The Bacak Nation

Our New Life

2011-09-25T09:04:00.000-07:00

(Images above: Ella learns to play in the Bacak house! I love the dress-up on her! Also, she shows off her Ghanaian superpower of carrying things perfectly balanced on her head.)

Today marks two weeks with Ella home.
I know, it's taken me two weeks to finally update, but it's been a bit crazy, adjusting to our new life.
I do call it a new life, because life will never be the same.
Much like having your first baby, life is forever changed in good AND hard ways.
Just to recap if you don't know us, we have adopted an older child internationally, disrupted our birth order, and she is deaf, so this is a special need that very much affects all of our lives.
All the changes and adjustments are complex, and I find it hard to answer they question, "how's it going?"
I usually say GOOD and HARD.
So let me recap some of the "goods" and then the "hards". Those are my main two categories.

GOOD!:
*It's so good to have Ella home! We waited for what felt like forever for her visa to come through, and it is still a little surreal that the Embassy ordeal is over and our little Ghanaian daughter is home! I love having her here and so enjoy her!

*She is bubbly and fun! I LOVE seeing life in America through her eyes! The smallest things bring her such joy! The water and ice dispenser, automatic paper towel dispenser, hot water from the sink, baths in the bath tub, riding her bike, and swimming...all bring her pure elation every time! It doesn't get old.
Deaf kids are generally very expressive, but my daughter...good heavens...SO expressive, so dramatic, such a big signer...she's just entertaining at times.

*Our bonding with her and her with us is going unbelievably well! It's such a night and day difference from our experience with her in Ghana. When we were there, she didn't want anything to do with Rusty. We never dreamed she would be the Daddy's girl she is today! It's such an answer to prayer! When we were in Ghana she wouldn't even sit next to him in the taxi. It had NOTHING to do with Rusty! She had no regard for men at all, and no respect for them. She didn't have a reason to. Respecting men is a new way of life for her. But today, she respects Rusty, she runs to him when he comes home from work and wants him to hold her for an hour. I've watched my man jump on the trampoline while holding her. He's amazing. She adores him now, Praise the Lord!
She and I bonded pretty well in Ghana, and have continued bonding even more since she's been home. I'm so thankful that this process (and it is a process!!!) is going well.

*My ASL skills are improving. They were more than a bit rusty, so I'm so pleased that communication for us is going well at home, and my brain is starting to think in ASL more and more. I have little difficulty understanding her most of the time. Her language level is still relatively low due to her underexposure to language in her life, but rising daily.
I'm so proud of my husband!!! He is signing better every day! He works so hard at signing and is doing amazingly well!

*God has provided in such a huge way with people in our life that have prepared us and supported us in very specific and important ways! I have two women who are so dear to me who have walked ahead of me. They are lifelines for me! One of these friends has adopted deaf children, so she has prepped me on my ADA rights for Ella and how to request an interpreter for her. I've done this twice already and it made my stomach hurt. People are not always excited or aware of ADA and the cost it incurs. This is why America is so great! People with disabilities are not second-class citizens! I feel so blessed to live here and for Ella to have so many opportunities open to her! But I have to be an advocate for her, always ready to defend those rights. You see why it makes my stomach hurt? With this issue and about one hundred more, Shannan and Shelly have walked me through it, talked me down from panic, given me the, "Yep...I know" commiseration, and such profound and Godly wisdom and advice! I'm SO THANKFUL for God's provision in these women, and others. Of course, for my Mom. She is my constant source of wisdom and advice. This road is hard, but God has provided people to walk alongside me and give the support we need. He is so good!

*Of all the issues that fall under the "hard" category, we could be experiencing them more severely than we are. I'm thankful, though there are daily issues to deal with, they're not worse. And sleep has gone amazingly well, Praise the Lord!

* Ella is adapting to American life so much better and faster than I could adapt to another culture. I am amazed at her adaptability at times. This life is utterly foreign to her, and she is rolling with it better than expected.

