Hands of Hope

Every year our church does a church-wide Bible/book study, and each week, the pastor's sermon ties in with the lesson. This year's "Full Service in a Self-Service World" is a little different! Instead of holding the normal weekend services this week, the congregation was sent out to serve others in the Hands of Hope service projects!

Here are some of the projects from which to choose:

• Helping local schools with landscaping, litter pickups, mulching, painting, etc...
• Assisting various human service agencies such as the Salvation Army Soup Kitchen, Salvation Army Thrift Store, American Red Cross, Wake Interfaith Hospitality, Society of St. Andrews, an assisted living home, New Bern House, and more.
• Packaging 100,000 meals for Stop Hunger Now to send to those in need in Africa and Haiti.

The Schmidt family chose to glean with the Society of St. Andrew. We were sent to a field in Louisberg, NC to harvest collards and cabbages. Since it was over an hour away, we were off to an early start for a Saturday morning. It is quite a chore to get 6 people adequately adorned to work in a cold, wet, dirty field, but somehow, we made it out of here on time!

We smartly put latex gloves over our cheap Dollar Tree gardening gloves, William and I were given sharp weapons, and we were sent out into a field to harvest the collards and cabbage. With Benaiah on my back and what looked like a little linoleum knife, I quickly realized that I was ill-equipped to harvest the collards. So, I crawled down the row cutting cabbages and peeling the icky leaves off so that they looked like what you would buy at the store. William harvested was a harvesting machine doing both collards and cabbages with his little saw. Jeremy did a great job hauling 8-9 cabbages at a time to the Inter-faith Food Shuttle's truck. Marissa enjoyed pulling the nasty leaves off of the collards and bagging them, Annika was in charge of the cabbage bag and peeled a few of them, and Benaiah got himself into a position on my back where he could see over my shoulder and give me editorial comments like, "EWWwwwww! Dat distustin', Mommy." Near the end, he started asking to watch "Yo Gabba Gabba" and "Barney."

We harvested for 2 hours, and as we were walking off of the field, the kids asked about doing it again!

We joined some other families from church at Bojangle's for lunch -our reward.

Sadly, we forgot the camera because I'm sure that the photos would have been great entertainment for many! These are collards. The field in which we worked had sand in between the rows, and the cabbages and collards were inter-mixed.

It is so cool to know that within 48 hours of our family project, people in need are eating the cabbages and collards that we picked!

Jeremy went back to church that evening to join his middle school small group in packaging meals for Stop Hunger Now. He said that was fun too.

When can we do it again?

Ready to Adopt Again?

A LOT of our friends with whom we shared our first adoption voyage are back in it for round 2! I am so excited for all of them! It is wonderful to see how God has changed our hearts through our experiences with orphans and seeing REAL poverty first-hand. One family is pursuing a 13 year-old boy whose likelihood of being adopted was diminishing with every passing day. Another family that we know is pursuing a child who is HIV+ and is educating everyone who will listen! I am so happy that God is using these families for HIS glory by making these children part of their families!

So, we've been asked more than a few times if we're ready to go back, and for now, the answer is "NO." It isn't that we don't have a desire to help orphans, but God really gave us a handful when he placed Benaiah Meteku in our family! He is one busy boy! The challenges of home schooling have been magnified as we are afraid to leave this little guy unsupervised for more than 30 seconds (maybe less!).

We both imagine that when the kids that we have get older, we would like to go back to Ethiopia and bring home some older children if that is what God wants. Another thing that we've thought about is being a foster family. Who knows what God will ask of us?

Two very important lessons from our first adoption remain:

1. Where God guides, God will provide. We have no concerns that if God calls us to adopt again, we do not need to fear the details.

2. When God's calling is clear, obedience is the only option.

So for now, we are content with our 4 blessings, but we are fully expecting the day to come when God will call us to adopt, foster, or maybe even something we have never imagined!

When that calling comes, HE will provide, and we will obey.

Home School Science Fair

(click collage to imbiggen -check out the squirrel art by Annika!)

After months of preparation, Jeremy, Marissa, and Annika all participated in the home school science fair. It has taken me this long to recover from it so that I could write this post!!

Annika made a non-competitive display called "Squirrel Friends." We read a few books about squirrels, she colored some, and we printed some and made a nice display. She was so cute answering questions about squirrels at her display! We did learn that there are white squirrels in Brevard, NC, and they have a festival in their honor! She didn't care. She just enjoyed people thinking that she was cute!



She is cute!

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Marissa's project was entitled, "Vermicomposting: A Worm Taste Test." (No, we didn't eat worms!) Getting the worms was a big pain in the butt! I ordered some online before Christmas. As it turns out, they were in CA, and the post office would not ship anything live while it was cold in between here and CA. Well, it was December and January, and it was really cold pretty much everywhere between here and CA, so they worm farmer never shipped them. After lamenting the delinquent worms on Facebook, I had a couple of friends tell me that I could get them locally, so with less than 2 weeks before the science fair, Marissa got 1/2 pound of premium red wigglers from a worm farmer in North Raleigh. Good thing they are fast eaters!



Marissa set up an experiment to see how fast the worms would eat certain foods. It was gross. So we had worms (EWWW!), and then we had to measure the food that the worms had left. She loves worms, and even Marissa was grossed out by having to pick out the composting food and get the worms off and out of it (double EWWWW!). She did end up with an interesting project and now has pet worms.

