Summer Break

School's out! The Summer schedule begins. We sleep in, wear jammies until.....well all day unless we have to go out. The kids play together. It's all so much easier. Avon Walk training is over. All we need is for the weather to cooperate and we will be outside as much as possible. The pond is a lighter shade of green, the grass--darker. Cucumbers, pumpkins, peppers, tomatoes, asparagus, strawberries and sunflowers are growing right before our eyes. Hot lunches and quick suppers are the norm. Ahhhhhhhh SUMMER!

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We had a busy start, though. My Avon Walk last Saturday and Sunday went great. We had a few surprises and a few aches and pains, but were all extremely blessed by the whole event. The thing that struck me most, was their presentation of "Every 3 Minutes". This explained that in the US, someone is diagnosed with Breast Cancer, every 3 minutes. It happens randomly as well as inherited. So throughout the weekend, Avon Staff handed out a Pink ribbon every 3 minutes to a walker on the event. That visual impact was hard. It could be me or you, it needs to stop.



Ok, deep breath....moving on. Austin had a hernia repair surgery on Monday. That went well. He is such a trooper. He is not in need of pain meds and I have to keep reminding him to take it easy. Shannon headed out from Sunday-Wednesday with Grandparents to McBain to hang out with cousins. She was thrilled to go and thrilled to be back. I missed her like crazy which is not strange for me, I missed my kids every day between 8 and 3 throughout the school year. Dwayne's the school board president for a year. Apparently he disagreed with me that he was overextended already. He is Superman and makes my head spin with everything he does. He will do very well, but it sort of makes me want to do even less to even things out more.




The kids have already met their summer reading goals. I am so proud. They still want to read and Austin was even happy to do some math worksheets today. It's actually fun when it's not required!

Can you tell that I LOVE SUMMER? I am terrible at schedule keeping, in fact I already forgot about the first summer T.R.I.P. order pickup.

The downside of the Summer Slowdown is that I have more time to realize that we are still waiting to be matched with our daughter. Just venting here......but this shouldn't be so hard. Let's see: There are tons of kids who need a home, there are tons of homes who need a kid. Sounds like basic math to me. Unless you add in 2 governments who require ridiculous reams of redundancy in order to make this happen. Of course, about 1/16th of it is necessary, but seriously do they need to know my underwear size? I know it will be worth it in the end, but it's difficult when you cannot possibly predict the end. All I can do is leave it in God's hands. His timing. That really does help, but so does blowing off a little steam about it all. This goes for all the adoption processes I have experienced up to now, you go in with eyes wide open, standing upright and hopeful, then BAM! you get smacked back with a "not so fast". So it's been a year since we were convicted to add to our family. Only 10 months of actually waiting. It feels like too long.

Here's my joy today. 1--All the Avon walkers got FREE Kenny Chesney tickets for Saturday! WooHoo! and 2--I am off to snuggle with my kids to watch the Tale of Desperaux. Perfect activity for this rainy cold June day.