weird

The other day, while I was cooking at the stove, Eli really felt the need to be involved.  He pulled a chair up to the counter right next to me and began punching numbers on the microwave.  I guess he liked hearing all the beeping and seeing the display change as he pressed buttons.  As long as he didn’t start it while nothing was inside I had no problem with it.  After a few minutes of this the weirdest thing happened, the screen stopped displaying all the different numbers he was pressing and simply spelled out “child”.  No matter what he pressed from that point on the display screen didn’t change.  The only way to get it off was to hit the stop/clear button.  I studied the keypad for a couple of minutes trying to figure out what had happened, how in the world he got it to say that, but I never found anything………..funny……….has anybody else ever had this happen??  Are we missing something?

The best $2 I have spent in a while

The kids and I stopped by the Kids Market consignment sale this morning to see what it was all about.  While there Eli spotted a castle.  It is not uncommon for Eli to find a toy when we are shopping, look at it for a bit and then put it back before we check out.  He might ask if we can take it home, but 99% of the time I decline his request to buy whatever it is and he is okay with putting it back.  So back to the castle, he found it soon after we got there and was very fascinated with it.  He kept asking me to buy it so he could take the tag off of it, for some reason the tag (an index card taped to it) really bothered him.  By the end of my shopping he was still very in to this castle and since it was only $2, I decided to treat him.  He was so stoked when the cashier removed the tag and gave it back to him.  As we drove off he began to ask me about the people that go in it.  I told him that we would have to look for some.  I mentioned that we might go look at Savers, but he said we didn’t need to and that he had some at home that would work.  I wasn’t sure that they would fit, but whatever.  When we got home he immediately took the castle to a table in the play room and found his people and played for a good 15 minutes all by himself.  It was wonderful. The only reason he stopped wasb because Nathan came in the room and Eli couldn’t wait to show him his new castle. Then we ran an errand, took a nap and when he woke up…………………more castle time.  I think you get the idea. 

Granpa’s Birthday

I am so behind!!! Nathan’s dad, aka Granpa, had a birthday about a week ago, so we hopped in the van and headed to Monticello to surprise him for dinner.  It was a great trip.  The kids had a blast.  Sadly, it was a very quick trip.  We arrived at Great Gran’s at about 3 or so and left about 7:30am the following morning.  The next morning as we were packing up to go home Eli began to realize that we weren’t staying much longer.  He then started to say “But I’m not weady to weave yet!!”  He was not happy with the plan.  We definitely need to make another trip soon when we don’t have to leave so quickly.  

I love this picture of Eli and Great Gran.

Lucy was a Great Gran’s girl while there.  She couldn’t get enough of her 🙂

Lucy with the birthday boy, Granpa.

Fun in a box

It is amazing how much fun very plain and boring items can be.  My kids have thoroughly enjoyed playing in empty plastic storage boxes.  Pictured below is one of those rare and magical times when they played in one box, together, without fighting……… We spent a good 45 minutes pushing and pulling them around in this box and also separately with an extra box so they each had their own.  They thought it was soooo funny.  Remind me why we have so many toys? hehe  Okay, so they do play with their toys and I am usually just as excited to go and look at the toy isle as they are, but they can be so content with very ordinary objects and their great imaginations.  I have to remind myself of this sometimes.

 

catch up

I’ve gotten behind!! Tonight I took a picture of Eli and Lucy playing.  Eli asked to look at it, so I opened the view screen and as we looked I realized there were a couple of events that we have captured with the camera and failed to get on the computer.  With all that being said, I apologize to any faithful readers for slacking on the happenings of the james family.  I will try and pick up the pace.  thank you for your patience 🙂  It’s funny how extra busy can sneak up on you.  I feel we stay pretty busy with 2 kiddos under 2, but the past few weeks have been extra busy.  I’m not sure I really saw it coming.  I mean, I remember looking at our calendar thinking “Wow, we’ve got a lot coming up in Sept”, but it never really set in how that would look in action.  I fear that this is the part of the year when things start picking up speed and don’t slow in pace until after the new year.  First comes fall-like weather which gets people excited about all that fall brings.  We start gearing up for costumes and candy.  By the time we get all that figured out it has come and gone in a matter of a couple of hours.  Then it is only a couple of weeks till Thanksgiving and well, even though there is a small break in between then and Christmas, it doesn’t really feel that way.  Then you add other things that are specific to each family, for instance, we are going to squeeze a birthday party in there between Halloween and Thanksgiving.  Busy, busy, busy.  I’m not sure I’m okay with so much busy, but at this point I don’t have much of a choice.  It’s mostly good stuff, ya know………okay, so I will end my ramblings and move on to a post with pictures.  Thanks for letting me vent.

