Whew!!!!

You know how life sometimes just catches you off guard? Well, there is so much going on in our lives, sometimes it takes a bit to sit back and just take a look at it all.

I am currently scolding six kittens for interrupting my attempt at a blog post, as they scratch at our closed bedroom door! Does that explain our lives lately??

We have eight kittens in the house, three of whom are now ready for homes and three who will be in two weeks and two more about a month or so after that. They are wonderfully adorable and seem to totally decide that it is time to play when we head to bed. Six of the kittens are very mobile and literally everywhere, so they are these flying bundles of fur, rolling rapidly across the house, jumping out under from furniture and also climbing our legs (really hope you have long pants on when they try that!!). Two nights ago Steve and I had three bundles of fuzz on our bed with us, I was so afraid I was going to roll over and squish them!!!!

Want a kitten??? They are litter trained and raised with children!!!! LOL!

Life has been good, what with baby ducks, baby chickens, growing young goats, growing and active kids and life in general. We have a new bathroom that we dearly love, and have learned to refinish our own floors. It is a process, unfortunately one that is slow going because by the time we feel like we can do it, we are too tired to do it!!! (Generally that means about 11PM.) But we CAN do it!!!!

The four littlest kids are on the same soccer team (no vacations or sick days allowed for the Oswald family!!!) and they are so far undefeated. Which they only rarely rub into the oldest three, who are on another team, and have not won a single game, though thankfully they have tied two!!! Whew. We just got photos taken of all the kids' on their soccer teams so are looking forward to seeing those!!!

Summer is just flying by, as always. Each day is so full, and generally so fun! We sat up until 10:30 tonight just all of us talking and the kids giggling away. Everyone was a bit nervous because as the last soccer game ended (actually the first was canceled because after all the rain the field is a total swamp) the sky turned totally dark and lots of great, but abnormal colors (green and yellow are NOT normal!). I don't think we even got any rain, but we raced home and got the animals all tucked in safely. To listen to the kids laugh, it makes it all worthwhile and so wonderful. They have all gelled so totally, it is hard to believe that it has been less than a year - August 14th is the Gotcha day! Unreal. And Zeri and Solly will be at the three year mark September 1st! I just cannot believe that it has not been forever!!! Our God is surely the God of miracles, to put this family together.

So, I hope you are having a great summer. I am trying to keep up in general. If the rain will stop, I can finish weeding - again! The goats have only gotten into the garden once!

Love to everyone, enjoy the summer, I am going back to my ceiling fan and getting some sleep before tomorrow starts - as always, very early! God bless!


"For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans for hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11

Extreme home make over - Oswald style

We have so laughed so many times about not getting approved by EHM, though many folks seem appalled that we didn't get it. In all honesty, I have a certain smugness about this dismay that others have. It does make me feel good to know that others would consider us worth and really be in our corner for it.

But on the other hand, we seem to be experiencing "God's Extreme Home Makeover"!!!

Given the hopes to adopt (and the death of our dear Sammy) it has all resulted in a second bathroom in our house (with TWO extra sinks!)! And getting to know a great Christian contractor who also happens to be a neighbor! Amazingly, we have a second bathroom and it is more than we could ever have imagined. A full shower, a hardwood floor, a bathroom both inside the bathroom and outside, extra cabinets, and just beauty overall. We took part of our schoolroom and put the bathroom there, taking down an old unused chimney in the process. We actually GAINED room in our living room by the time we took out the old chimney - and our lovely contractor realized that built in pine bookshelves would look wonderful under the boxes they had to create for the plumbing through the living room! We gained two nearly floor to ceiling bookshelves, just gorgeous when simply polyurethaned! Thank you dear hubby for finishing that off! I cannot wait to get books on them, they will be our school bookshelves so they are handy! The kids love the bathroom (they don't have to go downstairs to go to the bathroom at night! LOL. They generally don't anyway!). But with soccer season, having two showers is a huge thing! And it is just beautiful. The down (or up) side of it is that we learned how simple it is to refinish our hardwood floors, that are really hardwood!!!! Steve bought me a random orbit sander to work on the floors with and a detail sander to finish working on the stairs (there should be a poem somewhere titled "When You Give a Mom a Sander..." - in other words, I keep finding places to use it!!!).

