Life Goes On

This has been sort of a rotten week where my work with adoption goes. Visas continue to go unissued. Children that should not still be waiting are still waiting, their dreams of a family dashed. My friends in Ghana finding it hard to believe in themselves and the work that they do because sometimes we Americans can be so ugly. Ugh. Just hard stuff. But as I review the week in pictures it hits me how fun the week has been for the kiddos (which brings me great joy).

Homeschool is going phenomenally well this year. Stupendous. Taevy and Samren are motivated to do their work; their work isn't too much or too little; and I'm finding time to get everything done on my end as well. We're using Time4Learning as our core and supplementing with other things. This week one of the T4L science assignments was to make a model of Saturn (learning about models). We didn't have the crafty items called for, so we modified the assignment to "Make a model of Saturn out of found items." This was Taevy's model. Isn't that smart? An old (rather dirty) fish bowl with several head bands. =-)

Ever since Taevy was about Kendi's age she has LOVED dressing alike. It's an interesting long-term interest of hers. Sometimes she dresses like me; sometimes she coordinates all four kids to dress in "school uniforms;" but the last 10 days or so it's been all about Taevy and Kendi dressing alike. We got down into the 60's at night and 80's during the day this week, so my kids have decided it must be fall and that they are cold!
Thank you to MARY for blessing us with the wonderful dolls from "around the world!" Mary thought our girls might enjoy these, but actually 3 of 4 kiddos were super excited when two huge boxes of dolls representing many parts of the world hit our doorstep on Friday! The children have picked out two each (the 3 that are interested in dolls) and have chosen some of the other ones to give as gifts to family/friends this Christmas. We plan to send some of the others to Ghana so that some little girls or boys there can have a special doll as well. What a wonderful gesture Mary. Taevy said specifically to please thank you for sending the Asian dolls. Thank you again!We are currently reading "The Courage of Sarah Noble" as part of our homeschool. The unit study we're doing with it suggests various activities you can do for enrichment, one of which was to "sleep outside with a blanket" (like Sarah Noble does when she is traveling with her father in 1706). It took them a couple of weeks to get up their courage and figure out sleeping arrangements, but they finally did it last night!

Presenting Gillispie Kid camp site. Bright is in a $2 "tent" that our neighbor got for the kids. The girls are in a "tent" that we got the kids for Christmas last year. Samren wins the award for most original. He is in a foldable dog crate! LOL! As you can see, Taevy is not such a low maintenance camper, with her book shelf and backpacks full of clothes.
I went out at 1am to check on them and found 4 sleeping kiddos and 2 sleeping dogs (Kilo was outside to protect her babies, and Lucy slept in the dog crate with Samren. Notice Samren sleeping with "Sammy Bear." I love that my almost 9 year old still finds comfort in a cuddly bear. =-)
Taevy is looking rather "drunk" from Tampico and Goldfish crackers (their late night snack)!

I nearly freaked out at first because I couldn't find Kendi in the pile of blankets!
I think Bright got the short end of the stick. Half his body was outside of his tent, but he was courageous and sucked it up. Of course, Kilo picked him to sleep by, since he was the least protected (she's a good dog that way).

So...life goes on. It was a bad week in my adoption world. But my children had lots of fun this week, which in the end, refreshes me and keeps me putting one foot in front of the other!

Anita