Exhausted and Overwhelmed

Okay, I am totally exhausted and overwhelmed. Let's start with the exhausted part.

We had a BBQ sandwich fundraiser at church tonight, so my story begins on Friday. Friends from church purchased and smoked the meat for us. I picked it up from them about 8:00 Friday night. After getting settled in for the night, Tim and I got busy pulling the meat. We didn't get started until about 10:00. Tim had to quit about 11 or 11:30 and tend to the boys who were set for a "camp out" in the living room. (No tents. We just all sleep in the living room. They love it.) I finally quit pulling at 1:30 and got in bed by 2:00. We slept in Saturday morning, but I got started again on the pulling about 8:30 and pulled for another couple of hours. This was followed by a rushed trip of shopping for the dinner and picking up crockpots from my mother-in-law. Once home, I inhaled some lunch and took the boys to back-to-back birthday parties from 2:45 until 7:00.

I was so ready to catch up on some sleep, but I didn't make it to bed until about 11:30. Next, Colton woke me up about 1:30. He can't stand to be stopped up and unable to breathe. We moved to the couch where I slept sitting up beside him for about an hour. I later slid over enough to lie down on the couch and finally moved back to my own bed about 4:45. Whew! Finally, sleep.......NOT! Eli comes in at 5:30. "Can I have a drink of water?" "Can you get?" "Yes." and off he goes to get a drink from his water in the fridge. At least I didn't have to do much that time. Next my alarm goes off at 6:00, but I don't hear it until about 7:00.

Sunday arrived. Sunday morning service. Bro Jason preached a wonderful sermon connecting earthly adoption to being adopted into God's family. Hopefully hearts were stirred, and we won't be the only ones adopting for long. The afternoon is filled with last minute preparations. I got to church a little after 4:00 to start setting up. Choir practice was at 4:30. The concert was at 6:00. After cleaning up, we left the church at 8:00.

Now for the overwhelming part. When we got everything put away, I finally emptied our donation bucket to begin counting. By the time I finished, I was in tears. We needed around $500 to meet our self-imposed Phase 1 goal ($6000). Instead of that goal being met, it was crushed. After expenses, we cleared just over $2000!!! Praise God! Not only are we ready to start sending in paperwork, but I really needed that boost of support.

WOW! What a Weekend!

Update 3 of 3: Adoption Fundraiser

Tim has been working on his paperwork for the homestudy this summer. Unfortunately, he was interrupted by a storage barn that was calling to be built in the back yard. Time really began to crunch as the start of school hovered over us. Now he only has weekends to work on the barn, but it is almost finished. Once he does finish his part of the paperwork, I'll go back and redo the financial information. By then, we just might have the money we need to officially get started.

We have a fundraiser coming up at our church on August 30. If you are in the area, come by for the evening service. The choir is presenting a concert. Afterward, there will be a BBQ sandwich dinner as a fundraiser. They are planning to have homemade ice cream as well! Leading up to this fundraiser, our pastor is going to be preaching on adoption in the morning service. Hopefully, that will reach some of those who have simply not considered the great need of orphans worldwide. While I certainly hope for a financially successful fundraiser, it would be even greater if someone else decided to adopt.

Finally, we are still planning one more yard sale this year for some time in September. A good bit of stuff this time is coming from Tim's grandmother's former place. She recently moved in with my in-laws after a broken hip required a hip replacement, and she has graciously donated most of her stuff to us for the yard sale.

Update 2 of 3: 2nd Grade & Pre-K

Colton is SO excited to be in 2nd grade. Here is a look at what we will be studying this year.

• DiscipleLand 2 (All about the Bible...who wrote it, where did it come from, how do we use it...)
• Math-U-See: Gamma (starts with multiplication, and he is LOVING it!)
• Exploring Creation with Astronomy (already learned the planets in order as well as the names Copernicus and Galileo)
• The Story of the World: The Middle Ages (Even Eli enjoyed the Beowulf excerpt this week.)
• First Language Lessons 2 (grammar) (learned the being verbs this week)
• The Complete Writer 2 (copywork, narration (summarizing), and dictation)
• A Reason for Handwriting (handwriting practice...duh! He likes copying the Bible verses.)
• Building Spelling Skills
• The Learnables and Basic Structures: Spanish 2
• A Beka Health 2
• piano

I'm still trying to get Eli officially "excited" about pre-K. I'm only doing 2 subjects with him, even though he sometimes listens in on Colton's lessons. The plan is to do reading lessons on MWF and DiscipleLand (Old Testament stories) on TT. If we happen not to get to his schoolwork one day, though, we can easily do both subjects the next day.

Update 1 of 3: A Crazy Summer

Wow! Summer has been so crazy! I haven't had time to catch my breath...much less update my blog. So I'm going to try to make 3 updates (hopefully all today) to get you caught up.

First pictures of vacation in Williamsburg, VA...

Colton and Eli in front of the Governor's Palace

My three boys

Can I get one of these at the gift shop?

How about two?

The Cousins - Don't mess with them!

At William and Mary

Okay, it wasn't all historical...and you have to have ice cream

for lunch at least once on vacation.

A hut at Jamestown

One of the ships at Jamestown

Put those boys to work!