Moving On!

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world” ~ C.S. Lewis

The new name of my family's blog "Boulders Into Blessings" is from a devotion I was fortunate enough to hear at just the right time. It was the story of Aron Ralston, a climber who had to cut off his own arm to save his life. He was on a solo hiking and climbing trip when his arm became trapped in a boulder, he realized that the only way to save his life was to cut off his own arm. He had to use the pressure and weight of the boulder and a pocket knife to remove his arm and that's just what he did. 

Sometimes life can become so painful that it seems as if the only way to save ourselves, our spirits, is to be forced to confront the "boulders" in our lives, free ourselves from them and let those stumbling blocks become blessings. Aron says that he is so thankful for the experience with the boulder, no matter how painful, he wouldn't change it if he could. It gave him an entirely new perspective on life... for him the boulder was a blessing. For the kids & I, the boulders have become blessings as well, navigating and discerning truth from lies has been painful to say the least. Despite it all, we get a new beginning, no matter how complicated and tangled and painful our boulders have been. 

The boys 4 wheeling at camp!

Yes, the girls have helmets too, we were just posing for a pic!

So what did we do? We've gone country. Seriously, we packed it up and moved out of the city to the middle of NOWHERE! I took a job at a camp that I grew up playing at, I have childhood memories of playing in the same spots my kids now call home. The boys call it the "bermuda triangle" because once you are on camp property you lose cell phone service and the internet is spotty, oh the tragedy! They are doing great at their new (much smaller!!!) school, their number one reason for liking it better here = less homework. It's the little things. 

Not too long ago, one of them came home from school and said that people are just less "judgy" here. What they have all picked up on is that there is less concern for material things here... kids don't have to have the most expensive clothes, game system, cell phone. They are kids! They just need a safe place to call home and room to play. Yesterday consisted of new friends coming over to play, 4 wheeling, hiking, climbing rocks and sunset canoeing on the lake thanks to the awesome summer staff kids who are here on the weekends. How cool is it that they get to play with their summer camp counselors all year long!? Last night ended with having to force them off the trampoline after giggly wrestling matches with the summer staffers and all I could think was Thank You God for giggles instead of tears tonight. 

We'll take giggles over tears any night...  but when the tears resurface, and they do ~ it's just part of the process ~ we will listen God when you shout through our pain.

    

FAQ

Here are a few of the questions we get asked the most:

How are you paying for the babies?
They are on medicaid for health insurance until the adoption is final. WIC provides their formula (which costs roughly $600/month, yikes!!!) Beyond that they receive no other assistance or foster care payments because this is considered to be a "long term family friend" placement and not a true foster care placement. We have had lots of people help with buying baby gear, diapers, clothes, etc... which has been soooooo helpful. We are also hoping that the sky will open up and rain down buckets of money into our bank account ;)

How long will the adoption process take?
Probably somewhere around 6 months depending on how backed up the courts are. At that point, the babies will officially become members of our family and will share our last name.

How are Turner, Clay & Lanie doing with all of this?
Lanie thinks she is a big helper and hasn't shown much jealousy, which is a huge relief.

Clay is very hands on, and also was with Lanie. He will hold & feed the babies and loves to have one snuggle on the couch with him to watch TV. He also says that he doesn't look forward to them getting bigger and learning to talk because then they will drive him crazy like Lanie!

Turner is more hands off. When we had a serious family meeting to talk to the boys about the whole situation, Turner's response was: "They are total chick magnets, they should stay with us"... nuff said?

What is the mark on Peytons face?
It's her birthmark, a hemangioma. It's grows rapidly at first, but usually shrinks and disappears. We call it her strawberry :)

How are they sleeping?
Peyton is only up once a night to eat and is generally a great sleeper. Marleigh (aka Mad Marleigh) has good nights and bad nights. Still mostly bad nights, she wakes up in pain, probably from her reflux, quite a bit. I have tried to keep them on the same schedule eating, napping & sleeping... but in the real world it is hard. Especially while juggling the 3 other kids schedules.

That's all I can think of for now!

The tooth fairy brings castles these days!