The CALL

It feels like so much has happened over the past couple of weeks, but yet I have no blog to show for lots of it 😦 We have been going 90 to nothing around our house.  One of the biggest things that has been keeping us busy is The CALL.  CALL stands for Central Arkansas Loving kids for a Liftime.  It has all been in the works for some time now, but we have just recently taken the steps to become certified foster/adoptive parents through the state.  It’s all kind of surreal.  As a young girl had a desire to adopt.  I always pictured it being children from abroad, my vision was always to have a multicultural family.  For years I have prayed about what this would look like in my life.  I had daydreams about what it could look like, but have prayed that I would be open to what God had in mind.  Well, about a year ago I went to church just like any other Sunday not knowing that God was going to tug on that part of my heart that very morning.  I was very pregnant with Lucy, I think I was within a month of her arrival.  I remember seeing the video about The CALL and crying and knowing that God was calling our family to that, I had no doubt about it.  We went to one meeting and began to pray about it and how we could be involved at this point since we were about to have a newborn.  We tried to go to other meetings to get the process started, but it seemed like there was always a conflict in our schedules.  The whole deal slowly made its way to the back burner of priorities until we kind of forgot about it.  Then this past August I was blessed with a couple of days away in beautiful San Diego, CA. Nathan was there for business and I was able to use airline points to join him.  It was great weather and so nice to have no schedule to follow.  I just wandered around during the day and then met up with Nathan in the evenings.  It was just what I needed, it just wasn’t long enough 🙂  So, after being without small children for a couple of days my mind had had time to unravel and rest.  I was on my way home spending lots of time in airports and airplanes which gave me lots of time to read and think and reflect.  In that time God began to stir my thoughts of adoption and fostering.  I returned on a Thursday and that following Sunday our church hosted The Heart Gallery in our lobby.  If you are not familiar with this then you can check it out at http://www.adoptarkids.org, and from what I understand they are about to launch one that is for Pulaski Countyso be on the look out.  Basically, photographers donate their time and talent to take professional pictures of children that are waiting to be adopted and then Bedford Camera has donated their services and printed them at no charge.  Then the pictures are framed and the gallery travels from one church to another.  It really hit home for me seeing their faces.  It made it all the more real for me being able to put faces with this issue.  So, I get to church and there is the heart gallery.  I began looking at all the pictures and there are a lot of older children.  Our family situation at this time is not equiped to take on an older child, so I just prayed for the kids as I walked by their pictures.  Then I passed by a little girl that looked like she was close to my Eli’s age.  At that point this became even more real.  I had this sudden desire to go find her and make her mine.  I cried through the service and began to sort through how we would arrange the rooms and what this would mean for our family.  It was at this point that I knew we could not put this off any longer.  It just so happened that there was a CALL informational meeting the next night, so we signed up and it has been a whirl wind since then.  That was towards the end of Aug.  Our training took place in Sept.  We attended two full weekends of training, learning, talking and processing.  It is all a bit overwhelming, but through all of this there has been a peace that we right where God wants us to be.  We completed the training on Sunday and then attended a support meeting on Tuesday.  We have finally got our physicals and TB test done and hopefully have all of our paperwork filled out.  In the midst of all this the Heart Gallery appeared in the church where our training was hosted.  There seemed to be many new pictures added since we had seen it last.  Of course we looked at all the pictures and found a little brother and sister that are about Eli and Lucy’s age.  I was ready to take them home 🙂  So on top of all this other stuff, we are now trying to sort through what it would look like to adopt these children and go from 2 to 4…………are we crazy??? Maybe, but as long as God is bringing us to all of this, I consider it a good crazy.  Who knows what God has instore for us through this process.  The desire to do something like this has been in me for so long that it is weird and exciting to see this new chapter starting.  AND, what a blessing that Nathan has a heart for this, too.  When we met I shared this desire with him and he was very supportive and open.  Over the past few years God has grown this desire in him, too.  I’m sitting here staring at the blinking cursor not knowing how to wrap up all my rambling………I guess there is no rule that says I have to make this real proper.  So there you have it, God is really rocking our worlds, and this is only the beginning cause we haven’t actually added any children to our home 🙂  Since we are still in the middle of all this that is where I will leave this post, incomplete.  If you are at all interested in any of this I would encourage you to visit http://www.thecallinarkansas.com  There you will find more details.  There are many opportunities to be involved besides fostering and adopting, so check it out.  I’m done for now, thanks for “listening”.  Till next time………………

