My Ebenezer

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Too tired to blog. Here are the latest pictures!

On the right, we have a chalkboard wall. On the left, we have a wall that hold magnets – it has flakes of iron in it. I’ll put a molding around each on that is painted blue and the magnetic wall will be painted over with green.

And here is another view, showing the chalkboard next to the orange. Below it is another view of the doorway, I haven’t finished the curlie q’s yet, most of them still need another coat of paint!

So now I need to hear from you. What about the window? I’ve got wooden white blinds that will be put back but I need some kind of curtain or valance or something. What do you think? Any suggestions? Click on comments at the very end of this post to leave your advice. If you need instructions, Karen G., you can click HERE for directions! THanks!

One of my favorite blogs, windscraps, has a picture with every post that somehow ties in or represents the story. In an impulsive attempt to make my blog more interesting, I snapped these photos today in my front yard.

I went to check the mail and as I was walking back towards my house, I noticed this carefree squirrel sprawled out on the tree, looking so relaxed I wondered if he might be sick. Ofcourse, I wondered about that as I ran inside to get my camera, hoping he would still be there when I returned. Only for a second did i think, “oh, poor little guy.” My thoughts were purely selfish, I had to capture his image.

Now if I were some sort of amateur or professional photographer, this impromptu photo wouldn’t be anything out of the ordinary. But I’m not a photographer … and my first thought when I saw the squirrel was “awww…that would make a great picture for my blog.” A great picture for my blog….yes, that was my first thought.

What, do I have no life? Am I reduced to entertaining myself by chasing squirrels and taking photos for the sole purpose of blogging? Sad, but true. I’m a blogaholic. Before you laugh, you might want to consider that you are probably co-dependant. Afterall, if I didn’t have a devoted audience (all 3 of you) then I could probably resist the urge.

Here’s another sad thought, today, I am blogging about blogging. I’m sick, very, very sick.

Anyway, in another desperate attempt to entertain you, I want to shamelessly copy Danny Sims and play “Suggest a Caption” as he did with this picture of me at my last family reunion, using a interesting Koozie! Who is that next to me anyway, is that Pat? Linda? Maxine? hee hee hee

Okay, so here is the much anticipated squirrel. Leave a comment and suggest a caption.

I’ve told you already how precious my husband is. One of the many things I love about him is that I know he is going to be an amazing dad. When we talk about how close we are to bringing our child(ren) home, you should see the twinkle he gets in his eyes. His face lights up a little bit and I know he’s very excited.

He has worked so hard to refinish the bed that will go in the nursery. It was the bed he slept in as a child and it means a great deal to him to have his own son or daughter use it. We’ve put the bedspread on it that I had on my bed when I was little (Holly Hobby) and we were going to use is just until we got one that matches better, but I think we’ll leave it just the way it is. There is something very endearing about having our children use things we had when we were small.

I want to pass these things on to my children. I want to have lots of traditions that our kids will always remember. More importantly than the traditions and “things” of life, I want to teach our children to honor God and to trust Him in all things. That is what I treasure most from my mom – she gave me a foundation of faith to build my life on.

Daddy-O has such a deep love for family and tradition, I know he will be great at passing these things along. He will also be a wonderful example to our children of a Godly man. He’ll be there for the soccer games and recitals and anything else that comes along. I know he won’t let life get in the way of living. He’ll be there for the important things and for the day to day things.

I think I’ve totally screwed up what I’m trying to say here. Daddy-O is going to be a great dad. That’s really all I wanted to say!

Here are the latest pictures of the playroom. I’m getting VERY frusturated because the orange paint is not covering the blue paint and we’re going to have to do several more coats around the doorways. Killing me!

And here is the latest of the nursery:

The other day I posted about some of the differences between being pregnant and waiting to adopt. Today, I was talking to my friend, who shall remain nameless, who gave birth to a beautiful baby boy four months ago and she listed yet another benefit of not giving birth.

It seems she has lost some of the control of her bladder. Well, technically, it isn’t her bladder but something I can’t spell that she’s lost control of. It seems that if her bladder is at all full and she sneezes, she also pees. Not just a drop or two, either…enough so that it runs down her leg. I’ve decided to call this “Peezing” – it’s what you do when you sneeze and pee at the same time…more accurately when you sneeze and it makes you go pee. I’ve submitted “Peezing” to Webster and hope it will be added to the next edition of the dictionary.

If ever there was a benefit of not giving birth, this must be it. No peezing for me, thank you very much.

First, this is what it is supposed to look like – it was not an accident! ha! It still needs a few coats but at least you have a better idea of what we’re doing now.

