Finally getting in the groove again!

Well, after many weeks, I am finally catching up on things and making some time to blog a little.
We have gotten all our commitments out of the way and now we are just in the home stretch here for finishing the school year, the violin lessons, the orchestra rehearsals, etc.  After this week, we will have 4 more lessons and practices before the performances and recitals and then be finished for summer.  I have already filled out all the paperwork and will send away the forms for camp this summer.  Only having to pay for Hannah, since Abby received 2 scholarships!  Yeah! 

I took this photo today after church and then snapped Sarah Ying's picture at home, since her face is completely covered by a palm in the church picture!  You can tell by the kids' clothes that we are finally having some seasonal weather.  Hoping we will miss the storms passing through our area today, so we might actually be able to start disc-ing down some of the muddy ruts in our pastures later this week.  It will still be some time before we can break ground and plant any corn though.  Very heavy clay soil here...holds a lot of water.  Doesn't drain too quickly either.

We think we are going to be ready for Easter...just a bit more spring cleaning and some more sorting, etc. and we will have reached our goals for Lent.  Whew!  Just in time!  Then we will be ready for our home visit from the state DHR/foster care/adoption group preparation classes we have been attending.  These classes take 10 weeks and are only offered once a year in our county.  We were really excited about doing this last year...but after waiting for 11 months for the classes to start again, we sort of lost our "ooomph".  Hoping we can get back to feeling like it might actually be a good thing.  I really wanted to adopt internationally again...but even with the reinstatement of the adoption tax credit, we cannot afford to.  (I wonder if we could even qualify? - it would be close!)  There is one little sweetie that especially pulls at my heart-strings, and I would really love to be able to bring her into our family (can NOT understand why nobody else has snapped her up!?) but, for now, it just isn't going to happen...so I am praying to feel thankful for the children I have now, (and the ones I have raised already!) and to focus myself on parenting them and to let it all go.

But,

...maybe one day.



Amy