Doll and was very excited to be able to add that $50 to her growing money bank. The morning after we got home, Sarah got out her money jar and started to count her money. When the amount counted up to just $16 short of the goal she couldn't believe it and dedicated to work harder to make some more money soon.
As we were sitting there I realized that she probably hadn't set aside her tithe in the tithe jar from her Christmas money and told her she needed to do so. So, she took out a dollar and started to get up when I reminded her it needed to be 10%. I helped her figure out 10% of $50 and her whole countenance fell and she began to complain.

"But Mom, if I give $5 whole dollars I'll need more than $20 to finally buy the doll. That's a lot more money! Why can't I just give a dollar?"

I then took the moment to remind her about why we tithe and that God will bless us because of our giving. I shared a few stories of my childhood with her remembering some BIG blessing to my parents when they had no more money for food but decided to tithe what they had anyways. She was disappointed, but she understood and that was the end of it.

Later that night, after a long day of errands, I opened the mail. There was a small package included from Jonah's aunt that had little envelopes for each child in it. I handed Sarah hers and she opened it. Can you believe that she found $30 in that envelope? The first thing that came out of her mouth was, "Mom! You were right! God blessed me even more because of my tithe!"

Made my heart smile and now I have a little girl who trusts in God's blessings.