I feel like we are pregnant in so many ways. I mean, we are pregnant. We are expecting, just not in the same sense as a couple who is having a biological child. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be worrying about labor and delivery on top of all the other things expecting parents are dealing with.

This morning, one of my favorite friends came into church and sat her 8 1/2 month pregnant self down next to me. I was thrilled to see her and it’s so much fun to see her belly button sticking out. (for the record, this was seen poking through her shirt, she was not wearing a navel revealing shirt to church….or anywhere else for that matter.)

Anyway, it’s always so much fun to see her and talk with her because she is also expecting a child. We talk about how exciting it is yet how scary it is at the same time. She’s thinking about the actual delivery as well as wondering how she’ll figure out what to do with a newborn baby at home. I wonder what we’ll do with our kids and if we’ll be able to figure it all out, but at least I don’t have to worry about the possibility of a doctor cutting my stomach….OR WORSE….to get a baby out of me.

It’s funny, we tried for years to get pregnant and now I see so many benefits of not being pregnant. Don’t get me wrong, I still grieve for the lost experience but I’ve realized something lately. Though I do think it would be wonderful to see what a combination of Daddy-O and I would look like, to see our genes all meshed together in a child, I really don’t grieve that loss.

When I find myself getting the baby blues, it’s because I won’t get to experience a child moving inside me. (though that does freak me out and I can’t say I’m terribly disapointed about missing it) Let’s face it, if you know me at all you know I am an attention junkie so I also miss getting all the baby attention. You know what I mean, you see a pregnant lady and if you make any small talk your first question is about her due date. Someone asked my friend this morning when she was due and then gave her that tilted-head-smile because her date is just a couple of weeks away. I wanted to say, I’m Due Too! Any day now, actually…..just waiting for that phone to ring! hee hee hee

It’s not that I’m resentful or bitter, it’s just that I am so overwhelmed with joy and excitement about our “pregnancy” that I want to tell everyone about it. I want to talk about it more often, though Daddy-O would tell you this isn’t possible! I rarely think about misisng out on having a biological child with my husband….it’s the little things I miss. I guess I really don’t even think of our child as being any different. Afterall, Daddy-O and I are not genetically linked (at least not that I know of) and I love him with all my heart and he is my family.

I just can’t help but post pictures along the way. It’s so much fun to see the bright colors in our playroom, i can’t wait until it is finished. We’re going to try to finish the playroom today, but I don’t know if we’ll be able to or not. Anyway, here’s the latest.

So here’s the next step – we added a very bright orange (it probably looks red in the picture) to the other walls. Again, it’s just the first coat and we haven’t framed in the corners or anything, we just couldn’t wait to see what it would look like. It’s bright.

It won’t be for everyone, but I know the kids will LOVE it! In fact, my neighbor from across the street came over to look at it with her 4 year old and the first thing he said when he walked in was, “Your room looks pretty, Cindy.” He said a few times, “I like the green walls!”

We’ve been working pretty much all day on this room and also on finishing the nursery. We had to wait until the sun went down to do more staining and that project is coming to a nice close. We should be able to complete tomorrow night, if we have the energy to work on it!

Well, Christy told us not to paint the ceiling – we painted it anyway. I’d like to say that we had a stroke of creative genius and thought a NEON GREEN ceiling would look good, but I’d be giving us way too much credit. See, it all started with the nursery. Christy gave me this wonderful idea and helped me start it, then she left me to take “ownership” of the project and do all of the stripes.

The problem is, I failed to recognize that the success of the nursery really had very little to do with me, i mean a monkey can be trained to paint. It was the idea and the color selection that made it really work. Because I finished so much of it, i think i got a little cocky. I think Daddy-O caught that disease and we decided to strike out on our own a little with the playroom. Christy and I had decided on painting the walls orange and blue but Daddy-O and I decided the blue was too dark so we went with a lighter blue and decided to use it as an accent color instead of a base color. We went with NEON GREEN for the base color of 2 of the walls.

Anyway, i’m rambling. THe point of the story is that we hope this all turns out okay in the end. Christy gave me the idea for where things should go and how to use the paint on the different walls. I just wanted to let her off the hook here in case this turns out bad – Christy is GREAT at decorating and I wouldn’t want to tarnish her reputation.

Here are the first pictures – we’ve only done one coat of the green and we’ll do a second coat later. If you think it looks bright in the picture……you ought to see it on our walls.

"Samuel took a single rock and set it upright between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer (Rock of Help), saying, This marks the place where GOD helped us."

1 Samuel 7:12 The Message

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