Here’s the next update for our family!

Since being stuck inside our kids have been playing a lot more Wii. One game that they all enjoy playing is Mariokart. David and Ella have become very skilled at it and are becoming experts. Masamo likes to join in the fun too by holding the steering wheel (without remote) and he thinks he’s participating in the game, I dread the day he figures out that he’s not really playing. Here’s a pic of them all playing together.

I caught a really cute moment between David and Masamo. I was trying to get some things done around the house (imagine that) and I told the boys to entertain themselves for a few minutes. I stumbled upon them curled up on the couch with David reading a book to Masamo. Look how adorable they looked together!

We had an awesome trip to see our friends in New York State, the Apthorpes! We went over the long President’s Day weekend and didn’t want to leave to come home. Here’s a brief overview of what our weekend held….

Sledding (and David attempting to ski)

The skis and boots David used were old and broke with the first attempt so we just broke out the duct tape and kept going!

Ice Castle Festival

Up at Lake Chautauqua they build an ice castle every winter with the ice that they saw out of the lake. The blocks of ice that they use come from just off shore (within 50 feet) and are about 2.5 feet long, 1 foot wide by 14-16 inches thick! They had the castle lit up with colorful lights at night and also had a huge bonfire, fireworks and a snow/ice slide for the kids to slide down on and then onto the frozen lake!

Here's a view of the ice castle in the day time.

Ice Fishing

Walking on the frozen lake

Ice hut!

Drilling a hole for fishing

Scooping out the ice from the newly drilled fising hole

About a foot of snow fell the last night we were in New York. We made it all the way down the Apthorpe’s driveway before getting stuck. It took Jason and Clint about 10 minutes to dig us out of the snow but once on the roads we were happy to see that they were clear! Those New Yorkers don’t mess around when it come to snow!

I think the best part of going to New York was the time just spent hanging out. Talking, playing, cooking, and eating together was more fun than you could throw a snowball at!

Today we spent the one year anniversary of Masamo’s arrival home in the USA by going to Kids Against Hunger. This wonderful organization was hosting a Million Meal Marathon to put together a million meals in four days to help feed the people of Haiti. 30,000 children a day die of hunger and this great group of people is working hard to get that number down. The food we packaged was a “fortified rice-soy casserole, chicken flavored”. It is an extremely nutritious meal that can be made very easily with only adding boiling water. Here is a link to their website it you’re interested in more information on them Kids Against Hunger.

All six of us participated from scooping food, to measuring, sealing bags, and boxing it up! We spent two hours working and had a wonderful time. Everyone there was upbeat and positive and the music they played to go along with our time was motivational (who wouldn’t enjoy working to the Village People’s YMCA?) We concluded our time by praying for each person that would touch the meals we prepared and especially for the people who would be consuming the meals. We pray that not only will their stomachs be filled but that their hearts would find and be filled with God’s love.

Despite the look on Masamo's face, he did have a great time, just couldn't capture it on film!

The number of meals we helped produced in our two hours!

Please note the Ethiopian flag in the center of the picture!

Kids Updates:

Emily has exams this next week for the conclusion of the second trimester. She’s a little stressed out but looking forward to a (hopefully) much easier third trimester. She also informed me that she heard that the high school will indeed be offering AP and Honors courses next year. If this works out it means we won’t need to have Emily move schools next year!!!!

Ella continues on in her art classes at the YMCA but it’s become very apparent that they are not very challenging to her. She says she has a good time (which is nice) but it’s not really giving her the outlet I thought it might. I’m keeping my eyes open for something a little more inspirational to offer her. She really enjoys drawing and so maybe we can find something that just focuses on that instead of an overall “art” class.

David has continues with karate and this past week got the first “tip” on his white belt. A student must have three “tips” to test for the next belt in karate. There are certain things that a student must do to get their tips and for this first one David had to memorize and recite the student creed for the studio that he attends. We’re coming down to the end of our “free trial month” and have to make a decision if we want to sign David up for the year. The owners of this studio say they do not view karate as a seasonal sport and so have you commit for a year at a time to pay/participate.