So, we now have a two bathroom house - two FULL bathrooms! And to top it off, my dearest dad (step-dad if you want to be precise, I generally don't) is stepping in and helping us with a barn!!!! We discovered that it was much less expensive to build a barn than we had thought - actually because what we want really isn't in height but in room for stalls! So it is a really long story, but a garage has led us to now having funds to work towards building a barn! Big enough for two box stalls for horses, cross ties for grooming, and a bunch of smaller stalls for goats! We are simply over the moon!!! We work alongside our contractor, so that helps us to afford it, and I still work to finish paying it off. I am so grateful that God has allowed us this to provide for our needs, but I sincerely do look forward to basing my life out of my home again. I would love to get some sort of income stream going more from our farm, but in the meantime, my profession has just about paid for our new bathroom, and by end of summer, we should be totally back on track with me being a stay at home mom again, though it appears that my private practice is returning! LOL! God has such a huge sense of humor!

So, by this time next year, I have no idea what God might have done! He seems to be having a ball working in things lately!

The kids are doing really well. Really, really well. As much as I would love another driver, we are in no rush to put a kid behind the wheel. Our theory is that if you cannot be responsible enough to pick up your laundry, that we really should think twice about putting you behind the wheel of a vehicle. And that is OK. Everyone is healthy beyond little colds, my back is doing quite well (I am so very grateful!!!), Steve is healthy and mobile, the kids are just amazing. We are so blessed. We might not be wealthy in the ways of the world (though we aren't doing too badly that way), but oh, we are so very rich!

Happy Father's Day to everyone!!!! God bless you all!


"For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans for hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11

Baby Blankets

I have been praying lately for ways to pay things forward, to somehow do something for ministry, for others. It is really important to me, and as you know, orphans and adoption is huge on my heart.

I have met two other families out here who literally have just returned from Ethiopia, having adopted older children and one is going back in four weeks for her second adopted son (they passed court two months apart from each other). She just posted on facebook that in the southern part of Ethiopia there is a huge need for baby blankets as the hospitals and clinics want to be able to send a baby blanket home with each new mom, so they don't have enough in the clinic and to send home. The poverty is unimaginable in this country where we buy fancy cribs, huge wardrobes, and every gadget that can be conceived of, for our babies, much less that the hospital would need to give us something. These families don't even have a baby blanket for their newborns.

So, my friend would like to take baby blankets with her to this area (where both of her sons are from). I am going through what I have saved, what I just couldn't let go of, and even what I have saved for our hopes of another baby in our household - because really, if we were blessed with a baby, that baby would be showered with so many gifts from loving family and friends or we could go and purchase what would be so simple to get here! So, I am going to go through our things, and then hit our thrift stores to get more, and have put a request out on freecycle. I am hoping to be able to knit a couple quickly or get a couple quickly quilted up (my girls and I love to sew), but time is so tight, that I don't know if I could, but we will try!

So, if you are interested or know of someone who might be interested in helping with this project, please contact me! And, if you know of other needs like this, anywhere, please let me know. If we all mobilize, imagine the change we can be in the world!

I'm BACK!!!!!

Hi all!
Sorry for the silence, things have been so busy.

I hurt my back just over a week ago and was WAAAYYYY to embarrassed to tell anyone that I actually hurt myself drying myself after a shower! Of course, my chiropractor is right, and it wasn't that time that really did it, that was just the final straw. It had been coming for a long time. Anyway, I went from normal, going to Bible study, then heading to work, to on my knees outside a gas station, unable to move.

It was horrible. I would compare it to labor, at least the level of pain and being unable to move. I was able to get to the van, get in and call my dear hubby - who was working an hour away from where I was. Crying and trying to make sense. Ugh. Well, we decided that we would both head towards each other, as long as I could hope to manage to drive, and decide where we were going to take me. The question was, either ER or chiropractor. I hurt so bad, I knew that if I went to the hospital, they would give me tons of drugs, which at that point sounded good, but was so afraid they would then only want to do surgery. All that ran through my head was the people I know who have had back surgery, another back surgery, and then hardware placed and basically end up disabled.

Oh, my lord, that picture just ran through my mind over and over. How would I raise my kids, live on our farm if I was disabled?? Oh, my goodness, I just couldn't do it. I want my kids to have more, and that means that I really need to not be disabled! That was my hugest fear.

So, we opted to run to the chiropractor, a dear friend of ours. Steve called him from the road - he said he would take me as soon as we could get there. Steve met up with me when we got to the same area and took over driving while I basically just tried to breathe through it and survive.

All I can say is that it was horrible. I know that we got in, I know that I somehow very slowly walked, that I cried a lot, and that the first treatment really, really hurt. Dr. P told me that it would. He took xrays immediately and determined that "boy when you do something, you do it big". I had a bulging disc in my lumbar portion of my back. Now I can tell you it is just behind the top of my hipbone. At that point, the pain was so far and extreme that I couldn't have localized anything - the pain was huge and all over. I was told that I would be in to see Dr. P daily for a while. He agreed with my concerns as far as treatment routes, we needed to try to fix it this way and avoid surgery because the route was much as I imagined it. One of the things I remember telling him was that we had to get things better and then he had to give me things to do to make sure this didn't happen again, that I didn't just want the pain gone, but I had to be able to do things to improve my health and function so I didn't do this again. He laughed and agreed - that was his plan too. Works for me.

