March Is...

...definitely in like a lion, and out like a...well, the lion part didn't last more than a week. :) Last Monday we were buried under snow and out sledding. This Monday our temperature will be about 72. Love that! I love spring.

I have lots of news to catch up on! (Don't write to me about the preposition at the end of the sentence, Mom. I know. :) ) It's been busy, busy, busy around here, but a good, productive sort of busy. I hate feeling like I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off. My lack of posting has been due to this busyness, but also due to streaming Netflix (episodes of "As Time Goes By," the British comedy) and falling in love with running again. It happens every spring as I start to look around for road races in the area. The problem is that my treadmill is on the fritz. It's SAYING I'm going one speed, but I know my legs are not moving that fast. I think my motor may be dying, and it's not under warranty anymore. Bummer.

Anyway, without further ado, here are some pictures and videos of what's been happening around here. The first two pictures are totally random cuteness. Adah and Abigail love to dress up, but they come up with some pretty bizarre/unusual creations. Witness the following.

Next is a picture I snapped before family worship one evening. Daniel had a fire going, and all the kids decided that reading in front of the fire was a good idea. They look so snuggly! I will miss two things about this house...the yard and the wood burning fireplace. We will have small yard in the new house and a gas fireplace. (*sighing* while learning to be content in ALL things, especially in the fact that we will HAVE a brand new house! Really, I'm just being a big whiner.)

Nathaniel's birthday was February 26th, and we celebrated at home with spaghetti and meatballs for dinner and apple pie with ice cream for dessert. I'm not sure he knew what he was saying when I gave him the option: "Apple pie or cake for your birthday, Nathaniel?" but he sure seemed to be looking forward to it the day of his birthday because "apple pie!" was the first thing out of his mouth when I went to wake him up. The kids wanted to know if they got the day off from school because it was Nathaniel's birthday (they get their own birthdays off if it falls on a school day). Ha! Nice try, kids. Shiloh made his crown, they all helped to decorate and make signs, and they all made him some clay animals for presents. They also wrapped the animals, which was quite humorous in itself. I think they might have used a whole roll of tape. I love to see them loving on their little brother. Jackson was so distressed that he didn't get to make anything (they made them the day before during rest time) that we let him hand Nathaniel one of our presents. Nathaniel likes to be a well-dressed boy on Sundays (he ALWAYS asks for a tie!) so we got him two shirts with ties. He was a happy boy the following Sunday. He received lots of toys that will utilize his excellent fine motor skills. It's amazing - and yet a little sad - to see his dexterity. I know much of it comes from not having any other toys besides his fingers for the time he was in the orphanage. But who knows what God will bring from that? Maybe he'll fix things for a living since he works so well with his hands?

The second set of pictures comes from our day out sledding. We were going to go over to our pastor's house to sled with them, but they are later risers than our kids and our kids COULD NOT WAIT THAT LONG. So we bundled them up as best we could (we are NOT prepared for snow, and we need to get some better mittens for them!) and tried to figure out what to do for a sled. Yep, we don't have one of those either. Kroger sells them, but we couldn't get down our street to get one. Then Cora's friend, Susie, came down the street tugging her sled after her! She informed us that she had two more at home, so she walked back home with Cora to get them. We had SUCH a good time. We don't have a huge hill, but the kids didn't seem to mind. One of the most fun things was to see Adah being MUCH more adventurous than she usually is, and Nathaniel genuinely having a good time. A lot of the time he will be laughing at something, but he's actually being a clown and putting on a show. This time he was caught up in joy, and it was wonderful to see. Jackson also surprised us by being more physical than he usually is. He's cautious by nature, but he let it all hang out while sledding. He wrestled with Daddy in the snow and tried to take out Shiloh. He was completely soaked by the time we came in, but he didn't notice until two seconds after he got inside. Shiloh and Cora were their usual outdoorsy-types, sledding and sledding and sledding, and then going over to friends' houses and sledding and sledding and sledding. They LOVE to be outside. Abigail was a sweetheart and kept pushing Nathaniel down the hill time after time. She had a couple of good runs, but I think she was putting up with it for the sake of the hot chocolate later. Daniel, the only one suitably dressed for the day in his Afghanistan winter stuff, also went sledding. Uh-huh. It's not enough to have one shoulder surgery in a year, apparently. :) He was actually very careful, and he didn't run into any trees, so that was good. I also got a couple of runs in, and the kids cheered me on. It was just a fabulous day, and I was sorry to end it on a bad note with having to take Nathaniel and Adah to the doctor to get vaccinations. :( Nathaniel had a good check-up, though, for his 3 year appointment. He is in the 75th percentile for height and weight, which is a big jump from when he first came home. He was also chatting with the doctor telling her about Spiderman stickers, and the doctor was impressed with his language acquisition. She was also bowled over by his charm and good looks. :) Like I always tell Daniel, it's amazing that we MADE cute kids, and we ADOPTED cute kids as well. What are the odds?

