Wordless Wednesday

Like mother, LIKE SON?

Baylor evidentally learned this at school. When he did this it cracked me up. It was one of my favorite things to do when I was his age. I was very flexible and loved to show my family how I could put my toes in my mouth while doing the "birdnest" ( what I called it). Baylor can not quite put his toes in his mouth, but I am impressed.

Basement update

Our basement has been trucking right along. We (and when I say we... I don't mean me) have passed all inspections, installed insulation, hung drywall, laid tile and today we started the trim carpentry.

Here are some pics...

Let me say, I have a new appreciate for people who do this for a living ( and just do it on the side). We did not hang our insulation our friend and builder did. But we had some left over and we decided LAST MINUTE that it would be a good thing to do to add the leftovers in the interior walls for sound and heat and air. So we put the rest in one night after all the kids went to bed rocking along to the music from my iPod. If we did not have fun dancing as we hung it, it would have been pure torture. ( Mental note... never hang insulation again)


Here is the door corner with the drywall up.


Our bathroom floor tiled.

The trim. A trick we learned from our original builder and friend. You hang the two pieces of wood trim like this and then paint all of it (including the drywall between) with trim paint and you have the illusion of a huge piece of crown moulding.

Menu Plan Monday

I am going to try this today... it may never happen again.
*** Note- I am not a beef or pork eater so they are heavy in chicken and turkey and I always try to make it kid friendly. Nothing too fancy here.

Monday- Turkey Italian Meatball Subs (thanks Trisha)
Chips
Pasta Salad

Tuesday- Foil Pack Taco Chicken
Spanish Rice

Wednesday- Grab and Go before church

Thursday- Chicken Parmesan
Salad
French Bread

Friday- Turkey Bacon Cheeseburger Roll Up
Smiley Face Potatoes

Connect 4

This just cracks me up. Eliza was fussy while I was taking care of some kitchen clean up so I tried to bring out something to occupy her. She always dumps this out when she gets a hold of it, but I set it up tonight and showed her you could put the chips in the slots... AND SHE DID IT! ( again I sound like I am yelling... Macie the dog wanted in the action, the boys are playing Wii, and I am drying jackets with zippers in the dryer... do I ever get a video where you can just concentrate on what I am videoing?)

Wordless Wednesday!

Blogroll

Since I have a favorites button... I want to add some of the blogs I stalk *ahem* I mean read. But, I am not sure of the blogetiquite... do I need to ask first?

So, if I read your blog (or you read mine) and you think it would be fun to be added to my blog roll, let me know.

If you think it is a scary world out there and you prefer not to enter into it EVEN THOUGH you own a blog, let me know and I will not add you.

A girls weekend

So, this weekend I had some time away to have fun with some friends. We chose a very deserving guest of honor this year and surprised her with a "birthday" bash like no other.
We headed out about 3 o'clock on Friday and headed up to Center Hill lake where we stayed on a house boat. But let me tell you, this was no ordiary house boat. This was a 4 bedroom, 2 bath house that happened to float (even though you did not feel like you were floating). I tried to find a picture on the internet to show you what I was talking about, but nothing did it justice. I have already invited myself back for some summer time fun.

Among other various surprises, we all got tickets to see

It really was a good show. The dancers were amazing and just watching them, I was out of breath and they continued for like 90 minutes of continuous dancing.

Mr. Wayne Newton was one of the stars there. Mr. Newton did not dance and honestly he tried his best to sing. I know he is one of the great all time entertainers, but I do believe his 15 minutes may be coming to an end, for no other reason than his apparent health issues.

Helio and Julianne were the big couple. The danced a number or two and really wowed the crowd.
Monique was a true part of the show. She danced her dances with her partner, but she also hung in there and danced with the professionals on a few dances. She did great. I was impressed.
I hate that all the pics I have are of the stars. Sadly, I forgot my camera as I grabbed things to head out the door. So I will have to steal some pictures from friends and post later. It was a great weekend. The only part I would have left out was the running through the streets of Nashville to our "free parking"in temperatures that were in the teens. I could have done without that. I probably could have said no to a little food too, but come on... it was a girls weekend and what girls weekend would be complete without the junk and sweets!

Dateline NBC

I have not yet been able to watch the Dateline episode, my plan is to try to find it online as soon as I finish this. There is a great website on all things Guatemalan adoption (guatadopt.com) and I wanted to share what it's main contributor shared today. It is so touching, and so true.

