China Shirt Blitz and Giveaway!!

Hi friends!

Between now and August 7, we are having an adoption t-shirt blitz to raise money for our next adoption from China. The next payment we are trying to raise is $1800.

You can see the shirts here.

Shirts are $27 each and will be mailed 7-10 days after your order. I have an inventory on-hand of Men's and Women's sizes. As my inventory runs out, I will order in batches of 25 to save money. Feel free to write me a check or pay via Paypal. (If I don't have your size, please be patient as I collect orders for the next batch. I am willing to order youth sizes if there is enough interest.)

With each shirt you order, I will enter you in a giveaway for this handmade bear, Frazzle!

My Aunt Eva has made bears and dolls for as long as I can remember, and I have wonderful memories of the bear and doll clothes I received from her as a child.

Aunt Eva has offered her "bad hair day" bear, Frazzle, to us for this giveaway. Please visit her site to see the other dolls animals she has made! (Adoption peeps: she has just made a China doll for me to show my friends, and she's working on an Africa doll. Watch her site for these new ones!)

If you have already placed an order, please let me know if you would like to be entered for the giveaway!

First Grade Curriculum

I've been wanting to write this post for a while, but I'm finally getting a chance to sit down and do it.

For this next school year, I purchased Homeschool Tracker Plus to help me plan and organize school. It took a bit of time to get it started, but so far I really like it! I was able to download some lesson plans and tweak them, and creating my own lesson plans was pretty simple. I really like their online forums as well...I can even get a daily email of the topics discussed. This program should be useful for all the kids throughout their schooling.

I will say that we are following a classical model of schooling and we use The Well-Trained Mind for the basic structure of classes and curriculum, with some changes.

We will be using the following curriculum:

• Bible--Grapevine's Level 2 Old Testament Overview
• Language Arts: Writing--Writing with Ease Level 1. Thanks to the advice of a friend, I just bought the workbook and not the text. I also went to Peace Hill Press's site and downloaded the workbook pages so that I could print them off instead of copy them. If you do this, you still want to buy the workbook because it tells you what to do each day in addition to including the worksheets.
• Language Arts: Spelling--Spelling Workout A and B
• Language Arts: Reading--lessons 141-end of Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. We went through lessons 1-140 last year. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't have necessarily stopped at lesson 140, but just stopped whereever we landed at the end of the school year (after 140 preferably). Susan Wise Bauer recommends getting at least to that lesson by the beginning of first grade. Finishing this won't take us the whole school year. We also will be supplementing with Sonlight's reader's list for first grade...we're using the Reader's 2 schedule. We already started with The Beginner's Bible a little this summer because Aidan has caught the reading bug.
• Langauge Arts: Grammar--First Language Lessons 1
• Language Arts: Handwriting--Handwriting Without Tears My Printing Book. We are not using the teacher's guide this year. I really think we COULD use a regular handwriting program this year since Aidan is doing so much better with his writing, but we opted to stay with the familiar and let him go through just the workbook at his own pace. He doesn't seem to need the extra activities for fine motor that the teacher's guide gives.
• Math--Saxon Math 2. We had a difficult time by the end of Saxon Math 1. Math often brings tears in this house. We decided to stay with Saxon one more year at least and try to change things up a bit as far as what manipulatives to use. Aidan is excited to start math again, which is encouraging!
• History--Story of the World 1: Ancient Times. I am super excited about this. We're actually starting history a couple of weeks early because there are so many chapters and because I want to beat the rush to the library for some of the supplementary books for each chapter. I also bought the workheet pack for level 1 on their site so I can just print out the worksheets I needed instead of copying them. I have an older edition of the workbook, and the pdfs are the newer edition and much nicer.
• Science--Apologia's Zoology 1: Flying Animals of the 5th Day. I am excited that Apologia has now made Notebooking Journals for each of their elementary science books! We are looking forwarding to studying bugs and birds and such.
• Literature--Sonlight's Read-Aloud books for first grade. I have collected all of these through Paperback Swap over the last year. I'm already starting to collect the 2nd grade books. We loved the books from last year. We are supplementing with books listed for first grade in WTM; these go with the history curriculum. We are also pulling a few from Ambleside Online's literature books.
• Art and Music--Harmony Fine Arts First Grade. We're using the option 2 group in Art.
• Health/Character--Generations of Virtue has a curriculum for Preschool-Grade 4, and we will gradually use that this year. I don't have any of the books, so I added them to my PBS wish list and will also check the library.

