Glory Revealed Tour at our Church

A few weeks ago we hosted the Glory Revealed Tour at our church here in Lancaster, Ohio. It was a great concert. The majority of songs were all Scripture....awesome. Here are two of the videos that were made by the production company that came to our church. The entire concert will go on television at some point.






This video has Mac Powell from Third Day and Brian Littrell. Brian used to sing with the Back Street Boys and now is doing Christian music.

Oh, where O where have I been?

I don't have any cute pictures right now so my words will have to do!

The Midwest Summit on Adoption and Orphan Relief took place at our church last Saturday. I think it went extremely well! We had 250 in attendance. We also had 50 speakers and 30 Exhibitors. The keynote address was exceptionally good as Dr. Taylor challenged everyone to come out of their comfort zone when it comes to getting involved with adoption and/or orphan relief. I am confident that we will never know (on this side of heaven) the number of lives that will be changed because of this conference! God is good!

We also had our 12-month post-placement appointment with the Social Worker. It is hard to believe that we are approaching our one year anniversary of adopting Sarah! Time flies! This will be our last correspondence with the Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs. No, we won't be adopting again....not from China anyway! (tee hee) China does not allow families to have more than five children in the home...unless they do a large family waiver. To be quite honest, my quiver is quivering so we will move on.

I was talking with some friends during the conference about how I had two big hurdles to clear in regards to Sarah. First...get her off of the bottle. Okay, so she was still on the bottle! It was her still on the bottle or me going on one! Quite frankly, there is only one thing meaner in the morning that me without my coffee....Sarah without her bottle. The other hurdle had to do with her sleeping arrangement. I have spent every night in her room until she falls asleep. If I sneak out and she isn't asleep....oh, my! So, I knew that as we approached the first anniversary of having Sarah home with us, I needed to take care of those two things. What I didn't know is that three nights with Grandma was all it took! Sarah has no interest in the bottle and no interest in me being in her room as she falls asleep. Go figure!

We are now focusing on finishing up school. We are busy with track meets. Tyler is in the school play this year, too.

Well, that's a little update. I'm sure I'll be posting more pics of our crew soon.
K

Peanut Butter and Green Beans

Life is certainly not boring in the Alexander home!

He is risen! Sarah's first Easter! Yes, the Easter Bunny showed up today!

Easter 2006...............we didn't have Sarah home yet!

The girls at church. Miss. Denise gave them Easter Ducks!

Getting ready to leave for church....snow on Easter?!?!

Blurry, but beautiful!

Sarah's first Easter dress! Guess who gave it to her?

Lily is dressed and ready to go!

Lily and her Easter Bucket!

Sarah and her Easter Bucket!

Dane is the only boy that is allowed to hunt for Easter eggs!

Big brother TJ help Lily in the Easter egg hunt!

Sarah has her brother Tyler helping her!

Eggs all over the place!

Sarah did a great job on her first egg hunt!

The boys had a great time watching the girls!

Sarah had a good eye for those eggs!

Keeping warm during our breezy egg hunt!

This photo looks better than the top photo! We can't imagine

life without our Sarah!

Sarah, Lily, Dane, Ty and TJ.....the youngest to the oldest!

He has risen! He has risen indeed! It has been a great day celebrating one of the most important holidays of our faith....the resurrection of Jesus! We enjoy celebrating His birth, but to celebrate his victory over death! What a celebration! "Where o grave is your victory? Where o death is your sting? The sting of death is sin. And the power of sin is the law. Praise God who gives us the victory through Christ Jesus our Lord! (I Corinthians 15:55-57).

Okay, I obviously enjoyed dressing the girls this morning! My friends at church were surprised that I even had white gloves on them! I knew without a shadow of a doubt that no one would have the same dresses as my girls! These dresses were sent to us last Summer from Sarah's foster family in China! Aren't they beautiful?! It was so nice to say, "Ah-moo bought you these dresses!" My girls are not much into bows and ribbons so we settled for a few pretty curls. The boys? Well, they dressed themselves..although I did make a big deal and say, "no jeans and t-shirts today!"

We came home to a wonderfully cooked meal by Bob Evans! (smile) It was a deal I couldn't pass up when I was at Bob's for lunch this past week! I caved to pressure from my lunchmate Susan. She bought the package, too! Call me wimpy, but it was nice to have a great meal with the seven of us and not have to stress over getting it and everything else done.

Some Christians choose not to do the Easter Bunny thing at Easter because they don't want to put Jesus in the same category as the make-believe bunny. They skip Santa at Christmas for the same reason. That's fine if they do that...that is their business. We have no problem with the Easter Bunny and Santa Clause! The main reason I don't have an issue with it is because Jesus is a part of every minute of every day of our lives. We talk about Him as we come and as we go...all year round! We worship Him all year long. He is incorporated into our daily lives in such a way that I don't think our kids will ever struggle with putting Him in the same category as the Easter Bunny or Santa. That being said, we had to find the baskets that the Easter Bunny hid in the house for the kids.

The girls had a great time! They got a little candy, a little stuffed animal, and a movie. Sarah got "Curious George" and Lily got "Cinderella III." They were thrilled. The boys still enjoy trying to find their baskets, although we are running out of places to hide them since we've lived here for nine years now!

