Can You Hear What I Hear!!!

We are finally able to HEAR! What an awesome answer to prayer.


Emma got her hearing aids on Wednesday and the immediate reaction was remarkable. The look on her face said it all. You could tell that she had never heard these sounds before and she was amazed. I was amazed at how easily it went. She wasn't happy about them messing with her ears at first, but overall it went so well. Her eyes lit up when she began to hear the sounds around her.




As we were leaving the clinic I did a quick hearing test of my own. We were standing in front of the elevators and I was turned where she couldn't see me and I said "I love you Emma" in a very normal tone and she immediately responded "I love you." Talk about melting my heart. All the way home she was listening to the sounds she had obviously never really heard before. She kept looking out the window of the car and "hearing". Her reward was ice cream, a hot dog, and some fries from Sonic. Ice cream first!
The hearing aids themselves are not that noticeable but we have them attached with a little clip so that we won't lose them. That makes them a bit more noticeable. The only issue we have had since getting them is putting them in. They are a bit tight and she doesn't like me putting them in. I am sure that will get better once we both have a little more experience with them.



In other news.........


I worked a few hours on Wednesday night and those few hours turned in to my being unable to get home. We had some serious storming going on when I left work at 11 p.m. I made it all the way to the road that we live on and was praising God that I was able to get home when all of a sudden there was a tree and electric lines down and I was not able to get around it. Our phones were out and Bo had no idea where I was. Apparently he wasn't that concerned because he didn't reach me until around 6:30 the next morning! I ended up going to my mom's house to spend the night. It was one of those crazy moments in life. The electric company finally got the lines back up yesterday morning and I was able to make it around the tree and get home.



Our weekend plans include me working tonight of course, a soccer party on Sunday, Church, and Brady going to church camp. No AAU tournaments this weekend but plenty more around the bend.



Have a great weekend.

What Getting Up at 4:15 a.m. Looks Like

Emma woke up at 4 this morning and NEVER went back to sleep. Ths is how I found her later on in the morning. I probably would have done the same thing if given the chance.

Busy, Busy, Busy

The last week has been busier that usual, if that is possible. The school year is winding down, the soccer season ended this weekend, and AAU has started up. So here is our week in review with pictures.



Ashton had an AAU tournament this weekend. He and Bo were gone all day Saturday for that and we all spent the day yesterday watching a gazillion basketball games. The highlight was the fact that our team won the tournament in their age group. Ashton played very well and has been sporting his "medal" since coming home. The low point - Emma drank from a stranger's McDonald's cup and I didn't realize it until after the fact. For those of you who don't know me, I am a bit uptight about drinking after people, so for my kid to drink out of a total stranger's cup - well the thought of it just about makes me want to call the CDC. Total Yuck.....
We were at a university recreation center for the games and Emma was very intrigued by the rock wall.

Brady had his band banquet on Saturday night and I have to say he looked rather handsome.

Even in a suit and tennis shoes.....

Just playing around.

Saturday was our soccer tournament. Unfortunately we didn't win our game and we were out of the tournament. Well, unfortunately is a relative term.......Emma was very excited about her trophy.

Coach Ray has been a very patient coach. Trying to keep 10 4 year old kids in line is not something I would want to do. He has been great and we are already signed up for fall soccer and he will be our coach.

Emma's favorite part of the whole soccer game is pouring water on Coach's head.

Friday was our last day of preschool until fall. They had a party that morning and the kids were, in the words of Rory, WOUND UP! They were wild. Running and playing and jumping. Typical end of school activity.

Emma had a great "school year" and I can look back over the last few months and see just how much she has blossomed. I am so proud of her and so happy that she has had the opportunity.

Saying goodbye to Paizley.

This is her favorite boy in the world. She loves Kolton. He will be moving up to Kindergarten and Emma will be heartbroken.

Not surprisingly, Emma won the "Most Helpful" award. This could translate into, I want to do everything for everybody and I want to be in charge......

I feel like I am missing out on documenting some of Emma's antics right now. This blog will serve as a reminder so that someday I can catch up on scrap booking. So here are a few funny Emma Antics...

• She has started moving things off of my desk and making life a bit more difficult for me. I turned the house upside down looking for something that I had to get in the mail on Friday and finally found it under her movie in the living room.