For PE, Aidan will continue with taekwondo. Over the summer both kids have been in swim lessons, and we will decide soon whether to keep them in it or not.

We also have the chance to join a local co-op, which meets once every 2 weeks for the morning. We just sent in our registration for it, so we're hoping to get our first choice of classes.

I also gathered together the worksheets for each subject that uses them for the whole year. I divided them into six-week groupings and then paperclipped each week's workheets. I store them in file folders for each set of six weeks. (So I have bible, history, math, and writing clipped together for each week.) I know we will get off of that pre-planned schedule, but I have all the stuff printed off and ready to go. I got the idea for this here, though we will not be saving the worksheets after the fact in this way like she mentions. Instead, we'll file them in 3-ring notebooks per WTM.

We're making a timeline this year!! I'm using Homeschool in the Woods Timeline CD and we'll make a timeline that includes history and bible combined. I made a test timeline myself this past week and I'm really glad I did!! I did it in 2 evenings for the whole year, and now I'll be going through and marking which figures go with which chapters. I did a notebook timeline, in case you want to try to do this too. I think when we don't have little ones, I will graduate to a wall timeline, but I'm afraid Iona might try to pull stuff off the wall right now.

Simply Love China shirts are here!

Our t-shirts have arrived!! Thank you to Kari for the design. :)

For men, we have M, L, and XL in stock. The shirt is a medium blue. The front says "Simply Love." in white letters. The back has an outline of China in blue.




For women, we have S, M, L, and XL in stock. The cut is slightly slimmer than the men's shirts. The shirt is black. The front says "Simply Love" in white letters. The back has an outline of China in pink.



If you would like a size other than the ones we have in stock, let me know. I will keep a list of who wants what size, and as soon as I have enough requests to place an order, I will. Please know that it may take a few weeks for you to receive your shirt because of this.

The cost for the shirts is $27 each.

Sizes

Men's M Men's L Men's XL Women's S Women's M Women's L Women's XL

Thanks so much for supporting us in this next adoption!!

Changes come

It's been an emotional week here at our house.

We got a call from our agency on Tuesday and found out that Thailand is making major changes to their adoption program. They do not seem to be adopting out healthy children. Wait times are unpredictable.

We were encouraged to look into the China Waiting Child program. We did. Our hearts broke over the supposed "special needs" on that list of children. And we discovered the wait time for these kids is not as long as the healthy infant China program.

So we prayed. Cried. Prayed. Talked. Dreamed.

God seems to be directing us to adopt from this waiting child list. We can only adopt one at a time, but because we are interested in an older boy, it looks like we could get a referral very quickly.

When we originally chose our agency, we did so because they worked in Thailand. Now that we're adopting from China, we are planning to switch back to the agency who brought us to our daughter in Ethiopia. We lose our original application fee from the other agency, but we gain a familiar group of people. It feels like we're coming home.

We heard news today that our homestudy is going to be 3-5 months before it is ready to send in to USCIS. Our paperwork is on our social worker's desk, but 5 families are ahead of us. Once she finishes with it and does our training, it will take 6-12 weeks to get the approval of the one person in our state who needs to sign off on it.

It's hard to wait, but we are trusting the process, trusting that God will bring us directly to our son. We are encouraged and excited!!

God stories for Thailand...Counting Fish

So Friday afternoon I was SO discouraged when we received our agency packet. It was a whole bunch of paperwork to fill out and training to do and bills to pay, and it wasn't even our dossier stuff yet! I called our agency and asked some questions, but I'll have to speak with the person in charge this week to answer some of my specific questions. I was just simply overwhelmed. I totalled up what we owe at the moment and it was more than I thought, and I could not begin to figure out where that money was coming from.