An adoption attorney once told me "at its best, there is no adoption system as good as Guatemala's, at its worst, there is none worse". This statement is incredibly true.

Tens of thousands of families like ours have been formed through adoption from Guatemala. For many of us, our experience was far more than an adoption process, because our lives grew in ways beyond just the size of our families.

Many of us remain involved in the community of adoptive families through websites like this, local community groups, and other means. Many of us now have a devotion to help alleviate the extreme poverty in Guatemala that leads to children needing families.

Guatemalan adoptions were not all corrupt. It is horribly wrong and inaccurate to assume all children adopted from Guatemala came to this country through a corrupt process. More importantly, it is incredibly unfair to the children. But as is the case with any system, the combination of money and poor law enforcement created an atmosphere for corruption.

Intercountry adoption is an incredibly complex issue. It is political. It can be easily sensationalized. It is heart warming. But as Dateline has demonstrated, something that is obviously a wonderful concept – children finding families despite border – can run awry if left open to unethical opportunists. The real debate lies in what should be done when unethical and abusive practices exist.

The global norm is to stringently reform intercountry adoption laws. For example, Romania has formally ended the practice. Through much of Central and Southern America the trend has been to create an underfunded, complex, bureaucratic system that keeps intercountry adoption open on paper, but in reality makes it virtually impossible. The latter has occurred. No one, not even the critics of intercountry adoption like Unicef, can say what the impact has been on children. In an effort to remove corruption, are we throwing away the baby with the bathwater.

It is quite amazing that we live in a world where countless children die each day from malnutrition and other curable diseases. This is a world where children languish in squalid institutions and orphanages because their parent(s) knew that was better than what they could provide. And this is a world where there are many thousands of loving adults who just want to be parents and provide a family for a child.

Our children are not our “adopted children”, they are just our kids the same as anyone else’s. They are our purpose in life. They are the sparkle in our eyes. We love them more than words could describe. Our families may have been formed through intercountry adoption and because of this we celebrate Guatemalan holidays.....and we drink pachas rather than bottles.

Dear Blog Fairy

I LOVE IT!!!! Thank you so much. I think it looks just like me!

For those of you out in blog land... my friend that did this is very talented and this blog uplift is new to her many talents. If you look on the sidebar you will see a link to her blog Peek-a-boo Greeting. Go check her out and let her give your blog a face lift (or if you are in the market for invites, announcements, greeting cards, etc). This sweet, sweet, Mommy has been a help and inspiration to me throughout my adoption journey. She created my announcements, Christmas Cards and a video journal of her time in Guatemala. And truth be told, I met her through a friend and most of our relationship was through e-mail...I believe she is one of the most genuine people I have ever met, and I did meet her when I went to pick up my video.

She herself (being a young pup) is waiting to be OF AGE so that she can adopt the child that has always been in her heart from China. The services and goods she offers are all a way for them to raise funds for their travel expenses during their adoption. Please go support her.

Thanks again, M, I LOVE IT!

Surprise!

Dear Ashley,

I thought you could use a little happy before you head out. Let me know what you would like to change. I tried to use as many "dots" with a good mix of boy and girl (of course, a little heavier on the girl since that IS what you are). I hope you LOVE it!

Love,
your blog fairy

BBBBBEEEEEPPPPP

This is a test... this is only a test... your regular programming will return shortly.

HA HA

Actually my friend is doing a facelift to my blog this weekend... I will be back soon. Come back to see the magic she has worked. Because then you can go to her blog and sign up for her to give you a facelift. (all in the name of adoption fundraising).

SNOW DANCE

Every good (former) elementary school teacher, and every parent of a kid in elementary school knows that once it begins to snow and you really want a good snow, you go outside and do a SNOW DANCE. I did get it on a video clip, but I cannot get it turned upright... I will need to fiddle with it later.

But here are the boys out on the deck dancing...


Here are Daddy and Liza enjoying her first real snowfall.

Baylor trying to catch some flakes.

"I think Liza had one?"

Mommy: "Silas, Mommy did not say it was okay to have a donut."

Silas: "I didn't... I had one lest-er-day."

Mommy: "Then what is on your mouth?"

Silas: "I think Liza had one."

Mommy: "Liza had a donut, that got on your mouth?"

Silas: "Yep"

and he takes of running. ( This picture was taken after he had a chance to get most of it off. AHHH...the mind of 2 year olds with a little sister to blame.

Inquiring minds...