HARD!:
(DISCLAIMER: While I want to be honest with you about the struggles we face, I will not always fully disclose to the world on the internet the nitty-gritty details. I want to protect my children, their stories, and their right to tell. I want them to be able to come back and read all of this someday and not feel embarrassed or ashamed about what I disclosed. I can tell my own junk. They have the right to choose when to share their own junk.)

*Assimilating Ella into our family is harder than I anticipated. I should have anticipated this more, but I'm not sure you totally can. We have disrupted our birth order. This is not recommended because it's hard. Children see their ages as a badge they wear and they fall in line in the pecking order accordingly. We sometimes forget this as adults, but it's true. Ella falls smack-dab in the middle of my bigs and my littles. This has been extremely difficult for my littles. They do not enjoy feeling usurped by her. They have not warmed up to the idea yet.

* Trying to interpret her personality to them is difficult at times. Blending these personalities together is a challenge. We are crossing many cultural boundaries here. She is very much Ghanaian. Their culture is very different from ours! Also, deaf culture is very unique and distinct. Her volume level, her inappropriate use of her voice, laughing at things they take offense at, are all examples of issues all the kids are struggling with. This is going to take time to work through some of these issues. Much to my dismay, it doesn't all fall into place in two weeks time. In my dream world, I just thought "they're kids! They'll just play and love each other instantly!" It's not that easy. Don't get me wrong! Some of this is going well, but it's different for each of my kids. Some of them feel more love, affection, and acceptance of her than others. Bonding just doesn't happen instantly. Much to my chagrin.

*Learning to sign all of the time is very difficult. I personally find it difficult while I'm trying to teach school to the other kids. The kids find it difficult all of the time. Understandably so! Learning a new language is not easy, and it's completely life changing to have to speak it almost all of time! But it's a must. We have to all sign, end of story. How to get my kids there, I'm not quite sure yet. We are in the midst of this one, and when we arrive, I'll let you know. Again, some of them are doing better than others on this one.

*Interpreting everything in our lives is not an easy task either. Church just became very difficult. But God is providing for us as we adjust to this. We also just purchased most of the Bible in ASL that we will utilize in church and in family worship. I'm so thankful for resources like this one!

*We have the normal issues that so many international and older adopted children experience. Food issues. She is adapting better to food than I expected! She just found she likes ketchup as well as peanut butter sandwiches, which I think officially makes her an American kid. But food is still an issue. Meal time can be exhausting. She likes eggs. Those are familiar. We have literally gone through triple digits of eggs since she got here. I'm officially tired of scrambling eggs. She eats five scrambled eggs every morning! (We have documented her starting weight!) Food for these kids needs to be accessible and on-hand, which I sometimes stink at. I forget to pack snacks when we leave the house sometimes. That can bring on a breakdown. There is great security in knowing that food is there, and it's still going to be there tomorrow.

*I don't know how else to explain this adjustment time other than exhausting. This requires all of my time and energy. Every minute of every day. Trying to keep everyone together, communicating, breaking up disputes and misunderstandings, hoping to facilitate bonding breakthroughs, helping her to feel loved, secure, included, at home, helping all the other kids feel loved, secure, not forgotten...there's little time to answer e-mails, shower, return texts, and school my children! This leads into our decision to put Ella in public school. One reason: No one is getting a good education around here right now. That makes me crazy! I can't meet her educational needs, and I can't meet anyone else's. It's just too much. Also, I am not providing a language rich environment around here or able to spend quality time with her in the morning. So she will soon be starting school with the Deaf Ed program here in Bryan. It's at a great school and is a great classroom! I am very pleased with everything I've seen and learned so far! It is definitely weird and hard for me to put our child into public school for the first time. No offense to public school, this is just new for me. But I know this is a good place for her and for all of us right now, and she is very excited to get a backpack and ride the bus. She will start going half days at first, which makes it feel do-able I think.

This is not an exhaustive list of the goods and hards, but it's a start. I need to get back to my life swirling around me. I am thankful for prayers for us and for Ella!

Happy Birthday Emma!

