Leave Madonna alone

They say she wants to adopt again and people are critizing her for it. Shame on them! "Judge ye not and ye will not be judged." She also talked of her shock at the reaction to the adoption of her little boy. In an interview with Paris Match she said: "It was not me who chose Malawi, but it chose me. "A native of the country contacted me though my association, Spirituality for Kids which I publicise in all my shows. Some of us, all that we do - is an act of faith. It is easy to talk or type the 'words of Christ' but it is indeed harder to walk the walk of Christ. Sometimes we do indeed need an attitude adjustment. I hate hearing others being critizied for what they do. We do not know the whole story and wouldn't it be better to pray for them and the best outcome for the situation?
As Barbara Walters said, and she adopted her daughter, "It is pure love to adopt"! You can't be selfish to adopt, you can't hope they look like you and have your characterisics and traits, they won't have your genes or blood line. You just want to love a child and have them love you back! Right? This little girl she wants to adopt has no parents. Don't you think the life she would have with Madonna would be better then what she has now? She would never go hungry, she would have the freedoms we have in America. (or where ever Madonna lives) I can totally relate to Madonna for wanting to adopt again. Those that have the love for children have a hard time knowing when it's time to be done. Time to be done adopting or time to be done having children. I have a dear friend that just told me she has always wanted to adopt, she has 4 biological kids, and her husband doesn't want to adopt at this point because of his age. So they just signed up to be foster parents! She wants infants. She loves to care for babies. I am SO excited for them! We have a family at our church that has 10 children. I can't remember how many but most are adopted from the foster care system. AND Leanne has started her own non profit organization to help foster kids and their families. http://www.familieshelpingfamiliesofiowa.com sorry but the link option isn't working for me so you need to copy and paste it into your browser. There is a big gala May 23rd to raise money so that all the foster kids have new back packs and items they need for school. They have "loves closet" which has new or slighty used clothes for the foster families. Leanne has a great family. I got the pleasure of having 2 of her kids ride with us for 2 1/2 hours to church camp last fall. And we get to see them on Wednesday nights when I take the kids to "kids for christ". Maybe in the future we will be foster parents!

"Miracles happen every day! WE just have to open our eyes and see them!"

Spring 2009

Raven finally got over her sickness. She got her energy back. whew! the girl has energy. She got caught up on her school work in 2 hours. She loves it! Amazing. Ryker is having his 12th birthday this week! It always comes up so fast because of spring break that we never seem to get anything planned till last minute. I think we'll take him and his friends bowling. (he actually decided to just take the money we would have spent on the party:) Next year on his 13th he wants a paint ball gun party at this local indoor place that does it. Not my personal favorite thing but it's what he wants. He's getting a new bike and hoping for $$$$. He really wants an ipod touch. We were in Chicago for spring break and he hung out at the apple store with his Dad for a long time while Raven and I were at the American Girl doll store. We had tea, bought the new 70's doll Julie, and Paisley got a bitty baby that's asian. (looks just like her with piggy tails!) They also got matching outfits to wear to match their dolls. I love that store. We didn't seem to have enough time to do everything we wanted to do at all and the weather wasn't the greatest. cold and rainy. We also did the build a bear workshop thing. Pais was so cute. She loved it. We went to the big Lego store and had fun there. Ryker decided to save his money for the ipod touch. Our hotel was amazing. The intercontinental. We had a suite with 2 bathrooms which was nice when you have 5 people! The kids loved to swim. But man it was cold for me! I had to hit the sauna after that to warm up! Paisley LOVES the water! Ryker has become quite the swimmer. Raven hangs on the edge and is still learning.
Paisley has been talking up a storm! She also would like to potty train, but I'm not ready:) It's too messy at this point. So when she goes she gets everything out for me! Somewhere she learned to say, "Butt head!" Not good! Grandma was not impressed to be called this! whoops! One of her favorite lines is, "I DO IT!" She's not good at sharing yet. "MY BLANKET!" "MY BABY!" This too shall pass! She also likes to say, "Naked Butt"! She is awesome at doing somersaults and great at doing the splits. (she's very flexible) She is cute at dancing and will point her fingers out while doing the twist! What a great Spring!

Happy Referral Day anniversary Paisley!

2 years ago while I was driving Raven to dance I got the call! They had our information on our baby girl! When she was born, where she was at, her medicals and pictures! I could hardly focus. I prayed for lots of hair because Raven barely had any till she was two. Our Pais had hair! She was chubby and looked very healthy. We are so blessed and grateful for our beautiful gift from God! You've grown so much the past 19 months! Love ya Paisley! (Now quit crawling out of your crib at night! You're too young for that and it is stressing your Momma out!)

Raven sick and smelling something "stinky"!

