The birthday boy and girl

We had a big party at our house yesterday for my eldest and my little girl.  Their birthdays are only one day apart. 

  I am very blessed to have this 10 year old that made me a mom...

and this amazing little girl that blesses me with another female in the house!

Thank you, Gramma Perry, for the real princess outfit!  Lilly loves it!

It was a really great day....several wonderful families from church and homeschooling came over to celebrate these birthdays with us.  We are so lucky to know nice people who take the time to celebrate our children with us...we were blessed with a very full house yesterday!  Thank you to everyone that came...you made it very special for our kiddos.  And we're praying for some of our sick friends that couldn't make it...we missed you!

Blessings,
Kimberly

Busy Day....

Quick post-

We are having a big double birthday celebration today....my oldest turns 10 and my little girl turns 5!
I can't believe I've been at this mothering thing for 10 years already.
Wow...it all goes so very fast.  Too fast.  Lots of celebrating to do today...

Hopefully I'll be back here tonight with photos...

And I've got Dan working on getting at least one of the videos of our little man on this blog as well...he's even cuter in motion ;)  And hopefully we'll stop calling him "little man" and give him a real name.  The kids are already calling him the top name that was in the running...I just need to give the official OK on it before announcing :)

Gotta go finish cleaning and decorating!

Blessings,
Kimberly

Adoption update and nature study...

Adoption update:

WooHoo!

We had our very first home study visit this morning.....phew... Done! Check!
So glad to have gotten that done.  We were nervous but it seemed to go fine.   Also spent quite awhile this morning on the phone with our international agency getting all our check lists squared away as far as what we should be working on right now.  We're in a rush right now to get all our commitment paperwork into our little man's country so they can officially recognize us as the adoptive family that will be coming to get him.  The agency says he's ours...now we just need to make sure his country realizes it, too :)

I'm all emotions lately...at any given time I could just start to cry...I kind of don't know what to do with myself!  We've prayed, we've discerned, we've stepped out in faith to welcome this little boy into our family and now my heart is getting all wrapped up with a child that will be far from my arms for a long, long time.  It's hard...I'm a Mother Hen kind of mama...and this is very, very different.  I'm going to learn a lot about fully trusting in God through this process...I can just tell.

So....on another topic, we had a bit of unplanned nature study going on at our house yesterday.
My kids begged me to post these photos...

Remember this guy?  We found him last November and tried identifying him.  This picture was taken in November.  I blogged about it back then.   We were pretty certain it was a Lunar Moth Caterpillar. 

We put him in a tank to watch for a little bit and he automatically went to work making a caccoon.  We knew they were endangered in some areas and a pretty special thing to find so we kept him in the aquarium hoping that he'd emerge in the spring.  We had started to think that he was never going to come out.  Until two nights ago, when Dan heard something banging on the aquarium in the school room.

173 Days later....that's practically half a year...this emerged....

Huge, amazing-looking moth but it didn't really look like the Lunar Moth caterpillars we'd since in field guides.  We did online searching and realized that we really had a Polyphemus Moth...in the same family of large silk worm moths but still a different kind.   It only flys at night and it only lives a short time.

So basically instead of having a quick school morning and cleaning my house for our first official adoption home study visit the next day, we ended up researching moths all morning.  And we just couldn't let her go without drawing her in our nature notebooks.  And then releasing her...

We just can't pass up nature study...its a favorite here at our house.

Blessings,
Kimberly

Big News!

Meet the little guy that has us running around in a frenzy of paperwork...

If God wills it, we hope to make him a part of our family!  

He is two years old and has a little something extra...an extra 21st Chromosome...this little guy has Down Syndrome.

Sadly, in his country, there is no place for him...he was deemed unacceptable, flawed, undesirable and placed in an orphanage where he has spent most of his life.  But God doesn't view him like this...and neither do we :)  He is precious.  He means something.  We just pray that God can prepare us to be the best we can be for this little man.

We are very excited and nervous about bringing this little guy home.  We have already experienced what a roller coaster ride adoption is... but after all the events that have happened to us during our discernment process, we are trusting that this is the child that God wants to bring into our family. 

