6/8/09

Silas goes swimming.


Here are some photos of the other two kids since Roman hogged the previous post. Aili enjoyed her horse time too...It would be nice to get her actually riding on her own sometime. It won't be long before she will be old enough to at camp. Some kids around here are riding horses not long after they are walking. She's been taking 4-H horse club all winter and loves it. She loves anything that involves meetings and book work. She also got to be the "vice-president" of her club...all 5 members. That was a big deal because if something happened to the other girl she would be president!! And we all know Aili likes to be in charge (I have no idea where she gets it from).


Silas wouldn't go near the big "scary" horses but he found these less scary versions at the play ground. What a great use for old tires.
It was freezing the whole weekend. It stayed dry at least but we did at one point watch snow flakes falling...in June! I packed our trailer almost a week early with shorts and t-shirts. Last minute I grabbed the kids winter coats, extra blankets, socks, long pants and sweaters. We still felt cold the whole time...at least I did. I doubled up on my fleece jammies at night!

We started out the weekend by my vaulting myself over a wire fence to retrieve Silas from the out of use swimming pool. We had just arrived and were unloading food from our car into the big main kitchen while the kids played at the playground area in front of the building. There is a pool nearby that wasn't being used yet and has a big metal fence around it. I was keeping an eye on them from the big windows in the kitchen when I noticed Silas over by the pool. It looked like he was around at the back side of the fence since I could see fence between him and me. I squinted my eyes and watched for a second before I took off to make sure. I sprinted over, climbed the fence and found Silas sitting on the steps of the pool...fully clothed sitting in murky cold water up to his waste. He looked entirely pleased with himself and his ingenuity. He had squeezed through at the locked gate and decided to go for a dip. After I went and changed him (and wished I had brought more than one pair of shoes)and gave him a good terrified mommy lecture, we laced rope through the gap to make sure no one else would find their way in. It was a bit of a scare...one of those "Thank you God" moments. If he had jumped in the deep end or I hadn't happened to see him the moment before he got into the water I would have been wandering around for the next half hour looking for him. If he had gone in immediately there is no way I would have seen him in time. It would have been over. I think his cautious nature saved him this time. Sensible Silas squatted by the side for a couple minutes and then chose to go in by the stairs....his brother at age two would have run straight into the deep end without a second thought.

What was scary was the realization of how fast an accident can happen and how fast life could have changed in an instant. It was the end of a long day of chasing him around Aili and Romans Track and field day so by bedtime I was done. My nerves were shot.
The weekend got better from there thankfully :) And fortunately my nephew who had come with my parents had an extra pair of rubber boots for him to wear.


Aili tried out the climbing wall too. Here she is getting harnessed up. She has such a cute smile on her face I had to include this picture. She's not big into the climbing thing though...she made it about 10 seconds and decided that it wasn't fun or comfortable...all things that Aili holds dear. Cleaning out the chicken coop on the other hand was apparently a blast. She spent Saturday afternoon helping to shovel out a chicken coop at the camp. She loved it.
I was so grossed out when she came back with her feet coated in chicken poop and smelling like a chicken. I made her go to the bathroom and scrub. She likes to feel important though and being a big helper to the camp staff was really cool. It also feels "really cool when the chickens peck my feet". ....ok.
The big kids were SO good this weekend. The are such a great age to just let run and enjoy themselves. Other than some of the activities we did as a family they mostly just ran around playing and getting filthy with the other kids. They were so enjoyable , cooperative, went to bed perfectly and just plain fun to hang out with. It was worth it to go on a little camp out to leave the hectic life behind and really just hang out as a family. Silas was good at staying within viewing distance too and we had no Silas searches or scares the rest of the weekend.

It was a really good distraction from my sad week last week. I needed something to keep me busy, distracted and to have a little fun too. Its been a week since I we last saw Peanut and I still miss him. I am feeling better than last week though...the constant ache is gone for the most part and I am enjoying sleeping through the night again.
On Friday God brought across my path a wonderful woman who has been foster parenting for years. She has several grown adopted children and has 4 gorgeous little foster girls at the moment. I don't know how many children in the world have a piece of her heart but I know there are a lot. We spent a good deal of time chatting and I now have her phone number. There are so many issues and things that have come with foster parenting that need the support and mentoring of another foster mom. So many things that just wouldn't make sense to anyone else. It was such a blessing to me. She told me every child she has ever had has taken a chunk of her heart with them. She said that her heart brakes over each one that leaves her home. ...even only after a few days sometimes. It was great to talk to her about how I've felt about my last two babies. We discussed how we love "our" kids even knowing that it will tear our hearts out when they leave. It helped to feel "normal"...and encouraged despite my sadness at letting Peanut go. I realize its a good thing to love them like my own for as long as I have them. That little piece of love will always be a part of their story.
I came away from this weekend feeling so blessed and reassured that God is intimately involved in the innermost details of my life. He knows just what I need and when I need it...sometimes before I even am aware of my own need for something.
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1 comment:

Valen and Carol said...

That was so good of God to give you that kind lady to talk about your foster babes. It's so good to share with someone that really knows your heart.