After the girls had their naps, we had the Easter egg hunt in the yard. It is hard to believe that I had to wear winter coats on them! TJ and Ty helped the girls while Dane joined in on finding them.

This has been a great Easter as we celebrated it as the Seven Alexanders! A year ago I was doing my best to wait patiently for China to tell us that we could come to get Sarah! Time almost stood still then as the waiting was such a challenge. As my friends who have adopted overseas would agree, it is very difficult to know that you have a child that is yours, just waiting in their home country until you can come get them...and you wait, wait, wait! Here I am a year later and we are comfortably settling into being this family of seven. God is good!

TEASER: If I get time tomorrow, I will post the videos, "Licking Peanut Butter off of the Window" and "Green Beans and Licorice." You'll love them!

What a day!

I do have some video from today that I might post, but haven't gotten around to uploading them.

I have been really busy cleaning the house. I've put the boys to work in their rooms while I tackled closets, the girls room and my room. Goodwill is going to make a killing from our cleaning! The girls played in the house all day long. I was surprised how well they did with me trying to stay busy.

Tyler messed things up by putting one of my knee high hose over his head and running around the house saying, "I'm not Tyler." Sarah was scared beyond words. I was a bit mad at him, but I must admit that I enjoyed having her cuddle up to me for a good 15 minutes!

The next interuption came when I thought Tom was watching the girls. I came downstairs and saw Sarah licking the sliding glass door. I thought it was odd, but thought maybe she enjoyed the return of cold weather and the chill it brought to the glass. Not! Tom had given her peanut butter on a spoon. Sarah put it on the glass and decided she liked to just lick it off of the glass. I got it on video! I know my germ-concerened friends are probably thinking, "I can't believe she let her lick peanut butter off of the window!" I thought it was funny until I saw the bouncy horse had a bit of a layer of peanut butter on him,too.

The next video I took was Lily at dinner. We had fun video taping her eating a green bean..yes, one green bean. That is huge progress for my I-don't-like-veggies girl! Of course, I bribed her with a red licorice. You know, this cold weather has brought on some boredom in our home so we needed to create some opportunities to laugh and have a good time.

After the girls had their bath, I put them in front of the television and snuck upstairs to watch a little TV in my room. It wasn't long until Sarah found me. She loves to be wherever I am. She just hangs out with me and tells me she loves me. She worked on some puzzles while I watched TV.

It was bedtime before we knew it. I still lay down on the floor until Sarah falls asleep. I hope to stop doing that in the next month or so...I hate doing it, but I believe it has been in her best interest for now. Sarah's last words to me before she fell asleep were, "You're my best mother forever." That would have been a great ending to my day, but Lily was still awake.

If Lily is still awake when I get up to leave the room, she asks me to get in her bed and tell her a quick story. Tonight she wanted to hear her favorite story. It's about a mom living in a house with four boys..a daddy named Tom and three brothers named TJ, Ty and Dane. (Lily just grins as she tries to suck her thumb at the same time I tell the story) I tell about how this mommy was the only girl in the family and how lonely that was sometimes. I then tell her that the daddy said, "We ought to get a little girl in this house!" I then tell her about going to China to get a little girl named Yang XiaoJing and how we named her "Lily Kathrine XiaoJing Alexander." I kiss her good night and she says, "You're my best mother forever." Twice blessed tonight!

What on earth is Sarah saying?!?!

The girls were cracking me up tonight! Sarah took these end caps from our computer chair and put them up to her eyes and kept saying something that I couldn't figure out what it was! You can hear Lily in the background repeating her and then saying, "She's speaking Chinese!" I then made another video of Lily and Lily started doing the same thing, but her hand position and wording clued me in on what Sarah was saying....binoculars! They are so darn smart! Sorry for some of the potty talk in the Sarah video. Lily was sitting on the potty chair so Sarah got to "talking potty." We finished the second video on a more positive note...Jesus is our hero!

Really, we went to the zoo!

Dane helping the girls feed the bird.

Sarah feeding the bird all by herself!

Lily's turn!

Taking turns.

Still feeding.

Time to feed ourselves!

Gotta love this profile!

This one, too!

Cheesy!

Sarah loved the elephant!

Lunch!

Lily groomin' the goat.

Sarah's turn to groom him.

Groomin' together.

Nappin' at the zoo.

Well, today was a beautiful day! It looked like it was going to be the only really nice day this week. TJ is spending a few days on the farm with Tom's parents. Ty and Tom went golfing 18 holes. Dane and I took the girls to the zoo. I took a lot of pictures, but they were mostly of the girls! Really, we did go to the zoo! Dane was a wonderful big brother as he helped me all day with taking care of the girls.

It was so much fun to take the girls! The best part of the day was simply watching the faces of my girls as they saw so many animals. I wish I had taken pictures, but I was too lost in the moment. The best moment was when Sarah saw the elephant. They were walking and playing like crazy. It was so cool to see an elephant come to life for her!

They loved feeding the bird! And they squealed on the merry-go-round as I was anxious keeping my arms around both of them knowing I was going to get motion sickness....ah, but the things we do for our kids!

It was a great day!