A Letter

Dear Computer,
Why do you treat me this way? Oh little black box of plastic and wires, lovingly dusted and kept from drinks and sticky fingers, why do you act so hatefully to me? I do not understand all the freezing and the disconnecting. I have spent so much time with you. Often at the expense of my children being fed at regular intervals and surely at the expense of the gathering dust bunnies being sucked away into the Hoover vortex, I sit with you and gleefully tap your keys. I gazed upon your bright screen and found lively conversation and information. But now? You come and go when you please, connecting when you want, freezing when I am in the middle of something important. Why? I keep you properly updated, delete unnecessary emails, and give you lovely pictures of my beautiful family to gaze upon when I cannot be with you. Why do you turn away from my inquiring eyes? Why must you shield the internet from me and keep my ears from your gleeful cry of "You've got mail!" I love you and I need you, oh sweet beacon of technology. You are such a part of my life. Is that the problem? Was I too dependent on you? Was I smothering you? I can change, I promise. I'll give you some space. But don't turn your back on me. I am tired of this game and I am getting frustrated. Let's give up the freezing and the shutting down and the refusal to connect to the internet, okay? Can't we try to start over, to re-boot our relationship--but maybe just ONCE, not every 10 minutes? On my end, I will try to keep my cuss words to a minimum. But I have been faithful to our commitment, to our time together. I seek you out all the time-is it too much to ask some cooperation from you? If you don't feel like you can work with me, know that it will not end well for you. I have a hammer. I know how to use it.

Love,
Jody

This Is Foshizzle Rizzle

Make sure you watch it ALL!!

Disrurbing on so many levels. I almost died laughing.

Ooh Ooh, I'm It!

OK, so I got tagged by Dawn to choose the 4th picture in the 4th file on my computer, which was kind of hard because we have ALL of our pictures on here. Each year is one folder and within that year, each month has its own folder, but I just followed blindly and so here is a picture from 2005. This is my oldest daughter (aka Thing 1, now almost 9 years old) and I at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, PA. I grew up in Pittsburgh and we were home visiting my mom. The museum is well known for its dinosaur exhibits (the ones they show on Mr. Rogers-woohoo!) and we always went there on field trips when I was a kid. It was fun to go back with my own children. Anyway, they have part of the exhibit set up as an archaeological dig for children to grab some tools and scratch/scrape/dig away at the buried dinosaur skeleton. It was a lot of fun and as you can tell, Thing 1 was pretty intensely into it! It was great to remember that day from looking at this picture. She was so small and cute and fun-not that she's not now, she's just not a little kid any more and I miss it some times :(. So, now I tag Michelle, Jana, and Charisa to do the same-find the 4th picture in the 4th file folder on your computer, post it and explain it to the rest of us here on these innernets. Enjoy your stroll down memory lane!! :)

Official Numbers and The Thoughts They Bring

We are #10 girls, #7 boys on the waiting list, as we expected. So close, and yet so far...ish. Oh the unknown journey of adoption. "When will your adoption be finalized?" We don't know. "When will you go to Ethiopia?" We don't know. "Are you adopting a boy or a girl?" We don't know. "How old will your baby be?" We don't know. "How much longer will you be on the waiting list?" WE DON'T KNOW. Some days I want to scream it, and tell all well-meaning friends and strangers to stop asking me all manner of questions to which I just do not know the answer. Other days I wonder why people are not asking and why they don't care. Some days I just want to be there, meeting my newest little Thing and locking eyes with the dream that was conceived in my heart a year and a half ago. Other days I pray that it will never come because I am just not ready and I have so many fears of what the future holds for our family. Some days it is all I want to talk about and I want to tell the world about the plight of the country of Ethiopia and shout from my soapbox about how we CAN make a difference and we SHOULD do something, RIGHT NOW. Other days I want to curl in a ball on my couch, not speaking one more word about it, not even thinking about something that seems so hard, so unreachable, so overwhelming. The juxtaposition of these opposite days, these incessant questions with no answers, can be hard to reconcile in my mind, but fortunately, I know the Master of reconciliation. Every day, He knows the answers to all the questions. Every day. Every question. I don't need to know. And every day, He asks me to walk with Him. What an honor. What a blessing. God is good.

Compassion

We have been Compassion sponsors for years, actually I started in college. We have sponsored 5 children and are currently sponsoring 4 of them still. It has been a joy, blessing, eye-opener, and unifying thing for our family. My children have become aware of the lives of children in other parts of the world, parts that don't have the things we have. They have developed an understanding of the fact that we CAN make a difference in the daily lives of these children, even thousands of miles away, through the amazing work of Compassion. If you do not already have a child that you sponsor with Compassion, or you'd like to consider sponsoring another, click on the Compassion link next to this and get started today. If you are interested in a firsthand account of some of the Compassion projects, check out Owlhaven's blog where she is reporting from a Compassion Bloggers trip to the Dominican Republic. You too can make a difference in the life of a child or children, and be abundantly blessed as well. Go check out Compassion and let me know if you find a child to sponsor or if you already do so, share a little about your sponsored child in the comments. Let's change these kids' futures together!

Shoes We Can Use

I found this website for the CUTEST little baby shoes. The prices for these adorable leather shoes are great AND a portion of the profit goes to the International Justice Mission, a Christian human rights organization that fights human trafficking. Charisa also talks about this incredible organization on her blog-check it out! This is something we all need to make an effort to STOP and if we can help do that by buying the CUTEST shoes ever for our sweet wee ones?? Sign me up!! Off to Christmas shop.....



(btw, no, this is not sponsored or anything by Bugaloo, I just thought it was an AWESOME website discovery and wanted to share it w/ my peeps :)!)