If Home Is Where Your Heart Is. . . .

I just took the boys on a fun weekend away--it has been overdue since I took the girls to Vegas last year.  We headed to Aspen for the Winter X Games and it was so much fun!  Baylor came, too--he is a boy after all.  The drive was easy (even though we had to go the long way due to a rock slide that closed the main way), the weather was ideal and it was so much fun to be at the X Games.  They had booths and swag and games and give aways.  The whole environment was a blast!!!  This will for sure be something we put on our calendar for 2015!!! This is Nick Baumgartner, one of the boarders in the games! This is the Jeep we were hoping to win! Tiki had a MAJOR crush on the Monster Energy Drink girls! The boys were on TV, too!!!  It was so fun for Hays because one of his friends texted him and said that he saw them on TV.  So fun!  Dax is hoping that one day he'll be on the X Games ESPN broadcast as a competitor not a spectator!!!

Monday was the best no school day ever!!!  Wow!  I headed to the mountain with the fab five (Andy is in the Middle East) and it was a perfect short sleeve blue sky day!!!  The snow was great and we had a blast together!  Everyone was happy.  The good boarders were happy waiting for the not so great boarders and everyone got along.  It was fun to see the kids pair up in different pairs at times and do a run or two together.  The big kids took care of the little kids.  It was perfect!!!! I absolutely loved love loved being with the kids.  It was relaxing and we laughed a ton.  I loved just hanging out at the mountain.  With the big jump set up, we spent a lot of time just sitting on the side waiting for Hays and Dax to jump.  It was nice.  I'm not sure if I can pin point exactly why the day was so perfect, but it just was. We all agreed that it would have been an A+ had Andy been there, though!!!

I knew the day would come when a homework assignment would come home that Tiki couldn't do.  Monday was the day.  Tiki's assignment was to write the story of the day he was born.  What to do?  Do we write a great fiction novel filled with dark skin and people we make up?  Or do we adjust the assignment and make the story of his birth day the story of the day he jumped into my arms?  Well, with Tiki's typical innocent excitement, we decided to write about Gotcha Day!  (The entire third grade writes an autobiography as their second semester project--it is really fun--and we will be working on this project for the next several months.) I emailed his teacher to make sure this was the proper route to take and after a big and excited YES, we are off on our journey from Gotcha Day to today from the mind of a third grader. I am having so much fun with this!  Thankfully I have the blog to go back to for stories and details and Tiki is loving reading the stories of him.  This

 I just wanted to take a moment to brag on my man.  We have had some ups and some really yucky downs over the past five years and some of the low patches have been really tough to climb out of and it has been awful at times.  My glass slipper fit, so where is my happily ever after is often what I felt like.  Seasons.  I know that there are seasons and I know I haven't seen them all, but I am sure thankful to be on the other side of this one.  All of that to say. . . I love my husband!  He is amazing!  I want to say, "he has turned into the dream," but I feel like that would make it sound like he has been the only problem and we all know that relationships are more than one person. . .I'm sure (okay, I know) I've been a monster over these past several years, too.  But that thought of "he has turned into the dream" is what I'm feeling without the blame aspect.  He's amazing!  I'm in love and I'm blown away by how much he loves me.  I f

I am begging for your help!  For me?  No.  For Tiki!!!  I can't wait to share this story with you all.  As you may know, we are getting to go to Rwanda this summer for a few weeks and we could not be more excited!  I've had several great talks with Tiki and he is looking forward to going back to see his orphanage (this may change as we get closer, but for now, that is his thinking).  The first thing he said when he found out that we were going was, "For my birthday can I ask everyone to bring shoes instead of presents for me?"  Wow.  I was floored.  Something in his head remembers not having shoes (see above picture of him--fifth from left--in the orphanage) and he immediately wanted to bring shoes to the children who are in Home of Hope.  So thoughtful.  So unselfish.  So compassionate.  Such a protector.  So Tiki. So, Tiki's birthday is 02.03.04. . . coming up!  And I am begging you, please send shoes to him!!!  I think that flip flops would be best, no ten

So, people always ask me if I homeschool my kids (is it because people with more children than parents  homeschool or because I like to travel or because. . . ?).  No, I don't.  I have zero desire to homeschool my kids.  I would be a terrible teacher for them.  Absolutely awful.  I cannot imagine a worse teacher.  I would kill them or kill  myself.  I cannot even fathom it--I get anxious hives just thinking about it. However, whenever I think about the reasons behind homeschooling and how much better it would be for three of my children, there is a secret (and until now unexpressed) desire to do just that.  But I don't want to just homeschool.  I've seen homeschooling done several different ways.  I've seen online schooling and co-op schooling and mom-as-teacher homeschooling.  None of those styles appeal to me at all.  But in the back of my mind, I long (from the bottom of my heart believe it or not) to homeschool my boys.  I just don't know how--in a way that w