Masamo melted my heart the other week when I sang “You Are My Sunshine” to him and at the end when I sang “please don’t take my sunshine away”, he looked at me and said “I won’t Mommy” and proceeded to give me a big hug. This has now become his favorite song and each time I sing it he tells me the same thing. I love it!

Masamo is really advancing with his letters and here is his attempt at writing his name this past week!

I will conclude this post by mentioning that February 21st was our one year anniversary of Masamo’s “Gotcha Day”. I’m not really a big fan of this term, it is however the day that Masamo was placed in our arms for the first time. Has it really been a year? Has it only been a year? Isn’t it strange how time works like that, it went so quickly and at the same time seems to have been so long ago. What a year it has been. My next post will be dedicated to our youngest son; I’ll have it up as soon as I can.

Reminders of Africa, even in the snow in New York.

It’s February, are you feeling the love? My blog updates have been few and far between but it’s not an indication of my lack of love for anyone but rather it reflects how busy life has been around here.

We’ve had off and on snow around here and one snow day the kids were looking for something to do and I was looking to have my front walk and part of the driveway shoveled. The two opportunities met nicely and depending on how much work they did, the three youngest, made some money for their shoveling effort. Here are some pics of them hard at work.

We had the very big yearly event at our church of the Pinewood Derby! Both Ella and David again participated this year. Here’s the rundown….

David won fifth place in craftsmanship (out of 26). He designed his can himself and picked the colors but Jason helped him with the paint job and shaping of his car. Here is the progression of David's car...

Ella actually won a speed trophy (a first for our family)! She came in third for speed and that wasn’t even what she was going for! Ella was eyeing a craftsmanship trophy by making a colorful hammer head shark and would have won first place in that category if she had not placed in speed. Jason helped to shape the car but the rest was all Ella (design, painting, etc). Here is the progression of Ella's car...

One of my favorite events from these past two weeks was watching Ella and David perform with their second hour Sunday school class (Wonders of Worship). The teachers of this class put in tremendous effort and time into instructing our children in the different ways there are to worship God but a lot of the emphasis has been on music and singing. David mentioned to me shortly after he started the class in the fall time how much he really enjoyed singing in the class. He and Ella could be heard around the house singing some of the songs. For these reasons I was excited to hear them sing during our church’s Sunday morning worship service.
To my dismay David was practically in tears before the performance telling me he was “so nervous” about getting up in front of everyone and singing. The kids did practice before church but David would just sit down and not sing. Jason and I both talked to him to encourage him that he was not the only child up there singing, that if he went up on stage and did his job like everyone else that no one would be paying him special attention. We let him know that he didn’t know what he could do if he didn’t even try! One of our last attempts to give him some confidence was to tell him to just say the word “underwear” to himself, that one always gets a giggle from him.
Once it came time for the first performance , I stood at the back of the church to give David someone to focus upon during the performance. Our church has two morning services so the kids had two seperate performances. Here are some pics of the kids so you can recognize them in the three videos that follow.

Here are Ella David at beginning of their first performance. You'll notice David's lack of enthusiasm.

Here are Ella and David at the beginning of their second performance. You'll notice the difference in David's enthusiasm!

Lastly, here are Ella and David at the end of the first song during the second performance. David is so excited about the whole thing he bows to the audience!

Ella performed with flying colors too. She is a seasoned veteran when it comes to singing with the kid’s choir and so this was not a big deal to her. She used to be the one getting everyone’s attention with her little antics up on stage but with time has come maturity and she sang wonderfully.