2011-09-18T12:12:00.001-07:00

I know I need to update my blog...Ella's been home for exactly one week, and I so appreciate all of you who have been praying for our transition.
However, there's hardly time to shower, much less blog, I feel like. (Can I hear an AMEN!?)
But today, I need to pause this craziness in our life and celebrate my baby girl...my very first baby girl...Emma.
I am so thankful for this child. God has poured out his grace and goodness on her and made her His own!
She is a daughter of the King!
She loves God's Word, and many mornings snuggles next to me while with her own Bible, her own reading plan she has come up with.
The massive change that this adoption has heaped on her life could turn her inside out, but she has been steadfast this week.
Not unshaken. We've all been a bit shaky.
But she's leaning on the Lord with us and been adaptable when she probably didn't feel like being adaptable.
She loves us with all her might.
She reads like I always longed for my child to read.
(She got a Kindle for her birthday today, and has already downloaded "Pride and Prejudice" and "Great Expectations". I love it!)
She can run on all fours like a horse freakishly fast (when she doesn't have a broken arm). That's uniquely Em.
She loves to ride. She was born in love with horses somehow. She has taught me to love horses.
She actually teaches me all the time. I'm not sure who's homeschooling who?
She has her moments and struggles...because, duh! We all do!
But I adore my first baby, my sweet Emma Michal!
When she made her long awaited entrance, we had no idea what motherhood and fatherhood would really feel like.
I remember the amazing revelation of not only how much my parents must love me, but how deep the Father's love for us is.
We love you, Em. We have always, and will always, LOVE YOU!

It's our homecoming day!

2011-09-11T05:27:00.000-07:00

Watching the sunrise this morning was exciting.
Here I sit, in the same spot I have sat for the more than a month, every morning.
I have pleaded with the Lord in this spot.
I have battled hopelessness, anger, frustration, and sadness.
I have wrestled with them, and have run to the Lord and His Word.
Ten days ago, I wrote in my journal as I sat here,
"I'm watching light spill out on another morning, and Ella's not here.
She's not coming this week.
Probably not next week.
Lord, help me to trust you and your timing."
The Lord has ministered to me in those moments.
But today...today I have watched light spill out on the day she comes home.
This very day, she will be in our home! I have thought about this day everyday
for the past 113 days.
It's finally here!
In fact, as I type, Rusty and Ella are on a flight from Washington D.C. to Houston.
She is actually a U.S. citizen now. (I think. I won't pretend to understand all the legalities from here.)
She handled the overnight flight beautifully. Two more flights to go.
Today will just be the beginning of our new life together.
There is so much to adjust to! Our electronic lives take these children by surprise!
It's like us going to live with the Jetson's all of a sudden!
Things move by themselves! Escalators, garage doors, like magic.
The face of College Station, TX could not look more different from her home in Ghana.
Food. Oh goodness. Food is so hard! This will be a challenge.
And I know that some things I anticipate to be hard, might go swimmingly well!
And there will be things that catch us completely off guard!
Signing all of the time, all of us, is going to be challenge #1, if you ask me!
But all of these challenges, we are ready... I think we're ready (deep sigh and prayer)...
to face them today. We face them with great joy in having all of our family together,
under one roof for the first time today! Praise the Lord, for putting all of these children
as a gift under our care. What an awesome, take your breath away, strike the fear of God in you,
responsibility and privelege.
By the grace of God, we forge a new path today in the Bacak home.
The Bacak Nation has gone national! Praise the Lord! Today is the day!

Coming Home!