Okay... since you asked ;)

I used BLURB. On there you download the booksmart program to your computer and you have it for your making. There is a place to just click "download blog" and it does the work for you in that matter. I just went in and tweaked my pictures took out a few post ( video's obviously do not transfer) changed font sizes so stuff would fit on pages... combined several post to some pages, etc. Just made it fit better. It ended up being 114 pages. I did have to go in and check every photo to make sure it was centered but the program has a little "alarm" icon if the text or pictures are not working for that page. I will add here that I did not transfer my comments and I might regret that later but I do have a friend that is doing that so maybe she could share (M???).

As far as my FTC book... all my pictures worked because they were not 4x6 size and I was doing several on a page (like 9 in some cases) they were small enough that they images worked. For my medical reports... I had a hard copy of them all and I retyped them as well as the surprise vists...but it was basically
"M says that you are now taking Isomil Soy, you like a bath at 11AM, you go to bed at 10 PM and you wake up at 3, 5, and 8 AM"

I literally uploaded my pictures month by month and "drug" them over to the pages in the book. It really is not hard once you get the hang of it.

I did however have a practice run. My son loves the Atlanta Braves and we went to a game for his birthday last year. I took our pictures from the game and the trip and made a Birthday Book out of it for him as my trial run. I suggest you do that first so you will get the hang of it (even if you never print it out) so you can see what to do. I also recommend picking all your settings first like layout pages and backgrounds etc. If you go changing things after everything is in it sometimes sqews the pictures and text and changes things around and then you have to go back through page by page.

I have not published my FTC book yet because as I was typing the Dr. reports I realized that Dr. M just casually typed it and there are really no peroids or commas and such and I first thought I would just leave it that way as he sent it, but then I decided I retyped it and it was technically "mine" so I would fix it. So I have to go back and read through all of that.

There is a way I can e-mail you my book that I made. So if you would like to see my Atlanta Braves trip book, post your e-mail and I will send it to you just to glance at it, and then when I finish my FTC one, I could do that too.

Hope that helps... and I sure wish Blurb would give me a kickback for the advertising (you know for all 3 of you).

I wish I had a video...

Tonight I took Baylor to Karate. It is a 45 minute class so I dropped him off, ran to pick up a few things at a store down the street and came back to watch for the rest of the class. Eliza has not been in the karate studio much so I am not sure she knew why we were there. We had been there about 15 minutes when (as she was sitting on my hip) she straightened real tall pointed her little finger out and yelled "AY-YAR" (or somthing to that affect that was completely understandable to me)and then she started waving like crazy. It took me about 2 seconds to catch on after the shock of her yelling out. She had just caught sight of her oldest brother and was trying to get his attention by yelling his name and waving at him... PRECIOUS, I tell you, PRECIOUS. If you could have seen my smile. That was the first time she said something other than "MAMA" or "DADA" at a family member and she absolutely knew her brother's name.
AND THEN... I get home and I am putting her PJ's on for bed. Her changing pad is on the long vanity in her bathroom so she has a mirror to look into. I said "where's Eliza" she looked over in the mirror and said (CLEAR AS DAY) "Yi-Ya" pointing at herself.

I AM LOVIN' IT!

Uneventful Week

As I sit here tonight, I do not have much to talk about. It was a "get back in the swing of things" kind of week. Bay started back to school on Monday. Callan and Silas started back to Mom's Day Out on Tuesday and Eliza and I had some girl time to get some stuff done.

Brent left town today to go on a once in a lifetime (please let it be once in a lifetime) hunting trip in Mississippi with one of his best friends. He is fired up and has been preparing for weeks mentally and physically. I hope he has a good time and returns home safely in a few days.

Me... I had a little storm freak out today with the bad weather. Yanked a sleeping baby out of bed and freaked out the 2 younger boys sending them to the basement, all while freaking out on the phone with Brent, mom, my friend and carpooler, S . But all turned out well. I have been trying to "finish out the year" by completing a few little projects that I am excited about. First, I turned my blog into a book ( only June through the end of December). It was not that bad. Of course I could have made it fancier, but I wanted to see how it all came together first. I am really happy with it and glad that I have my blog in print for the kids to read someday. I have always wanted to journal but never enjoyed the pen and paper kind of thing. Then, because I got so fired up about my blog book... I began to think of other things to turn into a book. So, I took all of the information we got from our agency during our adoption (pictures, Dr. reports, surprise visits) and turned it into a book as well. I had been feeling the pressure of scrapbooking it all and having it all in one place, but the pictures were e-mail format so they are not the best quality and not all the pictures are good. And there were over 260 pictures!!!! But, I was able to put them all in the book just fine. I have not fine tuned it (spell checked) so it is not published yet, but it should be on the way soon. If I figure out a way to post it I will.

