Day 14: A website you like to visit.

I go to many websites but some of my favorites are Reecesrainbow.org and www.147millionorphans.com

Both regard orphans. One helps to find adoptive families to adopt kids with speical needs. one helps those left behind by selling products to support those children left as orphans. My favorite tshirt says 147million orphans.....feed 1.

I have a heart for orphans. We adopted 7 of them. Many people say to me we just cant afford the high costs of adoption. it isnt that we couldnt raise one, we just cant pay the fees involved to get one home. and yet they drive a fancy car and buy a new boat or big gas grill, etc. We chose to forgo those things. we used our credit cards, savings, donations, and many people do fundraisers(we didnt). we drive older cars, our only boat is a canoe. we dont own a gas grill. we dont drink lattes. I want to shake people and say you can afford two fancy cars and a boat but you cant afford to save the life of a child? really? perhaps those arent the kinds of people who should be adopting, but I so tire of hearing well we just dont have that kind of money laying around. NO ONE DOES! do you think we had the money laying around to go adopt FOUR at one time? no. absolutely not. but if you are willing to go into hoc for a boat, why not a child? get a loan. get a grant. get your church to help you(alexis you have an awesome church go get that baby!)fundraise. use your credit card. stop buying lattes and save the money. it doesnt all come due at once, it comes due in bits and pieces. first the home study. then dossier costs. dossier mailing costs. then comes the bulk of it in facilitator and travel costs. then a wee bit more at the embassy and you are done! there are so many deserving kids who NEED a home. a place to know love and family. A place to grow with guidance. If you see a child on reecesrainbow.org that moves you to adopt, www.147millionorphans.com also has a fundraising kit. you can sell their tshirts, they sell them to you at cost allowing you to save the difference for your adoption. there are 147 MILLION kids without homes and families and people who love them. Isnt every child deserving of love? maybe you or someone you know can make a difference in the lives of some of these children. Maybe you will buy from 147millionorphans.com maybe you will donate to a child or a family on reecesrainbow.org maybe you will adopt one or more kids and make them your own. maybe you will tell everyone you know about these two websites and ask them to help too. Every child deserves a famiy. a home. love. can you deny them?

how

how do I teach kids to be organised? they have no clue and they just dont CARE. so I said I am not going to do their laundry anymore. I wash dry and fold. its their job to put away. to me this translates put the proper things int he proper place. for them it translates to stick it all SOMEWHERE...ANYWHERE. so then when they want....say..underwear...they arent in the right spot and so they toss everything around and dig until they find underwear. then walk all over everything until mom says clean your room then they toss it all in the wash. I spent the morning cleaning and doing laundry and you wouldnt have a clue I even bothered. they just have no clue. I asked them to clean out under the beds. they cleaned as far as you can see standing up. I asked them to clean under the table they just allocated it to different piles under the table! I am fed up with being the only one who cleans up. Eric tries to be useful but lets be fair he works every day of the week(yes weekends and holidays too)and often has little more than 3 waking hours at home in a day. The kids just show up at the table and wait to be served. they eat and then they leave. leaving me to do it all. this is not going to continue. when we move the movers will move everything. dirty diapers trash empty soda cans. they dont choose WHAT to move, only how to move it. its our job to clean out and clean up. and I want to get at it NOW! but no one seems to get how to help. AAARRGHHH!!!

why?

Why does a boy who willingly and purposefully destroys most everything he puts his hands on sobs his heart out because his balloon flew away!

Day 13: A photo that makes you laugh

I try to do something new for Eric's birthday every year. sometimes its a balloon. sometimes we all pretend we forgot and then surprise we find a cake hidden in the garage. one year it was groucho glasses. It was cheap fun. and full of funny memories. See for yourself.

