You know fall is in the air...

...when the first batch of pumpkin muffins comes out of the oven!

Understanding the "wait"

Just speaking from my heart again, for the oh, 7 or 8 of you that read this blog!! The summer months have felt like an even crazier roller coaster ride on this miracle of adoption. Our agency is busy and we have heard about different situations and are still waiting and praying about some of those. I had an "aha" moment during our family devotions a few nights ago that is making me understand why God has put us on this journey. Back in July we got a call from our agency about the possibility of adopting a sibling group... would be willing to take a set of 2 young children close in age? Of course, we said "yes" and tried not to get excited. Emily was very excited because she declared sometime back in the spring (in a very prophetic manner), "Mommy, we have waited so long for our baby that I think God will reward us for being so patient and give us 2!" Our agency told us a little about this young woman's story and her name and we immediately began to pray for her...which is pretty much all we can do when we hear news like this.

Fast forward a few weeks in time...we got news that she had not shown up for a meeting with our birthmother counselor so Dave and I just assumed that the Lord has closed the door on that situation and we just continue to pray for our birthmother, wherever she may be. But for some reason, my kids keep praying for this woman by name! It hit me like a ton of bricks the other day when I heard them do this... here they were praying for a woman who is a complete stranger to them, who obviously needs prayer because she was considering making a choice to give up her babies and what if they are the only people in the world praying for her right now?!? God has called us on this journey to teach us about faith that moves mountains and I am humbled and in awe to see my children developing this relationship with their Father at such a young age! I knew that this journey would totally change Dave and I forever, but I had not idea it would trickle down to my kids like this! Please keep praying for us, pray that God would continue to give us patience and strength during this time.

A Shelf Makeover...

I've developed this new "waiting for baby" hobby lately of picking up items at yard sales that are considered "junk" and making them over for practical use in our home. It fills two of my hobbies...having projects and decorating on the cheap! Yesterday I picked this shelf up for $ 1.00. The paint was pretty worn and it had these lovely rose stickers on it and fancy trim hot-glued to the top. I also found this set of cute little jars, all 4 for 50 cents!

I stopped at Home Depot on the way home and bought a 97 cent can of spray paint and a 69 cent dowel rod.

I had Dave drill holes in the sides of it to run the dowel rod through, cleaned it, and gave it (and the jar lids) a fresh coat of white paint, and made myself a lovely shelf for scrapbook supplies for $ 2.66!

Cartouches and Mummies

We're still studying ancient Egypt this week, and we started the week studying hieroglyphics and making a cartouche (an Egyptian nameplate). We mixed up a salt dough and the kids rolled it into a shape for their nameplate.

We used toothpicks to trace out the hieroglyphics that represented letters from their names.

After the dough was baked and cooled, we spray painted it and then buffed it up to look old.

Next, we studied mummification...Why the Egyptians believed in this practice...and how it was done. We even learned the gross things like how they would pull the brain out through the nose, remove all the vital organs (except the heart, this was left in the body and preserved in salt) and the other organs were embalmed in 4 separate jars. We decided to try our hand out at mummification with these victims...

Emily made me cover the other Barbie as she said it was not appropriate to post naked barbie pictures on the blog! We cut up strips of one of Daddy's old t-shirts for our mummy wraps.

Next, we died them in tea to make them look old...

Then, we learned how to wrap the mummies....

Happy kids with their mummies!

Something to do with Seashells...

It never seems to fail that every time we go to the beach we come home with a plastic bag full of seashells. They usually hang around the house for a few days and then I eventually throw them away, how many seashells does one house need anyway? Yesterday, Em and I came up with a cute game we made with them that we will keep forever. We started by washing and cleaning all the shells...after being sealed up in a bag for two days they were a little stinky! Next, we put different sets of two matching stickers on the back of each shell, we used sets of fish, shells, seahorses, etc in keeping with the beach theme. We painted a layer of mod podge over each sticker to be sure they stayed in place.

After they were dry, we stored them in a plastic tub and created our own game of seashell memory. It's a little more challenging than the usual game since we made sure that each set of stickers went on two totally different shells. It's a great fun and free souvenir of our trip to the beach.

Bargain Beach Getaway

We needed to get away...even if just for a night...and the kids have been begging to go to the beach..so we took a spur of the moment bargain beach over night getaway. Dave gets these "points" from his distributor for buying irrigation supplies, in small quantities they are pretty much worthless but we like to save them up and about twice a year get something fun with them. This time we had enough for a free hotel night, and dinner out so we paired that with a hotel that had free breakfast, and a picnic lunch and we got away for just the price of a tank of gas and enjoyed 2 days of fun on the beach! Hurricane Bill is out there churning on the water and making some great waves for boogie-boarding, we had a blast (when we could actually stay above the water!)

We had some fun swimming in the hotel pool...

and enjoyed a nice dinner out and walked a few miles browsing through some shops...this girl is 9 and still thinks she can hop on Daddy's back whenever her legs get tired of walking!

The first thing I thought when I saw this picture was how there are "holes" in it waiting for more little faces...maybe this will be the last picture of the four of us???? The second thing I thought was "Were my feet sinking down in the sand?? Or is my almost 11 year old nearly as tall as his mama??"

Salt Dough Map!

We're studying Egypt in school this week and the kids made a salt dough map. The first step is to draw out how you would like you map to look on a piece of cardboard. Next, we mixed up the salt dough

Then you press the dough onto your map, you insert toothpicks where you would like to add labels markers for rivers, cities, lakes, etc...

We let the map harden overnight, it becomes almost as hard as cement, and then painted it.

Their finished product!