The Crew, Minus a Few

A little background on our crew: There are four families involved...we all met once upon a time at church here in town. A few of us went to high school together and the rest of us just sort of fell into place. We started having children and often more than one of us were pregnant at the same time. Our kids, all 12 of them, range in age from 2 to 12. They are together at church, on Sundays and Wednesdays, at all the birthday parties, Christmas parties, the pumpkin patch, socials, weekend vacations, you name it. They love each other and they fight like brothers and sisters. And when I see these pictures of them, I feel nearly ten years of emotions that are difficult to put into words so I leave it with just one: Friends.

So, every year, we, meaning my girls and I take our kids to the same pumpkin patch and shoot pics of our little tykes together...we shoot a few of just our own, we shoot some of all the kids, some of just the boys and on the years our husbands grace us with their presence, we rope them into a photo or two as well. This year, it was awesome fall weather and the patch looked a little different if a little sparse due to the poor economy but we got our pics anyway...we were just missing a few of the people we needed to make the pictures complete...so, this post goes out to my girl, Meagen and her beautiful children, Taylor, Kelly and Anthony! We missed you!




I love this picture of Grace and Ellie. Both of these girls were brought to their forever families with the help of America World Adoption Agency. Though they were born in vastly different countries more than a year apart, the miracle of adoption has brought them together and they are sisters of the heart.

The ladies: Jessi, Ellie, Grace and Ruthie.

The Gentlemen: Rusty, Brannon and Michael

The little Guys: Flip and Matthew

And, The CREW, minus a few

All In This Together

I hate starting ALL of my posts this way but alas, We had another busy week! We had the usual weekly schedule which I decided to post on the side bar...to keep people informed...mostly grandparents so the rest of you are just lucky, I guess. In addition, Ruthie had her team photo on Friday evening followed by a Halloween party which, although she had a lot of fun, she ran into a palm tree and put a pretty good scrape on her face! On Saturday, Adam had his second triathlon which I will talk more about later. I went with him and my mom pulled duty at the football field and gym with Ruthie and Rusty. Later that afternoon, Ruthie had her individual pic so we were back to the gym for the 3rd time in two days:0)

After church on Sunday, the three little one's went with my mom...Adam, Ruthie and I had lunch and then he was off to church for the rest of the day...Ruthie and I went to Target to kill some time before picking up two of her friends for HSM3...that's right, High School Musical 3! The girls all wore t-shirts and we took skittles, m&ms, and sweet tarts. We bought a giant tub of popcorn and huge Slurpee's...I pre-bought the tickets and we got there early to beat the crowd that didn't show up! It was showing every 30 minutes so there were maybe 100 people in our theatre. The girls giggled alot! (and covered their eyes when Troy and Gabriella kissed) This was a nice way for us to do something with her friends...a lot of times, Ruthie goes to her friend's houses because it just isn't as fun to hang with little brothers around...anyway, there may have been a little too much sugar because Ruthie was up in the middle of the night with a bit of a tummy ache if you know what I mean. She spent the rest of the night on the couch with a trash can beside her:0)

The weather here is beautiful!!! All of my windows are open and it makes me want to clean everything out! Of course if you know me, that means I have pulled everything out of everywhere, all of the closets are empty and each room is trashed...AND it will take me 3 weeks to get it all put back together...

SOOOOOO, Adam did not have quite as successful a race this go around. The swim was great, it was awesome. The bike was ok until he wrecked at the transition. I was standing there and the volunteer was telling the riders as they rounded the last corner to slow down and dismount at a certain line...well, when Adam came around the corner, the man was not paying attention and he yelled at him, "DISMOUNT HERE!" Adam braked hard and flipped over his handle bars! I started to rush forward and help him but he recovered so quickly that I didn't need to...I caught him on film just as his back tire was lifting so you can imagine the rest. After this, his drive took a dive and he cruised the run. We are chalking it up to a learning experience...in triathlons, things will go wrong on one leg or another and you have to put it behind you and move on to the next leg of the race...it is a very mental sport and your thoughts can kill you. He survived with only a little road rash and a small bruise to his pride.

