Summer Camp for Chinese Orphans

Bring me Hope

It's that time again!  Summer camp is in full swing, and Bring Me Hope is doing their thing in China.  If you've known me very long, you know that it is no secret that I want to take my entire family and join this organization in China to help with a summer camp.  They are short of the funding needed for 19 more orphans to attend camp.  You can help by clicking the link above and making a donation.

June in review

June launched us into a hot, hot summer.  No rain and record breaking heat in our area has driven us poolside lots. I have fallen short of the Joy Dare, but it has continued.
 Our month looked like this:

We started with Julia's birthday:

This happened to be a rather cool day, so you can see there is a bit of shivering in that water.

249. Julia, our funny, spunky, fashionista - 8 years old - our pearl of great worth

Zach's first paycheck.  He still loves his job.  I love that his schedule is set, but he picks up shifts every week.  That bank account...yep, lots of coaching.  You do have to write down your transactions.

Savannah's elementary art club reunion.  Savannah has spent hours this month sketching people.  She is really trying to master the complexity of portraits.

Julia's class celebrated the end of the year with a family pool party. 

Hoping for a new annual tradition...an amusement park adventure.  This year wasn't the best, and if I could find a way to budget a second trip, I would.  We did, however, have a nice enough day enjoying the amusement park with extended family.  

Gotcha Days X 2!

250. 7 years with Julia!

251. 4 years with Wyatt!

Andy and Zach went to the beach with our church for Bible and Beach.  They had a great time despite starting the week in the company of tropical storm Debby.  Andy said it was challenging but awesome, and he would definitely do it again.  They drove all night to get there (well they rode a bus with a driver) and pulled another all-nighter to get home.  They arrived on Friday morning with some foul laundry, nice tans, and bloodshot eyes.  Andy went right to bed.  Zach went right to work after buying Wyatt a Big Mac.  Zach's luggage is still in my foyer...lovely.

These are the boys who meet weekly in our home during the school year.

Our church does not offer VBS, so I took Wyatt and Julia to another church for their program.  They had a fabulous time and raised money by collecting change for missionaries.  The girls collected 173 pounds of change while the boys collected 220 pounds.  A pie in the face for the female leader was the result.  Julia actually wanted the boys to win, and and I wonder if some of the girls found a way to leave their change in the boys' bucket.

The big boys were gone, and the little people were at VBS, so Savannah and I shopped, enjoyed frozen yogurt and attended a jewelry party to help fund the adoption of a sweet family.

Savannah also played with hair chalk.

I normally don't buy jewelry, not because I don't love it, but because our budget is so tight.  I can justify it when it helps someone out.  These ladies gathered for a Premier party to help fund an adoption.  

I am posting the link for another family using jewelry to raise money for their adoption.  This jewelry is handmade and reasonably priced.  The child is from Wyatt's orphanage, and a glitch in their process has resulted in $5000 in extra fees.  I remember a glitch in Wyatt's process costing us $500 extra, and that was very frustrating. I would completely panic over $5000.

Help the Wiehl family adopt

254. "God, You gave us a spirit of adoption" stated during a prayer in church 

Wyatt's first Big Mac, courtesy of Zach who bought this as payment because Wyatt took care of Zach's gecko while Zach was at the beach.  Wyatt looked forward to it all week.  He inhaled it and then asked me to make him a burger.  Yes, we do feed that skinny, little boy contrary to what he might have you think.  Oh to have his genes...typed wistfully.

I started Kelly Minter's Nehemiah study.  I am doing it online with Beth Moore and totally loving it.  What a great fit for the summer!  The perfectionist in me had to download the videos because there is a video guide in the book.  I have to say that I am soooo glad I did.  Kelly's videos are a bit different than a typical study.  She concludes them by interviewing people with changed lives, and they are a great blessing.

and I will finish this post with more of the Joy Dare from June

256.  high school uniforms for Savannah provided by a friend

257.  good news at work for Andy

260.  Butterfly Flower returned temporarily to Bath and Body Works...totally stocked up

273.  Andy's car has been running for 10+ years, hoping for several more

281.  a nice reminder... 'and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like noonday.  The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and he will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden like a spring whose waters never fail.' Isaiah 58:10-11

288.  a gift found in words "Home -Where your story begins."  part of a sermon illustration

300. celebrated Dad's 69th birthday...love that his favorite cake is chocolate with chocolate icing...mine too

305. found myself a strength and fitness class that I am loving...will so miss it when school starts again

Gotcha Days Celebrated a Little Differently This Year

When we went to China for both trips, we collected gifts for gotcha days to come.  In giving those gifts to the kids, we have found that what we thought would be treasured keepsakes from the country of their birth  have been shoved under beds, lost, etc.  Therefore, we decided on a different approach this year.  We bought the kids analog watches and balloon bouquets.  I think that to master telling time, you must do it often, so Zach and Savannah both had analog watches while studying how to tell time in school.  In fact, I remember a year when every birthday gift I bought for Savannah's friends were watches.

