Haiti

This is the subject on every one's mind and much like 9-11 I feel the need to record my thoughts and memories surrounding this event.

I was shocked Wednesday afternoon when I sat down at the computer to check my e-mail and Y@hoo had a news story about a magnitude-7 earthquake hitting Haiti the day before. How had I missed this? I mean, I don't watch the news but surely I should have heard about this somewhere, from someone sooner than 24 hours after. I quickly read the article and sat here in awe. My thoughts flowed something like this:

-Where is Haiti?

-What can I do to help?

-I wonder what the adoption situation is with Haiti, maybe that is where God is leading us. I am sure the number of orphans will increase greatly with this disaster and the need for families will be great.

I quickly found a website for Haiti adoptions, looked at the beautiful children and found the list of qualifications. I was devastated to find that we are not now and will never be qualified to adopt a precious Haitian child.

-We must work towards helping in another way.

I am still seeking out other ways to help. We have heard a ton about donations and making sure to donate to a legitimate organization, that is in the works. With the possibility of adopting one of these orphans being non-existent for us, I am feeling burdened to pray for these people. I ask that you would pray with me.

Yesterday I was at my parent's house and turned on the news for a few minutes. The reporter stated that Haitians claim that 80% are Catholic, 15% are Protestant and 100% are Vudu. I do not claim to be a great scholar on Vudu beliefs, but I am certain that these beliefs canNOT overlap. Devil worship and Jesus worship cannot co-exist.

Please pray that the Holy Spirit would reveal Himself and that these people would find hope in the only source of hope, Jesus Christ. If you are planning to make a donation, maybe find an organization that will bring all of the supplies these people desperately need, food, water, medical supplies and the gospel of Jesus Christ. Without Christ it doesn't matter what their lives are like on this earth. Rich or poor, sick or healthy, injured or strong; No Jesus means eternity apart from Him. So, let's pray together for this country.

Green Eggs and Ham

The other morning I felt like a farm mama. It was very fun and lifted my spirits for the day. My MIL gave me an awesome apron for Christmas. It is black with white polka dots and white trim and a white "R" on the pocket. I have been trying to remember to wear it whenever I'm cooking, baking or grinding wheat. The trouble is remembering to take it off when we sit down to eat or someone needs some diaper/bathroom clean up. Oh well!

The other morning I remembered to put it on before preparing our eggs. Upon grabbing the egg carton I noticed the green eggs and nervously thought we would try them out for breakfast.

My mom found a lady who sells farm fresh eggs in our area. She has a couple of chickens that lay green eggs and they are supposed to be lower in cholesterol.

So, I scrambled them up with cheese and turkey, since I didn't have any ham, and we ate green eggs and "ham" for breakfast. It was pretty much just fun in my own mind, but it made me smile all day. By the way, there was a tad bit of a difference in the flavor, but they were great!

Yes, I will eat them in the rain and I will eat them on a train and I will eat them with a Gus and I will eat them on a bus. I do like green eggs and ham, I like them, I like them Sam-I-am!

Note: I will try to get a couple of pictures of my two amazing aprons!

Christmas Vacation

For Christmas this year we flew out to the mountains. The kids loved playing in the snow......well, Widdle did. Waddle seemed to feel a bit like the little brother on "A Christmas Story." He fell down several times and would just wine until someone came to pick him up. He did enjoy sledding down the hill and riding the tire swing though. Piddle enjoyed watching the crazy boys and didn't mind the snow suit too much.

Widdle and Cousin1 had a G.R.E.A.T. time playing in the snow. Cousin1 taught Widdle all of his tricks. They ate lots of snow, made snow angels, rode on the sled while Albert pulled them up and down the hill, threw snow balls and chased each other around. Those boys really got along great.

We were thankful to be in town when our cousin Cousin3 was dedicated to the Lord. Everyone but Stacy made it for the special occasion. Cousin3 and Piddle are 10 days apart, they enjoyed each other this visit but will really have a good time the next time we see them!

Sorry that this picture is sideways, but it is too cute to leave out. We had to round out our vacation with a trip to have pictures done. Granny gave all of the cousins these cute Js and we had to capture the cuteness. Though, it was a challenge!

Aside from all of the boys getting the stomach bug we had a great time and felt so blessed to be with family for the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ our Lord. We hope you had a Merry Christmas as well.

Happy Birthday Waddle!

Waddle turned 2 on December 22nd and with all the crazy that comes with traveling and Christmas, along with my lack of blogging, my little guy did not get a post to celebrate his life. So here it is!

