10/28/2011

It's Friday. I took the week off of blogging. It felt nice. :-)

I didn't want to leave you hanging without any pictures from our week, though.

But then blogger was having trouble and wouldn't upload the pictures. Bummer!

When I am able to upload the photos, I will.

Until then, enjoy the last few days of October! You know that once November hits, the weeks pick up speed and 2012 will be here in a blink!

10/13/2011

Last night we had an adventure... with a chipmunk. Not just any chipmunk, mind you. This was an albino chipmunk (who has ever heard of such a thing?!) and it was in our own backyard. Seems we often have wild animal adventures at this house.

I was walking with my two kids, picking up outside toys they'd left out. It was time to head in for supper. I stopped to say something and before taking another step, looked down and saw this little white animal in the grass. I wasn't sure what it was, as I'd never seen anything like it. It didn't take off running when it noticed us. It was small like a mouse. Maybe a chipmunk. But white. And scared to death, breathing heavy and just hoping we weren't going to hurt it. My son touched it before I could get the "don't touch it!" out of my mouth. Thankfully it didn't bite him.


It tried to run away, but moved slowly and appeared hurt. We followed it a few feet when it turned around the jumped on my son's pant leg! How I wish I had a picture of his face - and mine - at that moment. He screamed. I screamed. The chipmunk ran down his leg and over his shoe and back under a leaf on the ground. My son turned and ran!

When my husband arrived home a few minutes later, he went out with me to find the little critter. We did find him, trying to climb up a tree. He made it about 15 feet up and then fell to the ground. We caught him in this bucket to examine him further. He is a chipmunk. He is white (or light gray) and has no hair, except on his tail which is a proper-colored, furry and long chipmunk tail.

Very odd indeed. We felt sorry for him, as there was clearly something wrong with him since he was unable to climb trees or run fast, like most chipmunks. He was scared to stay in our bucket and tried to get out, so we let him go.

My son thought he looked more like a mouse, so he coined the term "chipmouse" and that is what we are calling him. :-)

Bye-bye, little chipmouse!

10/11/2011

As you'd expect, a year of serving as a foster mom can teach you many things. Here are my top 5 lessons learned.

5. No amount of training adequately prepares foster parents for what they will encounter. We underwent 30+ hours of training to obtain a fostering license. Since that time, the state has actually lowered the requirements to only 15 hours of training to obtain a license. And yet, after all of the training, we still felt as though we were not fully prepared for what would come our way as a foster family.

Every fostering situation is different, so it is impossible to prepare a foster family for every possible situation they may encounter. And rules and guidelines for foster families change yearly (like the tax code) so it's hard to stay on top of them. However, foster parents will be held to high standards and are expected to follow strict guidelines, so training is necessary to teach those things. I feel our state is doing a disservice by lowering the requirements for licensure in order to make it easier to become foster parents, while this means that folks will have even less information about what they are signing up for and what is expected of them as foster parents.

4. Good intentions aren't enough when it comes to orphan care. Many things are needed to be a good foster parent - organizational skills, patience, compassion, communication skills, transportation, high tolerance of stress, ability to stay calm in chaotic situations, training hours, etc. To simply want to help is good - it's a good starting point. Yet much more is required. The pity, sympathy or compassion that one feels for the orphan child does little good if not put into action in tangible way. The emotion should move us to action - to prayer, to becoming an advocate for children, to foster parenting, to something, to anything that is a tangible expression of our concern.

3. Foster care is a broken system. There is no way to get around the fact that the state fostering system is chaotic, government-run, under-staffed, and under-funded. It is far from perfect, yet it is the current way of handling the orphan crisis in America. It is all that is in place currently to provide any help, as broken and inefficient as it is. Working within the foster care system can be very frustrating. Those who are to be working on behalf of children can't keep up with the paperwork demanded of them. The system needs an overhaul. Or the Church in America needs to step back up to the ministry of orphan care.

2. There is a great need for more people to be foster parents, however... that need is skewed heavily towards teenagers and difficult-to-parent children. In our state, we were told that it was pointless to become foster parents who would take only infants. Infants are "easy" to care for and easy to place with foster families. There are dozens of foster families waiting to take in infants, in our county. What is truly needed, at least in our area, are foster parents who will take in older children, especially teenagers. This is part of the reason we stepped down from fostering for the time being. We would gladly accept infants and very young children, but we do not feel it's wise to take in teenage children given the ages of our biological children. So, while the need is great and more foster parents are needed, all things are not equal when it comes to the age of the children who waiting for a foster family to take them in.

1. When you take the risk to love, your heart may get hurt. To risk love may mean pain. It may mean that providing help for someone else proves painful for yourself in the process. Yet we are called to love. To give. To risk. To do it over and over. This is maturity. This is growth. This is true self-sacrifice. This is laying one's life down for another. God can certainly use foster parenting as a means of sanctification, as a way of refining us, as a daily opportunity to lay down one's life for another.

John 15:13 Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.

10/10/2011

This Wednesday will mark 16 weeks since we miscarried our baby. I can't help my mind from going to the "what if" questions. How would life be different right now if we hadn't lost the baby? I would have been 24 weeks along now. I wonder how this pregnancy would've compared to my other two. My almost 4-year-old son was HUGE in utero and weighed over 11 pounds at birth. Would this baby have been a big boy too? I have so many "wonders."

This past Sunday was the first time in 16 weeks that I've attended a worship service and not wept while singing praise to the Lord. I still couldn't sing all the words, as some are just painful and some are just too distant from what I'm feeling. But I can feel His love for me again and that is improvement. Sometimes just soaking that in and being silent before Him is what I need.