Anyway... I leave you with my attempt at a picture of the kiddos this past Sunday. Have a great weekend.

Help with HOPE

I do not know this mom... but I understand her heart. Click HERE and it will take you to her site. She adopted 12 years ago from China... she also just found a child on the waiting child list that she felt that God led her to just days before Christmas. For this to all work out ( with a deadline of Jan 31st) and for her to bring her daughter home, she needs to raise a lot of money. Go check out her site and her handiwork. You might be so inclined to help her bring her daughter home, or you just might have to have a dress, just because. I did... I got the Flower Power one.

Tell me what's on your iPod

My BIL gave me a hefty gift card to iTunes for Christmas. I have unloaded the cards onto iTune.s and am ready to load up my i.Pod. But I need some help. I love music... love singing. My problem... I never know who sings what... I just sing along. So I am having trouble finding what I like. I have some classic 80's, some college days 90's, my current faves and more. I love Christian and Country to listen to, but that is not really good to work out to. ( unless it is Shackles or Next Time He Cheats)

SO... what is on your iPod... don't be scared or embarassed. I will admit the firt things I put on were Bon Jovi, Salt-n-Peppa, and Prince. So, now that the ice is broken... give me some ideas.

Memo

To other mall shoppers and retail employees:

First of all I am not a circus side show so you can stop staring. Yes I have 4 kids and I know that one of them does not look like the others...after all she is the only girl. Staring as we pass and talking and commenting makes us all feel like we are purple and have one eye. And yes, it was bad enough that my 7 year old left the mall terribly self conscious today about our family, and walked several steps behind us and commented on all the people who starred at us.

Secondly, retail employees just because you are afraid of us coming does not give you the right to hide. We are not invisible, so when I am standing in the men's section trying to put together an outfit for my hubby... ask if you can help me. And when you see that 3 customers have jumped in line in front of me because I have to stand so far back with my tandem stroller, please tell them that I have been waiting patiently.

I hope you have fun reorganizing your lip gloss and gift cards that I let my kids rummage through and play with only because you were rude to me and when you asked who was helping me today, I meant it when I said NO ONE.


***Edited to add... it really does baffle me that we evidently look so strange walking down the mall. I make my kids behave and all of them were minding their p's and q's today. Really THEY were great. It was everyone else that stressed me out. I know that 4 kids is a lot to some people, but in my circle of friends and church family it is more the norm than not. It blows my mind that people go out of their way to comment or gawk or even stop in their tracks to watch us pass.

Who am I kidding, maybe they were just all staring at me and my powder blue fake UGGS.

The Princess Chair

I have had it. My little monkey (which I have called her since her Foster Mom dressed her in a monkey outfit I sent down) climbs all over everything. If we leave a chair even barely pulled out, she climbs it and even proceeds to climb on top of the table. I have never had a climber like her. You would think from all the times I have stopped her, pulled her down, and told her no... or all of the times she has fallen she would be less interested. NOPE... Sunday night she climbed right up and proceeded to fall and get a big knot on her head. I have had enough and thought maybe her own little chair would stop her from climbing so I ran out to Walgree.ns and grabbed a chair I saw the other day when I was in there. I wanted to get her this big plush chair from Tar.get but it was huge and expensive (and gone when it went on sale) So, the foam princess chair will have to do... in a pinch. She loves it... and is very possessive of it. She growls if anyone else is in it or near it (and Silas happens to be A LOT... so now I am on a mission to find another one for him)
Here she is enjoying the chair...



Also... we got a teeny bit excited to see this snow fall. It was pretty but only lasted about 10 minutes and melted away almost instantly.

Some New Year Fun

We have not been up to much here at the Jones Casa. We have played a lot of Wii and played a lot with our Christmas stuff. We also enjoyed having Daddy home on Monday and Tuesday. He and Baylor went hunting Monday morning and then we played all day. Here is some of the fun we had with Callan's gift from Uncle Jeff (the newlywed).

The Target... ( it shoots out disc in the air and you have to hit them)


The shooters...




And finally...
THE RETRIEVER (all completely on her own... it cracked me up)