The Young Family Farm »

Want the real of our day?? Just for your entertainment…I’ll share. How about the bad news of our day…and then the good???

Keepin’ it really real today.

Ok…so I *attempted* to take part in a normal summer daily activity and take the 4 littles to the Lifetime pool. It works GREAT when we go on the weekends because Rico Suave goes with us–and when one of our 4 gets overstimulated (we’re going through a REALLY tough stage with our littlest right now)–one of us can take him home to wind down while the other stays and lets the others enjoy a normal fun day at the pool during the summer. I hoped just MAYBE I could handle it solo and just maybe a tantrum wouldn’t happen…one can HOPE right?? Soooo…the bad news is we lasted 10 minutes before the crying started. We tried to hang in there because you know what goes into an outing like this (suiting up, sunscreening up…and to think about turning around and packing up–I was determined to TRY and let the older ones have at least an hour of fun.) A precious mom sitting next to me decided to offer consoling words…”My sister is in the process of adoption, but I don’t think she has any idea that this is what it really looks like…” Awww…thank you kind lady. I’m not sure if that was consoling or what to say–so I told her maybe it was just the approaching 3’s and all personalities are different–and there was really a lot of joy going on here;)…you just couldn’t see it at that moment:)

After my failed attempt to make our squirt happy, I decided I’d attempt to let our little one play in the kiddie room that has lots of fun things to do and sitters to watch them so we didn’t have to leave and allow the others to have a normal play day at least for just an hour.

We all got back outside, started to let everyone play–and 10 minutes later a lady with a HUGE white board started encircling the outdoor pool with the words written on it: “ANDREA YOUNG PLEASE COME TO CHILDCARE.”

Oh well. We tried:) And the precious staff in the kiddie room tried too! LOVE those sweet girls for trying! So…that was the bad of our day.

And then the good…

I tried to make our having to leave fun…and we went to Target to buy an really fun inflatable to take to our neighborhood pool instead…something like this…

Found that pic online–those aren’t my kids:) They all had a blast at our pool playing–and we met THE most precious family while we were there–who had a son that my littlest was absolutely intrigued by and had a blast playing with–outside of the pool (he is terribly afraid of water so to have 3 kids that LOVE to swim and 1 that hates the pool…it was such a sweet treat to have someone who he wanted to play with so the others could play with too!). His mom and I had an amazing talk about Africa, Wiphan, adoption…and even our upcoming hosting time with Tetyana. She was so moved about Tetyana’s story–that I sat there just so encouraged…JUST what I needed after a crazy day feeling like we couldn’t possibly take on any more crazy. Encouragement from a completely stranger…seriously–just what this mom needed today…because–I really, really, REALLY needed it.

I love how God orchestrates our day in the midst of crazy. To be honest, I’ve really struggled lately with the hard parts of adoption–it can just be SO HARD when you are the middle of helping a child heal. I struggle with thoughts about a normal, calm and peaceful life–and I’ve never lived in such need of an ultimate Healer…needing the Lord’s power to intercede on a minute to minute basis. It is good. I know that it is good. But it is so hard.

I love how the Lord provides–and how He sends just what we need when we need it most.

On a side note–I have some amazing blackberry recipes for you. I made some yummy jam the other night with the older kids too…way more blackberry jam than we could ever eat so we’ll be making some Mayberry style deliveries later today.

Last night–we also made some…GET THIS…gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan whoopie pies! The icing was made with tofutti cream cheese (cream cheese made from tofu) and organic sugar. They loved them (but I’ll confess I like regular icing!)

Alright ya’ll! Hope y’all have a good weekend!!!

XOXO!

Andrea

I have a fun favor to ask of you! I secretly nominated one of my dearest friends for a mommy award–because I think she is that amazing…and need your help in just taking 3 seconds to vote for Christy Elphick BY CLICKING HERE.

Just 3 seconds of fun…just for fun…because she is that amazing!

Meet Christy…

(She’s gonna kill me…cause I totally ripped that picture of her Facebook page. I’m a good friend like that;)

Christy doesn’t blog or takes lots of pictures to post on Pinterest to show all the amazing things she does–but if she did…you would be so encouraged! Really–this mom has been such a living testimony to me at what it means to serve others…and I just think it’d be amazing for her to win this award.

She gives up so much of her time to serve Created for Care and plan the retreats (honestly–she’s the work horse behind it!) yet Christy’s family isn’t called to adopt…but she feels SERVING adopting families is her calling. WOW. If you saw how hard she works to pour into these retreats and bless these moms–and she isn’t even an adoption mom–you would say DOUBLE WOW. She runs behind the scenes and her work really goes unnoticed–but she LOVES it and she is passionate about orphans finding families and supporting those who do have the adoption calling.