I must preface the next paragraph with the fact that I am not looking a gift horse in the mouth but for Jason’s business, thankfully, the economy has not seemed to touch it. In fact things have been a little crazy for quite some time now. This fact has led Jason to the point where he is desperately in need of a right hand man at work. Jason saw this coming down the pike quite awhile ago but it was not until recently that he had the owner’s approval to start looking for just such a guy. We don’t know where God is leading with this all. It’s been a roller coaster ride, so please pray for some help for Jason, and soon!

David and I shared the strep throat bug last week. David got it first and because he’s such a loving child, he shared his sickness with me. I had planned on getting a blog update done last week but those plans were put on the back burner until such a time as I recovered enough to even think about sitting at the computer for a few hours. Oddly enough my throat did not bother me that much with the strep rather I got quite a tremendous headache at the base of my skull. As long as I kept myself dosed with Advil I felt relatively normal but I could definitely tell when the Advil would start to wear off.


Kids Updates:

Emily had her formal Winter Homecoming a few weeks ago. The theme was Titanic but that did not seem to influence the attire this time around. Emily got ready with and went to the dance with some good friends and thankfully was not out too late. She came home after the dance at around 12 midnight and reported that she had had a good time but the dance was nothing that special. Here she is before the dance, photos taken by her IPod Touch.

Ella is starting a new Art class at the local YMCA this week. Because our school district is not offering any art at this time for the elementary students I really wanted to find an outlet for Ella’s artistic side. I figured we’d start with this five week course that covers a variety of media and see what she thinks of it. If there is something that interests her more maybe we can pursue that next. However I’m just excited to get Ella’s creative juices flowing again!

It’s been brought to our attention that David is having a hard time dealing with criticism, both positive and negative. It was no mystery to Jason and I that David is a sore loser, he hates it when he does not win at whatever game he is playing but unfortunately that has now spilled over into his academics at school. Whenever his teacher tries to help him David almost “deflates” and does not want to try whatever he is doing again. We’ve got a way to go to get him to understand between positive and negative criticism. We also have to work on him being a better looser. Someone told me to make sure he knows that he cannot be a good winner until he learns to be a good looser first. I think it will just be time and patience and practicing loosing with David to show him how it is done gracefully and how to take correction in a positive manner, to learn from his mistakes instead of seeing them as an attack on his self worth.

This leads me into my next news with David. David started Karate lessons today. We are trying out karate for a month for free and hopefully after that time we will have a good idea as to whether or not to continue to pursue this activity. My hope is that it will help to improve David’s view of himself. He did pretty well for the first class but did fidget quite a bit and had to be corrected by the teacher to stay still and be quiet. By the end of class he was getting the hang of the way things worked. We’ll see how this pans out, we’ll keep you updated.

One last story about David. Earlier in January the kids were anticipating having a snow day the next school day. The kids had heard at school that if they put spoons under their pillows that night that it would ensure a snow day the next day. David and Ella each took two spoons and put them under their pillows and sure enough the next day was indeed a snow day for them from school. I woke David up that next morning and told him that his spoons had worked, they had a snow day! David, still groggy from sleep said to me “No Mom, the spoons didn’t work, God did.” I was so proud of him! He realized who is really in control!

Masamo's developments have been smaller in the past few weeks but I’ll share some things that have been happening relating to him. One thing that Jason and I implemented in December is something called a “snack drawer”. This is just for Masamo and is a place where he can go at any time and get a snack for himself. He had been very food focused for awhile and was continually asking when he could eat, when the next mealtime was, if he could have a snack, even if we had just eaten. Apparently this type of behavior is not uncommon in children who have experienced any type of starvation. His food obsession seemed to come out of the blue for us but we were reassured that it could pop up at any time and did not have to do with any mistakes/poor parenting on our part.
By making sure that Masamo’s snack drawer is stocked with healthy snacks (dried fruit, nuts, granola bars, etc) I don’t have to worry about what he’s eating. I do limit the drawer to four snacks per day so that he can’t gorge himself. We’ve only had a few days that he’s actually eaten all his food from the drawer and his constant asking for food has really diminished since we started this for him.

