I've always wanted to say that. It sounded just like Leroy Thompson too! If you've ever heard him preach that message you know what I'm talking about (you can only understand about every 5th or 6th word of anything he says, try and google it if you can.) No we didn't pull any lever(again, you've got to hear the sermon to understand)... Mary Jane had this cool idea for Easter that we didn't get to do because there were too many other kids around and we didn't want to exclude anyone. It's just like an easter egg hunt except there are no eggs. It's our ghetto version of an easter egg hunt... we took brazilian coins (centovos) and hid them outside where we take the kids to play everyday. There were over 60 coins but it didn't even equal $2.00 American, so this was a very cost effective activity. My mother-in-law and Mary Jane went outside and hid these coins all over the place. We then took all the kids out and explained what we were going to do. They were so excited. We lined them up and then said, "go!" They all took off like a crazy mob of shoppers at Christmas when the doors open at one of those early bird sales! There was no way that you wanted to be in front of them. Gabriel was the first to find one. He was so happy and was jumping up and down saying something in his little sqeaky voice in Portuguese. When are these kids going to speak English, anyway?... Back to the story... rather than all traveling in a pack they decided to split up and go different directions (this was wisdom in action) and they all started to find coins. This lasted for about 40minutes. It was so quiet and peaceful with just the occational shouts of joy when someone found one. They were so persistant in their search. Even though what they were searching for didn't really add up to alot... they were excited about looking and finding these coins. My wife is a genius. To be honest with you I thought this was a horrible idea when she told me. I even told my father-in-law, when we were going down stairs for the event, that I wanted to go on record as saying this was a bad idea. I really thought that the older ones were going to find way more than the younger and that there were going to be fistfights, crying and a lot of spitting going on because someone was going to feel cheated and throw a temper tantrum. It didn't happen. Not even close. They were actually excited for each other when the others found one. I think we as adults could learn a lesson from this. How many times have we seen someone else get blessed and rather than rejoicing with them, we felt cheated and threw a adult sized temper tantrum and said, why didn't I get that? You know what I mean, don't you? It's easy to fall into that junk. Anyway, after the big ghetto easter egg hunt (without the easter eggs) we gave each kid a big bag of candy and toys that was filled just for them. You know, easter toy stuff... the kind of toys that you purchase at dollar tree and if they last more than 45minutes it's a miracle...? They all sat there and stuffed their faces with candy for litterally an hour. My mother-in-law asked me if we should tell them to slow down and eat some later. I told her to let them eat it until they puked because they weren't bothering me right now (this was the first break I had all day!). Well, they ate pretty much all of it and nobody puked. Then we played soccer for a couple more hours and the day was finished. Another day closer to coming home. Praise God!
We have a big day on Thursday. We have to take all the kids to court to see the D.A. for the finalization of the adoption and then we go and get their shots. After that we go to get their passport photos. It's getting close to the end...wow!
Thanks again for following our journey through this blog. I hope that it encourages someone out there to keep on doing what God has called you to do, no matter how difficult it seems. And don't forget to laugh along the way... because it sure beats crying. Well it's time for bed so that's all for now. I think I'm going to wake up in the morning and tell the kids I hid money while they were sleeping... maybe that will buy me a few minutes of free time and they'll leave me alone???
Love Ya,
Jim
No comments:
Post a Comment