Ace or Base?

No Kidding!

In the last two weeks, three people whom I know personally have had babies.  This is really not that shocking in the grand scheme of things nor has it never happened before, but...

Baby #1 (my cousin's) was named Jase

Baby #2 (my friend/coworker's) was named Case

Baby #3 (friend of the family) was named Jace

My wonderful friend, Lora, who is an aunt to that last baby suggested (after I told her this phenomenon) that maybe we should name this baby Ace!  I also suggested that maybe we should just pick a random consonant and add it to the front of Ace or Ase to make a name that sticks with the trend (e.g. Mace, Base, Dace, Lace, etc.)  We laughed about it, but later that evening as I was perusing some celebrity news, I learned that someone else has already beat us to the punch!

Jessica Simpson :)

At the end of June (I know I'm always a bit behind with news of any kind), she named her baby, you guessed it, ACE!

Sorry Lora...guess we'll have to stick with some random consonant or NOT! :)

From His Mouth to God's Ear!

Last night Luke came into the house to show me his "treasures"...a baby grasshopper and a baby toad.  Of course, they were only in his hand (not a container) and when he opened his hand to show me the toad-it hopped out.

I quickly went to get a container for the grasshopper so we could catch the toad.  We looked under the recliner where it had hopped-nothing.  We looked under the nearby couch-nothing.  We looked around the nearby toybox-nothing.  He looked behind the TV-nothing.  There was a toad loose in my house!  I am not above having said that if I found the toad it was going to die, which (I should have known better...) brought on panic by the son.

We both calmed down and he continued looking for a few more minutes until bedtime.  Admittedly, he was one very worried little boy as he headed up to bed.  As he was changing in the bathroom, this is the conversation that took place...

Luke:  "Mom, when is God going to come down from Heaven again?"
Me:  "Well, nobody knows that for sure."
Luke:  "Oh...well when God comes down from Heaven, there is something I want to tell him."
Me:  "Is it about your toad?"
Luke:  "Yes"
Me:  "You know that God can hear you all of the time so you can tell him whatever you need to tell him now and he will hear it."
Luke (talking to God):  "God, will you please keep my toad safe and help me find it tomorrow?  Please, God, please."
Me:  "When I said before that the toad would die that is because if it stays stuck in the house-it will die because this isn't the right place for it.  The house doesn't have the right food it needs."
Luke:  "Ok mom.  Will God protect the toad?"
Me:  "If you asked him, he will do his best and we will look for it again tomorrow."

I put him to bed and after a few tosses and turnings and anxiety induced memory moments...he fell asleep.  I went back downstairs and relayed the lost toad information to Scott (who had been outside mowing the grass when all of this occurred) and went to sit down in my recliner.

Lo and behold, out of the corner of my eye, I see something move.  Sitting right there in the middle of the dining room floor is THE TOAD!  I caught it (alive and well mind you) and put it on the fireplace mantel where Luke would see it first thing in the morning.  When he came into our bedroom this morning, I told him that God answered his prayer and there was one happy little boy heading down to the living room to see his what was once "lost" toad! :)

DONE!!

With classes that is :)

Call me a nerd, but I did actually enjoy going back to school and taking classes over the past almost 2 years.   It is, however, also a relief to know that I am done!  Hopefully, I will be getting to spend some more time on here sharing our world with all of you and in the meantime, there is a lot to do in my actual world over the next several weeks too!  It will be great to be able to solely focus on the people and things in my own home knowing that there are no classes hovering in the the near future...at this point too though, it does feel a bit weird to not have a class waiting in the wings! :)

Enjoy the rest of your summers-I will be enjoying mine!!!

10 Years!

Happy Anniversary to my husband Scott today!

We've reached the 10 year milestone, but I think there are good odds that we would both probably call this past year, the craziest of all of them thus far.  Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought a year ago at this time that our family would double in size in just one year...family of 3 to a family of 6 (coming this August!)

One year ago, I was starting to believe that we would probably never have a foster care placement and even if we did, we were only certified for one child at that time.  How quickly things can change in just a matter of days.  One year ago today, I was feeling disappointed by these thoughts because I KNEW pregnancy was not an option for us as far as building our family.

Sometimes, I really get the feeling that God is looking down on me laughing and saying, "Oh, my dear child, you have NO IDEA the things I have in store for you! hehe"

That is the magic of one year I suppose :)

So, in honor of our 10 years, here is a little list I've made to share with all of you...