Christy also volunteers her CPA services EVERY WEEK for Wiphan doing the book keeping, sending over transfers to Africa and keeping all the finances on track. (Being her good friend–I’d watch her drop her youngest off at preschool last year and zip over to do Wiphan’s books on one of her only times being kid-free.)

She has been one of our biggest cheerleaders during our adoption of Isaac…and now she and her family and once again supporting us to bring T here for the summer.

Will you take just 3 seconds in hopes to surprise this momma with whatever goodies she might win if she gets enough votes??? I think you can vote 1x per day and the voting period ends June 15th!

VOTE HERE…to help me thank Christy!!!

If you just voted…you totally rock!

xoxo!

andrea

I’ve been having the most fun with Instagram (thanks Angie Carley for introducing tech challenged me to that fun!) I have had a few friends ask for me to share some recipes from some fun I’ve been posting on my iPhone…so I’m going to post the links–so although I tweaked them–I didn’t write them:)

Our blackberries and raspberries are in full harvest…so we’ve been picking bowls full every day lately–which has required our getting creative with what to do with all these yummy berries. Every day our bowl looks just like this…

Last week we made a YUMMY blackberry and raspberry gluten-free cobbler…SERVE WARM + 2 scoops of coconut milk vanilla ice cream–organic goodness! (Rico and Parker had regular vanilla with theirs–but the rest of our crew can’t have dairy)

I don’t use special gluten-free recipe books. Nope–those are too mind-boggling and confusing for this momma. I like to keep things REALLY simple. I’ve found a gluten-free all purpose flour that I can substitute for any recipe and I it’s been fail proof and delicious thus far with all of our guests surprised or unaware that it’s gluten-free:). For this dish–I followed this Betty Crocker recipe HERE. BUT I substituted regular flour for GLUTEN FREE PANTRY ALL-PURPOSE FLOUR—I used aluminum free baking powder (Arm&Hammer, Clammer Girl and the others have aluminum and that’s not fun to feed your family)–I use sea salt instead of table salt–almond milk instead regular milk and 1/2 cup Stevia and 1/2 cup organic sugar. 3 changes–so I guess it’s my recipe:) Did you know you just have to make 3 changes to any recipe for it to be officially yours?? You learn something new every day.

THEN–tonight after dinner–we picked more berries. We sat down and the kids voted what we’d make with today’s batch. They wanted PIE. Blackberry pie…and momma insisted gluten-free black-berry pie:) Don’t you just wanna take a bite out of THIS…

I once again tweaked the recipe to be gluten free–and followed one on the Joy of Baking site. I didn’t use granulated white sugar as the recipe called for (that stuff is poison people…I kid you not) and once again I used The Gluten Free Pantry gluten free all-purpose flour. Worked beautifully. The kids had a BLAST cutting out stars with cookie cutters and placing them where ever they wanted on the pie! You should be able to find it at ANY grocery and even if you aren’t gluten free it might be night to have in your pantry for an unexpected gluten-free guest.

LOVE that mix because I can follow just about ANY recipe and it works like a charm!

OK…and now–just to entertain you with my top 10 favorite pictures just downloaded from my iPhone that were taken in the couple of weeks…(drum roll please…)

10. My kids sitting at my grandmother’s house on the SAME spinning stools I used to sit and spin while eating my cereal on. (My grandmother is a rock star by the way…she travels all over with her besties, dines from her own garden, cuts her own grass and makes ME need a nap when I try to keep up with her!)

9. Loo-bear jumping on a trampoline my aunt got when she was 13…that I jumped on when I was little…and now to watch her have a field day (yes–the springs are dangerous…but we like to live on the edge–no pun intended)

8. Isn’t it funny the things that take you back?? My grandmother made all my mom’s Barbie clothes when she was little. I remember playing with the same ones when I’d stay at her house during the summers and at holidays. When Laney pulled out THIS dress, I was taken back. Something about that white dress and the pearls…I remember thinking it was THE most beautiful dress I’d ever seen grace a Barbie…

7. Getting home from my grandmothers, I decided Isaac needed a haircut and although Uncle Rusty (Aunt Nisia’s man) usually cuts it–I decided I just couldn’t wait. He needed a clean save. And half way through…I needed a picture…

6. Refusing to cut Frankie baby’s hair…just not going to do it…

5. Do you think my kids drive our neighbors crazy with these kind of concoctions in our driveway all the time???

4. Home Depot sells these to change lightbulbs without a ladder. For us–it’s a tool to get Nerf bullets…

3. Isaac still hasn’t gotten brave enough to leave the TOP step of the neighborhood pool yet. BUT…he insists on wearing floaties and goggles. You see why I seriously am laughing the whole time we are at the pool???