This is how God answered when I cried out to Him:

• Our church's missions weekend was this past weekend. Friday night was a jewelry party for Women at Risk International, a group that ministers to and helps rescue women and children involved in the slave trade around the world. I knew they worked in Thailand, which is why I really wanted to go. I had balanced our checkbook that afternoon and had no idea how we would even get through the month, but I really wanted to purchase something small to support them. I don't even wear much jewelry! I got there just as the consultants were finishing their sharing and the group prayed together. I got to talk with a consultant about their connections to Thailand, and then I just walked around, browsed, and chatted with my friends. I noticed one of the tables had some books, so I decided to buy two of those: Sold and Princess. While I waited for the line to go down, I just walked around and talked to other women from church. Later, while I was still waiting, a friend came up to me and said, "I think God told me He wants me to buy you something here. What would you like?" I was astounded! We talked about it for a minute and I showed her the books. She took them from me and walked away, saying, "I'm buying these for you." !!! (If you know me at all, you know how much I love books, too!!)
• A few people came up to me and said they have things for us to sell at the garage sale. OK, more than a few, all since Friday.
• Sunday morning, during worship, we sang two songs from Urbana 2000, which was the convention where we both felt called to cross-cultural adoption. We cried as we sang "Santo Eres Santo" and "Jesus Shall Reign." The guest speaker gave a wonderful sermon on missions as well.
• Today, I sat down with that packet from our agency and actually filled the entire thing out! It really didn't take that long. I flagged a few things for Pete to sign and us to find out. We still need to do the training, but it felt great to get that done.
• I got a hold of the person who will be printing our t-shirts and started the process on that. Hopefully in the next week or two we will be posting on both our blogs how you can order those shirts!
• We got a phone call tonight from someone who has a lot to donate to our garage sale, including furniture! (I specifically told someone on the phone not an hour before that we did NOT have any furniture yet!)
• Tonight I sat down to balance the checkbook with the statements we just received. I found a bank error in our favor that I need to call about tomorrow for about $71. (They sent a charge through 3 times instead of just once.) Then, I realized another error on our own end to the tune of almost $500!!

I was VERY encouraged by this post this afternoon, so we've decided to keep track of these instances for our adoption.

God, you are SO good!

It's the little things, you know?!

Thailand

We are adopting again! This time we are going to Thailand for 1-2 children age 6 and under.

Adoption paperwork is heavily underway. We are about to turn in a stack to our homestudy agency on Monday. It's all completed and notarized and copied, but we just need one more piece in there. We sent in our application to our placing agency, and today we received the next packet from them along with the training we need to complete.

Along with the paperwork comes the bills!! Right now we owe $1000 + $2200 + $670 + $180 + $120. That's $4170!

Since we just paid off our credit card a couple of months ago, we are trying not to use it at all unless we have to for the adoption. So we are praying the money in!

We are having an adoption garage sale on July 1-3 to raise this money. Please let me know if you have anything to donate for the garage sale!!

We will also be selling t-shirts this time, and we're hoping to have a t-shirt table at the sale. I'll be posting a t-shirt blitz on the blog soon!

Please pray for us when you think of it. We're at the next few steps of a long journey, and we'll need you to hold us up!!

Iona is 2!

Iona turned 2 in May! You can see some pics here and here. It was hard to get very good photos because she is always on the move!! She got a tutu that day and some doll accessories, and as soon as she got the tutu on she was off, pushing her baby in her stroller...umm...I mean running through the house behind the stroller!

She is so much fun these days. She says the funniest things! She speaks very well for her age, and she really loves to play with her brother and wrestle him. She can count to 10 and sometimes higher. She loves to help me with chores as well, which can be good and bad! Iona just started swim lessons, and it's all I can do to hold her back from jumping in. She is learning how to sit with her legs crossed on the side of the pool!! It's a hard thing for her! Once she gets in the water, she tries to copy her brother. She is even practicing now in the bathtub. :)

Happy birthday, my sweet baby!! You are getting SO big! You've grown so tall recently and are such a joy to be around! It's fun to watch you take in the world around you, whether you are scared or excited or in awe. YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL!

PS--I'm planning school for Aidan in the fall, and this week I've been thinking about how to contain Iona while Aidan and I focus on schoolwork. I admit, at times I am terrified of what will happen! I know some people recommend having a box of toys specifically for school time, but I really don't know if that will work for her. I'd love to hear from some of my homeschooling friends about how they handle schooltime with a 2-year-old!