Go Fly A Kite

Building relationships between our children is so important us.  They can either be life long friends or lifelong enemies.  Positivety should always be encouraged with them.  Plus it is a sanity saver for us parents.  I like to look at misbehavior as a learning opportunity.  The older kids were at each other all day and I had, had enough! So instead of listening to who had to do what I took the opportunity to teach them about working together.  Mae had a kite that just would not fly. So I told them they had to work together to build a kite the would fly out of things we had at home.  It had to fly even though we didn't have any wind :) They totally loved that idea and were scrounging around the house for things to use.  They tried many different shapes and had to work out how to string it so it wouldn't crash.  This kept them very busy and while they didn't start out agreeing on everything, they worked out a plan and had a lot of fun together.  As you can hear in the video Jean was soooo excited when the kite flying so it was great for the teens, but it also was exciting for the little one.

"On The Wall"

Growing up my mother always framed our school pictures and hung them on the wall.  She even had frames that you could put wallet size pictures in for every grade.  In fact my husbands family did the same just as I am pretty sure most families do whether it is school pictures or professional. We all love to display our family in our homes.  For us we hang our children's pictures above our fireplace so they are the focal point of our living room.  We didn't want Jean to feel left out so we set a framed 5X7 picture of her (a cute one we had received from the orphanage) sitting on our fireplace until we had a picture of her to hang up.  I anxiously waited for all the pictures to come in so I could hang them up, but what I didn't even think about was what that would do to her.  After we had everyone's pictures I updated them and excitedly added her picture.  Later that day she said and pointed out to all of us "Jean on the wall".  We thought wow, she is so observant but actually after about the 3rd or 4th time of pointing out her picture we realized it was more than her "picture on the wall".  It was way more to her it was identity, she realized this meant she was truly part of our family!  Weeks/months went by and she continued to happily point and say "Jean on the wall".  How special, every time she did this it touched our hearts because we knew it told her she was truly part of our family, but it also told us she happily accepted being part of our family.  It didn't just stop there when every we went over to the Grandparents house she would find her picture and point it out.  She truly loves being part of a family, our family!



Daddy's poem:

Adoption is a gift

A gift from up above

Introducing one of God's Children

To His unfailing love

Caring for those without parents

according to God's plan

love them, pray for them

do what we can

when we brought our first daugther home

her staring at our wall

the reaction on her face

well that said it all

she saw her picture

for everyone to see

prayers were answered

she now has a Family

we are in the process

adding to our story 

Another picture on the wall

To God be the glory.