Pool Time

I was laughing at Kyn here cause she scooted her chair around so she could watch Tweety Bird with the girls:)  They had started watching when I was fixing their lunch.......and YES I purposely sat them in front of it so they wouldn't be right under my feet while I was trying to get them something to eat.........then they didn't want to stop to eat, so I sat it in front of them.......and they....and I ......ate in peace!  Tweety is such a chum:)

 This is what I'm talking about when I say she looks out of the top of her eyes!!  It made my eyes hurt when I tried it!

This is the look I got......for at least 5 minutes.......for scolding her for pinching Wren!  You'd think she was the one who got pinched!

Then as I was putting a hair holder in Wren's hair.....Iley is patting the top of her head, wanting one too!  So we had a little fun with it:)  And yes that's a dog bone.....and yes it's been chewed on! Pebbles didn't mind a bit:)

Sometimes at the pool, I wish we were invisible!  I hear...."your daughters are so cute"  thank you.  "their swimsuits are so cute" thank you.  "do they speak any English" not much.  "Which one is deaf"  I want to say.....you figure it out.......but.....it's kids, and they are just interested because they've heard the boys talk about them......so I say this one. "Which one is older?"  "are they twins?" no.  on and on and on!!! sigh.....  I feel like I have some exotic pets with me or something.  I know people are just interested, and mean well, but sometimes I just wish we could sit at the pool, in our own space without doing a question and answer session the whole time!  BUT>>>>>>>>>>  Headline news here!  We only made 1 trip to the bathroom!!!  I HOPE that means they are getting better bladder control........and NOT that they are getting tired of the trips to the bathroom.......and using the pool!!!!!!!Yikes scary thought!

Iley was so pleased with herself for putting her head in the water!

 So when I took her picture, of course Wren had to do it too:)  She does it all the time though.

 All the kids wanted to play with the little fish and net we brought.....this distressed the girls.....it's hard to know whether to make the girls share.....or tell the other kids no:(  I want them to be generous, but also understand that they haven't had much of their own either:(

 I have no idea who this little guy is but he wanted his picture taken, and I thought they were cute:)

And we always have snack time after the second break....around 4:00.

 Check out this next set of pictures!  I wasn't even trying to do this.  When I loaded them and looked at them, it looks like I just cut the picture in half.  Kinda cool:)

A girl in Shermans class found these goggles in the bottom of the pool and gave them to Wren to wear......they were much coveted by Iley.......then the girl said oh wait....I have another pair in my bag!  Thank you T:)

 

 Which MUCH pleased miss Cricket!

 She wore these the rest of the time....I don't think they helped her vision issues much???!!!

 This girl played with the girls all day.  

 Wren had fun swimming with the big girls in the big pool.  She is much braver than Iley.  Also much more willing to go with girls she really doesn't know:(  Not sure if this is good or bad.  She did keep an eye on where I was though and keep checking in.

 While others chilled in the baby pool.

Wren...Watching her big friend jump off the diving board.   She kept a close eye on her.  She gets bored pretty quick in the baby pool, but comes over to warm up.  It's always much warmer than the other one.  We try not to think of "why" it might be.....it's just smaller....I'm SURE that's why!

Worth Reading! Have I posted this before?

Love is a battlefield

March 28, 2012 | Author Bethany Gaddis

Not long ago a pastor was praying over Nathan and I when he uttered words along these lines: “Satan doesn’t want this family to succeed so God be their anchor as he attacks them.” It was right then and there that I truly understood what a war zone our entire family had just entered. I always “knew” it would be hard to adopt a child, that there would be days I would get overwhelmed or the kids wouldn’t get along, and days when progress would feel limited, but it was in that moment I became aware that being under attack was going to be a permanent part of our story.

You see, for the first 2 and a half years of my daughters life Satan believed he had gotten the upper hand. She was abandoned, alone, unloved, purposeless, insecure, unattached etc. He celebrated every hurdle placed in her life and laughed when she was unable to lift herself over each obstacle in order to run the race set out before her. He took pleasure in watching her build up walls around her heart and develop techniques that would serve her well in the dog eat dog world she was living in. But God had a plan for our daughter too. As Satan whet his appetite for her ultimate demise, God began a story line that would bring redemption and victory to her soul.

When we said, “yes!” to God’s call to adopt we enlisted each member of our family in the bloodiest war imaginable. Many had fallen in defeat on the very ground we were stepping into battle on. But many had found victory on this path as well. With each step taken toward our forever family we were being ushered onto the front lines of a spiritual battle I had only read about prior to now:

For we are not fighting against flesh and blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world and against evil spirits in the heavenly places. – Ephesians 6:12

War torn and battle scarred, my daughter had been fighting this battle her whole life but she was no longer going to be fighting it alone. Now we are all in the war.

Some days I get so tired from the fight that my passion becomes misdirected and I start fighting with or against my daughter instead of fighting for her. I become an adversary instead of her advocate. But graciously God offers me insight into my weary misfires and I am able to re-calibrate our troops and start to gain some ground again. Still, the Enemy is ruthless.

So as we, together as a family, enter into the war zone of adoption on a daily basis and struggle to lift Jaydn over the hurdles of her past and encourage her to venture away from the walls around her heart toward wholeness and healing, I cling to the Truth found in Romans 8:

If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but gave him up for us all- how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who shall separate us from the the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. -Romans 8:31-39

So Satan…hit us with your best shot! I may lose focus from time to time but Im in this war for the long haul and I have read the back of the book and know how the story ends- God wins. You got nothing on Love.

