One Thousand Gifts (201 - 220)

Counting...

201.  Cooler weather

202.  Rain - not much, but it was nice!

203.  A sweet friend who fostered a beautiful baby girl for a year and a half will finally be able to adopt her!

204.  Working out again.

205.  Visit from my sister, brother-in-law and great nephew The circumstances surrounding their visit were not good, but I am thankful that some joy can come of it.

206.  Decluttering the house
            I'm so thrilled to be letting go of the junk around the house.  I still have a ways to go, but I have a clean garage! I'm so tempted to put a picture of it here but that would just be weird.  I will admit to walking out there occasionally and just standing and looking around!

207.  Mr. Baseball and Ladybug get to experience their first  outreach to the homeless.

208.  Free slurpees

209.  Bob's back is starting to feel better.

210.  A special, middle of the night bonding experience between sisters.  Princess is on cloud nine today.
           Ladybug had a bad dream and woke up Princess to keep her company.  Princess slept on Ladybug's bed with her and they played with stuffed animals in the  wee hours of the morning until they fell asleep again.

211.  Spending the day with my great-nephew.  What a sweetie!

212.  Discovering a fun, new park

213.  An evening alone with my little girls.  A Burger King picnic in the living room and a fun movie!

214.  Carpenter 1 fire is almost out and there have been no injuries.

215.  Tigger, Knight and g-nephew hit it off immediately!  It was like they were always together.

216.  Mini family reunion at my other sister's house.  Great fun! Hopefully that will be another post.

217.  Fun afternoon at the Children's museum.  When it's closing time, the employees start a conga line to lead everyone out the door.  It's great!  We went twice in the last few weeks.

218.  Bear, who makes me coffee when she gets up before me.

219.  Ladybug wrote a card for me while she was at her friend's house today.

220.  Learning contentment - - to bloom where I am planted.  Still longing for somewhere else, but I'm starting to find some positives about being here.

One Thousand Gifts (191 - 200)

It's been a while, but I'm still counting...

191.  My beautiful oldest daughter is now a married woman.

192.  She and my new son are giving me a grandson!  He is due to make his appearance on October 28th - which, by the way, happens to be Boo's birthday AND Boo, Princess and Knight's adoption day.  

193.  School is almost over for another year.  We only have 10 days left.  It's been a pretty good year.  

194.  Thankful that I still have many years of homeschooling ahead.  That actually surprises me to think that since schooling is one of my most stressful things.  But a friend just graduated her oldest and it really got me thinking about how precious these years are and how quickly they go by.

195.  My boys getting new opportunities and conquering fears

196.  My kids love each other.  Yes, they fight like cats and dogs sometimes, but the love is there!

197.  My husband still loves me, after nearly 15 years, 9 kids, thousands of grey hair, deepening wrinkles, and many pounds (on my part).  

198.  Melatonin.  I can sleep at night again  :)

199.  Thanks to Ann Voskamp who, once again, let God use her to speak the exact words of encouragement I needed at the exact right time.  Mama guilt is a powerful thing, and it takes powerful words of Truth to dispel it.

200.  My bff's second cancer scare turned out not to be cancer!  

One Thousand Gifts (181 - 190)

Still counting my blessings............





181.  A surprise phone call from my sister!  I miss her!  Who'd a thunk it too.  We did NOT get along as kids.  Now she is one of my most favorite people.

182.  A blessed evening with an amazing missionary and wonderful friend.

183.  Watching children play at the park.  It struck me as so beautiful to see something like 50 kids all with huge smiles on their faces.  Odds are that some of those kids were dealing with big problems in their lives but right then, in that moment, you could tell, life was perfect!

184.  That the mold report for the water damage came back and showed NO black mold.  Just the regular stuff.  Woo Hoo!

185.  Warm weather.  

186.  My dog FINALLY figured out how to work the doggie door. Only took her a month!

187.  The love my kids have for their dog.  They all dote on her. Makes training next to impossible though.

188.  My amazingly messy kitchen. Because it means that we are well fed when so many are not.

189.  My daughter got a job with the school district.  One step closer to independence. 

190.  Watching my kids try to do the "YMCA" dance.  Hilarious!!

Our week (Feb. 17 - 23)

We had a pretty good week.  Monday, Bob had the day off and we grabbed Mr. Baseball's buddy and headed up to the mountain to play in the snow.  We had a great time!  Even though it was a holiday, we had the sledding area mostly to ourselves for about two hours.  

Tuesday was our weekly "Pray and Play".  Pray and Play is our homeschool group's name for a park day for all the kids.  The clan looks forward to it each week and are devastated if we can't go for some reason.  This group has been such a blessing to us.  The kids have made good friends this year.  

Mr. Baseball gave us a presentation on volcanoes this week.  The report was good but the demonstration wasn't as impressive as we had hoped.  Still fun though.
  
Don't you just love the line of toes in the background!

Today, Mr. Baseball had his youth group meeting so we picked up a few of the kids' friends and spent the afternoon at the park.   The kids had a blast.  

Princess and her friend

Princess, Bear, Boo and Knight 

 Bear

 Tigger

 Boo

Ambushing the next kid to come down the slide!

 

These are a few of the animals we saw while at the park.  The goose in the upper left corner had a friend that looked just like him.  These two geese were bullies.  They came up out of the water, ignored the seven kids around me, and made a bee line for me. They began pecking and biting my legs! think they were trying to bully me into feeding them!  


Summer Vacation countdown:  124 days complete / 56 days left

One Thousand Gifts (171 - 180)

Here are a few favorites from the last few days.

Trying to capture "ethereal".  Wasn't what I was after, but still kind of cool.  

Pinecone.  I don't know why.



Continuing to count my blessings..............

171.  Finding that perfect spot in the sunshine, on a cool day.

172.  Birds chirping and children laughing - a wold at peace.  At least my little corner of the world.

173.  Soft 6 year old lips on my cheek

174.  Cooking dinner with Ladybug

175.  Ladybug decided to bless all her brothers and sisters this morning and did all their morning chores!  What a sweetheart! 

176.  Bible study with my bff.

177.  Seeing true repentance in the eyes of my child.

178.  Chasing my son through the house snapping towels at each other.

179.  The absolute joy that my dog shows when I walk into the room.

180.  God using a terrible experience of mine to minister to someone else.  (Romans 8:28)

Miscellaneous Pictures

I haven't taken many pictures since Christmas.  Not sure why.  We've just been busy trying to get back in the swing of school after the break, I guess.  But, thanks to Denise, whose encouragement  got me to me to dust off my camera and get to snapping again!  Here are a few that I took today.

My beautiful Boo!  Love those eyes.

My wonderful husband got me a dozen roses.  

This is a macro shot of a bud of baby's breath in the roses, with a water droplet on it.

More baby's breath.

My sweet Ladybug.  She's getting more beautiful every day!

Oh - this is for Kim and Denise - 
These are all shot in manual with manual focus (the ones of Ladybug were autofocus), all SOOC (except for cropping for the close up of the bud)
Oh yeah!