Clay finally lost another tooth and instead of money, he left a note asking the tooth fairy for a caste. So did she deliver? You bet! Apparently, this is her Christmas Castle. I guess the tooth fairy is doing pretty good these days to have such a swanky Christmas spot to hide out in.

Jeff's Journey in the Race Across America begins Weds!

I can't believe it's finally here, but I leave out Weds flying to San Diego CA to begin my adventures as part of the crew (I'm not riding a bike...I'm driving a van) for the Team Type 1 RAAM Team. RAAM-Race Across America-is considered to be one of the toughest cycling events in the world. It's a continuous race from Oceanside, CA to Annapolis, MD, 3005 total miles I think. It's not a stage race. It's a continuous effort, coast to coast. Riders will be on the road for several days straight. Some will do it solo while others will ride on a team. I've gotten hooked up with one of the 8-man teams-Team Type 1. All of the riders have type-1 diabetes and from what I have read, Team Type 1 is apparently the team to beat. They've won the 8-person team race in the RAAM 3 of the last 4 years and hold the record for the fastest finish ever-5 days, 9 hours and 3 mins with an avg. speed of 23.38 mph. That's pretty amazing stuff even if you aren't a cyclist. Just imagine, crossing the US in just over 5 days...on a bike! To put things into perspective, think about the this. This year's Tour de France covers 2236 miles in 20 stages over the course of 22 days. The team I am crewing with is expected to cover 3005 miles in just over 5 days. The top solo riders will cover that distance in just over 8 days. So it's a grueling, intense test of human ability to say the least.

So how did I get involved? Well, a teacher at a school that I work at is married to the guy who coordinates both the Team Type 1 & Team Type 2 RAAM efforts. He's sort of the team manager and has been involved with this RAAM team for the past few years. In order to pull off the race, he needs about 20 or so folks to crew each team (Team Type1,2). She knew he needed folks to fill out the crew, knew that I am a cyclist, knew I have my summers off and so she passed my name along to him. I called him, found out the details and now I am part of the crew. The best part is that it doesn't cost me a dime...they pay all the expenses of the crew as long as we commit to serving the team as best we can. So to say no to an opportunity like this would have been nuts. The crazy part is that I started out just being a gopher/whatever guy on the crew just filling in and helping where needed. Over the course of the past few months, he's moved folks around and now my role is a driver of the race van. That means I will be driving the van just behind the rider on the road. Talk about pressure! We all work in 8 hr shifts and we are split into 2 groups. So that means I will drive for 8 hours and then spend 8 hours in the RV that will be following close behind while the other driver drives and then it all starts over again. We will do that from CA to MD. From what I understand, once the race gets started, it's a pretty grueling effort for everyone involved. But there is also lots of adventure and fun. I am excited and can't wait to find out what it's really like first-hand. I have a feeling it will be something I want to do again...but only time will tell.

I'm going to make an effort to blog & tweet as much as I can during the race, but that will all depend on how much down-time I have as well as availability of cell service. If you want to keep up with my journey, the blog I set up can be found at http://raam2010tt1.blogspot.com

Check it out and leave comments often as I will be checking frequently. Also, please say a prayer for the safety of all involved as well my family while I am away. This will be the longest I have ever been away from Meghan and kids, so that part is going to be tough but I know it will be okay.

See if this Easter bunny looks familiar...

Click here to see the video...

Clay all suited up and ready for his first game of the season! Go Cubs!

Jeff Richardson
Technology Coach
Gwin, Green Valley & Greystone Elementary Schools
Office-205.439.2563
Cell-205.602.8262

SnowFun

Clay's Lego Racer won a trophy for Best Of Show! Hopefully it's fast too! Turner's was up against some fast competition and placed 4th. He got a trophy last year though so now he & Clay both have trophies for their PWD Car designs.

Update-both cars came in a consistent 4th place. That's better than last place, but we still didn't do so hot in the speed catagory. Oh well, there's always next year.

It's Pinewood Derby Time! We got the Auburn Flyer & the Lego Racer.

Lanie's sick & Mommy's out getting medicine so...

