Celebrity Spelling Bee

MV had the opportunity to participate in a Celebrity Spelling Bee last night to benefit a local organization called Finding Balance.  There were ten 5th graders who went up against ten celebrities in a fun spelling competition.  The contestants could choose from 5th grade words (1 pt), adult  words (2 pts) or zinger words (5 pts).  MV spelled all of her 5th grade words correct, but another boy who spelled an adult word won the bee for some pretty cool prizes! 

MV's favorite part of the bee was hanging with the celebrities.  She got to sit with Tenth Avenue North, who sang "You Are More" and "Healing Begins" for us.  And, her favorite part was meeting Jamie Grace !  We all had a fun time watching the friendly competition on stage and listening to some pretty cool music!

NOW!

False alarm!  The blog was in the making, and still is, but now it's live!
apurereligion.blogspot.com

Adoption Journey

We have finally submitted our application to pursue adoption through America World Adoption Agency. We have prayfully decided to pursure their China "Special Needs" program and are waiting to hear what the next step will be. Still, we are open to any new road the Lord may choose to lead us down instead of China, but this is where we feel lead to begin the process! The agency is currently reviewing our application and my fears have begun to give way to a fresh and energetic excitement! I feel confident that I will continue to encounter all kinds of emotions through each phase of adoption and I know fear will try to creep back in again, but it feels good to leave some aprehensiveness behind and grab hold of the JOY of the Lord in this stage of the process!

I have decided to start a new blog just for the adoption process called A Pure Religion and now running updates on the side board of this blog! Eagerly waiting to see how God transforms this family as we seek to mirror His heart through adoption!

Gone Fishin'

Oh, God is so good to give us gifts that we don't even know to ask for! He has given us such sweet friends in the midst of this crazy move! Hicks family, I don't know what we would have done without you! You have been so amazingly kind and shown us brotherly love that we didn't even know we needed! Thank you, for loving on our family and making this transition so fun for us and the kids!

Here we are on a night out in our "borrowed" pond (really the Hicks' neighborhood pond)! All of the kids got to fish, but these two brothers wanted to do nothing else BUT fish! Forget the four-wheeler or bikes, just give 'em a pole and these two were happy!

This was little man's first time fishing and Brian made it so much for him! He wasn't giving that pole to anyone!!

2011 Florida Trip

Despite the mess in our crazy home, we decided to take a last minute vacation to the beach before school began. I love how God works all the details out perfectly, even in spite of our lack of planning! Here is a video clip of the kids on a Pirate Cruise Ship in Panama City. We never ever do the commercialized things at the beach, but this 2 hour trip was recommended and we decided to give it a try with some of our friends from school who were at the beach too! The kids had a blast pretending to be pirates

Still catching up: Man vs. Woman

After moving in our new and very humble abode, my niece came for a short visit. It was a little crazy around here, but I knew that if we didn't do it now, it would be a long time before we had another opportunity. While she was here, we had Little's friend over a boys vs. girls water balloon fight and swim night. The girls took the "tower" play station and the boys took the ground and tried to invade the "tower" without getting wet. Looking forward to more play times with our sweet neighbors!

Cathcing up: Little E Turns 5!

Little E turned 5 the weekend we were moving out of our house and the day CR had his first All-Star baseball game! I knew it would be a crazy time, so we decided to celebrate with him starting on Wednesday. Wednesday is $1 bowling night at Thunder Alley in Dickson, so we took one of Little E's friends along with his parents and sister for a fun night of bowling, glow-in-the-dark putt-putt, and pizza. I can't believe I didn't take any pictures here (I just gonna say my camera was probably already packed), but they all had fun playing and eating!

On Thursday, our friends from Georgia came for a visit with their 6 kids and we went to the Fishes house for dinner and dessert. I made Little E dirt cake at his request to celebrate with all 18 kids at dinner (the Fishes were minus 2 or it would have been 20!)but I left it at home! Thankfully, his real birthday was Friday and we had plenty of time to eat cake and cinnamon rolls before we left for the baseball game (followed by ice cream, of course!).

Happy Birthday, Little E! You amaze me with your spiritual sensitivity and insight into the simplest things in life. I pray that God will continue to grow your desire to follow him and that you will use all that energy you poses to seek hard after Jesus! You are such a blessing to us with all your hugs and kisses and snuggle time! We love you little, big man!

Championship Videos

I had to post each kid in one event from championship! They swam their hearts out and we had so much fun watching them improve!

Here is Little E swimming freestyle with no support from the rope!

CR beat his time, won his heat and came in 18th place (out of 91 swimmers) overall!

Hambone worked really hard to improve her breaststroke and it looks beautiful! Notice the intentional glide after each stroke - way to work!

MV is a natural breast stroker! She had to move up in age division this year and still was in the top 2 for her breast stroke! Looking good!

Catching up: Swim results

We moved one week before our final swim meet, Championship Meet, and hardly had the energy to finish, much less finish strong. We were staying at a hotel that week, which was 45 minutes away from our practice pool and decided that the kids would have to get in their practices at the hotel since we didn't have any desire to drive 45 minutes to practice all week in the midst of packing, closing, painting and moving and unpacking.

The girls were fairly consistent all summer long in their swimming and ended the season right about where they started with their times. Both swam very well and took time off their IM's which look hard to me!

The boys made huge improvements, especially Little E, with CR breaking 30 seconds on his freestyle at championship with a time of 28.98. Little E swam the whole 25 yards without touching the rope for the first time at championship and went from starting the season with a 3 minute swim to finishing with a time of 1:22.47! It was so fun to watch him improve and learn to swim this year! We almost didn't let him try it, but I am so glad we did!

In addition, CR also was the high point winner for the boys in his age group on our team. He didn't always enjoy swimming and would rather have been playing baseball, but once he saw all the medals and ribbons he won, he changed his mind and said he wanted to swim again next year!

Attempted catch up! CR and baseball

I am attempting to catch up on all our summer happenings!

For beginners, CR played baseball for the time ever this summer and we all had a blast. He finished his regular season in mid-June and then went on to play All-Stars, which we were very excited about! All-stars brought a completely different level of competition and I honestely thought CR was way out of his league on this team. But, much to my suprise, he rose to the competition and earned himself a position at second base. I was so nervous for him, that I could hardly enjoy a practice, let alone a game! But he had fun, despite his over-competitve mom and now wants to play fall baseball as well!

Oh, and somewhere in the middle of June he decided that his long hair was too hot and wanted it buzzed off like his Daddy's! I couldn't look at first, but how could I not like it with him wanting to look like his Daddy and all! Little E declared he wanted his buzzed too, but I quickly put an end to that discussion for the time being! We are calling it "a right of passage into the first grade"! Two more years for you, Little E!!

Next up, swim results!