Another new blog!

The new blog replaces the other new blog I just started. LOL So if you want to go to my "OLD NEW" blog to find out why I started a "NEW NEW" blog, you can read my post at:

CoffeeBean's Corner

and then put my (final? it better be!) new blog in your Bloglines or whatever you use:

Eileen's Blog (I decided not to spend the time thinking of a catchy title, what can I say).

Hope to see you there! Please leave me a comment if you visit!

My new home!

I started my new blog. Come visit me at CoffeeBean's Corner!

It's going to take me awhile to get things just the way I want them but I hope you will come and say hi. Please comment here or there and let me know if you stopped by!

Happy Birthday Ben!

My oldest child is now an ADULT! Yes Ben turns 18 today! I.can't.believe.it.

We had a combined birthday and graduation party for him last Saturday.







We had a wonderful time and Ben raked in the cash. :-)




See the flowers on the cake on the graduation side?



Here's what happens when you eat one:





Nice, huh? :-)

I homeschooled Ben for 11 years - from 2nd grade through high school. Now that he is graduated, he is taking a year off to work full time, save some money, and get his private pilot's license. Not sure where he's going to go from there - possibly go to the community college next year and go into finance. He has wanted to be a pilot since we went to China for Lindsey (4 years ago!). That is still his goal, but whether as a commercial pilot, private, or just flying for fun while pursuing another career, he is undecided at this point. He has certainly done, and continues to do, his homework regarding the aviation field. He had been accepted into an aviation program at a local technical college, but decided the loans would just be too large and he's going to try to pay for college as he goes as much as he can. We are helping him out the best we can but we're not made of money - wish we were! He has been great about saving money and watching his spending. I'm very proud of him. Now if I can just get him out of bed!!!!! :-)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BEN!!!!! I love you very much!

P.S. Have you ever played Blongo Ball? One of my sisters brought it to Ben's party, and my sister Ginny and I got totally hooked on it! I'm not very, ahem, coordinated and athletic, so I wasn't sure if I could even hit the target or even come close, but I did fine! It's so fun!

Changes brewing...

I have 4 blogs right now - this one, one for what I'm reading, one for knitting, and one for sewing. I can't keep up with any of them. LOL I'm sorry I haven't been posting here or commenting in other blogs much lately. Life has just been busy and as usual I am so behind on everything. I am still reading your blogs though!

Anyway....

In September I will start homeschooling Lindsey (Kindergarten), and I've been thinking about doing a blog with more of a homeschool focus - what we're learning, accomplishments, struggles, and misc. ramblings. But I still want to write about reading, knitting, and occasionally sewing so I've decided to combine everything into one blog. I've decided to start this blog at Homeschool Blogger. I haven't decided on a name yet so I don't have a specific URL to share with you. I would LOVE suggestions on what to call this new blog! I am so uncreative. I don't want the word homeschool in the title since the blog will be about more than that. The same goes for any one subject such as reading, knitting, etc.

I'm thinking I may lose some readers when I go to this new blog but I may gain some too. I would love to have you follow me there, but I understand if you're not interested.

I hope to have my new blog started in the next few weeks and when I get a URL I will let you know! Thanks to the faithful readers/commenters of my many blogs.

We interrupt this post to bring you this opinion: I think it's ridiculous that some people say they're no longer going to be Packer fans after all that happened with the Brett Favre saga. I think both sides made mistakes (although I blame Favre more, much more) but are you a PACKER fan or just a Favre fan? Don't let the door hit you..... GO PACKERS!!!!!!!!!!!!! Okay, had to get that off my chest. Back to your regularly scheduled post....

I will leave you with some misc. pictures from this summer. I will explain the first pic first. :-) This is my solution to letting Allison use scissors without cutting her hair. Like it? :-) I told her if she took the hat off she couldn't cut. She was pretty good about leaving it on. Notice her tongue sticking out. Every time she started to cut, out came the tongue.



And the rest....

