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I will soon post some photos of holiday highlights, but for now, Happy New Year!
Here are a few of the highlights from 2010:
Isaac finished 1st grade and started 2nd grade.
Lauralyn started kindergarten and learned how to read.
Kristin managed to be as cute as ever. Oh my word she is cute.
Daniel potty trained!!! Making the Haut House diaper free for the first time since 2003.
Noah murdered his first deer. Doe. A deer. A female deer. Sniff, sniff, boo, hoo. Mmmm, good.
Beth took LOTS and LOTS of photographs. And not just of her children.
Light of Mine Photograph officially took off, and is semi-lucrative.
Jezebel brought a live opossum in the house. Better alive than dead, right?
Daniel climbed lots of things, including the van. He survived the year with no broken bones (thank you Lord)!
Isaac played two seasons of baseball (D.T. Tribe and D.T. Dirtbags) and swam on the swim team.
Lauralyn danced in her first recital and learned how to swim for real, competing her first year on swim team. And learned to ride a without training wheels on her bike.
Kristin. She is just so stinking cute. I mean, I can't see past the cuteness. And she rocks at drawing and puzzle building.
Beth, did her best to stay sane. Better luck next year, right?
Noah worked a lot. And brought home the bacon (yay! for hard working husbands). And the Cadillac demanded new tires, a.c. and steering column for all the miles wracked up going to and fro.
Daniel decided he would challenge Kristin in the cuteness category, but fell short when he took up the habit of poo painting in his crib.
We went to Cherokee with good friends, we went to the beach with family.
Beth, Isaac, and Lauralyn went to Maryland and back via the slowest trains ever.
Noah, Isaac and Lauralyn flew to Texas (in 1/4 of the time it took the train to get the NC from D.C.).
And finally, we became a family of SEVEN, adding a foster son in mid-November! Hence learning all about raising teenagers and dealing with the public school system.
Looking forward to 2011:
Lots of 10 year anniversaries to be had! Ten years since: graduating college, moving to NC, buying a house, and getting hitched!
I admit... hoping for another baby. Maybe this will be the year we go back to diapers? One can hope.
Daniel will turn 3. How is that possible?
Isaac will turn 8. How is that possible?
Lauralyn will soon turn 6 and Kristin will turn 5. How is that possible?
Beth and Noah will turn 32. THIRTY-TWO? How is THAT possible?
Will we say good-bye to Mr. F? Will he stick around a while?
Will we foster more children?
Will Noah shoot another innocent deer?
Will Beth successfully remain semi-sane?
Time will tell. I know God will continue to be with us through whatever is in store. And that, my friends is good news. His faithfulness never ends.
Happy New Year! May your 2011 be blessed!
I know this is a week late.
Last Sunday, my sweet Kristin turned 4 years old.
Shocking to think it has been 4 years!
Kristin is precious to us... really I can't think of words that truly express what she means to me.
I do know for a fact that life would not be a joy-filled without our Kristin.
For her birthday, Noah and I went on a special date to the Salty Caper
and the Nutcracker at Catawba College.
Surprisingly, the Salty Caper was quite welcoming to our girl, giving her pizza dough
to work over at the bar and then made her a special dessert in the shape of a "K."
And we didn't even tell them it was her birthday. Certainly a special evening!
The next day I made the ugliest "Dora" cake EVER to have been created, but Kristin
didn't care. She liked it just fine. I admit I have gotten really slack in my cake
decorating motivation. I hate watching those cake shows where they make amazing
works of art for tens of thousands of dollars, and then people just EAT THEM.
What a waste of time and money! ... sorry, side tracked.
At age 4, Kristin is BIG as always. I can't keep her from outgrowing clothes constantly.
Kristin is in the clothes LL wore last year, which makes Kristin about a year bigger
than Lauralyn in size since they are about 2 years apart.
Speech therapy is coming along. She has a great teacher, and the problem lies in
spontaneous speech and longer phrases. Kristin is a hard worker and I know this will
not always be a problem. I feel badly when people don't understand her, especially
when I can't understand her... how frustrating it must be to not get your point across.
Kristin continues to love Dora the Explorer as you can tell from the presents.
She excels in drawing and putting puzzles together. She loves to dance and sing.
I am slowly starting to teach her some reading skills.
She has interest and will likely pick it up well despite her speech delay.
She wants to "do school" like her big brother and sister.
Astonished the last baby I birthed is 4 years old... however, I am thankful to have these children and love to see them grow and mature.
Happy Birthday, Dear One.
