It turns out that if you filed for the Adoption Tax Credit for 2010, you were audited. Period. End of story. And you probably still don’t have your full refund from Uncle Sam. I can’t help but think that this will be a continuing trend in future years now that the credit is so high...
Lesson Planning and OneNote
I’m a control freak. Combine that with a history of curriculum writing jobs and homeschooling and, well, I’m sure you can use your imagination. What I love about the Classical Conversations Curriculum Guide is that is gives me a framework around which to build my week. For instance, the first week’s history memory sentence for...
Garden Update in Pictures
We have harvested over 300 strawberries in under a week. Feel free to share your favorite strawberry recipes! Cherry trees, coffee, three-in-one citrus tree, and chives. Grapes galore! This year’s tomato “cages.” Cucumbers. Snow Peas. Lovin’ the nylon netting this year.
{#27} Indigenous Efforts
Every parent who has a child by international adoption should really find out what is going on in her child(ren)’s birth countr(ies) in terms of local orphan care. If I had to put care of a child on a continuum, it would look something like this: In an ideal world, children would be raised in...
All roads lead to Ethiopia
Road #1: Derek’s Calendar all started when our friend, Derek, served for a couple years at MTW’s AIDS project in Addis Ababa. Between book club and our Global Outreach [GO] Team at church, we see a lot of Derek and he still has a lot of Ethiopia connections. Road #2: The president of the non-profit...
Potato towers wall
We saw a post like this one at the beginning of the spring and loved it! We’re always trying to use our vertical space more efficiently. We had initially thought we would do towers but then decided a long, narrow wall would take less time to build while still accomplishing its our original purpose…more potatoes...
{#26} Don't Assume
I recently read a post where a mother tells the story of having had her older boys from China home 3 months when they had dinner with a Mandarin-speaking couple only to find out that the boys had no idea they were there to stay. She was heartbroken to realize that they had woken up...
Moving past the material
What is poverty? I often think it’s lack of material resources. I conjure up mental images of third, world, African countries. It’s more than lack of material resources. Brian Fikkert, co-author of When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor… and Yourself, spoke last night at SUMMIT VII and said the most...