The haircut

Did you see my new haircut in the pictures below? Like it? Hate it? I like it. Let me tell you how it came about because if you know me, I mean REALLY know me, then you know there is a story behind it. A funny one. My whole life is a funnny story so I'll fill you in on this episode.

My Ethiopian daughters love to slather lotion on me, comb or brush my hair, or any number of things that involve touch. So two Wednesdays ago Anna Mihret was combing one side of my head with a long, fine toothed comb and Abi Mulu was on the other side brushing. I was happily playing with my farm on Farm Town, which is on Facebook, and chatting online with my online friend and fellow Ethiopian adoptive parent Heidi. When Abi commented that Anna's comb was stuck. Several of the older kids came over to try and work it out. Problem was she had rolled the comb up my hair and possibly twisted it around a few times (I saw Adah Derartu do this to Addis's hair so now I know what happened.) After no success for the older kids I just sat at my computer with a big comb sticking out of my head wondering what I should do next.

Brittani, sister of Sarah's friend Hanna was willing to work on it, but that involved getting in the car and driving about twenty miles or so. I told Sarah I was NOT going to drive anywhere with a big comb sticking out of the back of my head. Even I have my limits.

Steve came home and he tried. My friend Judy stopped by and she tried and was successful with Steve's help. By the time the comb came out if was about an inch long. They had used a hacksaw, wire cutters and scissors trying to get it out and took about three hours to do all of this.

Now I was left with a HUGE knot, almost like a dreadlock and there was no way it would come untangled. No way. Uh uh. Not happening. We call Britt again, and she was now off work. She was willing to work on the knot but we had to go to her house. It was dark out so that was an acceptable option for me. As we drove by our church where our bookclub was going I waved my knot in the direction of the bookclub room and asked for prayer. Sarah and I laughed and giggled as we drove on.

Britt was such a sweetie. She laughed hysterically when she saw the knot and heard the story. Her dad Mike commented, "Are these the kind of people you tell us about at the shop?" She said, "Yes!" So she sat me down, diligently tried to untangle my knot and her face lit up when we told her she could cut it out. Oh the possiblities that held for her! Hair that hadn't been cut in about four years. She went to work and wahluh! My new do! Just an fyi, the girls aren't allowed to comb long hair anymore and if you see them coming at you with a comb, run.

Graduation Pictures

The cake at the combined graduation party for Taylor, Sarah & Hanna
Hanna, Taylor & Sarah
Sarah, Hanna & Taylor James accepting his promotion certificate from elementary to jr. highJoe accepting his promotion certificate from jr. high to high school
Joe & James
Joe
James
Joe, Mom & James
Joe & Mom
Mom & James Joe, Dad & James
Dad & James
Joe & Dad
Sarah's graduation board
Nathan was there in spirit.
Sarah walking into the graduation ceremony.
Mom getting a hug during the rose presentation to the parents.
Mom & Sarah
Sarah & Dad
She's so cute.
Accepting her diploma.
Goof-ball
Finally done!
Yeah! Hanna & Sarah
Sarah & Taylor

Shad & Sarah
Dad, Sarah, Mom
Dad & Sarah

Sarah at her graduation dinner. We all went to Fuddruckers.

Graduations & Promotions

Last week we Sarah graduated from home school high school and Joe promoted from junior high school to high school. James is "officially" a middle schooler entering the seventh grade. We had the ceremonies at College Avenue Baptist Church in San Diego with a full crowd in attendance. During the high school ceremony our family was able to share a half pew which means we were squished to the gills. Ten people in half a pew for HOURS on end. Not good. We managed to make it through intact. By the end of the ceremonies we had been there at least 6 1/2 hours. The children did pretty darn good though all of it. I thanked them afterwards for behaving so well.

Sarah looked lovely as she waited for her name to be called and very happy when it was her turn to accept her diploma. She even made funny faces for me while up on stage. (She does have her father's genes after all.)

Graduation Pictures

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=285805&l=1323510a8f&id=1659954950

Did America ever consider itself a Judeo-Christian nation?"

A conversation between man & son

Dad: Joel, quit farting around.
Joel: Can I fart in a triangle?