• I found one of her movies in the refrigerator.


• I found her sneaking back into her bed on Friday, while she was supposed to be napping. She had on her pink Mickey Mouse ears and was carrying a book. She gave me that look that said "Yes, you caught me."


• One of her favorite things to watch right now is "The Cricket on the Hearth", a Christmas Dickens classic. She gets a magazine and holds it while she sings carols. It's pretty adorable.


• Her other favorite thing to do is wear her Christmas apron and take orders. She has been watching Rataouille and suddenly she has become the chef.


• Her imagination is really growing. Watching her play is so enjoyable and I am always wondering what she thinks she is doing. I wish she could tell me.

We get our hearing aids on Wednesday. That should prove to be interesting....

I had one of those momma bear moments on Saturday morning at the playground. We had finished our soccer game and she wanted to play for a few minutes. I was busy getting all of our stuff together and when I looked up I saw a group of little kids gathered around Emma and they were staring and some of them were pointing. Needless to say, I was not happy. I went over to check on her and after calming down a bit I told the kids what her name was and asked if they had any questions. One of the little girls said "We are just wondering what happened to her fingers?" I told her that Emma was born that way and left it at that. In my defense, I was exhausted. I had worked Friday night and part of a shift Thursday night and had not gotten very much sleep. Of course Emma had no idea what they were doing, but at some point she will and I won't always be there for her. Our goal is to help Emma have great self esteem and be able to deal with situations like this that will always crop up. However, parents need to teach their kids that pointing and staring are inappropriate no matter what. I have become so much more acutely aware of that since Emma came along.

I realize that this will be an ongoing thing for us and at some point it won't bother me as much. Well, maybe.

Happy Birthday Ashton

I am a horrible mother.



My sweet boy turned 15 on Friday. He has not gotten a present. He didn't get a real birthday card, although I did write him a 2 page birthday letter which I think is better.



His father ate the Oreo's that were going to be used in the Oreo Truffles that I planned on making him. Then his father ate a really large piece of his birthday cake before Ashton even came home from school.



Middle child. Issues. Therapy.




In my defense, the reason he doesn't have a birthday present is because he can't decide for sure what he wants. He has picked out at least 3 pairs of shoes because the child is the male version of Imelda Marcos. He still can't decide. Then he thought he might want a PS3 and of course, when you already have 3 game systems, why wouldn't you want another one. He was less undecided about that when I explained that as much as we love him we are not dropping that much money for another game system. Back to the drawing board.



He did manage to have friends over for his birthday on Friday night. How many? I really am not sure because they were like zombies appearing from the grave as they came up the steps on Saturday morning to eat 3 pounds of bacon, 2 dozen doughnuts, and a pan full of biscuits. Not to mention all the orange juice and milk in the house. This is what you get when you have teenage boys! Oh to have their metabolism. I believe that our final head count may have been 10 but I still am not sure.




So after working all night Friday night and coming home to the House of the Living Dead (and Hungry), we headed out to Emma's soccer GAMES. Let me say, the first one was at 9:45 and these kids were on fire. Well, one girl was. I think she scored all of the 8 points. Thank God she is on our team. Emma got to kick the ball each time for the kick off. Is that what it's even called? I don't really know a lot about soccer. She also did a lot of running and continues to come over to me after each play to give me five. After the first game I had planned on going home to catch a nap, but being the dedicated soccer mom that I am......I stayed for the second game at 11:15. The 45 minute intermission spent on the playground coupled with the rain showers didn't help our players much in the second game. As a matter of fact, it was a total wash. There were kids rolling on the ground wrestling (our players), crying, picking clovers, eating Nachos on the sideline (my daughter). It was hilarious. Except for the parents that take it all seriously and didn't see the humor in it. Those were probably the parents that had slept all night and had not been up for 24 hours. I thought it was a blast. You can't pay good money to watch that type of entertainment.




After the loss, we headed home for an approximate 2 hour break before heading to dinner with Bo's family to celebrate Ashton's big day. Emma managed to avoid a nap altogether except for the 20 minutes in the car. We still managed to have a great dinner and she ate like a starved little creature. We ate at Kobe's and she enjoyed the show and kept saying "Hot". She ate rice, zucchini, steak, and ice cream. Of course she had to use her chop sticks. Well, not for the ice cream.



