Children, Children Everywhere!!!!

It's our first summer having 4 kids. This is some of what that entails:

• We got our foster daughter "P" (4 years old) at Spring Break and then her brother "J" (8 years old) came May 1. "P" went to the beach with us for her first time in April. We went with some of our best friends, The Burns, to Edisto. She loved it! That trip was such a sweet time of relaxing with friends! We all went again ("J"'s first time!) the middle of June to Fripp. Jeremy and I loved watching both of them experience the beach for the first time. "J" did not want to come back to Greenville.

• It's also our first summer joining a pool. My super smart amazing husband told me that we needed to and what a fun place it has been! We can go and easily stay 4 hours.

• All four kids did VBS at Taylors First Baptist and loved that. I loved the 3 free hours each morning :)

• "J" and Harper did swim lessons at the Y for 2 weeks, 4 days a week. They greatly benefited from that.

• Calahan is doing a golf tournament every Monday morning.
  

• Jeremy and Calahan start football July 11th. It's a big commitment, 3 nights a week.
  

• Jeremy and I are going on our 3rd mission trip together. This year we are heading to Eleuthera , Bahamas. Our church supports a precious family, The Fastzkie's, there and I look forward to seeing and being part of their mission first hand! (If you want to pray or financially support us that would be great! Email me and I will give you the prayer list.)
  

• 4 moms and 11 kids from our summer playgroup went to visit The Espinosa family in Allendale, SC for a couple of days. They have been part of playgroup for the last 4 summers but have recently moved to Allendale. It was an adventure! We were able to be part of their ministry at the Boys & Girls Club. I loved seeing how the Lord is using them to bless and encourage others in a different part of the state.

• We kept 2 of our nieces for 3 nights recently. 6 kids was CRAZY! I feel like I didn't even get to enjoy them because we were just managing 6 kids between the ages of 9 and 2.
  

• Jeremy taught adult service at Grace last weekend. He taught 4 services. He taught from Proverbs 3 on Parenting. He did a great job with the text. The Lord has blessed us with numerous resources to aid our parenting journey and Jeremy was able to share some of that. You can hear it here: http://www.gracechurchsc.org/resources/grace-teaching

• Hanging out with our GREAT community group for fun events! It has been fun building relationships with them.
  

So that's some of life these days. Busy. Not boring in the least!

Foster Family"ing"

In October our family began fostering. Our first foster children were a sister/ brother duo, "M & M". We had them in our family for 5.5 months. It was the hardest thing I have ever done. Our biological children did fabulous. Harper's new little sister was a year younger and loved the same things Harper did. They played together so well. Our new "little buddy" was 4 and had a speech disorder called apraxia. He was precious. He won our hearts immediately.
We enjoyed several holidays together!
I struggled to connect with our foster daughter. She was hard, my heart got hard. Ugh.
I miss them a lot! Praying for them to heal and have a healthy, safe family to raise them.
Tomorrow we will receive our second foster daughter "P". We are very excited. It is going to be a totally different experience just having one new child. She will bring her own issues that will be totally different than the first go round. Our family will be stretched and challenged and hopefully grown in the Lord all over again.