the start of an amazing story....

i am sooooo excited to be sharing this post with you all.

what i thought was a once in a lifetime crazy miracle is happening again in my family :)

i'd like to think that it kind of began with neiko (although i should really double check on that one).

when i got the call about baby neiko needing a home the third person i called was my sister. :)

and right away she told me that if for any reason it wouldn't work out for us to take him that they would be willing to help :)

which got them really thinking on this matter. they talked about it a lot and from there they decided to start the process of getting their foster licence.

they were feeling that God was telling them that their family wasn't complete. they have 3 girls- ages 6,5,and almost 4- but there are so many children out there who need a family- and they were willing and ready to add on :)

and then during this last year they put their house up for sale, sold it, remodeled and moved into a temporary home, and are drawing up plans to build on the property they are living on.

and all that craziness has kept them from being able to finish their foster licencing as they needed to be living in a permanent residence.

so that means during this year i have listened my sister wonder aloud at what God could have in store, and heard her sadness over not being able to take in any children until her house is built.

until thursday......

my mom got a call about a pregnant girl wanting to give her baby up for adoption. she was called on thursday and told that the baby is due on tuesday.

they needed a christian home. and ASAP.

my sister and her husband said YES without a moment's hesitation. and the birth mother said she would like to meet them.

dave and i and our kids prayed for them yesterday as they met with this girl.

and it went perfect!

she is giving them her baby boy!!

he's due tomorrow!!!!!!

and he happens to be biracial :) which just really warms my heart :)

i'm so happy for neiko that he will have a cousin who is "brown" (as all the cousins call him)

like him!

so now my sister is in a whirlwind that i am very familiar with :)

birth mom had a sono today and baby is measuring 9lb 4 oz.

a big boy!!

everything looks great though and she is scheduled to be induced on thursday!

my sister went shopping today for all new everything for a boy :) soooo fun! :)

and of course i drug my kids to a store today too to buy him a few things that he will probably already be too big for :)

i didn't get the 9lb 4 oz memo until it was a little too late :)

and she is making calls to our lawyer and our caseworker.

THAT part is the worst of it but God is in control! it is HIS work and HE is faithful to complete it!

PRAISE HIM!!!

i could NOT be more thrilled!!

HE is SO GOOD!!!

His work is astounding and His WORD is so true!!

HE truly does and is soooo much more than we could ask or imagine!!!

please pray for birth mom, baby, amy and jared, and their 3 girls.....

i read online that the cure for green pool hair is ketchup. so we gave it a try.

tekoa's hair was a shade of green that i have never seen before. it seriously looked like i had put green highlights in it.....

but no longer!

the ketchup worked great!!!

while i was ketchupping tekoa, neiko kept asking, "ketchup too? ketchup too?"

and wren was saying, "i don't want to do the ketchup hair, mom."

but she was green too so she had to do the ketchup hair. :)

we all laughed quite a bit during that ordeal :)

but the girls' hair looked so pretty and blond that night- with just a faint ketchup smell to it....

here are some already pretty outdated pics from when we kept my nieces :)

gotta love the leotards! especially on emma and neiko!! :)

when i held the blue sparkly one up for neiko he whispered, "oh my."

he thought it was beautiful :)

thanks to my family we managed just fine at church with 7 :)

here is tekoa in one of her special outfits. she pretty much always looks like this.

and she can't understand why i don't want her to wear tights and leotards to bed.

but she really doesn't wake up too often to use the bathroom in the middle of the night so i've been giving in on that one.....

and a note i found in shaeya's journal. she would KILL me if she knew i read it and posted it, but i thought it was really cute :)

my kids are always trying to tell me that grandma is the boss of me so if she wants them to go to the lake then they have to go.

they'll try anything to get what they want, won't they?? :)

wren's hair is finally getting under control. i think this was the first day of her life that her hair actually looked cute, so i snapped a pic :)

she's looking waaaaaaay too grown up!!!!

neiko on the other hand.....

i know i need to cut it but i just don't want to!

he came in from outside looking like this one day and i had a good laugh. i'm sure my other kids thoroughly enjoyed holding him in one place and covering him in hand prints.

they mix sidewalk chalk with water and come up with all kinds of ways to paint things :)

last thursday all the lighthouse families spent the morning cleaning the school......it's all clean and ready.

but i'm not ready!!!