2011-09-04T07:56:00.000-07:00

Finally, our daughter is coming home.
Rusty is leaving this week to go get her and we even have a plane ticket for her to the U.S.!
We are so relieved that this waiting period is coming to an end, and that we feel certain her visa will be issued.
We appreciate more than we can say the prayers so many have prayed on her behalf.
We can't wait for her to get here! Friends and family, this little girl is a spitfire, so it's time for you to meet her!
We know getting her home is just the beginning of a sweet, rewarding, but extremely difficult journey.
But we are so thrilled to add Ella to our family, as God ordained it to be from the beginning of time!
These first few weeks are going to be overwhelming for her, and probably for us as well.
Can you imagine the culture shock these children feel?
Having spent two weeks in Ghana, seeing how night and day different it is there, I know it's going to be serious overload for her.
Every adoption expert tells you to stay home and establish a routine as much as possible in the first few weeks.
Introduce people in your life slowly, not all at once.
Keep the traffic in and out of your house at a minimum initially.
Some of the hurdles we'll face involve food, air conditioning, and of course, BONDING!
Adding an older child to your family is big enough, but adding a deaf child has its own unique challenges.
Communication as a family will be a learning process, to say the least.
If you feel led to pray for us, you can pray:
-For all of my children to learn to sign fluently and that we would all be committed to using sign at all times in the house. This is huge! (Some of my kids are signing better than others.)
-Pray for Ella's adjustment to U.S. culture, food, environment, being surrounded by SO MANY white people, and sleep.
-Pray for bonding for everyone! As Ella grieves the loss of her birth family, she has to embrace us as her family, and vice versa. Please pray for this process, that God would do what only He can do in our family!
-For Ella's schooling. There is so much to consider, and we need divine wisdom as we begin teaching her and continue to make decisions concerning her education.
-We need people in our life that can sign/ will learn to sign to be babysitters, interpreters at church, etc. We are so thankful for the people He has already provided! Praise the Lord!
-Finally, safe travel for Rusty and Ella, and for their bonding while they are there together.

I'm sure there's more, but I'll stop.
Thank you again to those who have followed this, who have prayed, and who continue to pray. We can't tell you how thankful we are!

Waiting Well

2011-08-28T13:20:00.000-07:00

Let me update you on the progress of Ella’s visa…(deep sigh)...well…there is no real update to give. She has an appointment at the Embassy tomorrow, August 29th, and we hope to know something after that appointment. However, we have learned that this Embassy is completely uncommunicative and only gives us conflicting and confusing bits of information via e-mail. So answers and timelines are extremely hard to come by.
We have been in a period of waiting. Who likes waiting? Not me! This is not the way I wanted this thing to go down. But God is truly sanctifying us during this time of waiting for Ella to come home. I pray we look more like Christ because of it.
A friend and elder at our church wrote an article several months back about waiting well. They were waiting for their baby to come home, in the painful waiting period of their adoption process. I was so glad my friend Lindsay sent me that article to read this week. Her husband Kyle wrote, quite articulately, about what it meant to wait well.
This was a good jumping off place for me this week in my time with the Lord and journaling. I decided to share my own thoughts of what God has shown me concerning waiting well, and how I’ve failed to do so at times.
Here are my five points, inspired by my friends, in what it means for us to wait well right now:

1. Waiting with truth. We need to be meditating on scripture, on God’s goodness, His nearness, and His love for us during this time. I also have put on scripture that reminds me that God can be trusted, and that our hope is in Him, not in man. The passage I’ve clung to the most is from Psalm 33.
“We wait in hope for the Lord;
He is our help and our shield.
In Him our hearts rejoice,
For we trust in His holy name.
May your unfailing love rest upon us,
O Lord, even as we put our hope in You!”

2. As I wait, I need to be making the most of the waiting days I'm given. This means being productive, present with my husband and children and the people around me, not just living for the future. I need to take advantage of the days of preparation this allows me. I found this very difficult at first. Moving on with our life as normal without our daughter felt wrong and painful. Our life is not normal. We did not just go on vacation to Ghana and come back the same. God did the amazing thing He does with adoption, where He takes our hearts and knits them together with a child that does not look like us, does not share our DNA, does not share much at all in common, come to think of it! But in two weeks time (and this is a bonding process that can vary in time for every family, every adoption, but the end result is the same), we gained a daughter that we love like we love our other children. Something drastic happened to our family. And it was invisible to everyone who saw us because we did not bring her home with us. God had to force me to get up and move and be present in my life during this waiting period and grief I felt in leaving her behind. I think this is true for many people who are grieving, period. We have had a summer filled with grief. Just to recap this summer, we lost Rusty's Mom, and 10 days later, lost my grandfather. A few days after the funeral, we left for Ghana and started the emotional roller coaster of our adoption. It's been intense! And everywhere we turn, we feel grief. But people who have grieved much more tragic losses than ours can tell you, we have to move on. I need to take each day of this waiting period as the gift it is, and live the precious life He's given me.