Steve & I looked at each other because we didn't catch on that Joel's statement was in response to Steve's warning. We just thought he came out of the blue with it. John was in a full belly laugh and we couldn't figure out what was so funny. When explained to us we also had tears in our eyes from laughing. Life with boys is never dull.

Voddie Baucham

We went to Shadow Mountain Community Church last night for their summer series. Voddie Baucham was speaking which was the draw there for us. He is a refreshing drink in a parched land. He is getting the message out there that we have believed and practiced for a LONG time. Thank God for men of God who speak the TRUTH of God and His Word.
www.familydrivenfaith.org www.voddiebaucham.org

Preach it, brother!

Adoptive Family Get-Together

Saturday our local Ethiopian adoptive family Yahoo group had a gathering at the beach. We reconnected with friends and met new families. Adah had a great time playing with Dori, who is about the same size and has the same spunkiness as she does, the two little peas in a pod. One man was getting a kick out of Anna's dismissive look. If you speak to her and she doesn't know you or want to acknowledge you, she will look you in the eye and turn her head with a very serious face, almost as though she is too good to be bothered with you. We got to hug up on Isaiah whom we met in Ethiopia and traveled home with. He's about a year and a half or so now. Cute little guy.

The kids had fun playing on the park equipment and kicking the soccer ball around. I had fun talking to other parents about our lives. One mom I had met before either one of us had Ethiopian children, she now has three (she was going for one) and I have four (I was going for one, originally). Seven kids brought into our lives and families, blessing us beyond measure. Each one looks different yet the same. They all have an amazing story, an amazing happiness, and an amazing love. We're just thankful that we get to experience it with them.

A couple of bugs stopped by this week........

Senior Banquet

Yesterday our school Heritage Christian had their senior banquet to honor all of its home school seniors.

Our senior this year is Sarah.Sarah and her friends Aliza and Seth who happen to be sister & brother.Steve giving his blessing to Sarah.
Seniors-Sarah is in front

A Day In My Life

Since we decided that Joe would continue to be home educated through high school I looked at our ISP's Class Day II class offerings. Physical Science Lab is offered so I signed him up for that class. We are able to drop off our high school students, but I don't like to do that and signed the rest of us up to go too.

As I was heading to the car I was chatting with my friend Pam and told the girls to go get into the car. They obediently went to the car and after a few minutes they shut the doors and locked the car, from the inside.

All of a sudden the horn started blaring in panic mode. It thought it was being stolen and was reacting to this hostile attack against it. I don't have the "clicker" "remote" for it as it has been lost for over a year now so I couldn't just press a button to deactivate it. I told Addis to unlock the car from the inside and she did but it kept honking and honking and honking. FINALLY it went off only to keep honking ANYTIME we did ANYTHING to it. By now office workers are looking out the window, women are coming up to my car to get a gander at what is going on. (Did you know that I make an impression wherever I go, whether I like it or not?-With 12 kids, two colors, adults and babies-that tends to happen)

I decide I'm going to go home with my horn blaring and at least give the people at the church/school some peace and quiet. As I was driving through the parking lot with my horn blowing John said, "Mom, someone is coming who wants to talk to you." So I stopped and it was Yukon Don. Yukon Don is a family friend who does Bible Study with Steve on Friday mornings and is a handyman by trade. Thank you Lord! He worked and fiddled around for a while and could not figure out where the fuse was for the horn. He finally found it and took it out. Problem was my car would not go into drive unless the horn fuse was in. He put it back in and I shifted into Drive and then he took the fuse back out. Oh, the peace, the quiet! It had been honking for about twenty minutes.

I drove home with five of the kids in the car with me. All was well but I knew I couldn't do the errands that I wanted to so home bound we were. As soon as we pulled onto the driveway I turned off the car and tried to restart it, it didn't work. Steve came home and tried to figure it out, he couldn't either. He disengaged the battery thinking if it sat for while maybe that would work. Nope.

We had to get to a graduation celebration so we left it, hood propped for later pondering. On our way home, Sarah says to me, "You know this happened the other night at Youth. James made it go off and I stuck the key in the door and it went off." Huh? Are you kidding me?! It took a 17 year old girl to tell three adults how to disengage the horn. We tried it. It worked!

