Bad Hair Life

While shopping for shampoo in Wal- Mart today I noticed that almost every hair product on the shelves was about frizz. There were anti frizz creams, de frizzing gels and frizz away and frizz be gone, etc. Having frizz is obviously very very bad. Frizz is the modern day leprosy or something. In, is straight and silky...think Jan from the Brady bunch.
I resent that! Some genetic code said "curly and frizzy" when I was being made and I will never have straight shiny frizz free hair no matter how many products or straightening irons I use. And I have used them all. My bathroom is a virtual treasure trove of bottles and tubes that promised to fix all my inherited kinks and steel wool hair woes. They lied. The few times I've come close to defrizzing, I've only had to walk near a body of water and as if by magic my hair grows...not down, but out. My hair is hopelessly not cool and I'll just have to wait it out till the afro look comes back.

Schools Out for Summer

Yesterday was our homeschool group's End of the Year Party - which is great because it means it's the end of the year. For homeschoolers the end of the year doesn't mean you'll be with your kids more or less but that you have a few months of not explaining math to them. Wonderful!!
God blessed us with blue skies and sunshine after hearing my pleas about having 30 plus kids in my house.
Certificates and awards were presented pool-side - everyone played happily together from age 1 - 18. I love homeschoooling and won't miss it a bit over the summer.

On Your Mark..Get Set...

Just got back from a weekend in Charleston, capital of wild and wonderful West Virginia. Our son David ran hurddles in the state track meet. We traveled 5 hours each way to see him run for a total of around 31 seconds. He said, "Thanks for coming.", so we counted that as a good return for our time spent.
We sat in the rain for the first half hour or so and discovered that only James really had on a rain coat. Troy and I apparently were wearing faux rain coats and we had wet clothes for the next 3 hours to prove it.










It was interesting watching all the kids running although someone was checking their work email and it wasn't me.





We went to dinner at a Texas Steak House and it was going well until Troy happened to look up and spotted a long horn steer head above him. He had a nervous break down and kept as little of his butt on his chair as possible through out the rest of the meal. There was no explaining taxidermy at that point.
We were all glad to get home and today I picked the girls up from a "sister weekend" in Maryland with Kara.

Rib- It

Every morning my husband James and I get up at 5:15. He has to get ready to go face his 200 high school students and I have to have a little time before I wake everyone up here. Once the day starts it's like a train flying down the tracks till we stop in the evening. And every morning James looks out the porch window to the back yard and down to the pool. Surveying his land I guess.
This morning he saw something in the pool. Fully dressed and before his breakfast he did a "rescue".





........Lucky frog.

Loving a Bad Girl

The daughter of a friend of ours has been visiting the last couple of weeks. She's 22, beautiful, fun and does lots of things we have taught our girls are wrong to do. Our daughters enjoyed being with her but wanted to criticise what she wore, the things she said, and what she did. We explained that she did all these wrong things because she hadn't met Jesus yet. Our job was to love her in such an unusual way, that any friend of ours, she would want to be a friend of hers.... And we have a friend who could take care of all the "things" she was doing wrong. (It's way easier to point out others sins then to do the hard work of loving them in spite of them - and some people can make it hard!)
Turns out she really wanted to be loved in that way. She wanted to be around "us weird Chrisitans" and has returned home after telling someone on the phone that "she was going to be doing something about Jesus and get her life fixed". Her Dad is sad and worried that she's gone back, but I know the Holy Spirit is reminding her of something sweet that she wants and needs.
We have a sweet savior!

Don't Scare Me Like That

Twice during the day today I came across Grace lying down sleeping. Looking at her asleep when she normally has more energy then the rest of us made me so sad. I told my husband that her kidney disease must be finally taking it's toll. She's been fighting this for so long I almost believed that she would never run down. Later this evening she came to me and said she had a sore throat, and fever and I realized that she had the same flu symptoms her sister had a few days ago. I've never been so happy to see a germ spread.

I Like This Job

Today was a good day to be a mom. All 11 kids checked in..some with cards, one with flowers and one with homemade gifts. Kirsten called first...France is 6 hours ahead of us. Lane was the most excited, Kara gets points for bringing a grandchild. Margie was short and sweet. Kevin whined the most in his call. Aaliyah left a nice message. David & Steven promised to stop bugging the other kids in my honor. Kelly made sure I had nothing to do but enjoy the day. Troy colored in the lines best in his card. Two called collect from jail. Ashley was nice to her other mom (she promised) and Grace was Grace. What other job gives such sweet rewards?