White Christmas?

This is the first year that I've dared to dream of a white Christmas. We've had unusually early snow. Here are the kids making molasses candy in the snow a la Little House on the Prairie. The wet weather will continue and I just saw that we might get snow the day after Christmas. I had plenty of white Christmases growing up (15 minutes further up in the mountains) but a white Christmas here would be a rare treat indeed!

Readoption Complete!!

In California we have to go through a "readoption" process if both parents don't see an internationally adopted child before he is brought home. On Thursday we completed this process. Yes we were real slackers in getting this done. It could have been done a year ago and I'll admit that we were motivated by the accountant to have this completed in 2008. Still here we are celebrating the completed adoption process!

These pictures uploaded in reverse order. Above I had them pose on the way out for a post-placement report picture. The reasons for the smiles are the policemen and metal detectors behind me.

Here we are with Judge Boscoe. He said this was the highlight of his day.

Waiting our turn. We had great talks about all that we were seeing in the waiting area- frustrated people storming out of the door, the policeman's gun, the camera surveying the waiting area. The children were good waiters.

Now we await their U.S birth certificates with their new last name and new birth date. It will only take Sacramento 9-12 MONTHS to get it to us. Seriously. So in the mean time we'll be getting them passports for ID. Just when we thought the paperwork and errands were behind us!

A happy day.

Christmas Parade

Cold kids. Where do we stand?

African Angel

Clare as Baby Jesus.

A Heavenly band of angels.


A sweet small town parade.

My Handsome Men

Wordless Wednesday

Today's critter

Yes it's a young rattlesnake. I didn't get to see it but it was the big news when I returned from morning yard saling.

Funnies

This evening Gianna and I were talking about obesity and how one might become obese. I was rambling about various reasons that came to mind and I mentioned fast food. She interrupted to ask "What is fast food anyway?" I explained and then she said "Oh I thought it had something to do with fasting."

Aliou was flipping through the calendar and carefully studying each page. Finally he came to a blank white page at the end and asked me in all seriousness "Is this when we die?"

Athan told Aliou that he wished he was black. Aliou looked up from his play and suggested "Then go to Liberia!"

Never a dull moment.

Benefit #644

Benefits of having a large family #644: Watching the stoic 14 year old fall in love with his baby sister.

Freezing Time

Can we please freeze time now?

But then I guess I said that when this guy.............

.......was the age of this girl.

Video. Testing 1, 2, 3.........

Here is my first attempt at adding some of our own video to the blog. Anna Mae (age 11) took this video of Clare's actual baptism from the front pew. Doesn't Clare look happy to be a child of God?

Baptism Day

SHE married HIM....!?

Some time back an internet ad caught Michael's attention. It read "SHE married HIM and they had eight kids?!" and it was inviting him to look up old highschool friends. Well I guess that was us in real life today at my 20 year class reunion.

We did meet in highschool and though we didn't date until my senior year I still like to think of us as highschool sweethearts. We'll be celebrating 15 years of joyous marriage on October 2nd.

By the way, Michael would like the above family picture to count as a Christmas photo (yes it can be painful to get everyone lined up and looking the same direction.) So if we don't get a good picture tomorrow after Clare's baptism then you can consider this blog entry our Christmas photo ;-) This one even has the van in the background.

Class of 88

Can you find me?

On Clutter

Ginger's words could often be my words.

Wordless Wednesday

Real Baby

How many little girls out there get to put a REAL BABY in their doll buggies?

Wordless Wednesday

I don't know who started Wordless Wednesday but that's my kind of blogging! Oops. I'll use words just this once.

Baby Clare

Clare Olivia Tippett
Born at home on July 8, 2008
8 pounds, 10 ounces

July Baby

It looks like our new little one will be a July baby. We've been having fun looking at all the feast days and birthdays of friends and family to help us with middle names for the baby but they keep passing by and we keep looking forward a few more days..........

My mom has been blogging about us again. I appreciate her grandmotherly perspective on our last prenatal visit. We are planning another home water birth and I'm blessed to have my own sister-in-law from next door as my primary midwife accompanied by the same midwife who attended our other 5 births. Reading my mom's post refreshed my perspective and reminded me of just how fortunate I am.

Aliou just realized that the new baby will be white and not black. Most of the babies he's seen were in Liberia so I think he was expecting a sweet little black new baby like all the ones in his memory.

Since the children have been mostly caught up on chores (chores go so much faster when we're just maintaining all the nesting work!) I've had many little sessions of working alone on things in a quiet house while everyone plays outside. It's much easier to pray through my work at these times and I've been offering most of my prayers for little Baby Joe. Join me in offering a prayer for him and his family.

The things I've been meaning to blog about.........

We've been busy taking advantage of summertime opportunities before the baby comes. We're at a rare stage in life. Our family consists of 7 children under 14yo and NONE IN DIAPERS! This makes us fairly mobile. There is no one screaming on little road trips because they can't understand why they are strapped in a carseat instead of being held in my arms. Everyone can change their own clothes and walk next to me in the store. So we've been on the go and when we come home it is to sleep and catch up on chores. Good thing someone else is blogging about us. Check out Leon and Aliou's 1 year anniversary post by my mom here. And my due-date status here.

Being a Bandaid

Wow! I'm borrowing the following from someone who borrowed it from another adoptive parent's blog:
"It is easy to sink into the bliss of being an adoptive parent - but it is important to always remember that the bliss comes at great expense - often the heartbreak of a birth parent left without options, or the hopelessness of a child's prospects in their broken birth country, or the death-knell of an incurable disease, or the ramifications of poverty on a small life.

Adoption is not the answer - it is a band-aid and it is absolutely necessary, but something needs to be done about the problems - poverty, disease, war, racism, economic disparity - that leave children in this chasm.

It is imperative that those of us who walk down this road vow to always engage ourselves in solving the bigger problems - the very problems that brought our children home to us. Find an organization that is addressing these problems and send your money, give your time, advocate on their behalf."

It's so easy to feel that "I'm doing my part" by just fixing the next meal and comforting the next owie and being the parent that Leon and Aliou need for the rest of my life. Really that feels all consuming at times! But I love a challenge like this to look beyond my little world to see how I might keep trying to make a difference at the root of the problems that brought them to us. My main calling is to be a band-aid but I don't want to limit myself and my family to only that.

Pictures!

For some reason I can no longer put captions under each picture. My Blogger adviser isn't due for a visit until mid-summer so I'll comment on all the pictures down here.

First is our Little Flowers/Blue Knights Clubs end of year BBQ. Can you find the 5 Tippett kids in the picture?

From there we usually go to Costco. It's an hour from home so we do big shopping and Trader Joes shopping and the Catholic store shopping, etc. All things we don't have at home. Here we are shopping with only 5 kids. Yes they look lively but they were very good shoppers that day. They are getting better all the time!

Next is a top secret card-making session headed by Anna Mae for Gianna's First Holy Communion tomorrow. God willing I'll have some lovely photos of that to share soon.

And I just had to share the picture of my favorite book-end given to me by my mother-in-law. It is symbolic of my recent decluttering efforts since I usually have been unable to use book ends because the book shelves are usually too stuffed. Ahhh how refreshing is open space - on the bookshelf and everywhere!!