Now, looking back I cannot tell anyone too much about that first day or so. I know that one of the rules was that I had to do things under my own power. Things were bulged such that if I was moved the wrong way, the bulged disc would rupture. So, my dear hubby could not carry me or pull on me to help, I had to do it on my own with support. He assured me that the pain would stop me before I could hurt myself as long as I moved slowly (like I had any other choice). Poor Steve could only support me as I just bawled and moaned trying to get into the house. I passed out on the porch - we had been warned that I likely would. Ugh. Pain overload. Scared the kids silly. That is what bothers me the most.

I spent the next several days in bed, getting up only to go to the bathroom or the chiropractor, ice on my back and no anti-inflammatory meds (the inflammation is part of how the body heals itself by bringing blood to the injured area). Ugh. With each treatment, things dramatically improved. By Monday I was able to be up 15 to 30 minutes with then several hours back in bed, but the pain was down from a ten to a three, and when I pushed it of course it was higher. But I could move!!!!

I have been skeptical about chiropractic care, you hear so much and just know so little. But I have to tell you, when I look back, this is nothing short of a miracle and as Dr. P explains it, it makes perfect sense! God created our bodies in amazing ways, and we need to work with them! (I learned that with carrying and birthing my kids) I am now up and around, with rest periods in bed (NOT my usual mode of activity!!!!), no lifting, but slowly getting back to even work (yeah, as a speech therapist working with the elderly, I don't have a lot of physical work, but with a lumbar injury is that the weight of my body puts pressure on that injury spot, so laying down is really needed, upright is bad), and able to experience such less pain (soreness maybe, aching when I begin to overdo it). I am still in the acute phase, and looking forward to the next phase of strengthening myself and doing things to improve my health (and make sure that this NEVER happens again). Dr. P has promised that he will not just stop with getting me through this particular injury, but will help me get to a point of staying healthy! Yay!

So, being a mom of eight on bedrest - it stinks!!!!! AND we had workmen at the house all week!!!! Our second bathroom is just about done!!! In fact, we need to paint tomorrow so they can put in the toilet and sink!!!!! There are more outlets, TWO sinks (and cabinets and mirrors) - one outside the bathroom!!!! It worked out perfect with a little alcove created by where the shower had to go so we have an extra place for kids to brush teeth, do their hair, wash hands and faces!!! It actually is cute and makes sense logistically! So anyway, I was in soft pjs for most of the week with workmen in the house, and kids helping me with basically everything! I was in too much pain to be embarrassed.

Anyway, we are thrilled at having a long weekend together, with me up and around again, though taking breaks!!!!

God is so good! He brought us these amazing workmen, the lead guy who is a great Christian, and they have come up with ways to make it better, to add in things we need while they are already working within walls, ceilings and floors (and little to no added cost!), and a rapid completion of the project! All I need is a photo of it done and a note signed by the plumber that it is done and our homestudy can be signed off on!!!!

If I could dance (and maybe I could but am a chicken to try it!) I would. This is awesome! And to top it off, all these guys live nearby! We discussed a laundry room expansion (and our contractor Dave, who after living with us for most of the last two weeks - in and out anyway, insisted that it would be designed for two washers and two dryers, space for my ironing board, a counter for folding clothes, cabinets for storage, and even listened to us about our ideas about a family closet in there) and Dave had great ideas. That may be the next project!!!! Now to pray for funding! But the guys are busy on other jobs for a while, so when they get slow again, they will call us and that will give me time to work on getting the money or see what God has in mind! LOL! Happy dance!

Anyway, God has certainly taught me a lot through this, humbled me, and taught me to not count on what I can do. I actually got some more written on the book/s that I am working on - what else can you do when you are confined to bed - tv and reading (even good books) get really boring after a while! So, we shall see where God takes us, but I am so grateful to be functioning again! Have a great Memorial Day weekend! I have now been down my prescribed time, so am getting out to the garden!!!!!!

A great quote...

I love this quote (not sure who said it):
"She is secure in knowing that she's not a replacement, but a finisher of a race for someone who, for whatever reason, could not run any longer."