1:  Sweet & challenging boy we get to call our son
2:  Sweet & sassy girls whom we've been blessed to share our lives with for the past year
3:  Couches we have gone through thus far (in our defense the first two were already several years old when they came into our possession)
4:  Years of infertility that haunted us in the beginning of our marriage
5:  Semesters of college courses and late night homework
6:  Years of parenthood-we had no idea what I wild ride it would be either
7:  Months of pregnancy now under our belt
8:  Cats & kittens (at the moment anyway) with whom the kids love to play
9:  Equals the combined ages of all of our kids at this point in time (I had to stretch to come up with something for this one ;)
10:  Years of marriage and (hopefully) many more to come!

Thanks for sticking with us through all of the crazy! :)

An "F" for creativity...

is what grade this post would receive :)

The summer grind begins with my last class officially starting today.  I shall do my best to check in here as often as I can and to even post something worthwhile maybe ;)

Creativity can be hard to come by with five research article reviews plus a research paper to write over the next 3-4 weeks (along with a few other assignments)...a little creativity would make those research articles so much nicer to read too.  Alas, that is not meant to be!

I will do my best to suck some creativity from life to share with you here over the next few weeks.  I will try not to sink to the level of posting research information just for the sake of "having something to post" :)  If creativity eludes me, then I will try to at least come up with a few nice rants to share along the way...even better, I know! ;)

So, even if this post would fail miserably, at least I feel confident in the fact that my research reviews and paper will probably fair much better if past performance can be counted on as an indicator of future performance...even though they are terrible suckers of creativity!

We Be Jammin'

On Memorial Day Monday, Luke and I went strawberry picking.  Keep in mind that this was something I despised doing as a kid.  Early morning, picking and sweating, bugs, then coming home to clean and prepare them.  A common argument heard in our house was "We don't even like strawberries!  Why do we have to help with this?"  Mom would always respond with (keep in mind too that she knew that we knew that she also did not like strawberries) "Your dad likes them and he has to work.  Sometimes when you're an adult you do things you don't like for someone else."  or "You'll understand when you grow up."  Another often heard expression was, "Sometimes when you're an adult, your tastes change and you like things that you did not like as a kid."

At the time, all of these logics seemed quite illogical, but DANG-I hope I'm the mom that was always right someday! ;)

I honestly admit that I had yet to go strawberry picking as an adult until Monday.  I obviously did not know what I was doing at first either...

*We got all the way to our row with our metal trays and the guy says..."You're going to need baskets to put the berries in..."  I obviously misunderstood the people at the front-I thought it was either one or the other, not both the basket and the metal tray.

*As we get settled back into our row with BOTH items, the lady at the front starts yelling..."WE NEED THE PERSON IN THE BLUE VAN TO MOVE IT!  YOU CAN'T PARK IT HERE!" Repeat (5 dozen times-well, maybe it was only 4 or 5 times, but geez...she didn't give anyone much of a chance to claim it!)

Finally, after moving my car and walking back to our row, we got the chance to actually pick some strawberries.  Luke stuck with it fairly well for about 1/2 a tray and then he got tired so he chose to keep the conversation going while I finished the picking.  I wondered quite often if everyone gets to have such a diverse coversation when picking strawberries.  Some of our topics included:  people in Mexico speaking Spanish; people in France speaking French; people in both countries probably also speaking English; dolphins; orcas aka "killer whales;  traveling for a family wedding next summer; hotels; and why there was straw in the strawberry patch.

I worked up the strawberries a couple nights later.  The following day Luke and Big Sis helped me to make our first ever batch of strawberry freezer jam.  They were wonderful helpers and the jam has turned out quite well.  I'm looking forward to the upcoming blueberry and peach seasons to try our hands at some other jams, but I think I may have to study up before I take Luke fruit picking again!  I barely survived being able to answer all of his strawberry picking questions! :)

She Will Survive...

but maybe not when left to her own devices :)

She just turned 21 months and loves to try new things...foods & non-foods that is.

Many things go to Little Sis's mouth throughout the course of a typical day, but today the list also included the following outside items:

*cat food
*dandelions
*a random "daisy like" weed flower (that was immediately taken away because I had no idea if it was "safe" or not-I need a reference books for which weeds are okay to eat and which ones are not I think ;)
*a stick
*attempt to drink from the cat bowl

It's definitely going to be a tiring summer trying to keep my eyes on all three of them, especially with the next one wearing me out from the inside too :)

I wouldn't have it any other way though...unless maybe I could chase them around on a Hoveround with my feet propped up along the way! ;)