I am person inclined to worry. Anxiety about the future can take over, and I can at times become obsessive. It really is a waste of time, and as our pastor reminded us recently, our worry is offensive to God. I was up in the middle of the night last night (thanks to 2 little girls who booted me out of my bed and a head cold that is wreaking havoc on my sinuses), and decided to start re-reading Francis Chan's book, "Crazy Love." I love this book, and will probably re-read it again and again in years to come.
Here is a excerpt straight from Crazy Love, page 42:
"Worry implies that we don't quite trust that God is big enough, powerful enough, or loving enough to take care of what's happening in our lives.
Stress says that the things we are involved in are important enough to merit our impatience, our lack of grace toward others, or our tight grip of control.
Basically, these two behaviors communicate that it's okay to sin and not trust God because the stuff in my life is somehow exceptional. Both worry and stress reek of arrogance. They declare our tendency to forget that we've been forgiven, that our lives here are brief, that we are headed to a place where we won't be lonely, afraid, or hurt ever again, and that in the context of God's strength, our problems are small, indeed.
Why are we so quick to forget God? Who do we think we are?
I find myself relearning this lesson often. Even though I glimpse God's holiness, I am still dumb enough to forget that life is all about God and not about me at all."
-- Francis Chan
Have a blessed, worry free, stress free day!
That's me. I am so slack lately on the blog front.
There are plenty of GOOD reasons for that. Five of whom rely on me to be their mama... one of whom relies on me to be a wife... I'm no expert at either role, but I am hopefully improving at the very least. A work in progress, right?
With the rush of the season of Advent, comes lots and lots of photo orders. A blessing indeed, and a great end to a fall filled with photo sessions. The orders take some brain power on my part, sorting, correctly placing orders with my lab, emailing and calling clients, compiling orders as they come in, (correcting any mistakes made by the lab, ugh) and finally getting them to their respective owners.
God has a way of bringing in money to our bank account right before something major breaks. A MERCIFUL provider our God is... but I am wondering what we are about to replace. I have a feeling Cadillac brakes and a dishwasher may be on that list in the near future. Hopefully nothing more, but things tend to come in threes!
I have lots of catching up to do, but it will need to wait until things quiet down, and school wraps up (this week, yay!). We'll be taking 4 weeks off of homeschool work with exception of reading. Hoping to get some cleaning out accomplished, if I have time. AND blog posts!
On the fostering front... Mr. F is still here. :-) Our hope is that he remains with us until he can move to family out of state. DSS, the GAL, and Noah and I feel this is the best thing for Mr. F at this point (not to mention he desperately wants to stay here). He can visit local family all he wants, but we can help ensure his academic success among other things. We should find out what will happen this week possibly. The not knowing and uncertainty is painful, but par for the course in the foster care world.
Also, for all my fostering buddies and praying friends who read my blog... please pray for a court case on Thurs. that may have a great impact on the future of my foster nephew, who we are praying will sometime soon be our official nephew! Also, that same day, my fabulous MIL will start her 3rd round of chemo... which when complete will mark the halfway point of the treatment!
Hoping your Christmas Season is blessed!
What can I say... life is life. At least I took pictures on Halloween. We will ignore the fact that I am posting them in December.
As a basic update on our fostering... Mr. F has impacted me (and probably the rest of the Haut House) is such an amazing way. Having him here has blessed us... opened our eyes and our hearts once again to a world so close, yet so far from us. We live in a bubble, and Mr. F burst that bubble in a good way.
Please pray for him as Christmas is coming, and he is without his immediate family. We did run into some of his relatives at the Mexican bakery this evening. They are very nice, and it was definitely one of those "God" planned coincidences. Especially since I turned around to go back to the bakery, because of a sudden urge for a new cultural experience :-)
Okay, okay, on to Halloween, Haut style.
Step one: get home from photo shoot an hour before sundown.
Step two: tell kids to figure out what they want to dress up in
Step three: make a quick cat costume for Lauralyn (mascara wiskers and nose, daddy's soccer sock as a tail, tape paper ears on headband)
Step four: find princess dress for Kristin that fits, at least sort of fits
Step five: realize that Daniel's recycled dalmatian dog costume is a perfect match with Isaac's fireman costume (sent my my aunt Georganne, thank you...actually, Kristin's dress is from her too).
Step six: trick or treat our street which only 5 houses participate and then pile into van, drive to the "rich" side of our neighborhood to raid the candy at very nice houses (one of which is literally a castle). BTW, the rich folks give out big handfuls of chocolate, except for the dentist who gives out cheap toothbrushes (note to self: skip dentist's house next year).
Step seven: put sugared up kids to bed
Step eight: eat all the good candy (chocolate) over the next two weeks while children aren't looking
Step nine: keep the rest of the less desirable candy on top shelf to use as occasional bribe... throw it out next Halloween when the new batch of less desirable candy arrives!
