Sweet Life in the City

The last few times I have started to blog I would start giving an update on the kids but would always take an extended break and never get to Emma and Chloe. So, this post is about Emma :). In a little over a month my baby girl Emma will be 8 years old. Emma is one of the smartest and funniest girls I know. She is not as social as Sam and Chloe, so only those who really know her get to see how funny she can be. She loves to read and her mind is always turning. She wants to know about everything and how everything works. If you explain it to her she seems to memorize each step and can recall how to do it months and years later. Last week Jeremy needed to check the oil in the car and she wanted to go with them to see how to do it. She came back in and could explain the whole process to me using the correct terms. We do laugh sometimes because for being so smart this child sometimes lacks common sense. She will do things some times that make us shake our head because it just doesn't m...

  We have been living in Chicago for 2 years and 1 month. We have loved living in this amazing city, but it would be a lie if we pretended that it has been easy. We have moved several times in our lives to new cities, but moving to Chicago to start a church has brought about a spiritual warfare that we have never experienced in our life. It is a lot of pressure when each day you leave your house trying to meet people that you can share your faith with and invite them to said church you are planting, but you find out that getting to know people in this city is extremely hard and even if you do get to know them well enough to invite them to church it turns awkward. You encounter rude people daily and people that just annoy you so much that you have days that you truly say in your heart, "Who cares? Let them live there life the way they want to!" Okay, maybe that's a little harsh, but some days I long for that already established church with people who are already committed ...

    Samuel had a great birthday! I just want to say thanks to all of you that wished him happy birthday on FB, sent a card, or gave him a call yesterday. He loved reading each message and card. Grandma and Grandpa are going to be here tonight and he is having a birthday party on Saturday, so the celebrating will continue for a few more days :). I also want to say "thanks" for all the encouraging words I got yesterday about blogging again :). I figure that I spend so much time having inner dialogue with myself maybe if I actually write it down it won't seem like I am crazy ;).     Well, I just wanted to post a few pictures from yesterday and I also wanted to post a recipe that I am actually making for tonight. Being home this year I vowed to cook at home more this school year. I printed a bunch of new and easy recipes just to try to switch things up a little bit. Our new favorite recipe is found on French Dip sandwiches using my crock pot. Samuel got a new Lego se...

Today my precious son is 10 years old. 10 years old! A decade! How in the world did this even happen? It was just last week he was this tiny little baby asleep on my chest, right? We were just celebrating his first birthday. He was just learning to walk and talk. How quickly the last 10 years have flown by and I have to be honest I am struggling with this reality. I spent last night looking at pictures from the past ten years and tears fell because it is scary to think about how quickly the next ten will go. I know, I know, enjoy each day and don't get ahead of myself, but I can't help but think about it. Birthdays for my kids are also always filled with more emotions than a typical birthday. Their birthdays are filled with a great grief for their birth mothers, an almost guilty feeling of gratitude that they chose adoption, exuberant joy that they are your child, but a sting of sadness that they are not completely yours, and a heavy cloud of fear for the questions that might c...

There has been so much that has happened since I blogged last, so I am not sure what I should cover :). At the end of April I got a call from my principal asking me if I would be interested in stepping into the the 5th grade Social Studies and Writing teacher. The current teacher had been having a lot of health issues the entire year and was taking a leave of absence for the rest of the school year. This teacher would also be retiring at the end of the school year so there was a possibility that I could continue as the regular teacher the next school year. I was really hesitant because the highest grade I had taught was 2nd and I would be stepping into a mess. The poor teacher had already been gone the past three weeks and it was the final nine weeks. Jeremy was one of the other 5th grade teachers and he convinced me that I could do it and he would be able to help me figure it all out. So I got this call on a Thursday and on Monday I did staffing and Tuesday started in 5th grade. To m...