Hanukkah

In keeping with our attempts at being a diverse and multi-culturally aware family, today we had our Hanukkah feast.  We wouldn't have the time to do it on Saturday the actual start of the holiday, so we did it a day early.  Being non-jewish we did the best we could at authenticity and really learning about the holiday and it's significance to the jewish faith.   I made 2 Challah, the traditional bread of Jewish holidays, with 6 strands in each loaf, totalling 12, representing the 12 tribes of Israel.  We had a roast chicken, spiced applesauce and green beans as well, all kosher and normal Hannukah fare.  Then the kids taught us the dreidel game they learned at school, although we had to make some modifications since we don't have a dreidel.  Eva won!

 

 

 

Before and after pics of my Challah.  For some reason one loaf didn't rise as well as they other. :(  But they turned out great nonetheless.

 

 

We made a feast day out of it and even had lighted candles on the table, just the two since we don't own a menorah.  We had fun learning and talking about what we have in common and what is different between Mormons and Jews.

 

Next up...Christmas Eve (Christian celebrations), Christmas Day (American celebrations) and Chinese New Year (Chinese celebrations)...

 

...hopefully I'll remember to post pics, since I forgot to on several of the other holidays this hear (Cinco de Mayo was awesome).

St. Nicklaus Day

We're trying hard this year to teach our kids about different cultures, religions, countries, etc.  So for the first time St. Nicklaus came to our house last night.  He filled our running shoes with nuts in their shells, christmas socks, 2 candies each and two christmas pencils.  We learned about dark chocolate being what most europeans eat so we were not surprised to find Ghiradelli's dark chocolate variety's in our shoes. ;-)   And to top it all off, I'm taking the kiddos to the Arlington Christkindl 2nd annual German festival tonight, I thought it would be the best day to go learn more about German holiday traditions. 

 

I have pictues of the kids enjoying Flammkuchen (German Pizza) at the Christkindl but I can't post them until after the adoption finalizes.  We also had Schmalzkuchen (scones) and wassil. Yummm!

 

We shopped, we learned, we tasted, we listened, we played, we had soo much fun being German for the day.  We even got to see St. Nicklaus himself, although he had a strangely Texan accent. Humm?!?

 

And tomorrow we'll be moving on to another cuture to study...we are having Challah at dinner in honor of Hanukkah

Spelling Story

One of Isabelle's options for spelling practice each week is to write a story using her spelling words.  This weeks story was so good I had to post it.  The spelling words are italicized.

"The mild and mighty wind looked as if it started a fight. But then a child named Emily saw it and was scared because an unfriendly wolf was behind the tree.  He was staring right at the child thinking in his mind "I will fry the child."  With delight he tightly squeezed his hands.  But the wolf was careless and stayed there for a while so Emily ran as fast as she could.  But the wolf ran as if in flight.  He caught Emily and went to the baker.  Thinking it would satisfy his diet he said "Cook this child in mild hot sauce."  But the baker said "no, I will not."  So the wolf went to buy green dye to have green eggs and ham instead.  The wolf shared with the baker, which brought brightness to his heart."

By Isabelle Edwards

I thought it was adorable and awfully creative and post-worthy.

The Holy Ghost

Christopher gave father's blessing tonight since school starts tomorrow.  Two of our new kiddos (age 4 and 7) had never had blessings before and I was a little unsure about how it would go.  It was so beautiful.  The blessings were beautiful as always, but even Christopher got choked up when after his blessing Cruz (7 year old) slowly got out of his chair and sat on the couch and then curled up in a ball and said he didn't know why but he felt like crying.  It was the first time we were really able to explain to him what the Holy Ghost feels like when it touches your heart.  I was bawling as soon as I realized that he was, partly because the blessing was beautiful, partly because the Spirit was so strong, and partly because he was feeling the Spirit for the first time.  I'd seen the light in his eyes but I'd never seen such an obvious touch by the Spirit.  I looked up at Christopher who was trying not to cry as well.  Afterwards he came and told me why he was crying (because of a specific sentance in the blessing) and I read it to him again (good thing I always type while Christopher is giving the blessings).  He asked if it would be okay if he wrote about it in his journal because it made him so happy, up until today his journal had been full of writing practice that I give him, and drawings.  This is his first real entry (with spelling corrected because it would be incomprehensible otherwise).

"Today I had my first father's blessing for school.  My dad blessed me.  I felt excited and happy.  I cried because I felt the Holy Ghost in my heart.  He said with my medicine and if I work hard I will learn to read."

And then he drew a picture of him in the chair with Christopher's hands on his head.  I think it's no coincidence that this was able to happen on day 2 of his ADHD meds.  He knows the difference, he feels it and he is so happy.  I love that he was able to feel the Spirit.  I'm so thankful for the blessing of being a Mom.  I'm thankful for the children I have been blessed with.  And sometimes, I'm especially thankful for modern medicine.

--Robin

House for Sale by Owner

902 Greenridge Drive

$125,000

902greenridgedrive.blogspot.com

Mother/Daughter Date

My little artist and I enjoyed the Kimbell Art Museum in downtown Fort Worth followed by some Sweet Sammies! Since Isabelle loves art and I love Impressionism this was the perfect date! We had so muc hfun and got to see so many beautiful works of art.

News!

So here's the semi-offical announcement. Christopher and I have been working towards becoming foster parents so that we could adopt out of the state of Texas foster-care system. We've felt strongly for sometime that our family wasn't done growing and since the main door for family growing has been closed, we thought we should open some windows! We are now offically liscensed! Yeah! But before we got fully liscensed we've been doing what is called 'respite care' where we babysit for other foster parents for 2-3 days at a time, if they need to go out of town or just need a break or something. We fell in love with 3 kiddos that we did respite care for and found out a week later that they needed to move foster homes and CPS wanted the next placement to be permenant. They picked us and we are thrilled! If everything goes as planned it will turn into an adoptive placement sometime in April after the termination hearing. We're happy to welcome these 3 precious kiddos into our family whether it's permenant or only semi-permenant. :-) I think I'm not technically allowed to post their names or pictures on a public place like this so I'll stick with the announcement itself. I'll post pics as soon as I'm allowed. Stay tuned!

Cowtown

After a derth of several months without a working camera and we're to technology-challenged to have phones that do it easily and accesibly and too cheap to pay for a data plan anyhow, we finally resumed picture taking with the purchase of a new camera. Yeah! So now it's time to update the blog. The new camera also allowed me to get some pictures off my camera that I thought were stuck forever. :-)

Here's the Cowtown 5k/10k pictures. This race was at the end of February, it's a HUGE event every year with runs over two days varying from 5k to ultra-marathon. All three kiddos did the 5k. Isabelle and Jack are old pros at this but it was Eva's first 5k! Way to go little girl. Isabelle came in at 36:58; Jack was and 33:44 minutes, not their fastest but really good times considering how cold it was and this was the first time they ran without parents! Eva came in at 58:49 with Dad. Mom and Dad did our first 10k's the same day, Dad at 54:32 and Mom at 1:05:24. Overall it was a great race and lots of fun and thanks to Clarissa Grover we sported matching Team Edwards shirts for the event!