3. Waiting in prayer. I'm going to be honest. Sometimes it's easier to seek distraction rather than focus on prayer. Don't get me wrong, I think distraction has it's place in seasons like this, but my focus need to remain. Prayer. It's all we have. Pleading to the God of the universe that holds all things in His hands. He is good and hears our prayers.

4. Waiting in community. Even when clinging to the truths about God and being in prayer, pain exists. Real pain. It's tempting when you are feeling pain to want to crawl inside a shell and hide from people and community. I have had to force myself at times to be with people and to be real with people. I have found myself gravitating toward the people I feel freedom to be the most real with. Being in community in these times can be challenging, but the alternative is withdrawal from community, and isolation. I believe isolation is exactly where the Enemy wants every one of us. That is where he does his best work. The truth is, I need people in my life I can hurt with, be honest with, cry with, and live this life with. This is the Body of Christ. This is what I need desperately.

5. Waiting with perspective. Grief, pain, loss, and waiting can be consuming. It tends to be the first thing you think about when you wake up in the morning, and the last thing when you go to sleep. It can fill your thoughts every minute in between if you let it and your dreams at night. But I need my thoughts to be outward, remembering others who are hurting, some in far more severe situations, and some in far less. I need to force myself to draw my thoughts and attention to others and always to Christ. Thinking about myself and my emotions 24/7 is not the answer. Isn't honesty lovely?

I know these are just my thoughts as we wait, but maybe someone else is in a waiting season. I mean, who isn't waiting for something? And maybe some of you are grieving something as well. This has been a strange time in our life. We have so much to learn about waiting well, and honoring God in all we think and do! But that is truly our desire.

I hope to give a good news update very soon on Ella's visa. Will you continue to pray with us?

