Mia’s 9th Birthday. 2014.
Love Through the Eyes of an Adoptive Mom
1 Corinthians 1If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. (MSG) “Creaking of a rusty gate” –annoying, abrasive, rubbed the wrong way. Never take your paradigm for granted. We have 3 children who entered our family at the ages of 11,...
A Classical, Non-Leveled Spelling Curriculum
We started our classical education journey at a small, local, private school. When we started homeschooling, we joined a local Classical Conversations community, and now we’ll be starting a new classical community, using memory work from Claritas Classical Academy, improving on what we’ve learned over the past 4 years. As my understanding of classical methodology has...
Foto Flashback Friday
If I was more on top of life, I would have posted this closer to July 4th. Oh well. Last spring, we were welcoming a friend home from Ethiopia and decided to swing by the Lincoln Memorial. Grace has an obsession with Abe, so this trip was mostly for her. It’s not every day you...
Foto Flashback Friday
The garden has sadly gotten little attention since we opened Cafe Tesfa. The first summer the big kids were home (2013), we let them each plant one of our raised beds. Both big girls grew sweet potatoes (which if you’re going to eat a carb, choose this one).
Our Summer Safety Plan
Three years ago, we were jumping through hoops, ripping through red tape, and fighting for the right to bring home our sixth child (now 14). Apparently bringing home 3 unrelated adolescents through international adoption is frowned upon. We understood why, but keeping the connection between her and our son, because they were raised together, seemed...
A Year of Tesfa
July 1 was our one year anniversary as coffee shop owners. Cafe Tesfa started as a pipe dream. We always loved the charm of local coffee shops and frequented many as college students. A couple years ago, Patrick paired our pipe dream with a vision of helping local foster youth. We put some time, effort,...
Relationship and Reconciliation
The end of our pastor’s sermon yesterday really challenged me. You can listen to it here. It’s the one based on Matt 11:25-30. Start at time marker 21:45. It was about reconciliation. He talked about how reconciliation comes at cost. The cost is great (especially to our pride) but we can choose to focus on what...