This weeks updates and more...

Jesula: Jesula is now on medication to help control her seizures. The adoptive family is working hard on getting the paperwork together so that they can apply for a medical Visa for her. COTP is working hard on getting together the required documents for her to travel. Please continue to pray about this situation, it is still very fragile!

Christmas already... My kids are planning ahead this year. Well I think that they do that every year. It hit me last week as they were searching online for their hearts desires hat in the past years I had been selling my custom "pictures" and I would use the money for buying the presents. So today, I bit the bullet and listed three listings on ebay, here is the link if anyone is interested:
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZsisters3designsQQhtZ-1
Some people love the pictures and other people think that it's strange, I understand. My creations aren't for everyone. :) It sure does make getting all my kids in one picture together a lot easier though.

Home School: We had a good week. Well... we did have a bit of the "hungry stomach flu" hanging about this week. That is the stomach flu where you feel that you will be sick to your tummy but your hungry at the same time. Very odd, I know. I thought that my kids were making it up until Friday when I couldn't get out of bed! So it was interesting getting all the schooling done this week. The only thing that we let go by the wayside was making home made caramel apples. (No one felt like cooking with tummy aches.) So we have that on the agenda for tomorrow. We also started HS school this week. The first day of classes for my children went wonderfully. They adore the teachers, the new school, and their classmates. It was really nice for me to get time to talk to other Mommies and make some new friends as well. I think that there is going to be a wealth of information for me, some of the Mom's have been homeschooling for eons! We are very blessed to be involved in such a great program. This week we have two days as Friday classes start this week. Angeline loved all the attention from the other Mom's. So much that she barely napped and was beside herself for most of the rest of the day! Poor baby!
my kids have some really cool Friday classes, more about that next update.

Bean update: This week the report came from early intervention. I raced in the house so that I could tear open the envelope as finally there may be some answers to what is going on with her! I had so many negative things pounded into my head for so long I think that I was prepared for the worst. Now I know that things can change as she gets older but you are never going to believe this!
Angeline is ON TARGET in all areas for her age except physical(which was expected), and adaptive... I am not sure how many adaptive skills infants are supposed to have anyhow! She was even ahead of target in one area! I am hoping that this week I will be able to have a moment to write some letters to the doctor's and nurses who helped so much and I can send them a copy of the report. I don't think that they are going to believe what they are reading! Amazing! What a wonderful God we have making all these miracles happen! :)

Well I better get moving off the computer, my time is about up. My husband worked all weekend this weekend so I need to come up with something fun for us to do today without Dad.
Maybe more apple picking?
FALL IS HERE!
Have a beautiful week everyone. I will try harder to update Angeline's pictures next week. She is really looking a lot older and a lot SASSIER!
Blessings,
Sarah

Another Prayer Request

My dear friend Heather, the Heather who always leaves me really great comments, needs our prayers. Her husband Kent was hit riding his bike home from work last Monday night. He is home now, but has multiple broken bones, is still "out of it", and they unsure at this point how many surgeries he will need to get all put back together.
Heather is one of the most amazing women I have ever met. She is the Mom to two adorable children. Heather and I met through ebay, we were in a listing group together called the Queen Bees. I have had the honor to meet Heather and her two cherubs in person. She has always been an incredible moral supporter of me and my endeavors so please let's raise her up!
(And Kent too of course!)
Heather is a Weight Watcher leader and has a great website if anyone is interested in reading more: (She is my sole weightloss inspiration!)
http://www.thewwchick.com/
Love you Heather. Hang in there Kent!

