Quick Takes

Sneaking in at the last minute to join up with Jen again today!

1.  I know, I know, I still haven't done my Five Things post.  I will, I promise.  When I get more than 5 seconds to sit down and type.   I have to be able to think to answer the questions!

2.  We spent the first half of this week hosting family from out of town...then mid-week was spent hunkering down in a snow storm and then recovering from out-of-town guests (hello, laundry!) and the snow storm....then the past two days were spent trying to get us back on our regular school and gymnastics routine.  Whew!  I'm pooped and thoroughly enjoying this glass of wine.

3.  Today, however, I made the executive decision that we were all a little too stir crazy from our self-imposed retreat this week, and I got us out of the house.   I couldn't handle the bickering between Rascal #1 and Rascal #2 anymore, so I threw them into the car, packed worksheets for them to work on while we were driving, and drove to the state capital.  Maine has an awesome state museum that's super cheap ($2 for adults, $1 for kids over age six - total cost of $4!!  Woot!).  I figured that since Rascal #1 is currently learning about the settlers in New England in colonial times......we might as well make a trip to see the exhibits about life in Maine 400 years ago.   They have awesome displays of how people used to survive (how they lived, what work they did, what they ate, etc), and so I thought this might be a fun way to help Rascal #1 actually be able to visualize what he's learning about.  We had a great time - it definitely made today a much happier day!  

4.  Of course, some pictures from today:

Racing into the museum

talking about fishermen

this sign still cracks me up.  We've been going to this museum for four years now, and I still giggle every time we get to this display.  I'm still in middle school, apparently.

5.  A day in the life of a circus homeschooler:

Playing around pre-school hours

Rascal #1 learning about ocean water - measuring out some table salt

dissolving it into water

Boiling off the water

measuring the salt left behind

comparing what we started with and what we ended with

writing a story

perfecting the story and illustrating it

Rascal #3's own experiment:  tracing a shoe from every family member and them putting them in order according to size

Taking a break:  HABEMUS PAPAM!

Creating their own board game out of Legos (okay, this one is technically from the NEXT day, but they had so much fun playing their homemade game that I had to include it!)

6.  No update on the doctor stuff yet.    My doctor got stuck in an airport during this last snowstorm, and had to reschedule my appointment.  It was rescheduled for today, but I was unable to find a sitter, so I had to reschedule it for next week.    Oddly enough, I've changed my diet some and am feeling a LOT better.  Not 100%, but probably 50% better.   I'm hopeful that means that I'm heading in the right direction.  

7.   Could I ask for more prayers for us?   You can read up on our adoption journey here, but we're facing a bit of a fork in the road.  We've known for a long time that adopting Peter wasn't going to be the end of our adoption journey - we're going to adopt more children than just Peter.  However, we are at a point in the journey where we need to decide what to do.  Peter's adoption is stalled at the moment, and there's nothing we can do to speed up the process.   We have the opportunity to continue to wait for him, but move forward with adopting another child in the meantime.   We're praying on the decision, and will be for awhile, but we need to move either towards this other child, or continue to wait for Peter (for probably at least until next winter).   No matter what, we will continue to work towards bringing Peter home...we just need to decide if we're going to work towards bringing a second child home at the same time.   Thanks for praying for us.  

Okay, with that, I'm off to bed!  Rascal #3 has gymnastics bright and early in the morning...which means I need to get a household of non-morning people into the car by 8am.  Pray for us!