Now that it's been a few months since our miscarriage, we are past what most people consider a "normal" amount of time for grieving. The common vibe we get now is "Haven't you moved on yet?" or "You're still struggling with THAT?" I'll say again that these sentiments don't show care or concern for what the grieving person is going through. These aren't going to help the person at all, but rather will make them feel as though there is something wrong with them for still grieving, still aching, still feeling their loss. People grieve differently and it's all OK. My grief is affected by so many other factors as well, such as the fact that conceiving doesn't happen easily for us, the fact that we've stepped down from foster parenting recently too, etc.

I am still so glad, though, that we have made our lives an open book, letting people know about our loss. Just last week a new acquaintance was talking about two miscarriages she suffered a few years ago. I was able to express sympathy over her losses and tell her about our recent experience. There is healing in sharing, talking, being honest about the feelings.

Healing. Time. Processing through. Grieving. Feeling deeply. Moving forward but never forgetting.

10/5/2011

I've heard before about Brown Bag Burritos. You know, a way to make a super cheap make-ahead lunch that is good for you too.

My husband and I decided recently to give these burritos a try, with a twist. Most recipes call for ground beef, but we made a meatless variety and used beans as the main protein in the meal.

Here's a picture showing the assembly line process.


We spread a layer of beans (refried beans or just mash up cooked black beans) on the tortilla.

Then add a layer of cooked barley (rice would work fine too).

Top that with a heaping spoonful of this mixture: a package of taco seasoning, diced tomatoes, chopped green peppers, chopped onion, a can of corn, a few jalapeno peppers and whatever else we have on hand to throw in this mix ("everything but the kitchen sink").

Sprinkle with shredded cheese.

Wrap in foil and freeze.

When ready to eat, remove foil and heat in microwave for 1 minute.

It's very easy to make 10-20 of these at a time. The ingredients are inexpensive and easy to prepare. You could customize these with whatever ingredients suit you. And these burritos freeze easily.

My husband has been enjoying these for lunch on the days when there aren't other leftovers to eat. A cheap but filling lunch.

Brown Bag Burritos - they work for me!

10/3/2011

Today I am praying for a number of people that God has brought to my mind:

• My friend Joyce, who is at home with sick kids today.
• My friend Michele, who had her lower leg amputated last week.
  
• My husband as he seeks to glorify God in his workplace.
• My mom as she leaves for a trip to Hawaii this week.
• My children to seek unity and peace.

9/29/2011

The Secret Garden

I don't know how I managed to avoid The Secret Garden all these years. I recently picked it up and read it for the first time. I very much enjoyed this classic tale. It has themes of beauty, mystery, children and friendship.

Mary Lennox is an orphan child who is sent from India to live with a distant relative in England. She is a terribly spoiled child, but through the kindness of a servant the rough edges become smooth. Mary learns of a secret garden kept on the premises, locked up for the last 10 years. Eventually she finds the garden and the key for the hidden door. Tending the garden is the way she spends her time, hoping the dying plants can again become beautiful. Along the way, she meets friends Dickon and Colin and shares her "secret" with them. The three friends share in the work of the garden and in the end surprise everyone with what the garden becomes but also what they themselves have become in the process.

I know that movies have been made about The Secret Garden, which I have never seen. For the beauty of it in my mind could never be equaled!

I enjoyed the book and see why it's considered to be a timeless classic to be read by children everywhere!

9/28/2011

A few years ago we heard about Child Evangelism Fellowship's Mailbox Club. They have Bible lessons they mail to children. The children read the lesson and do a worksheet, which they mail back to the Mailbox Club. Volunteers "grade" the worksheet and send it back with another lesson for the child.

Membership is completely free. It used to cost one stamp per lesson, to mail it back, but now the return envelope is postage-paid so there is truly no cost involved.

Check them out or sign up online here.

After completing her first level, my daughter was mailed a completion certificate and a free music CD. After completing her second level recently, she received a completion certificate and a beautiful black Bible with her name engraved on the cover! She was VERY excited about that gift.

We incorporate the mailbox club lessons with our homeschool, but they certainly don't have to be considered "school." They usually contain a Bible story, a memory verse, a modern-day short story focusing on the scripture verse and a one-page worksheet. My daughter always looks forward to getting these lessons (what kid doesn't love getting mail of their own!)

I trust what my daughter learns through the Mailbox Club. She loves it. It's free. There are rewards for completing lessons.

What isn't to love about the Mailbox Club?

It works for me!

9/27/2011

From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

A friend recommended this book to me so I recently checked it out from the library to read it myself.

The story is about a young lady, Claudia, who decides to run away from the mundane routine of her boring life. She invites one of her brothers along, because he has money and she knows she'll need money to survive. Claudia's plan is to run away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. They stay there undetected for a week and end up trying to solve a mystery about a statue that just might be a work of Michelangelo.

The age recommendations for the book are 9-12 and I agree with them. I will hold off on sharing this book with my daughter for at least a few more years. I thought the plot was engaging, but I am not keen on introducing the concept of running away from home to my daughter. Claudia and her brother are typical children, so they were at times rude and immature. In the end there was not any resolution between Claudia and her parents, no remorse on Claudia's part over having run away or what she put her parents through.

This book did receive the Newberry Medal of Excellence for American Children's Literature in the 1960s and is considered to be somewhat of a classic. I am glad I read it, but think that calling it a children's book is a stretch. There is minimal educational content in the book, while there are numerous examples of bad behaviors cast in a positive light.

Therefore, I give this book 2 stars out of 5.