Please pray for us as we start this uphill battle for the life of this little one.  Pray that our hearts and home are made ready for him and that his little heart is made ready to accept us as his Mom and Dad.  Pray that all of our children will mesh and bond with this little man and that he will thrive as a Perry!

Blessings,

Dan and Kimberly

Much more info. to come as we get further along in the process...for right now, we thought it best to keep the country and other details private until we get a little further along in the process to bring our boy home. 

Chicks and news...

Our homestead is official!  Our chicks are here!

Don't worry...I'm sure there will be LOTS more pictures of our newest additions to the homestead.




As far as adoption, we have some really great news to share with you all but it will need to wait till I can post tomorrow.  Its big, though, so make sure you check back :)  Right now, I've gotta go check the heat level on the chicks...and take a break...


Blessings,
Kimberly

Fine Arts Show

We had a little Fine Arts Show at church today...there was ballet and tap routines, piano players, guitar players, a little recitation, a little singing and an area for displaying student artwork. 

Dan sat down with the boys a few times to work on one piece each for them to do and display at the show.  It was a wonderful opportunity for him to take to the time to work on painting skills with the boys.  It was awesome to see them working with Dad and really learning to beautifully paint!

And here are the finished products of all their hard work...

This is Gabe's...

And this one is Elijah's...

We had art displayed at the show...

And Lilly was in a little tap and ballet routine...she had such a good time!  This girl LOVES to dance...truly loves it. 

So...everyone is happy.  The boys are very proud of what they were able to accomplish with the watercolors and some undivided attention and direction from Dad and Lilly got to dance her little heart out and then bring her costume home for many more months of dress up and ballet :)

Happy Sunday,

Kimberly

Family Daybook

Our Family Daybook

Around the Homestead...

We've had frost...two nights of it.  Ugh.  Even with covering over my garden with plastic we lost a lot of tomato plants...learning some really hard lessons this first year of our homestead.  Starting a garden, tilling, planning, starting seedlings, transplanting those seedlings, staking, weeding, watering, dealing with frost....its all hard work but we're hoping it pays off and we have a fruitful garden this summer.

 Need to pick up our half of an order of chicken feed that we bought to prepare for our chicks coming.



 

Our adoption process...

Had a phone interview with the international agency we're going to use...went well.  Now we're just looking for the child that God is calling us to add to our family.  Praying that that child will be listed with our agency and we'll just "know."  Now hopefully we can start our home visits.  And our hours of online training.

Learning at home...

Off from school this week!  Mommy was just as excited as the kids...we needed to have nothing school related to do so we could deal all the rest of our life right now.  We've had our rental house to deal with, used car shopping, Easter week...

What we've been reading...

"The Small Scale Poultry Flock"...bought it from amazon.  Excellent.  Chicks arrive in 1 week!

What we've been thinking about...

Thomas Jefferson's birthday today...I didn't realize what was inscribed on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC.  It says,

"God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever."

Quite a quote to consider today on his birthday. 

You can go to http://mommylife.net/ to read more on this day of Jefferson's birthday.

I'm thankful for...

Taking one more small but helpful step towards adoption yesterday.  For Dan finding what looks to be a good, used car that we can afford for him to purchase.  For great kids and beautiful Carolinas weather!

I'm praying for...

The kids of Pleven Orphanage, Elizabether Dehority, the Archers and for Michelle to be blessed with the funds to bring her girls home. 

Whats growing and blooming around here...

Things just seem to be growing and blooming all around me...

Some bushes in the front that bloom these beautiful little flowers...who knew?
One minute its a green bush and another its full of beautiful blooms

 

 some of the plants in the garden seem to be settling in and getting bigger

Our blueberry bushes seemed to have weathered nicely over the winter and are growing...

and of course I blink and my beautiful kids are growing faster than I can keep up with...

Its sprintime....and everything and everyone is growing....

:) Kimberly

Easter

Happy Easter!