This week looks to be equally busy if not more so...Halloween, you know...time to get that perfect photo for my Christmas cards, get a pumpkin carved for the front step, get all the fun stuff done at school, and all the stuff that HAS to be done...like that mountain of laundry that just will not fold itself, no matter how long I leave it sitting there! Ellie's first Trick or Treat...stay tuned!

Tagged, Again...*sigh*

Ok, I have been tagged again by two different bloggers and since I have already done the one about 6 little known things about me, I am going to do this one and then I am officially and I do mean *officially* retiring from the tagging game...but not before I tag oh, let's see....Karen & Debbie S...so here goes:

8 Shows I love to watch on TV:

Well, since my husband is king of all things ESPN and I really just like to read, these are old ones...
1. Seinfeld
2. Friends
3. Law and Order
4. CSI
5. FBI Who Dunnits
6. Dateline Investigates
7. Mystery Diagnosis
8. Lifetime Movies:0)

8 Things that happened yesterday:

1. I woke up....PTL
2. I went to church
3. Ellie pooped and pottied on the toilet ALL day! (even at church!)
4. I washed, folded AND ironed all the laundry...
5. Adam put most of it away.
6. Flip went to a really awesome Power Ranger Bday party and had a blast! (costumes provided! How cool!)
7. Went to the Rays ACLS Championship Game...super fun!...they won..."Hey scau baud ova heey!"
8. Met some folks from our church working the concessions that I didn't know before!

8 Things I am looking forward to:

1. The day all my children have made professions of Faith
2. Halloween!
3. Thanksgiving!
4. My tenth Wedding Anniversary! 12/19
5. Christmas!
6. New Year's!
7. Disney '09 (Ellie's first trip)
8. A new Bible Study in my ABF

8 Things on my Wish List

1. All my children making a profession of Faith!
2. A really nice trip somewhere really cool for our 10th anniversary!
3. A Garage...DUH!
4. A pool...we live in FL people...
5. A full time laundress...seriously!
6. I want to be a better wife and mother...always...
7. Better devotion to my time in God's word...I tend to slack off when life is smooth sailing.
8. That our country would get a Christian back-bone and really ask ourselves, "what would Jesus do?" And then, DO IT!

8 Favorite Places to Eat (this is a hard one for me...a connoisseur, I am not)

1. Taco Bell: 2 Bean burritos, extra cheese, extra sauce, easy onion
2. Steak and Shake: grilled cheese and chili 3 way
3. Olive Garden: salad and bread (duh!) and Fettuccine Alfredo
4. Barnaby's pizza: pepperoni
5. Krispi Kreme: chocolate glazed (I feel obligated to put this after scrapbook weekend!)
6. California Pizza and IL Patio: (this is for all my Kras families)
7. My house
8. The park: with my kids (we did this just this past Friday and it was fun!)

Ok, that's all...Get to it girls...

The River

Garth says a dream is like a river...ever changing as it flows. It seems to me life is much that way too...each new age brings a different stage in life and I find that Rusty at seven is differnt than Ruthie at seven, Flip is so different at nearly five than either of the other two and Ellie at two...she too is her own little person...Some things never do change...when there are children in the house certain things must happen and one of them is the inevitable unauthorized haircut...

A few weeks ago, I was walking through the house and I found a long chunk of blond hair on the floor....there is only one blond in the house so I knew where to look. I immediately found the place on her head that it had been cut from and so I set off to to find the would be beautician...he has red hair. So I walk up to him, chunk in hand and I say, "Flip? Did you cut Ellie's hair?" He replies in the negative...I say, "Do you know who did?" He tells me she did it herself...hmmmm..."Flip, if you tell me the truth, you won't be in trouble." To which he responds, "ok, I did it." I said, "Thank you for telling me the truth, please don't ever cut anyone's hair again." I thought he understood until the next day when I found little red hairs all over the floor and noticed he had two large chunks out of the front of his hair as well...there was no talking this time...I will leave the conclusion of that story up to your imagination...