Lifest - Saturday

My sister and I had a great time at Lifest on Saturday. As several people told me, Casting Crowns was awesome! I have to admit a few years ago they were at Lifest and we only listened to a few songs and moved on to a different concert. I'm not sure why we were not that taken with them at the time. So I didn't know what to expect this time. Right from the start I knew it was going to be awesome! They really spoke to me about several things. I never really listened to the words of East to West but they fit me perfectly with what I've been going through lately. I was so blessed. I downloaded the song to my iPod. They were the last concert of the night (for us anyway) and I was sooooo tired afterward! This 43 year old mom of little ones is NOT used to staying up past midnight 2 nights in a row! LOL I was tired all day Sunday.

We were also pleasantly surprised by how much we liked Chris Sligh! He was awesome. We also saw just a bit of Rebecca St. James (the sound was bad or something, we left to go see Chris). We saw most of a concert by Danen Kane. We also listened to 3 or 4 songs by a band name Ruth. The band wasn't there though for some reason, just the lead singer and his guitar. Never heard of them before, it was pretty good.

I think that's it. Chris Sligh was our "Crabb Family" of this year's Lifest. Several years ago on the last day of Lifest, it was SO hot and we were SO tired and we were tired of walking from one concert to another. So we just decided to park our butts where we were at the time. We had good seats, we had everything we needed, we decided to listen to whatever singer/band was up next at that stage. It was The Crabb Family. We had never heard of them before and didn't know what to expect. WE LOVED THEM! It was awesome! It was such a nice surprise.

So anyway, there's the rest of my Lifest recap for 2008. I didn't take any pictures on Saturday so all you get is me talking. Sorry!

I can't wait for next year's Lifest!

Steven Curtis Chapman (and more)

WOW. Friday night was incredible. It was emotional. It was both uplifting and somber. We were at Steven Curtis Chapman's first concert since the tragic death of his daughter Maria. I feel so honored to have been there. When he came out and I saw him, I just started crying. I cried through about 3/4 of the concert.

My pictures aren't very good - it was dark and I was taking pictures of a screen, and my camera is crap, but here are a few:






We also saw Mandisa. She was really good. Even Jay really liked her. I missed half her concert though taking Lindsey to the bathroom. :-)



Then we saw a bit of Denver and the Mile High Orchestra which was great as usual but we didn't stay very long. I really needed to go to the van and freshen up and change into jeans and get all our warmer clothes for later. It was so humid yesterday, and my hair was just a fright. I have stick straight hair with no curl or body to it whatsoever, so add a little humidity and it's horrible. I just felt blech. :-(


Just a few random shots while in between concerts:





I also got to finally meet my friend Shelly Waala. We have been trying to meet up at Lifest for the last several years but something always happened to prevent it. Her little Mia is so cute and so tiny. She played a bit with Lindsey and Shelly's older daughter. It was so cute.

More on yesterday's Lifest experience in another post....(you guys were right - Casting Crowns was AWESOME!)

Are you happy now?

Okay, okay, lest you think I totally deprive my kids, I put water in the pool! :-)

-After sweating and struggling with the hose to fill the pool, and running in and out getting things together to go out, after about 10-15 minutes in the pool Lindsey got a little scrape, nothing major AT ALL, but she was whining and crying about it and would.not.stop. I told her either stop fussing or get out of the pool. She chose to get out. (grrr) Allison spent another 5-10 minutes then she got out. ALL THAT WORK for less than 1/2 hour of swimming! Sigh.

-FYI, Allison has an appointment for a haircut next week Tuesday so no comments about her hair in her eyes, okay? LOL

Lifest and Misc. Ramblings

It's that time again – Lifest! It's a Christian music festival held every year at this time. This year is their 10th anniversary. I think I've gone the past 5 or 6 years with the exception of last year. I had only planned to go only one day, Saturday. It turned out to be the day after my mom's funeral and although 2 of my sisters went that day, and it might have been healing in some ways to go, Jay had done double and triple duty with the girls in the weeks before that since I was so busy with my mom, I didn't want to leave him with the girls all day again. I was also pretty well exhausted at that point. So I gave my ticket away. This year I bought a full event ticket as I usually do and Jay bought a one day ticket as he usually does. I went with just my sister last night, we're skipping today, we will all go on Friday, and just my sister and I will go again all day Saturday.

