Thursday, July 29, 2010

Painting Frenzy

I don't have any photos for this post, but I will take photos of the end result...I promise!  Yesterday my good friend, Tiffany, came to help me paint my craft room and Sophia's room.  What a job!  I am no house painter, so I naively thought it wouldn't take too long and we could get it all done in one day...well that didn't happen!  We were able to primer Sophia's room (it was a very bright yellow for Nathaniel) and get the first coat on in the craft room.  The taping and cutting in really takes awhile, I found out!  (That, and managing the scuffles of six children at the same time...)  But Tiffany is a self-proclaimed perfectionist when it comes to painting, and a good teacher.  She is making our rooms look great!  We were going to continue today, but one of my boys wasn't feeling well, so we are postponing to next week.  We should be done in one or two more days...I'll post photos of the finished project!  THANKS, TIFFANY!

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Keeping Busy...Little Boy Style

When it's stinkin' hot outside and there's no extra money for "paid entertainment", what are little boys to do?  Well if they are my little boys, plenty!  Here are this week's top two ways to keep entertained in the heat and on a budget!
What's more fun than building a really long train track?
They were especially proud of this one!
Now if they would only share the train cars nicely...
Big brother helped them build this really cool fort in the basement with lots of hidden doors and storage areas
Lots of room for everyone!

Saturday, July 17, 2010

The Angels are Singing!

It was a very busy week in our house this past week.  This week was our VBS at church, and three out of the six of us were involved each night in some way.  Benjamin attended the VBS with his kindergarten buddies while Sabastian served as part of the worship team leading the songs and motions in the opening and closing, and helped out with the four-year old class.  I taught the Bible lesson four times each night to the elementary students...with groups ranging from 35-75 or more kids at a time, it was quite a challenge to teach an active curriculum (as in the kids were to be part of the story!) and keep order at the same time!  Fortunately the children were divided into "crews" and the crew leaders were mostly adults or teens who were able to help out with discipline and crowd control.  On Thursday night I shared the gospel as part of the Bible lesson with a very powerful visual presentation that was part of the lesson for the evening.  Many children raised their hands indicating that they were accepting Christ as their Savior that night, but we like to personally talk with the children and make sure they understand what they are doing.  On Friday night, a couple of the Children's Ministry volunteers took time to meet with each child who indicated that they had prayed to become a child of God.  Out of a rather large group of children, the ladies were pretty certain that 23 understood the decision that they were making.  Praise God...the angels are singing in Heaven this weekend!  It's such a blessing to be able to be involved in such a meaningful ministry and to see young lives changed.  It makes the craziness of the week all worth while!  Over the course of the next few weeks, I will be teaching the same curriculum in two other locations that are outreach ministries for our church.  Sabastian will be joining me to help lead the music.  Please pray for the children in these two locations, too, that their hearts will be ready to hear the truths of God's Word!

Friday, July 9, 2010

Union Canal Tunnel Park

On Monday, while I was out shopping with my Mom in Lancaster, Dave took the boys on a hike at the Union Canal Tunnel Park in Lebanon.  This park boasts the oldest transportation tunnel in the United States, and, in the summer on Sunday afternoons, you can still take a boat ride on the canal and get an up-close-and-personal view of the tunnel.  On this day, Dave and the boys went on a  hike around the canal to see what they could see.  It was their first visit to this park, and in spite of the heat, they had a great time.  Even Nathaniel (age 2) did the hike on foot...I was impressed!  Here are some photos from their visit...

The boys love to find...and eat...berries on their treks

Jonathan (up) and Sabastian and Benjamin (down) checking out the canal

I hope Dave was paying attention...this photos scares me a bit!

The littlest brothers trekking along!

A view of the canal

The water is a bit murky, but still has a beauty all its own!

I'm thankful for my husband's willingness to take the boys on adventures such as this and make some good memories with them.  I'm also grateful that he allows me to venture out on my adventures with my Mom...in a house full of boys, I need that every once in awhile!!

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Will You Be My Roomie?

We have been working on some rearranging of room assignments at our home this summer in anticipation of Sophia's arrival.  The first big change occurred a week ago when Nathaniel moved into Benjamin's room and the two little boys became roommates!  Benjamin moved to the top bunk and Nathaniel now occupies the bottom bunk, so both kiddos have had some adjustments to make.  Dave thought it would take a week to adjust, but Nathaniel is still enjoying his new found freedom of getting out of bed, turning on the light, and climbing up to join Benjamin at least once a night.  Both boys are getting less sleep than they were used to, but maybe that's not a bad thing.  I'm sure eventually they will settle down...just in time for a new schedule when school starts!

Benjamin's room is painted bright yellow with other primary colors as accents, so we decided to repurpose Nathaniel's old changing table/dresser by painting it red and using it as his permanent dresser.  Last week, while Sabastian was camp, Jonathan helped me sand it down, and I painted it.  We started with spray paint, which Dave applied, but that didn't work too well.  But the final effect is pretty cool...almost looks distressed without being distressed...people pay big bucks for that!  You can see the process and final product in the photos below...

This is what the finish looked like before it was sanded

Jonathan hard at work sanding the drawers...he did an awesome job!

The main piece after being sanded...the brown that remains added to the distressed look in the end!

Dave surveying his spray painting...and not liking what he was seeing!

The final product...doesn't it look cool against that yellow wall?

Nathaniel likes it!

The next step in the room switcheroo is to move the remainder of my craft stuff upstairs to our guest bedroom/back room.  It used to be up there originally, then I moved to the basement, and now I'm moving back up...go figure!  Before I move completely I am painting that room, so currently I have four shades of blue on the wall in an attempt to decide what color I want in there.  Hopefully I'll get that painted with the help of a friend, and then I can move the remainder of my stuff up and get settled again.  That will open up the downstairs area outside of the younger kids' rooms as a playroom, which will be nice.  There will be lots of space for a play kitchen area which I can't wait to have for Sophia and her brothers to use!

The final project is Sophia's room.  I'm SO excited to be decorating a little girl's room finally.  Of course, it will be pink, with brown as the accent color.  I already have a lot of decorations picked out or made.  I'm enjoying collecting items from Etsy and other places, and also making and repurposing items.  I am going to paint the crib white and turn it into a toddler bed (hopefully...we can't find the directions!) and paint a current dresser that we have white and give it some new knobs.  I have already spray painted a grapevine wreath white and have pink and brown ribbon to decorate it with, and I have fabric that will be incorporated into a quilt for her bed.  Little sparrow birdies and plum/cherry blossoms are going to be the motif.  It's going to look really cool!  I'll show photos as I go along...I'm very excited, but need to get the other projects done first!

So, there you have it.  The summer is a good time to do all this movin' and groovin' indoors, especially on days like today when it's a bloomin' 100 degrees outside in the shade!  I hope you're keeping cool in your little corner of the world!

Friday, July 2, 2010

Adoption Update

It is July already...hard to believe that half of 2010 is in the history books!  By the end of this month, we are hoping to have a HUGE milestone completed toward our adoption of Sophia...our referral dossier in Taiwan awaiting our court date!  God allowed us to complete all of the paperwork on our end in record time during the month of June, but we are still waiting for some legal paperwork to come from Taiwan.  When that arrives, we sign, date, notarize, and state authenticate everything--and then it can be out of our hands and on its way to Taiwan!  There is only one thing that can slow that down at this point...when we send our dossier back to Taiwan, the orphange fee needs to go with it.  Right now we are still needing about $3000 to cover that expense.  We know God is able to provide, and will provide in His time.  Would you like to play a part in ransoming a child from a life as an orphan?  Help us bring Sophia home