Waiting on a visa

2011-08-14T08:16:00.000-07:00

So, I know I've neglected to update here, as I promised I would.
Do you ever feel too sad to go public with all your emotions and tell cyberspace exactly how you're feeling?
That's been a lot of this summer, and I chose this time to revive my blog. Ironic.
But I know it's time to update so many who are praying for our Ella to come home, and ask you to pray specifically.
Obviously, we left our Ella in Ghana.
That was one of the hardest things we've ever done, to sum it up simply.
We tried to explain governmental bureaucracy to an eight-year-old for two days, explained where she would be going after we left...in ASL/ Ghanaian signs...but our explanations fell flat.
She didn't understand, and we don't understand it really either.
Our experiences with the U.S. Embassy have not been all pleasant. That was disappointing.
Everything I knew about U.S. Embassies was on the movies. Like everything else in movies, it's not quite the same.
We brought our little girl to the airport. She and I both had started crying about two hours before the airport.
I held her and cried with her right up to the very last minute.
I would sign things to her like "You know we love you, right?" She would shrug.
I would sign, "when you come to America, we will celebrate! We will have a party! I don't know when it will be, but we will be waiting for you!"
She would shrug.
She didn't know those things. She doesn't have a context for parental faithfulness. She doesn't really know if we're people of our word.
Right now, she waits at her school, in the care of her headmaster, but I don't know how she's feeling. I don't know if she expects us to come for her at all? Has she written us off yet?
I pray she hasn't.
I am praying that God would whisper in her ear, "They're coming back for you. They're coming. Just wait."
We are waiting too.
It felt completely wrong to come home and move on with life as usual.
It was wonderful to wrap our arms around our four little ones here at home! Wow! We missed those kids!
However, jet lagged parents should not be allowed to parent unsupervised upon arrival.
We were completely unfit parents! Rusty came down with a fever in the first hour we were home.
We both had felt sick, but I thought it was just that youth group lock-in feeling from "sleeping" on an airplane, traveling for 24 hours, and eating the airplane snacks and what was left in my disghusting backpack.
But when I saw Rusty with fever and ASLEEP when we arrived, I knew we were in trouble.
I thought for sure he'd brought the souvenir of MALARIA home with us.
He ached, had a headache, chills and fever. You know what that's called in Africa? Malaria.
But thank the Lord, his fever came down, and he assured me it was some other virus. Still a virus picked up in Africa. Not very comforting.
Rusty has since recovered, thank you dear Lord.
We have spent time with our attention starved children.
The giant pile of LIFE waiting for me has been waded through and sorted into piles, some of it accomplished.
Life is moving on in this house with our four children.
BUT WE HAVE FIVE. We have five children. One is missing. We left her on another continent across the ocean.
We are awaiting her visa, and then Rusty will be on a plane to go get her!
We don't have a way to communicate with her, so pray with us that she knows we are coming for her.
But we don't know when.
Let me try to break this down as best I know how.
There are two main parts to getting our little girl a visa.
The first falls under the Department of Homeland Security. They can take up to 60 business days to review her file. Yes friends, that is about three months.
They can interview all of her birth family, and anyone else they want. It would be about a 10 hour trip, a long bus ride, to get them from their village to Accra and the Embassy. But it happens all the time.
We have a great praise to report, in that we received our approval from the DHS on Friday!!! I sat shocked with my coffee and hardly awake at my computer Friday morning! There it was. I read it, reread it, and then called Rusty! Wow! It only took 8 business days! Praise the Lord!!!
Next, we have the Consular Dept. They should contact us soon and tell us what we need to do and when we can come for her exit visa interview.
We have heard of people getting appts. within two weeks, or two months. There's no way for us to know when.
We hope to hear from them soon!
Please pray with us for an appt. very soon, and for Rusty to be able to go and get our little girl and bring her home!!!
Friends and Family, you have no idea what is about to hit you! This girl is one BIG personality! I'm ready to introduce our world to Emmanuella Bacak.
I'm ready for her to come home!

