Tea Parties, Christmas Ornaments and Everything in Between!

Things have been a little crazy around here lately.   Over the last 9 months there have been so many ups and downs.   The weight of worrying and waiting for your kids to be in your home is over.  Now we're dealing with daily struggles that keep me busy and praying for forgiveness for my constant failures.    Our kids have been amazing, but, they are kids.  They've all had a lot to deal with and they've handled it in their own ways.   Just this week I feel like I'm finally seeing all the kids bonding in a way that brings tears to my eyes.   Ethan has struggled with Christy since she came home.  For so long it was him and Luke.   He now has a "twin sister" and they have their own little imaginary world that they would gladly welcome anyone into, but, Ethan's a little old for that. :)  So, he's been left out, which he's not used to.  He resorted to bullying, torture and trying to make her life miserable. :)   It wasn't actually that bad.   But, lately they have a new bond.  You can tell they sincerely love each other.   They rough house and he still loves to aggravate her, but, she is his sister and he loves her.   You can tell by the look in her eyes that she adores her big brother.   

I'm trying to learn how to juggle school with a toddler, a 3 year old in a 7 year old's body, and a 6 year old with about a 15 second attention span.   I'm learning I can't do it on my own.  Jesus is the only thing that gets us through.  Unfortunately I'm hard headed and still try to do it on my own too many days.    So, we have our moments.   But, then we have those moments where I just stand back and look at what God has done and what He is doing...what He is going to do.   

From our marriage, to our bio kids, to healing the wounded hearts of our adopted kids....he's faithful and so, so good.  

We have had a great couple of months.  They've been busy but full of things that have been good for our hearts! 

Christy is loving being a part of American Heritage Girls.  My mom got to join us for the AHG Tea. 

The kids love making applesauce and cinnamon ornaments so we made a huge batch!

Then we made some gluten free cookies and hot chocolate and watched the Polar Express.   I put them on these fancy little plates and the kids oooed and awwwwed about it.  :)

Today we talked about forests.  We discussed the different types and layers of forests.   Then we walked our woods and found the different layers.   I feel so blessed to homeschool my kids.   Our little nature walk was such a great ending to our "school day" and we accomplished so much more than just learning a few facts about forests.   

We found this black witch's butter or black jelly roll fungi.   

I was excited to see our chickens loving our new compost pile.  With all of the trees around our house we have tons of leaves so I'm trying to put them to good use this year.  

If you look closely, you can see that one of them is enjoying this while the other is not.   

Moses wants to be a big kid so he made his own bow and arrow :)