Jesula part 2

The past couple days after I saw Jesula's pictures on Saturday have just brought to me a flood of emotions. These are the kinds of emotions that make my brain work much faster than my mouth can spout out the words, and surely a lot faster than my hands can type the words so please bear with this post. The kind of feeling that just makes it feel as if someone is cutting off each of my toes with a rusty knife, until they eventually reach my heart. My heart for Haiti. Why there has to be babies waiting who need medical care makes no sense to me. Surely any human being with a heart would want to see a sick baby get the help that they need they need when they need it and not when it's too late. Why there has to be Mom's who love the tiny baby in their arms but they are unable to keep them because just watching them die slowly is too much for their hearts to bear. Why we are so blessed and others have nothing. Nothing but pain. It makes no sense. Why are we two hours from this country by air from the USA and why can't anyone just make it legal to go and get a child that needs help when they need it. What is the deal? There is no deal. There are rules and regulations and I am sure that somewhere in a paper filled logical sense that there has to be rules. But why not just an exception every now and then? Rules are meant to be guidelines for peace and justice but in situations like this there is not justice that a baby waits, a family is grieving the loss of leaving their baby behind, and a frantic organization is in a tail spin to try to move mountains while a hopeful adoptive family who in the past 24 hours has grown so close to this baby that they feel her warmth on their chests tries to build Rome in a day. Why? And what are we to do is PRAY. That is what we will do. And in the meantime I will try to not spout off to more than five strangers per day about Haiti, about the injustice, about the waiting babies, about the people who need us, and about the lack of people here who seem to want to do anything. Just five, no more. I promise. And I promise when asked about why I have 12 children to not spout off things like "Well how could I say NO?"... and "If more people would just step up and adopt!"... or "Why wouldn't I want to help as many children as I humanly could, who wouldn't want to do that?" or "Are you jealous of the JOY around me?" Only once per day to one stranger will I offend with my heart, my hurt heart for Haiti.
Off to bathe my Bean, snuggle my children young and old, and to count my blessings.
Sarah 

Jesula Needs YOUR Prayers

Just an FYI, the picture of Jesula and this request was posted with permission from her soon to be adoptive Momma. :)

Jesula is at the same orphanage that Angeline was at and has a wonderful family waiting for her in Ohio. She has hyrocephalus and is having a really hard time. She is tiny and frail and fragile and needs our prayers. COTP is doing all that they can for her, keeping her comfortable, trying to keep her eating and they are working on overtime to try to get her documents together for her passport so that the adoptive Mom will be able to go to Haiti and bring her here on a Medical Visa. Angeline needed so many miracles yes indeed... but Jesula needs even more! The mayor where she was abandoned and the hospital where she was left at are even more difficult to work with than the ones that COTP dealt with regarding Angeline. (and if you don't remember, read back and see how hard it was to get her passport!)
So we need lots of prayers over this situation... we need prayers that Jesula despite being so tiny and frail, stays strong and fights for her life. And that she can eat and stay comfortable and make it until they are able to get her the care that she needs! We need to pray for the adoptive family... that they keep the faith and keep moving forward and staying strong and allow each setback to push them further forward! We need to pray for COTP that the employees are able to do all that they can, and that Antonio can make a miracle happen. Pray for the hospital in Haiti and the Mayor, that they find it in their hearts to move fast and do the right things for Jesula! 

Updates Galore!