________________________________________

Harrison came running in and said MOM  there was a baby deer standing right under your bedroom window!  WHAT??  It ran off and we didn't think much of it.  Then Thatcher came in and said the dogs had killed a baby deer:(   In it's dehydrated state, it could run no further, and they had indeed attacked it.  It wasn't dead yet, and we tried to give it some water and milk, but it didn't make it through the night.  Poor little thing!  It was SO cute.  Sometimes I REALLY dislike dogs!

Look at it's poor little tongue sticking out:(

After hearing much clanking, and chatter, I wondered what the girls were up to.....Wren was up on this chair handing most of the contents of the little kitchen through the railings to Iley.  It looks like Wren's taking an order or something??

 Iley was dutifully stacking them on the stairs.  Wren is usually the instigator of their play, and Iley follows along.  I had caught them a few minutes before with Iley's cereal bowl, dipping the leftover milk into all their little bowls.....in the living room:(

After swimming this is what their legs look like!!!  The Sahara Desert!  Does anyone with little Asian people know what lotion works best?  Regular stuff hardly phases it.

While Harrison and Iley were doing this........

 Wren was dogging Dad's every footstep!  She wants to know what you are doing, and if possible "help".  He's telling her JUST WATCH!  as she's trying to touch everything.

 She's trying to touch the junk he's dumping out of the strainer....yuck!

 It's all fun and games until...............

 Harrison and Wren cracked heads:(  Iley wasn't feeling too sorry for anyone obviously!:-0

Afternoon snack on the porch swing.

 Harrison made them a fort.

 Then showed them why they need one:)

 While I was fixing supper Harrison came in and said, Mom, you might want to come out here, the girls shucked their swimsuits and are jumping on the trampoline stark naked!   Sure enough.  ....modesty is an issue we are working on at our house....they didn't come with any sense of it!  Troy came in about then too and took over supper while I found them some undies.  And yes I took some pictures, but didn't want to get turned in for posting them here. 

Swimsuits:(

Since I've spent a few afternoons at the public pool.....and what to wear swimming is always an issue...and what not to wear......is glaringly obvious....I do wonder if mirrors have gone out of style.....or if everyone just has no taste.....it brought to mind this article I read a while back.  Everytime I read it I laugh out loud!!!  Enjoy.

In days gone by, the bathing suit for the over 40 crowd was boned, trussed and reinforced, not so much sewn, as engineered to fit.  They were built to hold back in the right places and give some uplift- and they did a good job.

Todays stretch fabrics are designed for the prepubescent girl with a figure carved from a potato chip.  The mature woman has a choice-- she can either go up front to the maternity department and try on a floral suit with a skirt, coming away looking like a hippopotamus who escaped from Disney's Fantasia-- or she can wander around every run of the mill department store trying to make a sensible choice from assorted designers's florescent rubber bands being sold as bathing suits.

What choice did I have?  I wandered around, and in desperation, picked out one and entered the fitting room (which is known to most of us "older girls" as the chamber of horrors).  The first thing I noticed was the extra! ordinary! tensile strength of the stretch material.  The Lycra in that bathig costume must have been developed by NASA to launch small rockets from a slingshot.  I fought my way into it, but as I "twanged" the shoulder strap in place, I gasped in horror---my boobs had disappeared!

Eventually I found one boob cowering under my left armpit.  It took a while to find the other.  At last I located it flattened beside my seventh rib.

The problem is that modern bathing suits have no bra cups.  The mature woman is meant to wear her boobs spread across her chest like a speed bump.  I realigned my speed bump and lurched toward the mirror to take a full view assessment.  The bathing suit fit all right,---but it only fit those bits of me willing to stay inside it, unfortunately.  the rest of me rebelliously  oozed out from the top, bottom, and sides.  I looked like a lump of play dough wearing undersized cling wrap.

As I tried to work out where all those extr bits had come from, the prepubexcent sales girl popped her head through the curtain, "oh, there you are!", she said, "that is a lovely suit."  I curtly asked what other suits she had to show me.

I tried on a cream-crinkled one that made me look like a lump of masking tape.

I tried on a floral two-piece which gave the appearance of an oversized napkin in a serving ring.

I struggled into a 2-piece leopard skin that covered my stomach with ragged frills and I looked like Tarzan's Jane, pregnant with triplets and having a rough day.

I tried on a black number with a midriff and looked like a jellyfish in mourning.

I tried on a bright pink one-piece with such high cut leg I thought I would have to wax my eyebrows to wear it.

Finally, I found a suit that fit...a two-piece affair with a shorts style bottom and a loose blouse-type top.  It was cheap, comfortable, and bulge-friendly, so I bought it.  I figured at least I had something I could wear and that the hours of search had been productive.

Life is not fair-- when I got home, I found  a label, which read--"material might become transparent in water."

So, if you happen to be on the beach or near any other body of water this year and I happen to be there too..I'll be the person in cut off jeans and a heavy t-shirt.

Another Reason......

Another reason she may need to see an eye doctor????  HOW do you do that?? 

 Thanks for the hats Aunt Lucy:)

 I guess they thought the boys needed hats?  They look a little like Mr. Potato Head.LOL

They look so thrilled here don't they!