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When Jeremy told me that he wanted to do a project involving bubble gum, I was very torn. I was happy that he had interest in something, but I also knew that over the years, the science fairs across out country had been bombarded with gazillions of lame bubblegum experiments. So, we put a twist on it. His project was entitled, "Strechi-densi-bility: Stretchiness, Density, & Water Solubility vs. Bubble Size." So, Jeremy's project actually had 3 experiments and a calculation with lots of data analysis.



We were having some major motivation problems with this one, and two days before the science fair, I was totally losing it (screaming, crying) while trying to get it across to him that he needed to finish his stinking project! After lunch, he realized that the science fair was *this week* NOT *next week*!!! AAGHAGAHAGAA!!! Jeremy did get it in gear and turned out an excellent report and an interesting project.

Neither of our competitive projects won any awards or moved on to the the next level, but we are so glad that we did it! The kids learned a lot about the many aspects of a science fair. There is WAY more to it than just running an experiment. We had to employ our math, writing, *time management*, and art skills too.

Next year, we will have some solid deadlines for every step of the projects! They WILL be great!

SNOW DAY 2010!

Well, they were right! We got a significant amount of snow! Everything for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday have been canceled, and we are enjoying our weekend off! We really could use some down time since we are all sick or getting over being sick.

Poor William has been our for 3 hours or so trying to clear the driveway. He gave up on the plastic excuse for a snow shovel long ago and has been using a flat-bladed thing he bought to pull up carpet tacking and a dirt shovel. We really could use a nice, metal snow shovel from up north!

The kids all enjoyed the snow! We have to do our best at batching it when it comes to bundling though. The kids are all trained to keep their pajamas on under their clothes to got out to play, the girls wear rubber rain boots, and Jeremy is lucky to fit into my 20+ year-old snow boots. Here is what Benaiah wore out to play in the snow:

• Onsie
  
• last night's pj's (cotton, two-piece)
• sweat suit
• denim overalls
• mittens
• hooded sweat jacket
• denim jacket with fleece lining
• knit hat on top of hood
• leather shoes

With as little snow as we get, it just isn't worth it to get snow boots and bibs.

So, we're all snowed in, and today is Mom's birthday. She doesn't have a computer, so if you could call her and wish Barbara a "Happy Birthday," she would be thrilled!

Happy 2nd Birthday, Benaiah!!

Benaiah had a great 2nd birthday! When he woke up, the first thing he said was, "Happy to you. Cake!"

We began the celebration with banana pancakes for breakfast, and then we went to Build-A-Bear Workshop where Benaiah made a wolf that we named, "Natty Wolf." Natty Wolf also has a little friend named, "Tay-tay," which from what we can tell means "no, no" in Amharic.

After another favorite meal, pizza, Benaiah enjoyed a nap, but since he knew that something was up, he made sure that he didn't waste too much time sleeping.

Mema, Aunt Patti, and our local cousins came over for chicken nuggets, gold fish crackers, and some Very Hungry Caterpillar cake. Benaiah had a fun time ripping open his gifts and being the center of attention.

His birthday was funny for me again this year. I didn't mourn his birth mother's loss as much as I did last year, but his birthday is strange in comparison to our bio children's birthdays because I have memories of their births and I don't even know what I did the day that Benaiah was born. I guess our gotcha day with Benaiah is more significant to me. We lit a candle at dinner to honor his birth mom. God bless her!

Happy Birthday, Mr. B!!

Happy 6th Birthday, Annika!!

My baby girl turned 6 years-old! Annika asked for a "Hawaii birthday," so we bought luau paper products, pineapples for the tables, leis, and of course, we had a volcano cake just as she requested! (She loves Hawaii and wants to go there more than Disney World!)

Annika was thrilled to get the Webkinz mud hippo which was the only thing that she would tell us that she wanted for Christmas or her birthday! Jeremy and Marissa got that for her.

Mom, Patti, Scott, and the kids joined us around noon for pizza, chips, dip, and the volcano cake. We played lots of Wii games together and had a great time hanging out all afternoon!

Happy Birthday, my sweet New Year's Eve surprise!

Merry Christmas 2009!!

We had a nice, quiet Christmas morning at home. LOL! Mom came over to enjoy the chaos. We moved some of our chairs in to the dining/school room so that we could sit beside the Christmas tree. I don't remember if I mentioned on here that we set up our tree in there so that Benaiah didn't try to climb it or knock it over or strip it or eat it or all of the above!

We only had a few packages under the tree since we decided to just do a big family gift this year. Marissa opened the major gift and found a Wii. (You can see Jeremy's reaction in the photo above where he is squeezing the life out of Annika!) We also got Dance, Dance Revolution Disney Grooves. So, guess what we did all day and night for the next 10 days in which William was off of work? You bet! (William and I were so sore!) We all love it! We especially love it because in most of the games we have, we have to get up and move. William and I have started doing the DDR dancing for a workout a few times a week in addition to our trips to the gym.



We had a nice steak dinner and decided that Jesus wanted a birthday cookie instead of cake this year. We sang "Happy Birthday" to Jesus and blew out a candle.

We had a great Christmas together as a family and hope that yours was blessed too!

Merry Christmas!!