Another development for Masamo is that he seems to be attaching to a specific stuffed animal. His animal of choice is a stuffed giraffe that was from Build-a-Bear that one of the kids gave to him. Masamo named his giraffe “Rosie”. Although he is not always carrying her around, Rosie is never far away. He loves on her a lot and for the first time today took Rosie potty to show her how it was done. I am encouraged to see this behavior. It’s a step in the right direction in his attaching and bonding with us as a family. Here is a picture of him with his beloved giraffe…

I’ll leave you with one last picture. Each day that Ella and David are doing their homework at the kitchen table (while I make dinner); Masamo does his “homework”. He gets out the whiteboard and draws. Most days it’s just scribble but lately he’s really started to draw recognizable things! This picture is of a snail that Masamo drew today. He also wrote out a letter “E”, “M”, “N”, and “O”. We’ve been working on letter recognition and sound lately and he seems to be picking up quickly!

It’s three weeks into the new year and this is my first post. I’m sure you can tell that posting more often on our blog was NOT one of my New Year’s resolutions! I did have a few though, here they are....

#1 – Spend more time in God’s word. I have found time and again that the more time I spend reading God’s word, the more content I am. I’m more focused on others and my selfishness does not rear its ugly head quite as often.

#2 - Get together a book of recipes that we enjoy as a family and keep a menu planned for at least the next week. I find that I absolutely hate late afternoon and it is mainly because I have to figure out what I’m making for dinner but have no idea what to make. I’m hoping to alleviate that problem by getting together a list/book of recipes that at least half of our family will eat and then plan meals for the next week to month!

#3 – Start exercising. We joined the local YMCA on January 3rd and it’s been wonderful to take advantage of their workout rooms, pool area and track. I told Emily after our first work out that I was proud of myself even though I was only able to do half of what she did (calories burned and distance gone). I told her, “I haven’t exercised in…..”, then looked at her and said “How old are you again?” It’s a sad fact that I have not had any regular exercise since I was pregnant with Emily, almost 16 years. YIKES! I pray that I will keep all of these resolutions.

The New Year also brought my brother Thom and his wife Katherine into town to visit! We were able to see them several times during their six day stay and took them their first night in town to the Cincinnati Zoo Festival of Lights. This year it was very mild, 40’s-50’s. In the pictures you can see us with practically unzipped jackets and yet Thom and Katherine are bundled up. Even these “mild” temps were chilly to them where in Texas the highs have been in the 70’s. Here are some pics from our time with them.

New Years was a quiet event for us this year. Both Emily and Ella spent the night at friends houses and we had Thom and Katherine over for a quiet evening of talking and watching the ball drop on TV. David and Masamo went to bed by 10pm. Once we got over how sad Dick Clark sounded on the TV (he really should just retire) we said goodnight and the Kelly’s left.

The New Year also brought a new project to our house. One that I have been itching to do since we moved into this house five and a half years ago! We repainted our master bedroom!!!!! The color on the walls before was an ugly burnt orange. Although many people complimented me on this color it actually came with the house and I have never been able to stand it! The new color is Burnt Almond. I love it! We hung new curtains and put some more baseboard around the floor to fill in the gap left from where we took out the floor covering the original hardwood floors.

Here are some pics from before and please don’t judge me on the clutter on my bed. We were getting ready to move things out when I realized I hadn’t taken any “BEFORE” pictures.

Here's some pics of the DURING, the old and the new paint together.

Here are the AFTER photos!