This year AWANA has included a new two year old program and we now have a child in all four sections of the AWANA program: Truth in Training, Sparks, Cubbies, and Puggles. So, I couldn't resist lining them up and taking a shot of all of them in their uniforms...after much frustration and me finally yelling, "JUST STAND THERE AND SMILE!" Here is a picture of them just so...So far, the AWANA year is going well. Last year, Ruthie was only able to stay in club until Christmas when her gymnastics schedule changed...we will have to see what January brings. Ellie absolutely loves church! As soon as she sees the steeple, she yells out, "Ellie's church!" to which all her older brothers and sister start to tease, "no, my church!" and this goes on until she cries and then they get in trouble and I explain to Ellie that the church is everyone's.

SIX MONTHS

So, you can see by the ticker that we have had Ellie now just over six months...I can hardly believe that it has been that long since we got home! Before we know it, we will be filing our 1 year post placement and then I will blink and she will be in kindergarten! Six months has brought so many amazing things! She is talking so well, she loves to read, dance, and sing. She absolutely loves "dollies." She fights with her brothers and sister like a pro and she is just so well adjusted that I almost feel guilty for not having had some of the problems we expected to have. She is a completely loving child...loves to snuggle, gives kisses and craves contact with others. She goes easily to others but runs to us with arms flung wide when we return to her. So, I have no complaints, just pure joy mingled with craziness and moments of fine tuning...for your listening pleasure...Ellie sings, LIVE! (make sure you mute the music.)

This One's for the Girls...

My mom has given me many morsels of advice over the years and she has dealt with many moments of drama that go with raising a daughter...one of the things she said to me when I was younger has always come back to me and I found myself saying it to Ruthie the other day as she was dealing with some of the drama that goes with being a young girl..."Lori, in your lifetime, you will find that you will have only a handful of people that you would truly call 'friend." As I look back over the years, I can count exactly one handful of women who have been down the road, up the hills and around the bends with me. Heather, a childhood friend...you know the kind that you can not see or talk to for a year and then have lunch and it is as if no time has passed at all? I have known Heather since 1st grade...we grew up in each other's homes and we have an understanding of each other that far surpasses the bindings of friendship.

Then there are my girls...the one's who are in my life daily. We have been through the birth of our children, the deaths of our brothers, the sickness of loved ones, adoption, financial difficulty, emotional overload...these are the girls who have provided me with the nieces and nephews I will never have, the sisters that will never be, and the brothers that I miss so terribly much. This past weekend, we went to scrap book together and although it was less than productive in terms of getting pages done, the time reminded me to be thankful for the people in my life...my family, my friends. The people who rally around me, in good times...and bad. So, this one is for Dinah, Meagen, and Marie...I love you, girls!

"The road to a friend's house is never long."

-Danish Proverb

The Mis-Adventures of Rusty & Flip

Adam really wanted me to get some of the video from the boys first weekend in Football/Baseball up on the blog before I left for the weekend...I cannot even begin to describe how busy we have been...I know, same song, different tune but it is so true! Since my last blog, we had lunch with my great Grandmother...yes, my mom's grandmother...she is 96 and she cheerfully informed me on Saturday that her doctor says she will make it to 100 without a problem. It was her first time meeting Ellie and I must say they were both quite smitten.

Before lunch, we hit the football field with Rusty...it was so fun/cute! When Adam went to sign him up, they recommended that we keep him in with the beginners for one year...as a result, he is the oldest on the team...he scored 2 touchdowns, and made about 6 tackles. (pulled flags) On one of his touchdowns, he taunted into the end zone and although we had to discuss good sportsmanship with him, I really regret that I did not get that particular one on video because it was hilarious...too much college football on the play station!

On Monday night, Flip had his first T-ball game and I have not laughed so hard in a very long time...had I known what a spectacle he would make of himself, I would have sent out invitations...he had such a good time...he "dived" during every play in the field whether he was near the ball or not...he and one of his little friends from school played chase in the infield during plays and he came off FILTHY! At one point Adam walked over to the dug out to check on him..."you ok bud?" Ya, I'm a little bored but I will be ok." UUUGH! This child is too much...if he was bored, it didn't show...he finally had his chance to have his sport and he lived every moment of it...I am posting a few clips from their sport mis-adventures...enjoy! I am off for scrappy weekend 2008!