I had Steve call Don to tell him what we figured out just in case it happened to another home school mom and his assistance was needed. He told Steve, "I've been going to Class Day for 3-1/2 years and it's never happened before, I hope to go another 3-1/2 years before it happens again. Hilarious.

Home School Convention

Last weekend we went to our local home school convention sponsored by Christian Family Schools of San Diego. The main speaker was Voddie Baucham.
If you've never heard Voddie speak you're in for a delight. I have YouTube videos below for your listening pleasure if you have time to listen.

We were challenged in many areas and reconfirmed our decision to home educate our children, even the one going into high school. We have Joe signed up with a charter school. A great charter school. Can't say anything bad about it. BUT! It is a government school. Period. It will always be a government school. So I'll have to buck up and get through high school once again. (I've done this four times now you would think it's not a big deal.) Voddie told us, "Don't quit!!" That was what I needed to hear. I broke the news to my son that he would continue to have me as his teacher and he took it very well.

We were challenged in not letting boys and girls playing contact sports together. When boys are physically pushing girls and competing with them they are not learning to protect and cherish them. As it turns out the soccer team Joe had tried out for was allowing a girl to play on the team. Now you can't tell me that she is THAT good that she can't fit on a girl's club soccer team. I'm not buying it. We told the coach that Joe wouldn't be playing on a team that had girls on it, especially at fourteen years old. Could this be why we have more domestic violence? There are NO gender lines between men and women, boys and girls? Come on! Let boys be rough, physical, sweaty, aggressive, testosteronish (my own word) without a GIRL in the mix. I told him our concerns and we told him he couldn't play. He took that well too. He is a REALLY GREAT kid. It turns out that a higher level team was having tryouts the same day I told him he probably wasn't going to play on that team and he went. He thanked me when he got back in the car after the tryout. He liked being challenged, he liked not being the best player on the team, and if we had not put our foot down, he wouldn't have had the opportunity. So now we just hope he makes the team. :-)

I came home after the conference and downloaded podcasts of Voddie's for my iPod and have all ready listened to a few. He is inspiring, rightly handling the Word of Truth, and challenging. Thanks for a great weekend, Voddie!

Life: Imagine the Potential

Mountain Camping pictures

We went camping in our local mountains a few weeks ago. We camped at Paso Picacho and were able to go to Green Valley Falls twice to enjoy the rocks and little waterfalls. The kids had fun there and enjoyed our camp as well. Below are some pictures that I took of the nature scenes around me. You can see more of my people pics on facebook.


The spider is at the bottom right.
Textures in God's world amaze me. This beautiful dove flew right across the path in front of me Blue Jay (I think.)WoodpeckerThere is a deer just coming out of the bushes. The little things poking out of the ground are mini pine trees. The area was devastated from the Cedar Fire in 2003.

Biblical Womanhood by Voddie Baucham

Anna's Birthday

Anna celebrated her 3rd birthday the other day.

Isn't she sweet?
She's so funny. This is her REAL personality. She doesn't show it much outside of our home unless she is very comfortable. New suits. Is Adah Derartu to much? Look at her posing. I think I have my hands full with that one.
Oh to be 3 again!

Camping

We went camping in the desert two weeks ago, and we had a glorious time with friends and two other families. There was literally nothing there but dirt, dirt, dirt, did I say dirt? and various desert plants. The first day we set up house and got everything in order. Some went riding on desert toys, (quads, motorcycles, golf cart, and a Rhino). My kids had a blast, I had a blast and so did my husband. We don't have desert toys but we sure had fun using them!

On the second day I got to go out on the long two hour ride for the day in the Rhino. It was so much fun! We drove up and down hills, over big bumps, and went fast over the straight-aways. Our team only had one flat tire that trip so that was good. There was a spare tire so we were quickly up and going again.

That night we decided to have a taco bar potluck. It was delicious! Steve took fresh corn tortillas and grilled them on top of our propane stove to heat them up. Everything was so yummy! With the work divied up between three families it was easy too.

I was able to take some pictures of the desert flora and flauna in attempts to be creative. Enjoy.

Ethiopian Millenium

We were in Addis two weeks before the Millenium in August 2007!

God Bless the Children