 Both Wyatt and Julia have asked for balloons for their birthdays, and we have never gotten them.  It was a tradition when Zach and Savannah were little to have balloon bouquets.  Therefore, I splurged on balloons.  Our intention was to throw in a dessert and call it a day.  However, they will actually have a party of sorts.  Our class at church is having a family game night tonight.  We are going to feast on fried chicken and homemade side dishes and desserts then try to beat the other families in 'Minute to Win It' games.

We did not go traditional this year, but I think we were successful.  Yes, you can see our celebration was late this year.

Gotcha - June 9, 2008  Wyatt actually enjoyed Chinese food on his Gotcha Day.  Julia was enjoying a birthday dinner with her Aunt Tiffany at the same time.  I think Zach was a bit disappointed that we didn't treat the family to a Chinese meal as has been our Gotcha Day tradition.

Gotcha - June 7, 2005

Jula is a righty, and Wyatt is a lefty.  I had to explain to Julia that watches are worn on the opposite hand of the one you use for writing.

Maybe using an analog watch to tell time is a lost art with digital clocks everywhere.  I just know that the high schoolers with whom I work frequently indicate that they cannot tell time on an analog clock.  Our school system still uses them throughout the schools, so I don't think it hurts to learn.

Taking a Vote

Help a mom out. Julia is due for her yearly pictures, and we are arguing over clothes. I am posting pictures of her in the options. Vote for the one you like best. Keep in mind that it is all about the hat. She wants to wear that hat, and it is so her.

Option A

Option B

Option C

Not to sway the vote, but I really like C. She knows that which is probably why she doesn't like it.  Help me out.  Leave a comment.

July 12, 2012 Update.  We chose Option A which was Julia's first choice.  When we reviewed her album, we found that she has almost exclusively been photographed in blue and white.  Therefore, I caved and let pink be the focal color this year.  The pictures are terrific, but I cannot post them here due to copyright.

p.m. update - Success!

We have the fire pit.  Andy likes it and is working on putting some rust proof spray on it and setting it up on a fireproof mat on the deck.  We may be enjoying s'mores tonight.

The mechanics found nothing wrong with the car.

We are sitting around Andy's new fire pit enjoying s'mores when Wyatt turns to Andy and says: "Yo, what's up? Are you chillin' with some hot babes?"

Savannah and are are just as bad, we responded with "yes, he is."

We are now accepting donations to send him to Christian school.

Does summer get any better?

Father's Day Weekend

We have not fully celebrated Father's Day yet, but we did some celebrating over the weekend.  Most of my brothers and sisters and I gathered at a buffet that my dad likes for lunch on Saturday and treated him to lunch.  We could not convince him to let us leave the tip, so he practically paid for his own lunch just by doing that.  That's Dad.  If not for him our family would not be going on a vacation this year.  Our budget no longer allows for such extravagance.  With a new baby, Jonathan is in the same boat, so Dad is renting a beach house for the entire family.   We still don't have a gift because four of us are going in on something together and have not yet decided what.  

We have also failed to do anything for Andy yet.  My intention was to get him a fire pit which is the only thing he has mentioned that he wants.  Unfortunately, Saturday ended in a bit of a bust.  The car wouldn't start and had to be towed.  This ten-year-old machine has been pretty low maintenance all these years, so we are hoping this fix is minor, but the jury is still out on that.  Zach worked until 9:30 that night, so I intended to take him to pick up some swim trunks and to buy the fire pit so that Zach could carry it.  However, 9:30 rolled around, and I was fighting hard to keep my eyes open.  Andy took him for the trunks, and we have yet to get the fire pit.  I have no vehicle today because Andy needed to go to a different location for part of his work day, so he had to take the van rather than let me drop him off.

Both my dad and Andy have birthdays in the next few weeks, so we looked into combined gifts for both.  The fire pit was going to be Andy's combination gift, but I think I am going to go really cheap on that and get him some clothes for his birthday.  Andy has lost about 30 pounds since the year started.  He has simply been eating right and running daily.  His clothes are not quite falling off of him yet, but they definitely look pretty saggy.  He is not likely to buy clothes for himself.

A friend of ours mentioned at church on Sunday, that Mother's Day better not be overlooked, but men better not dare to complain if Father's Day is overlooked.  Well, we had no complaints about our sad failures this year.  Good for the dads in our family!  This family is used to doing things late. Wyatt and Julia are still awaiting Gotcha Day gifts, and we are nine days late on the most recent gotcha day right now.