I decided to paint the little Princess's fingernails. She was a real trooper and was totally into it! She never moved and was very proud when her not-so-skilled-at-painting-fingernails-daddy got finished. She ran into the den hollering "Look Turner and Bubba, I got fingernails!" It's fun having a little girl who is so girly:)

Two of a kind...in that they both have curly hair they hate having brushed & get into everything!

Turner's got a great "fan base" already!

We have this EXTREMELY enthusiastic, musically-gifted friend Christophe Jackson who introduced us to this group called the Birmingham Boys Choir as we were talking to him about Turner's love of singing and trying to find out a way to encourage him to develop it as one of his many gifts. Turner sings in the bathroom, sings while eating, while jumping on the trampoline, playing...he just likes to sing. He also likes playing the piano for which he has been taking lessons over the past year and half, but is currently on a short hiatus. So as we talked about the BBC, we thought it may be something Turner would enjoy and told him about it. He decided it was something he wanted to look into so we made an appointment for him to meet the director and audition. This took place over the Christmas holiday and we found out this week that he was accepted! He will be joining the choir this summer! We are really proud of him for taking the first step towards making this happen and hope that it turns out to be a life-changing experience for him. The choir does lots of cool things from local concerts to tours in places as far away as Japan! As for the picture above, upon finding out that he was accepted, we posted it on Facebook and got an overwhelming response. For that we are thankful! It's really great to know there are so many folks willing to offer words of support and encouragement, helping Turner see what a truly great opportunity he has before him. Thanks!

Surprise kids...we're @ Disney World, not Cousin Eddie's!

So we did manage to surprise the boys' and Lanie (well, she's not too sure of anything) with a few days at Disney. We are actually in-line for Space Mountain as I write this. The boys thought we were just taking a road trip with Nanny and Papa to somewhere in Florida to see some "distant cousins or something." They did see the signs as we got near (you would have to be blind or illiterate NOT to know you were near this place with all the insane signage everywhere) but never did they even ask if we were going to Disney. And the I made the comment "Oops, I made a wrong turn" (which is very unlikely when I drive!) they looked up from their iPods just in time to see us pass under the 'Welcome the Disney World' arch! "Really? We are going to Disney? Woooooohoooooo!!!!!"

Well, we found our hotel and got settled. It's a great resort w/heated pools, a water slide, lazy river, mini-golf and much more. Today, Thanksgiving, we are thankfully visiting the Magic Kingdom. It's gonna be a great day! The boys are excited, Lanie doesn't really know what to think and the grown-ups (me, Meghan, Nanny & Papa) are all smiles. The only character we've seen thus far was Pinochio and Lanie wasn't too keen on getting very close. Now, we are almost to the front of the line. Hopefully Turner won't cry this time...last time he was just 4 and didn't really dig Space Mountain. Godspeed!

And this is why I love Fall!

Extreme Room Make-Over

***The Birmingham News is doing an article this Saturday about the boys "Hanging Beds", so we bumped this post from earlier in the summer to the top page. Turner & Clay were thrilled to get to be in the pictures!***

Several days ago, Meghan and I were talking and decided the boys' room could use a little sprucing up in order to make a bit more useful for them as they are growing up, need a little more space and just to give their room a change. You see, for the past 3 years, their room has pretty much been a place for sleeping, piling dirty clothes, stuffing clean clothes, cramming the junky trinkets from birthday party favor bags (sorry if I offend anyone, but come on parents, you know EXACTLY what I mean), infrequent piano practices, and the occasional "prison" for the typical "Go to your room!" parental command at the end of some stand-off or argument. All that to say they don't spend much time in their room with their eyes are open.

Here's what we had to work with.

