Adoption Fundraising

Well, here we go. For those of you who don't know, God has put an orphan from R****a on our hearts. We are praying now for Him to supply all that's needed to bring this little boy home and get him the medical care he needs.

In order to try to raise funds, I am hoping to do some architectural renderings of people's homes. This is the flyer that is being posted in some select locations in the area. There may be some other opportunities having to do with prints of past artwork for a local historical society. I am praying this will come about--it would really help with what seems like an unsurmountable sum of money we need to come up with for this adoption. We are trusting God to provide.

If you know someone who would like a pen and ink rendering of their home, please make them aware of this. I usually work from photographs that I take, so doing an illustration long distance is not a problem. Please keep us in your prayers as we seek God's will in this.

Marc hits 15!

June 3, 2008

Well, I'm about birthday-ed out at this point. Three birthdays in a row, all about 8 days apart. (Matt, then Claire, then Marc) The cakes, the presents, parties, and special dinners...you get the picture. Marc has the last birthday in the series: June 3, 1993 at 10:28 a.m. Since Marc is now in the teenage years, he usually needs a wake-up call to be available to sit on my lap at that "early" hour.

Marc's dinner request actually ended up being a hit with everyone. He wanted something with shrimp....so I found a great recipe from Emeril for shrimp scampi with a baked herbed rice pilaf. The dinner was topped off with his request of ice cream cake.

It amazes me (and ages me) that my baby is now 15. Fifteen or not, look at the baby face on that boy! (AKA sweetcheeks) I probably won't be able to say that next year, as he is growing up too fast!

The training wheels are OFF!

**Since I'm just starting my blogsite, many of these posts will not be in any kind of order.**

5/23/2008

Katie has been a proficient bike rider for quite some time now, so it was the natural order of events that the training wheels would soon be history. I think she was more ready for it than we were; she begged us for the longest time to take them off. I was definitely thinking I would need to buy stock in Band-Aids, but she surprised us and took off with no problem at all!

Claire was a whole different story. The over-protective mother in me balked at the thought of a legally blind child riding a bike. We did the larger tricycle, the Big Wheel, but they just didn't cut it for Claire. She wanted a big bike. After showing us that she could handle riding her sister's bike (with training wheels at that point) and talking to her ophthalmologist, we decided we would get her the bike for her 9th birthday. Before Chris could even take the wrench out of the tool chest to put the training wheels on, she took off on the bike! That child amazes me! She fell a couple of times, but she is tough, so she'd get up and get right back on the bike. So, no training wheels were even needed for Claire. They are both now very adept at bike riding and we have gone on a couple family treks with mom and dad, both at home and at the beach.

Where did the last 20 years go???!!

We have a tradition in our house that the birthday child has to sit on mommy's lap at the exact time when that child actually came into the world. At the time this tradition was started, I was not thinking ahead as to when the child might actually get taller than I am! So now my sweet baby Matthew (all 6'2" of him) tries very hard to fit on mom's lap without inflicting too much pain! He is all legs!

These pictures were taken back on May 17 at 5:08 p.m. That is when I officially became the mother of this wonderful, sweet boy (not a boy anymore!) 20 years ago! It is really hard to believe it has been 20 years! He has been such an incredible blessing to all of us! Enjoy every minute while your kids are small--it goes so, so fast!!!