Trading Tea for Elephants

A joyful heart is good medicine, But a broken spirit dries up the bones. ~proverbs 17:22 There is nothing more heavenly than the sound of a child laughing.  No matter what kind of day I have had, that sound will always cause a smile to come across my face.  We like to be silly at our house and we love to laugh.  The road of adoption is filled with stressful days.  Emotional rollercoaster.  One day can hold a high where I am shouting and dancing and also a low where I am weeping on the floor.  Sometimes this happens all in one hour.  Some of my favorite times with our family is when we are home alone just being silly and everyone gets a case of the giggles.  Especially now that everyone in the house is laughing. Kody is deep compassion and strong desire for justice can make him, at times, very serious.  This week they did a writing assignment at school - "What I would do if I was President of the United States".  Kody wrote that he would free all the slaves in the world,

I love Valentine's Day, always have.  I love the sappy cards, the flowers, the chocolates, the i love yous, the pink and red decorations and everything else that goes along with the holiday.  I had read on a friend's blog that their family reads 1 Corinthians 13 every  night at dinner during the days leading up to Vday.  I liked the idea of getting the kids reading scripture about love and having some talks about what is love anyway.  So this year we are doing something new.  The kids and I made a big heart out of a piece of posterboard and then colored it in all shades of red and pink from the crayon bin.  Next I wrote out different things that the Bible has to say about love...what it is and what it is not.  Each day one of the kids draws a card, Kody or Tyler read it out loud and then we all talk about what we think it means. Very simple idea, but one that has got us thinking and talking.  One card reads, "Love is not jealous".  After talking about what it me

"Hope waits but does not sit.  It strains with eager anticipation to see what may be coming on the horizon.  Hope does not pacify;  it does not make us docile and mediocre.  Instead, it draws us to greater risk and perseverance."  ~ Dan Allender   What do you place your hope in?  This is a question that has been swirling around in my mind for months. The boys middles names are family names - just like their Daddy.  My middle name is from a promise in scripture that God gave to my mom after my older sister had gone to be with Jesus. A promise that He would turn my mother's "mourning into joy " (isa 61).  And now our girls, just like their mama, have names that give testimony to God's promises.  God gave us Hebrews 11:1 when He called us to adopt from Ethiopia, "now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."  Faith's adoption was a lesson in faith for our entire family and taught us what that word truly mea