The Small Picture

I teach my kids science...I know the problems with global warming. The temperature rising in the polar oceans is causing ice to melt and flooding can occur along coastlines throughout the world. The warmer climate is wrecking havoc with animal habitats and behavior. It's all terrible.

But in my little "Kate world" it's hard to not love global warming. I understand that I have a microscopic self interest, but when it's 95 degrees in April and after the soccer game everyone comes back to the house and we lay around the pool and the kids are swimming, I have difficulty worrying about global devastation. Swimming in April is fantastic!! I'm already working on my tan.
It's true that we should care for the environment and I'll be very sad if the house that we rent every year at Nags Head is gone because Nags Head is no longer a peninsula in North Carolina, but merely part of the ocean floor. But for now, my biggest pain with global warming is getting the kids to hang up their wet suits and towels and not throw them on their floor.
I'm shallow.

Visit Day

One of my least favorite, but inevitable parts of foster care is "visit day." Among the kids we've had, these days have ranged from fairly unpleasant to a nightmare. For the kids, the visits are a collision of their two worlds- each with their own separate rules and roles. I have sent in a perfectly compliant 6 year old to mom, to have him emerge as a sullen, demanding beast. It takes awhile afterwards and a few reminders that "you don't act that way with me." I've also had the unbearable task of putting a child in the car who is screaming that they don't want to leave their mom. And it's confusing to have two moms, especially when you love them both. The biological moms are at a disadvantage. They're desperate and make promises that they couldn't possibly keep....new dogs and video games and assurances that they have changed and you can't blame them at all really. And then there's my attitude. I don't handle visits well...they bring out the worse in me. I don't like turning them over to another mom, even if it is their own. The evening after a visit is never perfect. It's a good night for everyone to go to bed early.
Good night.

Why a Shoe?

  When James asked me to marry him in 1972 I said "yes!" with a caveat - I wouldn't cook, or sew and I DID NOT want any kids.  He agreed with my terms thinking he could live on love alone.
   Four years later we decided that if two were great, three would be even better and we had our first daughter Kirsten.  Within about two seconds of having her in my arms I knew that being a mom was about the best thing I could do.  Kara came along within a year and a half and our family was complete.  The girls grew and went off to school and I was bored.  God had a plan to fix that and we started foster care.  Originally we had no intent to adopt but of the 60 some kids that have come through the house, a few seemed to need to stay.  A few like 16.  

Who's In The Shoe

This is Margie our oldest.

She came to us as soon as we opened our home to foster care and didn't have a clue what we were doing.  

She smiled and I loved her instantly and do to this day.

Margie and her husband Barrett live in Florida with my grand-kids Cameron and Taylor


Kirsten is our oldest home-grown daughter.

World traveler and changer, Kirsten and her family have been missionaries in Israel, France and Chad.
She now lives with her husband Stephen and my grand-kids Eleanor, Elijah, Silas, Annelise and Jocelyn near Orlando, Florida.



Kara is our second homemade daughter.

She is so like me that it's scary but much smarter and handier with a drill.
Kara teaches at a school in her neighborhood and lives with her husband Nate 
and my grand-kids Scarlett and Ensley in Maryland.



This is Lane

Lane came to live with us as a teen but I believe she was really mine all along.
She is the perfect daughter-sister-aunt and makes everything we do a zillion times more fun.
Lane's a nurse and lives with her husband Josh and my grand-daughters Layla and Lauren 
right around the corner from us.  See, I told you she was perfect.




Here's Big Jake

Jake is one of the sweetest kids ever. 
He is sweeter than he is smart and has had to learn some of life's lessons the hard way.
He lives in West Virginia and we see him as often as we can.

Working at the Car Wash

How many Aclys does it take to wash White Boy?





All of them................ and they have to squirt each other and have a blast and it doesn't even matter if the van gets that clean.
Yea for Spring!

Blog Vanity

My blog background is noticibly plain now. It's a sad story and a warning.

I was tired of my old blog background and while we were on spring break I had some extra time to search online for a new one. I found one I really liked and started the download. As I sat watching the screen something weird and wrong happened. A page came up that said SEX MUSUEM and I couldn't click it away. There was no "Xing" it out and control alt delete did nothing. Two of the girls walked by and were alarmed at the screen. I was stuck! I finally had to turn the computer off to get rid of it. And that's when it happened. I had invited a BIG BAD VIRUS in...the kind that wrecks everything. Out antivirus software cleaned it but the damage was done. Tomorrow we have to move everything that we want to keep to an external hard drive and then wipe the computer clean. This is all giving me heart attacks. All my music on Itunes and my pictures and files and every science lesson I've written for the last 5 years.

And of course James is so pleased I've dumped on him the mechanics of all this mess.

My blog may be plain green for a long time.

a rainy day,a ladybug umbrella and two granddaughters

Jumping to Conclusions

Our new 9 year old has been a joy. He's had a little problem in the truth telling area but over all, you couldn't ask for a sweeter boy. Which made the situation today almost unbelievable.

The boys in the neighborhood were riding bikes up and down the road, yelling at each other claiming that they and they alone were the fastest...biggest...best...bike rider, ever, in the entire universe.
One kid from 2 doors down came running to our door with the our 9 year old in hot pursuit. There appeared to be a problem as evidenced by the "I'm going to kill you look on both boys face. The neighbor kid informed me that, "He said the S.H. word to me!"

I was shocked! I knew he had come from a home where words like that were more common than courtesies, but it wasn't like him to use bad language. Great...stop what I was doing to deal with this! He started crying and I told him how dissapointed I was in him for cussing. I told him that it was so hurtful to others, etc... He kept saying that he didn't cuss. I then had to talk to him about the lying issue. Why did he have to make it so hard! He kept insisting that he wasn't lying. I'm at my wits end with this boy and suggested we go talk to the offended party. I asked the boy what exactly happened. He told me the story and concluded, ".....and then he said the S.H. word - Shut Up."
Oh. Well. There you go. And don't say shut up anymore either.

Happy Ressurection Day!

(Taken moments before everyone tore off their nice clothes.)

No Fool

And the chicken this year was.........
Grace!

You'd Have To Be Crazy

Every year around this time we open our pool. It's still VERY cold here in the beginning of April and the water hovers at the frigid line.
So when our still wintry pasty white children insist on jumping in we have...
"Fools in the Pool Day".
Here's this year's line up of fools.
Only one was afraid.
Guess who didn't jump in?

Which would then make this child not a fool.

Kicking and Screaming

Unlike my very smart 2 year old grand daughter who engages in peaceful protests when she's not happy, my 6 year old son throws full out uninhibited foot stamping fits.
I think tonight it was over the Sunday School paper found in the back of the van. He refused to believe it wasn't his despite the fact that his brother's name was on it...written in cursive no less. This hotly desired paper had sat completely forgotten in the van since Sunday but he couldn't back off.
He spiraled so far down there was nothing to do but to make him stay home from Awanas. I really hate to take church away, especially since I drop ALL MY KIDS OFF and have exactly two hours alone.
So we spent my two hours together.
Good thing I love him.