On to some other news...Adah FINALLY has the training wheels off her bike! She was just so uncomfortable with the thought that I didn't want to push at all and figured she'd let me know when she was ready. Well, she let me know, and then she wasn't happy with the decision. She was deathly afraid of falling, so we started off in the grass. She fell a few times, learned that it didn't hurt too much, and then started balancing. She can make it down the driveway, into the yard and around a couple of trees now. Her confidence is building, and I am so happy to see her accomplishment. She worked HARD to overcome her fear. She would much rather give up when anything seems hard (wouldn't we all?) and I remember watching her from the treadmill as she tried to decide whether she would try a run down the hill or not (obviously I didn't leave her to figure things out on her own - I had just been helping her down a number of times and then told her she could give it a try on her own if she wanted). She sat there FOREVER before doing it. I watched so that I could see her face when she turned around in triumph with that big smile on her face. Way to go, Adah Tomata!

Some funnies from the kiddos:
We were driving along (love those random conversations that take place in the van!) and Jackson pipes up, "Mommy, it's so HARD!"
Me: "What's hard, Jackson?"
J: "It's so hard to decide what to be when I'm grown up! There are sooo many CHOICES! Should I be a fireman, a motorcycle man, a racecar driver, or a knight? I can't decide!"
Me: "Well, (trying to laugh only on the inside) I think it's a good thing you're only four and you have plenty of time to decide. Maybe as you get older you'll find that you like one thing more than the other and it will make it easier to decide."
J: "Yes, I saw on the video (an educational video from the library) that motorcycle men have to have a lot of training. Maybe I don't want to be that. Maybe a knight."
What do you say to that? I think I murmured, "Mmm. Hmm." How do you destroy a boy's dream that he can be a knight someday? :)

I try to be somewhat more purposeful in my parenting with Adah, verbalizing things that I don't necessarily verbalize with the bio kids because they have the foundation that Adah doesn't have with us. I will reassure her quite often that she is my daughter forever, that I will always love her, that I would do anything for her, etc. I was just being silly the other day and telling her while hugging her, "Adah Tomata, you are my daughter forever and I will never let you go. Well, okay, I'll let you go when you are a grown-up or when you want to be married. Then I'll let your husband have you, but not until then!"
She responded, "Or until we both die."
Well, all righty then. Way to be morbid about it. :)

Daniel had to go in for a steroid shot in his shoulder last Thursday in an attempt to ease the pain he's had since the surgery in November. Abigail, knowing Daniel's extreme dislike of doctors and needles, prayed for him that morning, "Dear Lode, please let Daddy not cry during his shot." I told Daniel, and her prayer was answered!

Jackson likes to check out a BUNCH of informative military books whenever we go to the library. He will sit and STUDY them during his rest time and tell me what he learned while studying. Currently, he's studying books about artillery, the Marines, rockets and missiles, aircraft carriers, and the Air Force at war. I think he's trying out all branches of the military before deciding. :) He came down the other day and said, "Mommy, what do you think I should be? (obviously a big theme right now) Do you think I should be in the Army or Marines?" I, not realizing that this was just a rhetorical question, responded, "Well, we obviously like the Army because Daddy was in the Army, but the Marines are pretty cool, too." Jackson, somewhat outraged, said, "WHAT? Do you WANT me to die?" :) Maybe there are lots of gruesome pictures in the Marines book? I'm not sure. He decided he wanted to be in the Army, but not to give out uniforms...to fight. (this was an entirely different conversation) I explained about how we felt pretty strongly about serving our country, but I think that part of the conversation went over his head. He just thought that if I wanted him to be a Marine, then I obviously had very little regard for his life.

Continuing on the same theme, he was asking while Daddy was gone for the "parachutes song." I told him I had no idea what he was talking about, and he responded with a sigh, "Ask Daddy. HE knows what I'm talking about." Daniel did know what he was talking about and downloaded the album onto his iPod since he only has a tape. It's the 82nd Airborne chorus singing, "Put on your boots, boots, boots, and parachutes, chutes, chutes..." Now he plays it during teeth-brushing time and everyone sings and marches. To say that Jackson was delighted is an understatement - his dimples grew to gargantuan proportions when he heard Daniel hook the iPod up to the speakers.

And lastly, (how long can I make this post?!) I am so delighted to have a daughter who bakes! Shiloh got done with school early on Thursday and was looking around for something to do. She asked if she could make something, and I said, "Sure, just check to make sure you have all the ingredients before you start." So she made a chocolate cake! All I had to do was make the coffee to go in it and she did everything else. That started a cooking spree where she ended up making scones for lunch on Friday and biscuits for our "breakfast dinner" on Saturday. She's very careful, and she really enjoys it. I was impressed that she tackled biscuits. They're pretty tough to make correctly, and they were so yummy! We will host Bible study at our house next week, and she's looking through the cookbooks to decide what to bake. I have discovered that it's absolutely worth it to have them make messes and add more time to my prep work when they're younger and "helping" in the kitchen. The one-on-one time has been great, having a dinner helper every night. Jackson can even do more than I thought he would.
Well, I better get this post published and see about breakfast for the kiddos. We're on a new schedule doing school on Saturdays and taking Mondays off, so they're sleeping in. Today is hair day for Adah (picking out teeny braids - a very long process!) and shoe shopping day for everyone else. All of a sudden they've ALL outgrown their shoes? How does this happen??
Love to everyone-
Casey