Raven, my funny girl, had me get her a chicken salad sandwhich on Monday. She said it was stinky and only took a couple bites. She hasn't had an appetite at all. I even got her milk shakes and those don't taste good to her either. Today she wanted me to make her an egg salad sandwhich so we'll see how that goes! Anyway that night she kept telling her Dad something smelled! The next day she kept saying that all she smelled was that stinky chicken salad! She was smelling her shirt, the blanket, then ME! She couldn't figure out where it was coming from but something smelled! Ya know when your sinus' are messed up and you smell Stinky stuff? I think that's what is happening with her. This morning I had to hear it again. What smells? I'm like, "go brush your teeth!" Then she thought it was Paisley's diaper. She is just the funniest thing when she is sick!

My dear friend Leah was over last night and thought Raven looked really bad. today she was asking me about how much she is drinking because she was worried she might be dehydrated. Especially since her fevers have gotten so high at night and we're on day 11! I called the Dr. and the nurse had me swab the inside of her mouth and said it should be moist like mine. Well it wasn't it was dry! She said to bring her down. Raven has the best Dr. in the world! So of course I got the 50 questions on what they were going to do to her! I was so worried about them admitting her because I can only imagine my princess dealing with all the probing and poking they do in the hospital! I made her drink water all the way down there. The Dr. said she was fine that there was slobber under her tongue and that since she can get up and down on her own she's ok. But 1/2 hour later he called me and said her strep just showed up positive. So that's why her poor throat hurts so bad now. Just now she woke up from a cat nap crying saying she couldn't breath. Her nose is stuffed and it burns to breath. We need to go get those antibiotics and hope they help her feel better. I'm going to have to miss my classes the next 2 days and the only time I can take them again is the end of April. But I need to be here for my girl and Jeff has people out sick at his work so he's the only one there, so kinda hard for him to take off. This too shall pass!

Raven and Mono

My poor Raven is on day 10 of being sick. It started on a Saturday when we went roller skating. She took a friend and Ryker took a friend. She complained of a stomachache all day and just wasn't herself. Then that sunday night she had a fever as well as the next morning. I knew there was a lot of flu going around and she didn't have much for cold symptoms so I didn't take her to the dr. That wednesday morning she still had a fever! I needed to get to work so jeff stayed home with her and took her to the dr. They just said she had a virus. I was a little mad they didn't do any bloodwork. They did do a throat culture and it was negative. The Dr. asked Jeff if I was a Dr. since he told her that I wanted blood work done! Seriously couldn't he have just said, "aren't you going to do blood work to rule things and see what type of virus she might have"? instead he used me as an excuse to get it done and then they wouldn't do!
I was concerned about what we were going to do for Thursday because I had a class I couldn't miss because there was no make up class till the end of April. Jeff had a consultant coming into work so he really needed to be there. I prayed she'd be fine. She woke up with NO fever! She was excited to go! The past several days because she puts the "high" in "high maintenance"! She could have a 102 degree temp one minute and be running around hyper with many needs the next minute.

We found out that she spend 1/2 the day in the nurses office. I felt so bad but they didn't call me because she wasn't running a fever. Well sure enough it came back that night and the next morning so Jeff stayed home with her again on Friday. She was much better Saturday.....

Back to last Saturday, I feel bad now because she stayed home with Grandma that evening so we could have an evening out with a friend for her birthday. Hope Grandma doesn't get anything! Sunday the fever was back. Monday morning I'm on the phone with the dr. office. Her throat really started hurting her that day and she wasn't as lively as she had been the previous week. Over the course of the past 3 days she has fallen asleep here and there for awhile which is sooooo not like her because usually she is so wound that she can't relax enough to take a nap. So I did my google research and got worried it was mono. Also because she had complained about her stomach. When we got to the Dr. office (and many hours before) she kept asking if she was getting shots, will they prick my finger, will they swab my throat again, and on and on. Poor girl just stresses herself out worrying about things. They did do all the above except give her a shot. She started feeling really bad after we left the office. We had to pick up Ryker and go to Grandma's to pick up the roast and veggies she made for us. She was not feeling well in the car and then fell asleep. Dr. Anderson called and she does have Mono. He said in these little ones the average time frame for feeling really ill is around 2 weeks. But he said that her liver and spleen are enlarged so she has to be careful about rough housing or contact sports. (she just does dance!) But now she is all freaked out about that cause her dad scared her when he said that her brother and sister can't wrestle with her or hit her in the stomach or she can bleed on the inside. I explained he's not the most tactful person in the world! :) But that she just needs to be careful. She has a ton of homework from school but hasn't been up to it at all. The past two days her poor throat has hurt so bad and she just sits in a daze on the couch. She has been drinking a lot and eating a little. She gets the chills and the sweats. I'm exhausted too! Of course after I get her situated last night, miss paisley decides to get up, which she never does! Then after she goes down, Raven is up again and her fever was 104.6! I've never seen that before so that freaked me out! I gave her motrin and got her to sleep. I kept checking on her and then googled a little to ease my mind which of course only made things worse and then there was no way I was going to sleep. I'll pay for it in a couple of days!
My dear Raven, I pray you start feeling better and the fevers go away so you can go back to school with your friends!