i'm kind of in denial. even though we had parent orientation, and tekoa had her kindergarten physical, and there is only 14 days left of summer..... :(

neiko's birthday.....he's 2 now!

and here's what the kitchen looked like the morning after neiko's birthday.....

just the sign of a good time, right?

and shaeya and her friend sarah making lunch for us all that day to take to the pool :)

i have to apologize to my blog readers because i'm fully aware that the quality of my blog this summer has been pretty bad.

i used to do such a better job at capturing the funny stories and everyday chaos, and now i'm just scraping by.

i'm hoping once school starts i can put a little more effort into it!!

i'm thinking with 3 in school i will have time for all kinds of extra things like planning meals, grocery shopping, cleaning, decorating, and sleeping.....

potty training is in full force.

neiko is still surprising me with how well he is doing, but he doesn't usually tell me when he has to go.

basically if i follow him all day and put him on the toilet every hour or so he can make it all day with no accidents.

but WHO has time to follow 1 child around all day???

NOT ME. so he has accidents. but i remind myself that every time he pees on the floor he is learning! :)

now what happened at nap time today was different. maybe a bit more intentional.

i put a diaper on him and then put him to bed.

and when i went to get him out of his crib he had at some point taken off his diaper and then peed and pooped in his crib.

i'm telling myself though, that he really wanted to take that diaper off so he could go use the toilet.

i'm SURE he was trying to tell me and i just couldn't hear him......

he turns 2 on thursday. bittersweet. funny how you can long for something and yet dread it both very intensely.

i'm very ready to be done with diapers, pacifiers, high chairs, car seats, and cribs. but i'm a little torn about being done with my babies.

especially after keeping my nieces for the weekend.

little emma (who is almost 1) is so very sweet and cuddly. she fell asleep in my arms and i could hardly bear to lay her down.

i forgot how much i missed holding a sleeping baby.

it was definitely busy around here with two more little ones, but it was fun. and i miss them.

it was great to see my kids all helping out with them too.

shaeya was in charge of livie (who is 2) at night. it was actually pretty funny.

shaeya would come stumbling down the stairs in the morning and say, "i'm exhausted....livie kept me up all night long." or "livie fell out of bed last night" or "livie was crying in the middle of the night so i climbed in bed with her and she just kept talking and talking."

and i would laugh. i was just so glad it was her and not me :)

you know, she can take naps in middle of the day to make up for it......

and once again, we felt the need for that conversion van.......sigh......

while i was writing the above paragraph neiko threw a ball under my chair. he went under there to get it and decided to shut the computer down as well.

i've always wondered why they have to make the power button so appealing.....so round and pushable and with such a pretty blinking green light.....

dave and i had our 12th anniversary yesterday. and thanks to dave's sister maria we had a WONDERFUL night out. it was sooooooo nice.

and we bought our first piece of furniture for the house.

so now we have officially started decorating and now i feel pressure to dig through the rest of our boxes. the ones with all the decorations from our first house that i haven't seen since i boxed them up over two years ago.

something tells me i won't end up even using most of them but maybe there will be a few surprises in those boxes.....

but that's a good WINTER project, right?

and anyway i've got potty training, school orientation, kindergarten physical, school supply lists, birthday parties, and family reunions to keep my mind occupied.

oh the end of summer. always very tragic.

just 3 weeks left of life with no schedule and no alarm clock......

i may be setting my self up for disaster here but....

i actually had a full day home last week and decided to try putting underwear on neiko.

of course i realize that he is a BOY. and he is too busy to be terribly concerned about where he pees.

but my other kids were all potty trained before they were 2. okay i know for sure the girls were, but my memories of potty training tyden are a bit blurry. it was maybe shortly after he turned two.

my mom tells me that since neiko wasn't with us for his first 8 months that i should expect him to be about 8 months behind on some of these things.....

so i'm not entirely sure if i'm fully committed at this point but he's really not doing too bad.

we are about 4 days in now, and he is telling me some of the time when he needs to go, and he usually goes when i put him on the toilet.

i haven't had to change a poopy diaper for 2 days now so i'm pretty pumped.

so we will see.....

it would sure be nice to have him completely trained before school starts and the craziness begins!

he loooooves to watch daddy mow. he talks about mowing all the time.