A few pictures...I didn't take pictures of all the baking- resurrection cookies, resurrection breakfast rolls, a cross cake...lots of special Easter activities but it was easier to not worry about taking pictures.  I purchased some nice Easter books for the kids' baskets and all of them got some quality art supplies and of course some pool items!   I did take some pictures after church and while the kids hunted for eggs...

Why a picture of Matthias in goggles, you ask?  Well, all the kids got goggles in their Easter baskets for the pool.  Lets just say Matthias thinks their super cool and hasn't wanted to take them off since he got them.

We made him put them away when we dressed up for church...and sure enough Dan looked over at him in the middle of Mass and he'd sneaked the goggles back on!  I can't imagine what the people around us thought of the three year old in his Easter best sporting goggles in church!  We snatched them off quickly, but who knows how long he had them back on :)

The littles egg hunting...

The big guys...hunting after the littles for the harder hidden eggs...

Still sporting the goggles :) 

The last egg to be found...hidden by me :)  Easy, but no one noticed it...

Hopefully I can make some time to be back with our "Garden of the Good Shepherd" Plans for the Easter Season.  It is an activity board with pieces that we use for the next 7 weeks to celebrate all of Easter.  We'll be planning themed snacks and crafts to go with each week.  More pictures to come of that over the next weeks.

Many blessings to you and your family as you celebrate these 50 days of the Easter Season!

Things will be a little quiet around here today and tomorrow...Last night was Holy Thursday and we were blessed to have friends invite us to a Seder (Passover Meal) at their home and then we went to a very late Holy Thursday Mass at our church.  Going to the Seder was really quite a blessing...reading God's word, talking about the significance of each item on the table, having our children ask quesions and parents explaining the symbolism of each part of the meal...it was very special.  Today our family was able to go to Living Stations at our church as well.

The rest of today and tomorrow will be quiet...and I'll be back with Easter pictures and festivities :)

Many blessings during this Easter Triduum,

Kimberly

Red Roses this Holy Week

Our rose bush is blooming...blood red roses...just in time for Holy Week.
I can't seem to look at them, and their thorns, without reflecting on my gratitude for the blood Our Lord shed for us at the end of this week.  Finding it an amazing blessing that these roses start blooming right in time for Holy Week. 

 

And just because we're a nature-loving homeschool family...I of course have to leave you with a picture of a little nature tidbit hidden down on the stems of this rosebush...the molted skins of the tent caterpillars that were dining on my roses before the boys re-located them for me...

Elijah was pretty excited to point these out to me...

 Doesn't everyone find it interesting to find molted caterpillar skins? :)

Happy Tuesday!

Blessings,

Kimberly

Brooder boxes and Ballerinas at the end of the rainbow

This past weekend Dan got materials for our two brooder boxes and started work on building them...

 

For those not raising chickens, the brooder box is what the day old chicks will go into until about  4-6 weeks of age.  Then they will move to the chicken tractors.  With our nice weather here, we might be able to move them to the tractors even earlier.  

 We also had a quick bit of rain.  We it cleared, there was a double rainbow across the sky.  My spunky little girl, in true Lilly style,  ran out into our front yard and yelled "Look!  I'm the ballerina at the end of the rainbow!!"  With all the St. Patrick's Day festivities last month going on around us, the idea of a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow was one that Lilly must have paid close attention to.  I guess she just decided that a ballerina at the end of the rainbow would be even better :) 

I wish I could have gotten a video of her....she was dancing and twirling all over the front yard...

My little ballerina at the end of the rainbow :)

vacation, anyone?

Hi all,

  My friend Michelle is still working hard to adopt Alyssa and Piper and bring them home.  They are in need of funds to finish their adoption. 

Isn't this beautiful?

This is a little resort in Gatlinburg, TN.

Would you like to be entered for a chance to take a little vacation here from April 15-20th?

If so, please go on over to Michelle's blog and donate $10 or more to their chip-in button.
You will then be entered into the raffle for a shot at winning this little vacation to TN. from April 15-20th.

More details on Michelle's blog:

http://findingrdaughter.blogspot.com/2012/03/mountain-resort-giveaway.html

This opportunity to enter only lasts a couple more days so enter today!!



Blessings,
Kimberly