Just this past weekend I hung a wall saying that I had custom designed. It is a line from the song that Jason and I have as “our” song. If you have any interest in this, the website that worked with me was wonderful and was the cheapest one that I found out of the ten or so that I previewed. My creation is now an option to choose from on their site! Here is their link Trading phrases

Jason and Emily went skiing this past weekend with the youth group from our church. This is a yearly event for them and they have an awesome time. Emily said that this year was especially perfect due to the weather, people on the trip and no one getting seriously injured. It was kind of lonely without them but the younger kids and I kept ourselves busy. We went over to my mother’s house on Saturday morning and stared working on a craft with my mother and sisters that Jennifer had seen done on the Today Show. The craft, which is a wreath, involved shatterproof ornaments, a wire coat hanger and clear thread. The ornaments I bought on clearance at Walmart the day after Christmas and the coat hangers were bent into circles. We quickly learned that the clear thread just wasn’t cutting it for the project and so had to go out and purchase some wire to attach the ornaments to the hanger. Here is my final result hanging on my front door…..

Kid Updates:

We’re getting a little nervous around here about the state of our school system. As a result we are contemplating doing something else for Emily for school next year. We haven’t made any decisions but are in an information gathering stage. We’re seriously considering sending her to another school district that has open enrollment. There are a few nearby that offer it but it is something that we would have to apply for. The reason for all of this is the concern as to whether or not our district will even be able to offer the types of courses Emily is going to need to prepare her well for college. She is in many honors classes and those are up for the chopping block next year, along with a lot of other things. The future is unknown but we will make the best decisions we can based on the information we have.

Ella has spent a lot of time lately learning some simple crafts that are teaching her how to hand sew. On a recent snow day she used her new sewing kit and a sewing book she got for Christmas to make a “Quiet Mouse”. She did an awesome job! Next she decided to kick in a little of her creativity and made what is called a “Stuffy”. She decided to go with a Pokémon character named Buizle for this particular craft. Here are her finished projects….

We had a breakthrough with David in the past couple weeks. It first happened when we were sitting around the living room one evening and David said the word “rocket” for some reason. Now, if you know David you know that he has a very hard time pronouncing his letter “R”. This time instead of saying “Wocket” for the word rocket he actually pronounced the “R” and said “ROCKET”! Jason and I immediately looked at each other because we had both picked up on what a significant and new thing this was for David. We had him say a few other words that started with “R” and some he got and others he did not. I must confess, I teared up and cried at the fact that my little boy was losing the last little bit of “baby” that he had left. I am overjoyed that his speech is progressing but sad to see him growing up. It was truly a bittersweet moment. Here is a video of him pronouncing some “R” words…

Our youngest son is always entertaining us with, sometimes intentional and sometimes not. He was eating a powdered donut one morning and when he was done, well, here’s what he looked like…

I couldn’t help laughing and once I was done taking a picture I showed him in the mirror how he looked and he laughed too!

We were driving in the car recently with Emily driving, me in the front passenger seat and Jason sitting in the back with the younger three. Jason decided to dance to the music on the radio and Masamo looked over at Jason and asked him very seriously “Daddy, do you need to go potty?” It’s a sad comment when you child thinks you are doing the potty dance when you are instead just having a good time. Thankfully Jason took it in stride and laughed along with the rest of us at Masamo’s question.

Another funny story I’ll share with you is that I was wearing a short sleeved shirt the other night and was getting Masamo in his pj’s when he pointed to my arm and asked “What is that?” I had to clarify what he meant but he was pointing to some goose bumps on my skin. I explained that they were called goose bumps and that they meant that I was cold and needed to get warm. He thought about that for a moment and said “Yeah, we need to get you warm so the goose doesn’t bite you anymore!”

Here is a video of Masamo showing us his eyebrow “trick” and then singing “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”, with David accompanying him in the background.

I want to encourage you to click on this link to see Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Although we may have heard it or parts of it many times, this year it was particularly special to me because Masamo is home and Dr. King’s dream is now personally my own dream. I sympathized with the civil rights movement my entire life but now feel that I am really a part of it having a son whose skin color could possibly cause other people to judge him unfairly. I will leave you with one small quote from this incredible 17 minute long speech that really fits our family.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."