God uses a Little Foot

Wow it's been a while since I posted.  We've done Christmas, New Years, Zoe's 1 year home, two shows and my birthday.  Dang.  I may have to go back and revisit some of those eventually.

I am back because I was reminded this weekend of the power God has to use simple things for His glory. 

We have a beautiful young woman at church that I have spoken with a few times.  I will call her Sheryl here.  I don't know Sheryl well at all.  She is a native of Zoe's country who has been living here for some time.

Thursday night I was at a conference at church, and Sheryl came up to me.  She said she had been meaning to tell me something for quite a while.  She reminded me that when Zoe was newly home, I would go to the front of the church with her during worship and sit on the floor and let her enjoy the music up close.  Sheryl usually sat a few rows back, and apparently she was watching me sit and love on my new daughter - the one with 10 fingers and 7 1/2 toes. 

You see Sheryl's parents used to tell her that when she was born they asked the doctor to count her fingers and toes.  They told her that if there had been more or less than 10 of each they wouldn't have taken her home.  Luckily she had all her fingers and toes, and all was well.  But Sheryl has been living with a sense of needing to be good enough to be loved.  Our amazing God used my love for our precious Zoe - and even her little foot - to show Sheryl that He loves her exactly as he made her.

I cried when she told me her story, and gave her a big hug.  But the healing of her heart had already been accomplished by God.

Sheryl's story reminded me that the simple things we do can be used to speak God's love to people's hearts.  And that being obedient to Him in pursuing wonderful, silly, amazing Zoe across the continents was worth it in ways we may never know.

A Christmas Carol

My three boys are part of the Spotlight Theater Production of A Christmas Carol December 7-9.

I'm working with costumes.  It's going to be so good! Check out the trailer:

Christmas Carol Trailer from Spotlight Videos on Vimeo.

I'm so proud of these kids!

If you want to come see the show, you can buy tickets here.

Please remember to credit a cast member when you buy tickets!

And for more fun, Drama Queen is directing her very first production - a One Act Play as part of a four play production.







To see Drama Queen's play, call Chicago Academy for the Arts (312.421.0202) and reserve a ticket for this Friday or Saturday at 7:00.

Schooling

I thought it might be good to give you a little glimpse into our world.  This is what school looks like around our house:

Lots of reading (and listening to) books.

Zoe likes to do whatever the brothers are doing.

Computer work:

A bit of dancing :')

And frequent breaks to do, well, whatever:

Happy Halloween!

We have a good time around here celebrating a fun and relatively un-scary Halloween.  The week started off with carving pumpkins with Daddy.

Zoe had the chance to go to a costume party on Tuesday, so she threw on a backpack and went as Dora, joined by two of her brothers:

She caught on very quickly to the Say Trick or Treat Get Candy connection.

For the actual Halloween she went as a bumblebee.  Turns out she thinks all the costumes are really scary, so she actually only trick or treated at one house.

The rest of the kids had a blast.  Friend were here and they stormed the neighborhood for candy.

 Drama Queen wore her brother's Ghillie Suit to school for the day.  I'm sure she turned some heads on the Metra.

Hope you all had a wonderful, Happy Halloween!

Fall Pictures

I realized I haven't been posting much lately, so decided to do a picture post of a few of the things we've been up to.

No. 1 Son is part of a group of boys who like to stage a mock Hunger Games battle every now and then.  They have an awesome time fighting each other to the "death."  The weapons are either foam swords purchased at the Renaissance Faire or homemade foam sword, axes, bows and arrows and, of course, whips.

We took a trip to the Pumpkin Farm earlier this week.

They have a corn pit - best idea ever!  Since we went on a kind of rainy school day, we had the pit mostly to ourselves.

And finally, today is an absolutely beautiful day.  70 degrees in October.  But the cold is coming, and so Z-Man and Zoe took a trampoline break:

Bright Abyss

No. 1 Son plays bass in a band called Bright Abyss.  They recently play a festival at a nearby park, and had a great time!  The crowd of friends that came out to see them was just amazing - what a wonderful community we are part of!

Click HERE to see videos of their performance.