Waddle, you are a perfect addition to our family. Your sweet disposition and exciting sense of humor add laughter and life to our days. Your vocabulary and imagination are taking off and you surprise me with something new almost every day. Right now you LOVE your cowboy boots and who doesn't? You look so cute in them. I am so thankful that God saw fit to give us a little boy to help our first little boy be more tender and protect our little girl. You are a wonderful big brother and an awesome little brother. You are a pretty good cousin too! I am so excited for the journey that God has laid out for you. I can hardly wait to see the road that our Lord has known from the beggining of time, roll out in front of you. May He reveal Himself to you and use you for His glory and the furthering of His kingdom. I love you buddy!

Jumping on the bed

Waddle has a black eye.

For Christmas the boys received a collection of books about the 5 little monkeys. One of the stories entails jumping on the bed. I'm sure you know the song even if you haven't seen the cute pictures to go with it. Well, in our house there is one bed that is available for jumping on. It has always been Widdle's bed. Which ever bed he has slept in (except for the crib) has been available for jumping. Right now he is sleeping in the single bed that goes with our bunk beds. It has rails almost all the way around it. The other day the boys were jumping when Waddle "fell" and landed his head perfectly on the headboard. He hit the railing with the outside corner of his left eye. Thank the Lord, it did not bleed. But, it did bruise right away. On Saturday I took him to have his two year old pictures done and noticed that it was starting to heal. Some of the pictures really made his eye look yellow. Yesterday afternoon it started to look red across his entire eye lid and some yuck was coming out of it. This morning his eye was matted shut, but has been cleaner throughout the day. I'm not sure if he got an infection while rubbing his eye or what is going on. The eye ball is fine, it is the lid and area around that is reddish/pink and a bit of yuck coming out.

After this incident, when Waddle began to cry, Widdle said "Call the doctor." We had been singing while they were jumping and we maybe got a tad carried away with it all. I suppose we won't have monkeys jumping on the bed much around here anymore.

Happy New Year!

I think I am the worst blogger around. A lot is always going on around here, but I just am not sure that it's all that exciting. I do want to take note of the daily happenings though. I know that I can not remember the exciting or daily parts of my life and so writing about them here is going better than all of the millions of journals I've tried to keep.

On the 16th of December we headed to Colorado. Flying out of New Orleans makes for a cheaper flight, but a longer day. After a 3 hour drive we entertained ourselves in the airport for a couple of hours before wrestling three littles in three seats for a three hour flight. The kids did great! We found a little, round table with little stools around it right by the runway and set up camp. The boys LOVED watching all of the planes take off and land. They chased each other around the table for a L.O.N.G. time and squeezed in a bit of wrestling. Piddle army crawled around the dirty airport floor..... I know, I probably shouldn't have let her, but I couldn't hold her still for so many hours right before boarding a plane-that she would have to be still on. The boys were totally excited to board the plane. Widdle had his own seat while Waddle and Piddle were lap babies. This meant that Albert and I could not sit together. The rule is that you can only have one lap baby per section of seats because of the number of oxygen masks. So, we sat across the aisle from each other with a gentleman sitting next to Albert and we tried to gently talk to each other across this poor guy. When people were looking for seats I felt as though I had a contagious disease. There were two empty seats next to me and no one seemed to want them. After a while a gentleman who resembled Santa Clause, sat by the window. The middle seat remained empty. Yeah!! Waddle and Piddle took naps on the plane and we ended up shifting Waddle to my empty seat so that Widdle could go potty. Side note: we packed all of our stuff in 2 suitcases! This was a proud moment for me, the excessive/extreme over packer!

While in Colorado we went to Cousin1's school program and had dinner with Albert's siblings. Within a couple of days all of my boys had a bad stomach bug. Waddle was sick on his birthday and so he stayed in his Js all day. I don't think it bothered him. We pushed back The Duck's Christmas celebration to Saturday. It felt a bit weird to not do anything special on Christmas day, but it was nice for everyone to feel well when we did celebrate together. Before Christmas we had a big snow. We got about 8 inches over 36 hours or so. It was nice and powdery and Widdle loved playing in it. Waddle wasn't quite as mobile as he'd like to be and reminded me of the little brother in "A Christmas Story." Piddle liked being outside, but did not particularly enjoy that face plant into the snow. :( After a few days the boys built a snow man and we visited the Denver Zoo Lights before trucking back home. Albert and I did squeeze in a trip to Centara for shopping and we were able to see "Blind Side." (Excellent movie!) We traveled home with 4 bags. That was a bit of a challenge. The funniest part was when we were weaving through the line to check in and several people told us that we need one more child. Maybe they thought that would make us completely crazy. Any who, we managed to make it through the airport with the boys carrying their backpacks, Albert had a backpack, I wore Piddle in her carrier and carried the diaper bag. I think it was about as light as we could go.

We are glad to be home and celebrated Christmas with my family last night. Part of me feels like we should be planning a day to take down all of our Christmas decor and part of me feels like we just put it up. Maybe we'll take it down next weekend!

We hope you had a Merry Christmas and I will try to update better this year!