That is how we feel about parenting our kids. All of them. We started the race for three of them, but are honored to be finishing the race for five of them. We really do try to honor the kids first moms and dads and talk about them when the kids want to. It is a fine line, honoring, but allowing the kids to revel in their current lives. Some families do ceremonies to honor birth moms, we will have to think about it. Two of my kids don't recall their moms, they died when the kids were very young, one doesn't know anything of the father, and they all have histories and stories that are wonderful and painful, each in turn. But, as their parents, we are very comfortable with being their parents NOW, and not having been their parents earlier. It isn't threatening, thank goodness. Not for us, at least today. Feelings change, I am sure!

It has been a rough couple days. We are trying to get the new bathroom done so our homestudy can be signed off on. And our plumber has dragged us along for over a month, and after the awful work he has done in the last week, we fired him last night. So now we are back at square one. Sigh.

Finishing the homestudy just feels like one of those things we have to do, to close this chapter in our lives. We aren't convinced that God wants to do anything with it, but we just really want it finished and completed. Then God can do with it as he will.

So, if you know an plumber who would love to help out an adoptive family (meaning being reasonable priced and letting us help as we can to speed things along) please contact us!

A great video!

I loved Carrie Underwood's song "Jesus Take the Wheel", but really haven't followed her music much since then. Well, a friend sent this link, and I was very impressed. Really gets you thinking about so many things!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LraOiHUltak

Well, I am off to laundry, cleaning, teaching, trimming hooves, loving on kiddos and waiting on the plumber. Our bathroom project is limping along, mainly limping because the plumber has only shown up when he said he would one out of three times. Sigh. I don't know what to think. We are very used to doing it ourselves and not waiting on someone else, but this job is beyond us. I think once the plumbing portion is done we will go at it on our own. I have so far lost two days of work to this insanity. Hard to pay for the job if I cannot go to work to pay for it! Sigh. God is in control, God is in control. And at least it is a sunny day outside so I can enjoy it with the kids - can we say "schooling outside???"!!!!

Would you believe????

That I am writing this post on my laptop at the dining room table, while I stand here making waffles?

Yep.

I like to cook, but it can be quite something to have the energy some days in the midst of the wonderfulness of life. Now isn't that a nice way to put a spin on it?

So, one way I deal with that is to cook in bulk. And by that, I mean bulk way beyond the usual bulk cooking I do just to feed the number of hungry kids in our home! Our regular recipes obviously are much larger than a family of four would need. So, to make waffles and have substantial leftovers (look, if I'm going to stand here and mix all this up and then hang out in front of the griddle for what feels like forever, I don't want to have to do it again any time soon - I would rather spend more time and be done with it for a while) - anyway, we take our recipe and multiply it times ten. Now, I don't have a mixing bowl that large. I don't know that anyone does outside of a bakery. Maybe I should think about that? Hmmm. But,there really isn't space in our house for that either.

Anyway, back to the story (or ramble, as it may actually be).

So, I make LOTS of waffles and freeze quite a lot of them. Put it this way. I made waffles for dinner last night (recipe times five) and the kids ate it all as fast as I could get it off the griddle. So this morning I did a batch of ten times, and while the kids ate it, some had cereal, some did whatever, but since they had had some waffles last night, some of the novelty had worn off, so I had some more left. However, given the capacity of waffle irons on the market for regular people, it takes a long time to use up all the batter we made! We even had to leave some for a second cooking session tonight.

Gasp - I skipped church tonight (after a very busy day) because I knew that I had several hours of waffle baking ahead of me, as well as MANY loads of laundry (the down side of demanding the kids completely clean their rooms, including under their beds!!!!

So, anyway, here I am at 10PM, still cooking waffles. I have been at it since 7PM. The giant soup kettle I make my batter in (again, need something huge) is nearing empty! The kids helped quite a bit, watching waffles, laddling in batter, washing dishes, folding laundry, but now they are all safely tucked into bed. ]

What in heaven's name do you do while waiting for a waffle to cook?

Sort laundry
Scrub the outside of the stove
Start the stove self cleaning
Scrub the water cooler and floor around it (it sits right next to the stove)
Clean off the table - directing kiddos where to put things or one to watch the waffles
Listen to kids telling stories about riding the horse moments before
Put things in better order in the pantry
Kill the stray ant that somehow walked in
Trip over baby goat
Put diaper on said goat
Direct someone to heat up a bottle for said goat so said goat will quit crawling up my legs and nibbling on my pants
Remind kids to take their medicine/vitamins
Hook up the laptop and try to get on the internet, between waffles

I almost tried to find a way to pull out paint to start painting in here, but that would really just go very badly - paint in waffles, waffle batter in paint, paint on a kid, it just wouldn't be good.

Do you have any secrets for creative ways to pass time when you are stuck to the stove? Or am I just getting punch after about 50 waffles? I am thinking it is the latter. Time to go play Farmville on Facebook. Good night! Hope you got a laugh. Doggone it, baby goat just woke up!