Highlights from last night:

*We parked our car and then I couldn't find my ticket. I knew I had brought it along because I remember looking at it in the car shortly after we left home. I had stuck it in the book I brought along to read but it wasn't there when I went to get it. I paged through the book at least 5 or 6 times, my sister paged through the book several times, we tore apart the car looking for it before finally finding it.....in my book! HOW did we both miss it so many times?

*We saw Natalie Grant (excellent!) and about ½ hour of the Newsboys. We left in the middle of their concert because a) we've both seen them before; b) we were both tired; and c) we were getting cold.

Friday night we will see Steven Curtis Chapman. It will be his first concert back since his daughter died. I can imagine how emotional it is going to be. We couldn't find a babysitter for the girls so we are taking them. It's going to be a long day!

We also plan to see Mandisa (formerly on American Idol) and Denver and the Mile High Orchestra (seen them a million times already but they're still fun to watch).

Saturday: Most years we are conflicted at least a few times about which concert to attend when there are several going on at the same time that we want to see. This year there are really only 2 people I wanted to see for sure during the whole festival - Natalie Grant (check) and SCC. But Casting Crowns is playing Saturday night so we will see them, and also Chris Sligh (another Idol contestant). Otherwise we will probably just walk around and decide on the fly who to watch. It's going to be fun no matter what!

In other news:

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of my mom's death. It's so hard to believe I haven't seen or talked to her for a year. It still feels so wrong sometimes to be going on with my life, doing normal things, when she's gone.

Lindsey got stung by a bee on her finger on Tuesday after her t-ball class. She screamed at the top of her lungs for about 5 minutes. I mean she SCREAMED! She held ice on it for about an hour and then she was fine. No bad reaction so now we know she's not allergic to bee stings anyway.

She asked me this morning if I love her and Allison "to the moon and back ninety hundred and five times". I said yes. :-)

She's in the middle of the second session of swimming lessons. It's the first time she's taken them. She took Level 1 in the first session, didn't pass and is back for another round of Level 1. We're not going to the last session. I want August to be a little more laid back with not so much running. She just finished a 4 week t-ball skills class. She's going to 2 days of Safety Town in August at the same place I went to Safety Town when I was her age. Oh she's also taking swimming lessons at the same pool I took them at as a kid. Then I took Ben to lessons at that same pool, and now here we are again. Sort of a surreal feeling. The last thing she's signed up for this summer is a one hour "Kids in the Kitchen" class. She's doing that with her 2 cousins Andrew and Thomas. They were all adopted within a few months of each other back in 2004. Lindsey from China, Andrew from Russia, and Thomas from Guatemala.



Allison has elevated whining to a new level. Heavy sigh. She can say almost 50 words now. She's still about a year behind in her speech but making really good progress.

Her taking off her diaper is going to send me to the looney bin. We've had over a month of this with no end in sight. We have to duct tape her diaper on at naps and bedtime otherwise she takes it off and pees on her bed or the floor. Yesterday she discovered a new trick - taking her diaper off from under her shorts, then wetting her shorts. Just lovely. Both my girls are quite challenging in their own ways, but that's another post for another day.

Ben will be 18 next month. EIGHTEEN! I can't believe soon he's going to be a legal adult and can vote for president in November.

That's it for now. It took me over an hour to write this post and now it's almost time to leave for swimming lessons and I've gotten nothing done except feed the girls breakfast and get them dressed. Slacker! Have a great day!

Who Needs Water?

My neighbor very generously gave me her old swimming pool since it's now too small for her 3 girls (all adopted from China!) She brought it over the other day but we haven't had a chance to swim in it yet. So it was just sitting on the grass empty for now, but that didn't seem to matter to my girls!

Notice the dog in the picture, of course! He always manages to sneak in pics!