Little miss curls

This morning I took advantage of the crisp morning light and grabbed one of my favorite subjects, and did a mini photo shoot with her. We put curlers in her hair last night and this morning she woke up with these loose bouncing curls. I just couldn't resist the cuteness and had to take some pictures. 

An adoption homecoming

There is something so BEAUTIFUL about watching a family journey through adoption and get to have a front row seat at the grand fanale! Tonight at 5 p.m., Allison Weber made her debut as her very tired, but beyond blessed mommy and daddy, arrived back from Ethiopia. Their two girls waited anxiously at the airport for their return and couldn't wait to see their baby sister for the very first time. 

Here are the girls as they spot their mom and dad coming down the walkway. 

First family picture, The Weber 5. 

One proud daddy!

 A special moment between sisters!

 mommy and daughter. Isn't Allison beautiful! Oh my, she is just a doll!

Of course adoption is near and dear to our hearts and it was 5 years ago that the Weber's were at the airport as we welcomed our daughter home from South Korea, a moment we will never forget. And this will be a day that the Webers will always have and hold near and dear to their hearts. Blessings Weber family, we are so happy for you guys!!!!!!  

history in the making

"Porque en su mano están las profundidades de la tierra,
Y las alturas de los montes son suyas." Psalm 95:4
"In his hand are the depths of the earth,
and the mountain peaks belong to him". Psalm 95:4

Being able to watch history in the making is truly an amazing thing! Tuesday evening we tuned in to the rescue efforts to free the miners from Chile who had been trapped for 69 days! Our entire family was glued to the TV as the first rescuer made his way up to the top from 2,041 miles below the surface of the earth.

I snapped this picture as the rescue capsule landed where they 33 miners waited for their turn to be rescued. 

 And this one as the first miner reached the top, his son was crying so hard as he saw his dad for the first time in over 2 months.

 And here he is hugging the president of Chile. It was such a sight to see! Michael and I ended up watching the first 5 men rescued, then we headed to bed just before midnight. We woke up the next morning and tuned in again as they were rescuing the 14th miner. During homeschool we left the TV on and then after some errands in the afternoon we watched the final rescue efforts that evening. It was so neat, and emotional to watch these 33 men pulled to the surface. I hope our kids will remember this for a long time and be able to tell their kids 20 years from now that they witnessed history in the making.

Random October

I had planned on adding a lot of pictures to this post but that will have to wait because it seems I have run out of photo space on my blog and I have to purchase more space if I want to add more pictures. I knew this day would come, at least it will only cost me $5 a year. But here are the pictures I was able to download. They are from Chusok, the Korean Thanksgiving celebration we had with our adoption agency, Dillon Southwest. It's always great to be around other families who have adopted from South Korea. Anna really enjoyed it this year and came home asking if we could please move to South Korea because she really likes their fans, their rice, and she wonders what the houses look like there. I am very happy she is embracing her culture and I hope we can continue to develop that in her. 

The adoption agency had special visitors fly in from South Korea. The first three Korean women you see here pictured left to right are all foster moms. They take care of the babies until they are ready to go to their forever families. The woman on the far right is an intake worker and she works with the birth mothers when they make the choice of giving their babies up for adoption. Anna's foster mom, Mrs. Lee was not one of the visitors that came. We hope some day to be able to meet her. And we are not sure if this particular intake worker was the one who worked with Anna's birth mother.

Taking a bow.

There were also Korean dancers.

We were able to have this woman write Annagrace's name in Korean, or Hangul as it is more appropriately called.

Anna found this very interesting. 

Moving on, Jadon found this praying mantis the other day and kept it for a few days. We took a picture before Jadon let it go. 

Michael was out of town on Sunday and the kids and I decided to sleep in and do church at home. We do this every once in a while and we really enjoy it when we do. I had the kids be in charge this time and they each had to come up with one thing to do. Jadon decided to do an experiment and explain how when we sin, it separates us from God. He demonstrated this with water, pepper, and soap. When you put a drop of soap in the water, the pepper clumps together and moves to the other side of the bowl. I'm not sure what components represent God, sin, and us but he did a pretty good job explaining it to us.