Paintin’ a Pumpkin

This morning we decided to paint the pumpkin that Great Aunt Gayle gave us.  Eli really enjoyed this activity and it keep him busy a good 30min.  The end result is the prettiest rainbow colored pumpkin around 🙂

To Gramma’s house we went :)

We took off first thing Friday morning and headed to MO to visit Nathan’s mom, sister and brother.  While there we also got to see his Aunt Gayle, Uncle Dan couldn’t make it 😦 , Aunt Nancy and Uncle Bob.  They all live within a few hours, so they drove in and spent a day with all of us.  It was a weekend filled with cards, toys, food, movies, food, a little shopping and more food 🙂

They all sat at this table for a really long time playing cards.  

Lucy doing one of the things she does best………eating.

Eli and Lucy’s Great Aunt Gayle and Great Uncle Dan grew this pumpkin in their yard and brought it for them.

Hug or a headlock? Honestly, I think it was meant as a little of both.

Aunt Tarah and Lucy

Gramma and Eli walking around the shopping center.

Lucy had more fun with this empty water jug.  She spent a very long time pushing it, carrying it and pulling it around the kitchen.  It’s amazing the things that entertain kids.

When Lucy noticed that I was taking her picture she ran towards me laughing and smiling. She was moving so fast that I almost didn’t get the picture!  

Gramma and Eli had a great time playing with playdough.

Lucy was like a little monkey.  They have a lot of stairs at their house, so she spent a lot of time climbing up and down them.  Eventually we put up the baby gates to give the grown ups a break.  That’s when she began looking for other things to climb on and she found a chair just right for her.  She was sooo proud.  It was really cute.

We had a GREAT time.  Thanks to Gramma Gari, Tarah and Elliott for letting us envade your space. Thank you Bob & Nancy and Gayle for driving over for the day.  I have to say, the kids did sooo well.  We did have a little sickness the first night into Sat morning, but other than that the kids slept better than they do at home and played really well.  We look forward to our next visit.  Love you all!

Happy Birthday Whitney!

Over the weekend we got to celebrate one of my good good friends birthday.  I first met Whitney @ Lakewood Junior High.  I didn’t know anyone and she was one of the first people to befriend me 🙂  We have been friends since.  She is such a blessing to me and my family and we look forward to celebrating many more birthdays with her. 

Sat night we went out to eat with the Loibner, Chino and Jones families.  It was good food and great conversation. ALSO, it was Alison’s birthday yesterday, too, so Happy Birthday Alison!!!!

 

Apparently the guys are too cool to take a group guy picture 🙂  This was the best we could get.

Labor Day

We had a low key Labor Day.  We went to Wild River Country.  We were blessed to have my Mema with us and we met a couple from our community group, too.  With more than just me and the kids making the trip we were able to go on slides and that was very fun.  Eli was all about the slides.  We played hard.  Lucy didn’t even make it out of the parking lot awake.  Eli tried real hard to stay awake.  If we would have been in the car 5 more minutes he would have been out, but we weren’t so when we got home and attempted to take him straight to his room for nap he woke up just enough to realize we were skipping a very important step in our day……………eating a popsicle!  All summer we have had a popsicle upon returning from the pool and yesterday was no exception.  Afterwards Eli went down for a nap and our friends came back to our house for lunch, ice cream and a card game (I was not in on the card game:] )  Anyways, it was a nice day. Hope everyone else was able to enjoy some quality time with friends and family.