First I have to start with a couple very important prayer requests: Please pray for a baby in Haiti that we are trying to help out with. She was just found a couple days ago and needs a miracle. I do hope to write more about her in the future but right now, that's all I feel I can say. Secondly, please pray for my friend Anita who is so near and dear to me. Her family is adopting a baby from Ghana, named "Bright" and he is very ill as well from malnutrition and could use the prayers. Last pray request would be for Angeline's Visa. We are applying today to extend her Visa. I have the paperwork all ready to go and we really need it to go through for her to stay in the US to have the rest of her medical treatment completed while her adoption goes through. She has lots of hurdles to still jump with regard to her feet/legs and also her bladder evaluations are in October. Thanks everyone for lifting these babies up with the power of prayer! Ok now on the the updates! Angeline was evaluated last week for early intervention services and we do believe that she will qualify. Her services should start in about an month or so. We are anxious for her to start getting regular therapy and we are hoping that it can be here in our home. Bean has been such a ham! She is really getting to be quite the drama queen and fit right in with the rest of the girls in the family. She currently hates all forms of baby food and will smack away the spoon as it's coming towards her. Because of her hatred for baby food, she has also learned to do a really good rasberry so she often is seen with spit flying from her mouth. Which of course is hard not to laugh at! Angeline is just so darn stinking cute! My husband has a beard and Angeline does not like kisses that tickle. So when he gets close to her she grabs his face with both hands (hard! don't underestimate the grip of a baby!) and she turns away when he kisses her. (With a huge sneaky smile on her face like... "I am controlling this show partner!) Homeschooling was MUCH better last week and I am expecting that it will be even better this week! I have started doing less work as a group and more work individually. So now we are doing history and science together and the rest of the lessons I make stations in the morning and the kids move from activity to another. This is so much better. Everyone get's along a lot better not being so close to each other all day. And the competitive side of the kids really pushes them to get the lessons done so that they can move on to the next thing. I try to make sure to have at least one "fun" station for the things that my children really enjoy like art. I was impressed with how much they accomplished last week and by how much more fun they had. Phew.This week we start home school classes (one day this week two days next week and will remain two days per week through the school year.) This will be a nice way to break up the monotony and I think that the kids will enjoy making new friends and participating in all the fun and exciting things that the HS program has to offer. Well it's already time for me to start waking the little ones up and getting Angeline to go down for a nap. (She wakes at 5am so by 8 she is ready to nap!) Please have a wonderful week and enjoy one another this week. Robert and I made time this past weekend to have a night out alone and it was oh so much fun! More about that later. Blessings all. Sarah

Home schooling 101

Was this a class and I missed it? Although we had been doing a couple hours of homeschooling each week this summer, our official home schooling started this week. It has been interesting. Why do I homeschool so many children? (My oldest two are done with school, and the next two are both Junior's in high school, the rest are home.) Well... although I adore so many teachers at our local elementary school, there just seems to be some areas lacking. We had far too many issues last year with bullying (other kids to my kids), and my kids were just not progressing as I had hoped that they would, and as I knew that they could! We only have lived here for a year and a half so I know what they are capable of because they have always been in public school. Since we moved here the four children who we had on IEP's in our previous state (IEP is a special education plan) no longer qualify for special education here. Now the school officials told me, isn't that wonderful that THEY help them SO MUCH that they no longer need special education? Umm... no... more like... maybe your school is so behind the "lower than average" area that they have been working in, is now you average standard. Hello people. So although I had always admired so many great home schooling families, I just knew that it was not something I was ever going to be able to do with so many children on so many levels. (Although I wanted to try it!) But when push came to shove, and I don't have the tuition for them to go to private school, or Christian school (I did inquire for wondering minds), I knew that there was just no other way then to keep them home. So here we are week one. The one thing that I always admired about HS'ing families is the closeness that they have with one another, siblings seem to be friends and parents really "know" their children well. So this week, I guess I was imagining this kind of bonding bliss. Not so. I forgot how many of my children are just not "morning people". The goal was that each day we would start school at 8am. That way if we wanted to take a break, or get done early in the day in order to be able to go and do something fun, that we would be able to do that. We had to have a nice long heart to heart yesterday morning which did seem to make a difference. We talked about our options... moving (likely to a new state) so they could go back to public school, we could sell our house and buy an even smaller one and they could go to the private school, I could just give up and send them back to the local school, or they could treat one another with love and kindness and we could have a really great year home schooling. Well they choose home schooling but I did spend some time today looking at houses in other states. :) So that is where I have been the past week or so. I promise that I will update with pictures next week. Oh... and if you were wondering how or when I will ever have a break. We are involved in a parent partnership program so the kids do start two days in the classroom in another school district in two weeks. I will be staying at the school with Angeline while they are in class and spend the time with other HS'ing moms, planning lessons, being social, and grading work! :) (And taking care of Angeline too of course!) And sometimes when I am really lucky I will be able to have another adult take the kids on their classroom day and Angeline and I will play all day long. Shhh don't tell the other kids. Ok back to cleaning, then I may shower and change my clothes, that would be a novel idea wouldn't it? Blessings to all... Sarah :)