So what did we do for Father's Day?  We drug Andy to an amusement park.  We wanted to do this park in June this year which is one of the lighter months for crowds. Father's Day is a light day according to the park's website, and we were trying to coordinate family and friends going as well.  We gathered enough people to get the group rate, but never saw our friends for the entire day.  

Don't get me wrong when I say that we drug Andy there.  He doesn't hate amusement parks, but Andy won't even visit his family on the weekends because they are three hours away, and he really wants Sundays to be easy as he prepares for the work week.  This park has a great water park, and instead of enjoying the water, Andy ran around riding coasters with Savannah until he was so beat up by them that he had to stop.  We were supposed to switch out so that he could enjoy the water park, but everyone was finished with it in short order because the breeze made it pretty cool to run around soaking wet.  So yesterday was definitely not about Andy - proof of what a great dad he is.

For the trip, Julia made herself a bed in the van.

Zach drove both ways, and Andy sat in the passenger seat to coach him.  No napping for Andy.  Zach and I struggle to get along and have realized that I cannot coach him in this area.  Therefore, Zach no longer drives with me and is sadly low on his required hours as a result.  He really needs his license by October.  Andy travels again then, and I no longer have the flexibility to change my hours at work to get everyone to school.  The only family who can help us no longer has a child at Julia's campus, so I need Zach to take on that role.

This ride was closed most of the day. It closes before the park and only opened about an hour before it closed again.  We texted the kids, and they literally ran across the park to make it onto this ride a few times before closing.  

My fear of heights kept me off this one.  I will only go so far.

Andy has a great free throw, so he won a basketball.  I was trying to capture Julia doing tricks with the ball.

Miss Independent was determined to ride something by herself.  Julia's first attempt at this was on an 8 seater rapids ride.  I wouldn't let her do it.  Really, what's the fun in that?  That is the ride that you want to ride with others so you can laugh at them if they get soaked and you don't.  She loved this 65' high swing.  After riding a few times with various family members, she rode by herself.

We didn't argue when she wanted to ride the Revolution by herself.  What adult over 30 can even ride that thing?  Joshua rode it, but he is not quite 30 yet. He rode before Julia and wouldn't get on again when she asked. Julia was with the adults when she rode it.  She got off of it and ran around to the entrance to ride again and was disappointed when we cut her off after the second run so that we could ride one more coaster before closing.

We almost forgot that we promised Julia ice cream after the last coaster ride, and Andy had to run with her to the shop to get some before closing.

Julia always makes me think of my mom when we are at amusement parks.  She just laughs so much on every ride, and Mom used to laugh on the coasters.  It set Mom's best friend at ease to ride coasters with her.  I can't imagine anyone being more fun in an amusement park than Julia.

You may be wondering where Wyatt was in all of this.  When we visited the park last year, there were only about three things that Wyatt enjoyed.  Andy and I tried to talk him into going with us, but he really was adamant that he did not want to do so.  Wyatt is terrified of height and and hates spinning which rules out just about everything, so he stayed with Dad while we were gone and had a great time. They ate Chinese, and Dad called me last night to find out where Wyatt was from in China.  He said that every time he takes Wyatt out for any kind of Asian food, the staff just makes over Wyatt and asks questions that Dad can't answer. We usually do take-out, so we don't get that experience much.

We had some glitches but had a great day overall, and the group rate for this park is definitely the way to go.  We will try to give Andy a good Father's Day this week.

All grown up---almost

Almost exactly one month after his hire date, Zach got his first paycheck today.  He grossed $169.62, and his net pay was $133.75 for 23.4 hours of work.   I just had to put that down for posterity in the family scrapbook.  I will not make it a regular habit to announce Zach's pay. The first check is just special. Zach did have $20 pulled from his check to cover his uniform, so his taxes were not so deep. We drove straight to the bank where he opened his first checking account complete with an ATM card that will be in his possession within two weeks.  I have a feeling that there is lots of coaching to come on managing a checking account.  While waiting in the bank, we discussed long-term savings and tithing as I hope to start him on the right path from the beginning.  

The best news of the day is that the owner was in the store when Zach picked up his check. He told Zach that he is hearing lots of good things about him and that he will increase Zach's hours on the next schedule in anticipation of Zach's upcoming Bible and Beach trip. I am so proud of Zach.  He worked hard to get this job as he had to memorize the menu to be hired.  Zach loves his job.  Sweet!

In other Zach news, I returned from running all day to find that Julia was wearing her new pearl earrings. I praised her for changing them by herself when she revealed that Zach did it for her.  He is crazy about her.  Believe me when I say that if it he had done this for anyone else, it would be EPIC!  For the record, Zach has no piercings, and I do not anticipate that he will go that route.