more snow pics

clean up clean up

Our kids love to play in this one particular corner in our living room.  It is behind the loveseat and has big windows and a wood divider thingy.  Anyway, they have accumulated lots of “stuff”, over the course of a couple of days stuck indoors, in that area.  This morning I asked them to pick up their mess when they were done.  I was doing something on the computer and heard them singing the clean up song.  I turned around to find this:

they cleaned up by putting everything on the couch.  I was trying to explain that now they had cleaned up the other area, but these things needed to go where they belong.  Eli was only concerned with the corner.  They were very proud and are now sitting on top of their heap watching planet heroes.  It’s a start, right? 🙂  They did clean up what I asked them to clean up.

SNOW!!!

We had no idea it was coming!  In fact, we were going about our morning like usual when a friend sent me a text about the roads or something.  I looked out and was surprised!  We ventured out for a short roll in the snow.  We don’t really have snow gear, so I did my best with some zip lock bags, extra layers and socks for gloves. (i could only find 1 pair 🙂 )  The kids liked it, but were okay with the idea of coming in and sipping on hot chocolate.  Since then we have enjoyed the snow through the window.  It is beautiful.  For a while we had huge fluffy flakes.  So pretty.  Hope you are keeping warm where ever you are today!  O, and I thought I might mention that E is not into having his picture made lately, so the eyes closed is totally on purpose.  Gotta love it!

Monster Banks

The other day I picked up this little kit at Target.  It had 2 monster banks (they are ceramic, not plastic), paint, 1 paint brush and one sponge brush, fuzzy hair, googly eyes and 2 sided tape in it. The kids LOVED it.  It ended up being a multi day project.  We painted one day, left to dry, came back and painted a little more the next day, left them to dry and on the 3rd day we added eyes and hair.  I think they turned out pretty cute.  I especially love how the bigger one’s coin slot is his mouth.

“take picture of my babies, mom”

Lu got her babies all lined up, came to find me and instructed me to take their picture.  Not a very exciting post, but a fun memory for us.  Since we have started fostering she has started mimicking us with her babies.  For example, we had 2 newborns for a week.  During that time she started carrying 2 babies around at a time.  Once we went back to just one baby, so did she.  Lucy also likes to name her babies after our foster babies.

It has been interesting to see how our kids react to having new kids in our home.  Eli calls them “fosters”.  It’s almost like that is their last name to him.  You know, like “Hey, when are the Smith’s gonna come over”, but he will say “When are we gonna have more fosters?” or “we have lost of baby fosters, I want some more big kid fosters”  Overall, they enjoy it.  I think it will be interesting to see how it alters their thinking about what is normal.  I can remember growing up we would leave and spend all summer where ever my dad’s ball team was and at some point in jr high or high school it occurred to me that none of my friends did that.  I never thought they all did, but some how it never occurred to me how different that was for other people.  Does that make sense?  I think one day my kids might realize that a lot of their friends don’t have kids come stay for a while and then go………….. I have so many thoughts that have been rolling around in my head and I don’t know where to start.  That is a big reason why I haven’t kept my blog up to date AT ALL.  For those of you that keep up with us, I apologize.  Fostering is such a part of our day to day life that I haven’t figured out how to share without breaking confidentiality.  AND, I don’ t always know just how to put my thoughts in to words on here.  I feel God has been putting it on my heart to share some things, so I’m working on that and hope to share it with you soon.  Okay, so you are probly wondering where that picture of Lulu’s babies are, right?  I won’t leave you hanging any longer.

no time to sleep

a couple of mornings ago our sweet baby woke up around 5 ish to eat.  Her crying woke Lu up and Lu’s fussing woke Eli up.  It was early enough that I wasn’t ready for every one to be up, but just late enough that it would be a big battle to get Eli back to his bed without some loud objections.  So I sent him to lay in my bed (he thought that was a treat) and got baby girl a bottle.  I was working to get Lu’s diaper changed and put her back in bed when Eli says from the other room “Mom, you are always up!”  I laughed and told him I could see where he might think that. 🙂  And if you are wondering, they only lasted about 30mins in bed before we were all up.  O well, you can’t say I didn’t try.