Happy New Year !!

Entertaining Angels Stats

One year ago this month, Jordan had her first meeting with the pastor of our church to discuss starting a personal needs closet. He was very impressed and approved her idea and she had her first distribution in January 2011. Here we are one year later and to date we have served 51 families, 130 individuals. Jordan has purchased over $565 worth of toilet paper, soap, shampoo, toothpaste, toothbrushes, deodorant, feminine hygiene, combs, Vaseline, razors, laundry soap, etc with over $420 worth of donations from friends, both virtual and real-life. Thank you all!!!!

We have met so many wonderful people who have come for free needs.... many with stories of the struggles of providing for their family's basic needs. Every month I have had the privilege of hugging an individual that just happened to make a wrong turn down the street that the church was on or saw the kids on the sidewalk out front, waving their signs and waving to those that pass by and came in and started talking about struggles with behaviors they are facing. I always tell them how happy I am that God led them there that day.

Toilet paper, ya'll. Toilet paper has led to so many wonderful opportunities to share. And I am so proud of Jordan. She has such a wonderful heart for the homeless and those in need.

This last week we had 24 families that came for personal needs with 17 of them being first time families. As we were adding the new addresses to the data base, she was discussing ways to increase our goods to be able to provide for more people. You see, last week we had to close early and turn 2 families away because we ran out of goods. Broke.our.hearts! For this new year, we hope to be able to double our purchases so that we can serve everyone that comes to our door.

Merry Christmas

The Lamb Choir

During the Christmas program last night at church, the "rarely seen, but always favored" lamb choir sang 2 Christmas carols. It was cute and the kids loved doing it. They had dressed their lamb puppets in little choir robes. LOL! Sorry for the shaky video... my 3 year old was standing, swaying, and clapping on the pew in front of me so that he could see better and I was trying to film and hold him at the same time.

The Solution

Jeanna still cries most mornings as she does not want to go to PS. Today was the last day before winter break so Jordan went in to get her a few minutes early and found her in art class with a room full of 1st graders running WILD! When the kids saw Jordan, they came up and started tattle-telling on things Jeanna had done to them. Jordan said she told each child how sad that was and just listened. When my girls got to the car, Jordan told me what happened and I asked Jeanna how she felt about her friends telling on her? She said, "Sad." I asked what we could do to make everyone feel safer and she said, "Don't send me to that school no more!" ROFL!!!!

A girl with a plan.

We are getting ready for the spelling bee that our home school group is having in January. Each day the gang has been practicing, writing and quizzing each other. Even the baby is walking around chanting, "Spell the word slkgjshgovi?" We all laugh at his made up word.

We are very delayed in preparing and decorating for Christmas. We did find a family to adopt this year and we are excited as they are family that has very little and their Family Advocate says they would be very appreciative of any help. My kids have started their Dollar Store shopping list and we hope to get their shopping done within the next 3 days.

"Whose Teeth Are These???"

Fourteen years ago with my oldest was 6 years old and started loosing his teeth, I has so much fun being the tooth fairy. I would help him write notes and the "tooth fairy" would write cute little poems back to him with money, trinkets and candy. In the morning I would pretend to be all upset that the tooth fairy had given him candy saying she just was trying soften his teeth so she could have more of them. He thought had an ally in the tooth fairy.

When Jordan got her 1st loose tooth and we explained the tooth fairy to her a look of horror washed over her face and her eyes filled with tears. "Do I have to let the tooth fairy come into my room?"  "Ummmm, no." I told her and we decided to let her leave her teeth in a zip lock bag taped on the outside of her door. As the years went by and more and more different children came through my door, this became a great way to keep up with all the free-falling teeth. As the older kids got older, the younger children learned that Mommy was the tooth fairy and nowadays, my younger kids prefer to keep their teeth in a special locket or something.

Today I found a zip lock bag with 3 little tiny teeth in it and asked, "Whose teeth are these?" Jordan cracked up that I asked the question as if it was the most normal thing in the world to find a baggie of unclaimed teeth.

Yup... normal everyday happenings.

**UPDATE**

We think they are my foster daughter's teeth as they are not very old and my 7 year old has only lost 2 teeth so far. She has lost more than 3, but my have put others in a different bag. I may have to have people write names and dates from now on.

Funny

First Grade Dolch

We use a combination of Harcourt High Frequency, Readers Are Leaders and Dolch for learning to read around here. Jackson started on the pre-primer list during Pre-K and took right off with reading. He started the First grade list this year and has mastered it as of today, so I am letting him move on the the 2nd grade list. He is happy to be moving on. We are doing consonant blends in Language Arts and he can name the sound of them all, but struggles when they are not at the beginning of a word. Lots of practice on that this week.

Ask Him Anything!

I made chili on Sunday and had left overs for chili dogs tonight. I love lots of beans in my chili and I was told that there was lots of.... well shall I say, flatulence! So tonight when we were getting ready to make dinner and I said it would be chili dogs it brought up lots of discussion about last night "musical" adventures. When Jordan said the dinner prayer, she asked God to "help us not have so much gas!" which caused erupted laughter. I guess they know that they can ask Him anything.

Busy Bulletin Board

At one point I was trying to post our monthly bulletin board, but just got away from it. I usually do them in the evenings after the kids go to bed so that they wake up to a surprise. Jordan loved this month's board and took pictures immediately. It is a bit busy, but fun. The trim comes from ABCteach.com and the rest is just random clip art.