he is obsessed with other little boys' toy lawn mowers, so i bought him this one from a garage sale but the wheels don't work.

it doesn't seem to bother him too much though :)

bunny is still alive- even through the heat- and even though he doesn't look very alive in this picture.....

wren is still talking about this day-

it was one of the highlights of her life.....

this cracked me up :)

they were being ninja warriors.

so i went to iowa with shaeya and her team this weekend. it was a new experience for me.

i do not love horses but i am learning to love them because i love my daughter.

she loved every minute of being in the horse barn, helping with ribbon, practicing on the barrels, sleeping in a camper, hanging out with her teammates, and having her mom all to herself for 3 days :)

and their performance went great.

http://youtu.be/UF0VZngQGWE

waiting for the awards at the end. she was pretty exhausted. and HOT.

and the team with their ribbons after it was all over :)

and i had fun too. because i was a tag-a-long.

i had only 1 child and no other responsibilities.

i sat and relaxed during the 5 hour drive.

i sat at the campsite and chatted with the girls and played on my ipad (i had no idea that campsites now have wifi- too funny!)

and i sat and watched the competitions and read a couple of books.

i can't remember the last time i sat that much. it was heaven.

......apart from the heat and the flies and the horse smell..... :)

but i was glad to get back to the rest of the fam. i missed them.

even the two that keep me from ever sitting-

.......and even when i'm driving i can't just sit :)

you never know when someone's gonna pee or puke or spill.......or get their finger stuck in their straw hole.

and then you have to take a picture and then rescue them :)

well i apologize for the fact that i am trying to squeeze the last week and a half of our lives into one post.

it's a lot.

i'm gonna do my best to keep it from getting too long....

here goes-

we left on friday at noon for champaign. we hit the children's museum first and

we LOVED it.

they had to kick us out at closing :)

then we checked into our hotel and were very excited to discover a couch with a hideaway bed. our room slept 7 with no problem :)

after settling in, the girls and i walked to a gas station to get ourselves a snack.

then we loaded back up and headed over to trina and destiny's house where we traded neiko for destiny and went to see 'brave.'

really fun :)

we traded kids back after the movie and then went back to the hotel where our friend ryan met us to hang out for awhile. we put the kids to bed and found a place in the hotel to sit and catch up and have a late dinner.

sooooooo nice :)

the next morning after feeding the kids (free breakfast! it was awesome!) and apologizing to everyone else for our noise level we hit the pool!

we met another family there who had seven kids. our kids had a lot of fun playing with them :)

after that we went to hessel park for destiny's party. the kids had a BLAST! :)

and so did we :)

i love meeting new people and the kids did a great job of making new friends that day.

dave and i both fell in love with anthony. he kept coming to me and wanting up :)

sooooo sweet!!!

and caden!

zero expression on his cute little face but when i kissed him he kept leaning back in for more.

MELTED MY HEART.

we brought destiny home (with tyden on the floor- went fine :) and had a really fun week with her.

between the mission, vaulting practice, trips to the lake, dentist appointments, fireworks at glen oak, and a family get together destiny says, "godmom you is always going somewhere...."

:) too true.

here's the glen oak pictures-

we brought squirt bottles to help us keep cool.

i'm embarrased to say that we lost tekoa for a bit that night......she was filling up her water bottle and got a bit turned around. she finally told someone that her parents were "lost" and they called us over the loud speaker.

she was FINE, okay? she was never really that far from us.

plus it happens to other parents all the time.

poor shaeya started feeling bad right when we got there. she perked up for awhile- and got to watch the fireworks- but i had to pullover for her to puke on our way home.

the next morning we had breakfast then headed to the lake!

wren's first try at scuba diving :)

uncle chad helped her out.

there are some BIG FISH all around them.

i love how unafraid she is!!

here's tekoa and i on the new waterslide :)

on thursday morning we made the trip back to champaign.

we took trina out to lunch and then to walmart and then we had to say goodbye :(

destiny wasn't quite ready for good-bye.....

but hopefully we will see her again soon!

and here's one last video.

after the mission yesterday i took the kids to the pool and wren is starting to learn to swim!

she LOVES it!

and that's it for the world's longest post!

tomorrow is shaeya's last vaulting practice- her competition is this weekend!

she and i will be going with the rest of her team to iowa on friday and coming back on sunday.

......say a prayer for dave if you think of it! ;)