2. Frank got my iPhone and insisted on taking a picture of me and Tami…one of my roommates from Auburn (War Eagle!) who joined us for dinner just a few days ago…

AND…

the #1 picture on my iPhone that is making me smile this week…is an out-take from adventures in potty-training. Some times it works out…and some times…you fall in

Hope y’all have a wonderful week!!! I’m volunteering all week at VBS…Isaac and Frank’s first VBS this year and they are having so much fun!!!

Blessings to you all!

Andrea

FIRST–before I begin rambling, you HAVE to go back and look at our sneak peak beach session that Nicole sent us! I’m so technology challenged that I posted them really small…and sweet Nicole helped and now they are much more fun to peak at! Alrighty–so if you are going to Hilton Head this year, you must contact this precious girl for family pictures! You won’t regret it:)

See how much fun you’ll have:)

Sooooo…back to preparing for our 15 year old princess. Richard and I spent 7 hours in a training class yesterday. YES–7 hours. I have to say though, it was REALLY good. Like–really good. The most powerful hour was a panel of kids who were all teenagers. It was really neat because 4 of the 5 kids were actually teenagers when they were hosted–very close to T’s age! The amazing part was hearing their hearts, hearing what they THOUGHT they were getting into coming…and hearing how they connected with their host families and later became permanent parts of their hosted families.

All 5 of them were scared to come. They had heard awful rumors about what might happen to them when and if they agreed to come. They thought their body parts might be taken for research. They heard they might be abused. They heard awful rumors about WHY people would pay for them to come. ALL OF THEM OF COURSE BEING UNTRUE. BUT…the point is they did NOT know for sure. And they all thought it was worth the risk because of their current life in the orphanage (often not having anything to eat…one saying some times kids would eat dirt and paper…some times they would run to bee fields and endure getting stung hundreds of times on their hands just to get a little honey in their belly)…so even if the rumors were true–they thought it was worth the risk.

Each came–and instead of being hurt…they discovered what it felt like to be LOVED…to be in a FAMILY…to have shelter, safety and security…that tomorrow they would be fed, taken care of and not only those things–but they would also get to DREAM for the first time. For their entire lives they spent day after day thinking about where the next meal might come from—fretting the day they would turn 16 and be on the streets–that they never got to dream about simple things like…”I wonder what we’ll do today!” And for the first time…these children as host children got to do this!

Richard and I didn’t realize kids couldn’t come with us because we are so last minute…and we didn’t read the email about yesterday until FRIDAY…and it was good for our kids NOT to be there as we listened to what these kids have SEEN, what they have already been through and what they have never received. (Thank you Aunt Reid and Gigi for saving the day and keeping the 4 littles for us!!! Can you tell Rico Suave and I stink at planning!?) We both needed to be there–and the kids did not as it was hard to listen to. Very, very, very cruel and hard things. Things no child should have to worry about or have to face. The majority of girls caught in the sex trade come from these countries–and it’s devastating. Something our princess might have to face…something my heart is not okay with now that it is hitting our family in a new, real way.

One of the girls was sharing her heart…she will soon turn 16 like our “T” and as she shared she began to say she wondered why she got chosen–and yet her friends would be 16 this summer…and she burst in to tears and ran off the stage. She ran to her once host mom…now adopted mom…they embraced–and we all cried. She bravely came back to finish what she needed to say…and I sat there staring at our girls beautiful picture–looking at my husband and shaking my head…we needed this day together–we needed just to process this as a family…and I can’t wait for my girl to get off that plane so I can hug her…tell her how loved she is and show her she has nothing to be scared of with our family–we are here to just love her.

And speaking of hugs–we talked about how these children have NEVER been hugged. They don’t know how. It’s strange to them–and awkward. So we had a class of “hug therapy” and talked about the healing that takes place in TOUCH…how attachment takes place in TOUCH…and how these kids who have never attached or been hugged…need this…and how it will not be easy at first. It was really funny because we had to take turns being the one that wouldn’t hug back–or didn’t want to be hugged…and then we practiced family hugs…here’s the group hug (not everyone looks as happy about the hug do they;)?!)

24 more days until our girl arrives.

When I stood to introduce ourselves and say why we were hosting…I just said, “I don’t know why–we just felt we were supposed to bring T home this summer…we are setting our expectations very low–whatever God wants to do and we are along for the ride.

For one of the rare times in my life I have no idea what God is going to do with this. I just want Him to do SOMETHING…and to use us however He wants to…because I want this precious one to have a beautiful life and to know Him…and to be able to dream and think the simple things without fear…”I wonder what I will do today…”

Thank you for praying with us and for us and for being along for the ride!

XOXO,

Andrea