Day12 Something you dont leave the house without

KIDS! even a trip to the grocery store has seven or eight or ten kids saying I wanna go! I wanna go! sometimes I take this one or that one. or two or three. or none. Depends on the day. Depends on where I am headed and what my intended purpose is when I get there. I took the boys shoe shopping last weekend and the next time I suggest such a thing I hope someone will suggest that a root canal would be more fun. the girls shopping are all about gimme gimme gimme. i want i want i want. and ohhh how bout this? can we have this? whyyyyyy? the boys were all about Im hungry. are we done yet? can we go now? I want to go home. we arent ever going to get home! we are stuck in here forever! I dont like lunch, sulk I dont like those shoes, sulk. so as one can imagine I prefer to go alone. but usually when I leave the house its on a mission that involves kids. eye doctor. dentist. specialist appt. philly appt. regular doctor. school event. school. so the one thing I take with me most often is kids. 1 or 2 or 6 or 10 just depends on the day and the activity.

GRRR! AGAIN!!

we had our hearts set on a piece of land and were making plans and oops we forgot to tell you there is a pending offer and that driveway is actually an easement. so we moved on from that and had 2 other plans. one worked out to be TOO MUCH MONEY to fix it up. on to plan C. making plans. thinkin we will go look at the land one more time. Call agent and find out that oops that land is sold. they didnt mark it pending so all this time we have been planning and thinking it was already sold. we are really mad and frustrated and disappointed and wondering if we should even bother moving up there. we have been looking at properties for a good 3-4 months. and no one will survey their land. so you never know exactly where the lines are and how much property is included. its very frustrating.

Maybe we just shouldnt move there. maybe this is the universe saying there is something somewhere else for us. I dont know. we could stay here. but that would suck. we could go to Ukraine for the summer. no. just kidding on that one. We are disappointed that we wont see summer in Ukraine this year. we really did enjoy Ukraine. but I dont see a trip to Ukraine in the cards.

Eric is on call today so I didnt really get a chance to talk to him but I know he is feeling the need to move on from his job. it is just a question of WHERE. do we keep trying in Duluth when its clearly not working? should we give up and look elsewhere? where? Im all for california! or texas! but I dont know that Eric would be too keen on that. and of course there is always the jerk who will want to make things difficult but I really think at this point the kids are old enough to have their say in court. at 14 one child hates going to dads. at 16 one child doesnt care either way. and he sure doesnt go out of his way to see them but a couple times a year so why couldnt he do that with us living further away? but he would be a dick just because he could. thats how he works. father of the year and all that.

so where will we live? where will we move? when will we move? who knows.

I am sad

It gets tiresome taking care of people who dont trust you. and also those that you cant trust. two of my kids have substantial needs. they need help in a lot of their activities of daily life. They need help with their equipment, bathroom, getting to the table, eating, dressing or undressing, getting in or out of bed, brushing teeth, washing hands, well a lot. the only thing they do independently consistantly is play. and even then they WANT me to do it for them. I have to draw the line somewhere though. so if you want that doll dressed then you have to find a way to do it yourself. anyways, these two are very sweet and loving but it is clear that they dont trust. constant reproach for how you are doing things, constant fear that you will hurt them or drop them(I have never under any circumstances dropped them). they can be demanding and needy. and what do you get in return? complaints, fears, worries. while its sad that they should feel that way it gets a bit wearing on me who does the bulk of their cares. a warm meal that doesnt include getting up 16 times or a nights sleep thats uninterrupted, or a shower that doesnt include crying over nothing, or faking laughter so that it appears you think its funny while its really just an excuse to pull yourself away from my touch.

then you have the ones who cant be trusted. I "planted" a nickel. it wasnt 15 minutes before it was gone. INSIDE a container IN MY BATHROOM. someone knows that I have money there, it isnt a secret anyways. mostly pennies. but I knew someone had been digging in it because every time I put a quarter in it disappears. One child has a history of stealing. So does another. one admitted it but the other returned it. so who did it? I am sad that I cant trust my kids. that they would steal me blind. I am sad that my kids dont trust me when I am their biggest defender and advocate.