We have been CRAAAAZZZZZYYYYY busy the last few weeks!!! I feel like a blog slacker but I have had NO time!!! Yikes!!

Here are a few from the big kids (Noah, Destiny & Nathan) last soccer game. IPFW has an awesome program that is absolutely free!! IPFW's boys and girls soccer teams are the "coaches" who teach the kids some basic soccer skills and the program provides all of the kids with a t-shirt, shorts, soccer socks and a ball...oh yeah did I say it was FREEEEEE!! It is 7 weeks long and not ultra competitive...more like fun and free exercise...did I mention it was free! (for you fort waynians you sign up for it at the IPFW kids fest during 3 rivers festival)
I didn't get many GOOD pictures of the kids playing soccer since a fellow PTA mom had a son on Noah & Nate's team and the 3 little ones kept me busy. So here is sassy Wuby.

Please be in prayer for our family! We have an interview with the Board of Katelyn's Fund for an adoption grant! It is scheduled for Monday Night at 9:45PM! This would be a HUGE relief for us and would make it clear to us that God wants us to move forward with our ET adoption when we have been soooooo down with our financial issues. The email from Katelyn's fund brought me to tears and then spurred me on to put a few more grant applications out there.

The theme of the day. Just wanted to share..............grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

So, I know I have left a bit of a cliff hanger for a couple of weeks and then fell off of bloggyland. We have been WAYYYY busy the last few weeks, which is great! I am finally feeling like "me" again...the me that runs around like a crazy person volunteering everywhere. After quitting everything....working and all volunteer work, it was nice to have the time to help us settle in but after awhile I started to realize that I was a little depressed. I started to feel a wee bit jealous of another busy body I know....kind of like I was "slipping", "growing old", "mind turning to mush", etc. After more introspection I realized that I LIKE feeling crazy, running around checking things off of my to do list, pulled in many directions, and well IN CHARGE of something....a focus...a purpose... a goal.........beyond breaking down laundry mountain and keeping my living room clean for 5 whole minutes. So I have put myself back out there a bit (with Torrey's tight leash ready to reel me in if needed...and you all know I WILL need it).

Anywho we are still trying to figure this whole thing out but we think we are going to stick with international adoption at this point. 2 weeks ago a friend who is a foster parent trainer mentioned to us that we should look into foster to adopt again. With our continued financial whoas (note + last weeks: dryer broke for the 3rd time in 3 weeks= need new dryer) we gave it a few whirls around the old thinker and still have not come to a firm decision. When we started our second ET adoption we knew that it would be hard financially but we had a plan in place that would make it all work....it still will work but it will continue to be a HUGE financial sacrifice for the whole family. While International adoption comes with many unknowns, we feel like we have been there and done that once so (perhaps mistakenly) we think that this go around it might be a wee bit easier. With Foster to adopt there are so many additional issues that we are not sure we are ready to deal with. Which makes us reevaluate all of the ET issue again and what new ones might come up that we haven't dealt with before. So nothing has been officially resolved. We have thought about dual listing and seeing if we find a US child first. Our ET specialist says that it may be 6 more months before we receive a referral but they can never be sure if it will be tomorrow or next year. So the question remains...where is our next child...here in the US or in ET? We have looked over the waiting children lists from all over the nation and identified a few children that we may be interested in but they are older and would fill in the 3 year gap between Carter and Noah. But again are we realistically ready as a family to disrupt birth order? There is a sibling group in particular that has been pulling on our heart strings but our house isn't big enough for 5 children. Is that what God wants for our family? Our hearts are open and our ears are keen to hear...oh yeah and if you have God's email address can you tell him to shoot me over an email? I will be waiting by my computer checking the adoption forums!

Our little diva ready to head our to dance class.

We started early this year with pumpkins (a first for our family....we are usually caught up in some project and do pumpkins the night before). The first week of October we headed to a local farm stand to pick up a few orange beauties.Now don't let the picture below fool you...Noah never dipped his hand into the pumpkin...he refuses to touch gooey stuff. Torrey & I are always stuck dishing out the yucky stuff.

Please pray for our family as we have been contemplating another direction that has been brought before us for our adoption . We really want to make the "right" decision...being the one God has chosen for our family....but deciphering that is difficult.

So this week was another CRAZY week! From my temporary post this week you may have gleaned that we had a plumbing issue. The water department stopped us as we were leaving to take Noah to school to say that a pipe had burst in the easement and was pouring into the neighbor's back yard. Oh yeah and it was our responsibility to find the leak and fix it. So after many tears of frustration and dreading the possibility that we would have to dig up the entire back yard in search of the leak (note: 4 digit estimates rolling through my head) dads came to the rescue. My dad rolled out of bed to come and check it out for us. He gave Torrey the confidence that he could do it on his own. Torrey's dad made the trip out after work 2 nights in a row to dig the 6ft. hole and fix the pipe. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!! The total cost was about $150 PTL!!! It appears that when the water company came out a few weeks ago to shut off the water so we could fix the leaky pipe in the basement they jarred the pipe which wasn't properly supported causing it to break. Luckily the leak was only 1 foot from the valve so our fence and backyard was spared. We were without water for awhile but everything is back on line; laundry & dishes are slowly being caught up.

So Monday we went in to school to officially withdraw Carter and tried to sign him up for preschool. Unfortunately the preschool teacher is out all week due to a death in the family. So the preschool director told us we have to wait until she returns next week to "test" Carter to see if he is a good fit for the class...."huh!!!". Apparently if he is too advanced or behind they won't take him. The Director told me to put him back into Kindergarten for the week until the preschool teacher gets back!!!!! ....um, no. Needless to say, I am ready to find our family's "normal". So we are looking at homeschooling preschool if we are rejected. Carter and I have had some good alone times together while the little kids are at school. He has really needed it though, as he is still having some issues with being displaced as the youngest after 4 1/2 years of being the "baby." So again we wait!
Carter has been obsessed with "yellow" hair and has been begging for awhile to change his hair to blonde. Torrey said we could go ahead and dye his hair. We figure we will be saving it all off in 6 weeks anyway, so what's the harm. My little sister Lora brought over some blonde hair color but we ended up with flaming red hair and Carter wasn't happy. My friend Kristy let me borrow some hair bleach but this made Carter's hair patching white and brassy red. So in a last ditch effort we put the reddish blonde back in to tone it down a little bit (yes, this is a picture of "toned down".) Today Lora will be coming over to try again....though Carter likes it how it is.
Here is the picture of my finger before the stitches came out on Tuesday. I wish I would have taken them out myself and sooner. The doctor's hands were shaky so he yanked on the stitches unnessicarily....and since Carter was there I had to be brave when I wanted to shriek! I thought they had something special to get them out....nope just tweezers and scissors. I would have taken them out earlier because the doctor had put 5 knots in the end of each stitch so it caught on everything and hurt more than the actual cut.

Wuby is still having a great time in dance! This post is more for her than anyone. She likes to work on her mouse skills by clicking on the triangle play button for her videos on our blog.