Back home, finally to bed!! Aside from the Tuberculin cough, I slept soundly until sweet Emma was awake at 5 a.m. and ended up in our bed. I wish I could say she was a sweet angel, but it was like having a donkey in bed with us. Kick, Kick, Stomp, Stomp. My Lord this girl is a brute.




Sunday was spent going to church and having Ashton's "girlfriend" over for the afternoon. That involves numerous trips up and down the steps to keep a watch on things. Of course you pretend you need things out of the freezer and you are doing laundry and whatever else you can think of. I wouldn't want them to think we were checking up on them......



So my baby boy is 15. No picture on the blog, No present. No truffles. Partially eaten cake. No real birthday card. Poor kid. I think he isn't too upset with me. As stoic as he is, I even got a smile out of him yesterday after he read his birthday letter. As with most 15 year olds, those smiles are hard to come by sometimes. Of course, he was probably just trying to manipulate the situation so that he could get 2 pairs of shoes to add to his collection.

My Kiddos

It is almost impossible to get a decent picture of my family together. Emma refuses to cooperate, the boys are trying to help her and all opportunities are lost. This was about the best we could manage yesterday.
My daughter gave me the most unique mother's day card that anyone could ask for. Suffice it to say Hallmark can't match it! I will treasure it always.

My girl and her special features. I consider myself one of the luckiest moms in the world.

Happy Mother's Day

Thanks to effects of cold medicine, I am having a lot of trouble sleeping tonight. Emma also woke up around 2:30 and was apparently having a bad dream that required me to rock and sooth her. I think she was dreaming about riding something, because she kept moving her legs like she was paddling her tractor or her tricycle and saying "ride, ride." We moved on to the rocking chair and had a little momma time and she fell right back to sleep. Her little snoring is so adorable and when I look at her face reflected in the glow of the nightlight, I just melt.




Looking at her and being UNABLE to sleep, I couldn't help but think about Mother's Day and many of things that go along with it.




I am one of the lucky ones. I have a great mother. She is a Christian first and foremost. She lives her faith and you don't have to be around her long to know that she has something that everyone should want, FAITH. Even when the times are hard and she is taking care of her husband who isn't the man she married 16 years ago after my father died. He is a man who everyday is becoming more forgetful hindered by the effects of a horrible disease. Yet my mother continues to try to look for the good things and takes such good care of him. She is an inspiration to me and others and I love her so much.




I am also lucky to have a Godly mother-in-law who raised a son that became my husband and the father of my kids. She did a great job helping to shape the man he has become and I hope that someday my daughter-in-laws will think the same thing about me. We'll see......





But while I have been laying in the bed unable to sleep, I began thinking about mothers and I couldn't help but think about Emma's birth mother as well as other birth mothers. God brought to my mind the mother of Moses, his Hebrew birth mother, Jochebed. I kept thinking about the sacrifice that she made to protect him from the curse of death placed on the Hebrew boys. She was able to keep him for 3 months without him being found and killed, but in those 3 months I am sure that she worried everyday that he would be discovered and put to death. I believe that when she couldn't keep him in a longer, she made the ultimate sacrifice and placed him in a little "ark" that she made and covered with pitch to keep him safe and she let him go.




I think about Emma's birth mother and how I may never know the real story behind her decisions to let Emma go. I have my theories and whether they are right or wrong, I don't know and really don't care. I choose to believe that she had a mother's heart and did what she had to do for her baby. I believe many, if not most, birth mothers make that decision. I am thankful that it's not a decision that I have ever had to make. I am also thankful that I have been blessed by the decision that she made. Because of her sacrifice, I have the opportunity to raise a little girl to grow up to become the best she can be. Yes, her birth mother could have probably done the same thing and even done it better in her own culture, but that wasn't allowed to happen. So now I have the duty and obligation to raise this child to be the best she can be. I owe that to a woman that I will most likely never meet.