Yes, we have a basement that is just begging to be finished out, but of course that takes a good bit of $$$ (which we don't want to spend), time (which we do have), and 2 boys willing to sleep down there (which we don't have-they are too yella). So until all the stars align, we have put that project off. In the meantime, we decided to get creative and make the most of the bedroom they currently call their own and do a room makeover. We knew we wanted to paint and get them some fun, new furnishing. But most of all, we wanted to open up the space so it would be more functional for them and hopefully become a place they would like to use for more than just sleeping. To create more usable space, we were thinking of selling their bunks and building some loft beds. As we were searching images online, I stumbled upon this post on Bob Vila's site which had a few pictures of "hanging beds," something neither of us had ever seen before. It looked simple enough and with a little creative engineering, I figured I could create something similar for the boys. The whole idea behind a hanging bed is to free up as much floor space as possible while still having a bed in the room. What we really like about the hanging beds, besides the obvious novelty of having hanging beds, is that there aren't 4 long legs supporting each bed and taking up space which is what we noticed on most of the loft-style beds we saw. And with further investigation, I figured out how to create the hanging beds from their existing bunk beds, which meant we had no lumber to buy! It was a no-brainer for this frugal couple! So now we had a plan and decided to make it happen. We kicked the boys out of their room, forbade them from entering it until we were done and then we got busy doing our own version of extreme room makeovers. I think the hardest part of the whole deal was moving the boys out of their room for a few nights and cleaning out all the random stuff that they have accumulated over the years from collections of paper airplanes and pencil grippers to rocks and scraps of wood from who knows where. Meghan started the transformation by taking down all the stuff from the walls and applying a few new coats of paint, changing the color from blue to taupe and making it feel fresh and clean. Also, she bought a couple of cool orange chairs to add to their new room. Meanwhile, I began phase 2, which was the bed reconstruction. Enter the drills, power saw, sander, etc. I took the bunks apart, made some measurements, incorporated a whole lot of guesswork and within a few hours, I had them back together. But now they looked a little different because they were attached to the wall and appeared to be hanging from the ceiling!

The first bed almost complete. Doesn't it look like it's hanging?!

I tested each bed's sturdiness and upon realizing they were safe and sound, we began putting everything else back together. There was still quite a bit of work to do with placing all the furniture, cleaning up all the sawdust, making the ladder, and figuring out what needed to stay in their room and what needed to go to the attic, but we made it happen. And after 4 days of the boys being sequestered, we invited them back in for the grand unveiling!

Oh yeah, they like it!

They were super excited and very grateful to say the least! They both told us at least 20 times how much they loved it and appreciated us doing it for them. Now they are wanting to invite all their friends over to see it and hang out in their cool new room! Trust me when I say that before now, they never really cared about bringing their friends into their room. I even overheard quotes like "our room is totally tricked out" and "it's all a kid could ever want." Big points for mom and dad! I think those quotes make it all worthwhile. This is one occasion where we can confidently say that our efforts towards trying to make our boys happy have been overwhelmingly successful!

Lanie swimming! It's amazing how great she's done in the pool this summer.

Sweet Little Baby Doll

Turner's 1st Piano Recital

Tonight we got to enjoy our first of what will hopefully be many more piano recitals featuring our blooming musician, Turner Reese! He's been taking piano lessons from Ms. Katherine for a little over a year now and his hard work is paying off as you can hear in this video. Practicing isn't the most fun but he has worked hard, stuck with it and did a great job in his first performance in front of quite a large crowd. He even got himself dressed in a fine button-down, khakis, AND a tie..without having to be told! It was truly a night of firsts...his first recital, his first time to fix his own hair and his first time to wear a tie. I must say, I am very proud of him. He is quite an awesome kid who will be growing into a young man all too soon. He's got lots of talent and we hope he continues to develop his skills and passion for music.

Bows and Sunglasses

Lanie's new thing, now that she can climb with the skills she must have inherited from her "spidey" dad, is to get in the rocker in her room and pull down all the bows that mommy has clipped to the bow thingy hanging beside the chair. Well, today after she pulled a bunch of 'em down, I decided she needed to wear them all! Isn't she adorable?!

Spidey Sense

So... Jeff went on a field trip with Turner's class last week to DeSoto Caverns. This morning we got an email from Turner's teacher with a note and these photos attached that someone snapped on the field trip:

"I couldn't resist sending these... we've all been laughing and wondering if you sleep all day because you are up all night fighting crime?"

Gotta love a man who proudly wears the Spiderman undies the kids picked out for him!