Anna told us a Bible story (from memory) about the farmer who puts three of his workers in charge of his money while he goes away. Here she is saying, "and he gave the first man 5 talents..."

I followed up by reading the Bible story.

Camden chose to give us all communion and since we didn't have any grape juice, we pretended to dip the bread in the juice. Camden explained about Jesus dying on the cross and how the bread represents the skin that was broken.

Anna played Jesus Loves me on the piano. 

And that's all folks! I had so much more random October pics I wanted to share but this will have to do until I buy more space. See you after I make that purchase!

photo project part 2

We went to the park tonight and I found some more letters for my little project I'm working on. I think I have Jadon's name all done but I am not sure about the "n", not settled on that one yet. 

a photo project

I got the idea a while back of creating the kids names out of pictures and then putting it together in some frames. So I have been keeping my eyes open for things that make letters. I have several more letters to find but here is what I have so far. Below is the "C" for Camden. This is the arm of an outdoor patio chair.

I really like this "e", I will be using this for the "e" in Camden's name. This is part of our brick fence we have in our front yard. So I will probably use the above "C" and then lower case for the a-m-d-e-n.

This is the "O" I will use this for the "O" in Jadon's name. This is found on the outdoor chair as well.

 I really like this "D" for Jadon's "D". This is from a pot I have on the front porch. I may stick with all capitals to spell J-A-D-O-N.

I will be using this "A" for Anna's "A". This is the back of her bike and I actually like it dirty because it shows how much she rides it and what a "tough" girl she is. How fun would it be to find things that represent each kid that I could use for their letters. I had thought about legos to create at least one letter in each of their names since they all love legos but on the other hand, I would like to keep it nature related. We go up north in a few weeks so I hope to finish this project while we are there. I hope to have the pictures taken, printed and in frames by the time Christmas gets here so I can have then laying out by their presents on Christmas morning.

The mother of all storms...

...came today when we had over 80 people at our house. That's right, 80 people! I belong to a homeschool field trip group and Michael and I decided to host a field trip at our house that involved Crime Scene Investigating. We had several outdoor stations set up where the kids would be rotating through learning about finger printing, interviewing techniques, vehicle searches, watching a staged crime that we videotaped, and talking to detectives. There was a chance of storms when we started the field trip at 1:00 and by 1:40 a microburst hit our area and we had no choice but to have everybody come into our home. I think it's safe to say we have never had that many people in our home at one time. It was a bit dissapointing with all the work we have put into this field trip and then we didn't even get to do half the stuff we had planned. But all in all, it was a field trip that will not soon be forgotten. Here are some pictures to tell the story of how things went.

 This is only half the people, you can't see everyone who was gathered in our dining room and school room.

 the aftermath!

goodbye September, Hello October

Every now and then we find a recipe that the entire family LOVES and this is one of them. It is a steak salad with homemade dressing. It is so yummy! I served this for our 2nd annual culdesac barbeque we had on Friday night. So so yummy!

 We spent a lazy Sunday night enjoying some cooler temps outside. Of course Pepper was in the middle of the action ready to play ball!

 And the chicks were in the mix too. Mrs. Pixie coming over to see what I was doing.

 Maximillia, she is a cutie!

 I love that Pepper and the chickens can be together and not bother each other.

 Hershey, she is our little escape artist.

 My sweet Cam Cam

 Anna certainly has the gift of touch. There is something theraputic about her touch. (Please ignore my toes by the way, somebody needs a pedicure.) So back to Anna, she loves to give me massages and especially loves to rub my feet. She has some strong little fingers too! I feel very spoiled.

 Jadon's eye, love his blonde wispie hair covering his eye brows.

 A boy's best friend.