So Moses goes on to be one of the greatest men in the Bible. He was sacrificed by his birth mother and then adopted by Pharaoh's daughter. The "irony" of it all is that his birth mother was selected to be his nursemaid and was able to nurse him and love him that much longer. It's believed that he could have been nursed for up to 4-5 years (WOW - way to go Hebrew women). I think that in that time she must have been teaching him and molding him to become the man he became. I also want to believe that even though Pharaoh's daughter might not have been living the life she should have been, she became one of the first adoptive mothers and an example to all women. She took a child that wasn't hers biologically and was able to love him and nurture him. That isn't easy for a lot of people. That is one of the most frequently used excuses for not adopting. "I don't think I can love him/her like I would my own." Well, let me just say, THAT IS NOT THE CASE! Yes, I had a few issues during the first days, but those were mainly related to the environment that we were in and the stress we were under, but God allowed my heart to be completely filled up with love for a little girl that my womb never knew. And that is the sum of adoption. A baby doesn't have to grow inside of you to be yours. I don't know exactly how God does that, but He does. It never ceases to amaze me.




Well, between the cold medicine and the late night with my girl who I didn't mention is the one who gave me the cold, I have written a post that is a all over the place. However, it's what is in my heart and mind and this is my blog, so I guess it doesn't really matter.




For all those moms out there, the ones who will have their children near today and the ones who won't. For the ones that have sacrificed to allow their children to have a better life, for the ones who have lost their children to the curse of death, I say thank you. Thank you for the sacrifices that you make and the love that you share. Thank you for those moments that you don't beat the children even when they might deserve it:) Thank you for loving them even when you don't get a lot in return (think teenage years). Thank you for going through the fire and coming out burned at times. I believe that God will have a special place in Heaven dedicated to mothers.




I believe that place will be a spa or a least a bathroom that doesn't allow little ones to interrupt.

Moving on Up

Our girl has decided that climbing the steps does not require any assistance from her parents, regardless of how many times we tell her it does. I found her sitting on the steps yesterday singing and laughing with her sword in her shirt. She is always ready for a battle!

Thankful Thursday

Emma and Rory enjoyed their day together yesterday. Melissa had her first chemo treatment yesterday and Rory spent the day playing here. Let me say, GIRLS are too funny. Having had boys first, it never ceases to amaze me the difference in the two.

Some of the funny things I heard said yesterday:

• "Emma is wound up". Yes little mother, she was wound up.


• "Are you a mouse catcher?"


• Rory telling Emma "Say chip Emma, say chip."


• Rory telling Emma "Say yes mam Emma, say yes mam"


• "Miss Mayme, I love you." I heard that one several times and it NEVER gets old.

I love this picture because it looks like Rory has Mickey ears.

Sliding down the slide. Emma refused to cooperate so there is no picture of her.

The mouse catcher question came after I set a mouse trap upon discovering a little visitor in my pantry floor. Can I just say, nothing makes me freak out anymore than mice. Well, maybe spiders. Can I also say, that attempting to bash a mouse's head in with a ball bat while it hides behind Kroger bags doesn't always work. Can I also say, that YouTube and Google are lifesavers because when someone doesn't know how to set a mousetrap, step by step instructions are there to guide.

So I set the trap and put in the cabinet under my sink because I was suspicious that after the ball bat incident that is where the little rodent had disappeared to. It was later in the day that I heard the snap and with great pride opened the cabinet to find it had eluded capture. I reset the trap again and hours later I checked to find it had once again outsmarted me. Not to be outdone, the third time was charmed! It almost reminded me of Osama, but without the conspiracy theories. The little rodent also had a water "burial" and there will be no photos released.

So the moral to the story is that after 43 years, I can finally set a mouse trap and patience is indeed a virtue.

Say a prayer for Melissa and her family. She has her second treatment today and from all that she has been told, it will be particularly brutal. Pray that she won't be so sick, that she will not have pain, tand hat she will not be as exhausted as expected. She is a remarkable human being.

Spending the Day with Rory

Thelma and Louise......Barbie Jeep Style

My Marathon Man

I just have to give praise where it's due! My sweet husband and his sister ran the 1/2 Marathon this weekend and lived to tell about it! I am very proud of them! Bo finished in 2 hours and 41 minutes. Most importantly, HE FINISHED!