Finally...a post from Ghana

2011-07-29T07:56:00.000-07:00

Akwaaba. We’ve heard that word many times since coming to Ghana. It means welcome. The people of Ghana are very welcoming, and so hospitable.
They are a beautiful people! I think the women are striking, and the children…they are the images I will always keep with me.
The women are really remarkable because they are all either wearing a baby on their back or carrying a large load of something on their heads. Or both. What are we doing with all these expensive and bulky strollers in America? Why don’t we just strap a baby on our back and go? We must seem so silly to them! I can hardly believe the loads the women can effortlessly balance on their heads. I saw a woman carrying a huge TV on her head yesterday! But mostly they are carrying what they are selling, or transporting some kind of goods.
I think I’m getting used to the use of the car horn here. Everyone is using theirs, constantly, but it’s really a form of courtesy, actually. It says, “here I come, watch out!” It keeps people in the road from getting hit. It let’s drivers know you need in, or need to turn. Or it may just be telling someone to get out of the way.
We are for sure on Africa Time. Things move at their own pace. When you visit someone, you sit, you tell them your “whole story”, and you stay a while. You enjoy their hospitality, and you say a long goodbye. There’s no “dropping by” or a “quick stop”. Some sound advice people gave me before coming was to slow down, remember TIA. This is Africa. That was good advice. I have thought TIA many, many times.
The people here are educated in English. But only the highly educated are proficient in English. Almost everyone we’ve met speaks Twi, or a dialect of it. The signs are mostly in English, so you would think everyone speaks English, but they do not.
We have felt like freakin’ Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie everywhere we go in the villages! We are rock stars! I am guessing many of these children have never seen white folks. So the children come from far and near to see us. They are so polite, and once I smile at them, they always smile back! What would we do without the magic of the iPhone to entertain the crowds of children? They can’t believe their eyes when they see a picture of themselves! And a video…that blows them away!
Ella. Our Emmanuella. This has been a traumatic week for her, saying goodbye to her family. There are so many ways to describe this girl. Dramatic. She’s a drama mama! Hilarious! Boisterous! Playful. Bossy. I think wherever she goes, she’s running the show. Natural born leader. Smart. She has the potential to do and be something great, by God’s grace! Stubborn. I’m sure that will transfer into determined! She is something else. I just can’t wait for you to meet her. Her laughter fills a room.
As Ella was feeling such deep grief in separating from her birth family, I was grieving with her. I held her close and cried with her. I felt like “What have we done!? We have just come here and wrecked this girl’s life!”
But yesterday, we visited her village and her family’s home. I am thankful for that insight. I needed the peace it gave me. There is no hope for a future for Ella here. For children whose family can’t afford school tuition, the children end up working at a young age. Some children end up in slave labor, like the children working in the fishing trade that Mercy Project is working to save. Slave traders come around to the villages and offer the parents to give their child a job. They say they will take them to work on farms or fishing, and their child will bring back money. This seems like a great opportunity! But they lie. And the parents never see their children again. The children are badly mistreated and overworked. Other children end up begging on the streets. But the lucky children get paying jobs. They are very low paying, but they can be street vendors, or work on a farm. But Ella can’t be a street vendor. She can’t communicate, and you must be able to communicate with hearing people to be a street vendor of any kind. She wouldn’t get a job like the other children. Without school, there is no hope. No trade, no ability to work. I asked our guide Peter where she would end up? His answer to me was graphic. Deaf children here must go to the school for the deaf. But it’s expensive. It’s a residential school, and it is more than her family can do. There are so many children in their home! It’s hard to tell who belongs to who. They all belong to each other it seems. Some children were orphaned when Ella’s aunt died, and so those children now belong to Ella’s Mom. There are children everywhere, and they all need schooling, which costs money. They can’t support them all. I don’t know if they can feed them all. They sleep in a small enclosure the size of my closet. They cook their food on an open fire in the open area you can see in our photos. Their bathroom is a squatting dump on the outskirts of the village. The living conditions are poor like I’ve never seen before. They had Peter, our guide and director of ACEF, African Children Education Fund, take pictures of some of the children, hoping he can find support or hope for these kids also. Those pictures you see on websites, like Compassion or ACEF, I watched them take the photos. It seemed surreal. But I want you to know, there is love and laughter in this home. So much laughter! I find Ghanaian people quick to laugh! There is real family.
They love Ella so much! They were gesturing for her to go, and to go to school. That’s what they want for her. That’s her only hope. Nothing good awaits a deaf adult with no trade school or training of any kind. Nothing good. Even with schooling and a trade, many of them will not get far. No one in Ella’s family can communicate with her. There are no signing classes for parents of deaf children, like we have in America. Many parents in America don’t even take advantage of it, but it’s available. So her discipline has been minimal. But her family loves her, and they want hope for her. They want a future for her.
Birth mothers always amaze me, because they put their own desires to have their children close to them aside for their children’s good. It is the most selfless move any mother can make. Ella’s Mom gave me her baby. She only wanted to know if we would bring her back to Ghana someday. It is our hope to do so.
I would like to write a post soon about the Ashan's Children home orphanage. It was a place I'll not forget, and they are in desperate need of funding to stay open. I am praying God would do something to save the 65 beautiful orphans living there.

Funny things I've learned in Ghana:
-I can hold it when I have to go to the bathroom so much longer than I thought!
-Carrying tissues for personal toilet paper was a brilliant travel tip I received!
-I have learned how many people you can squeeze into a tiny sedan. I had no idea!
-I have gone to the school of traffic and driving in Ghana. Wow! We have spent most of our time here in a car. We haven't necessarily traveled many miles, but it takes many hours. We have had an excellent driver who I have great respect for! It takes some serious driving skills!
-Best sign I've seen so far: "Have fun, but think about AIDS".
-The children just call out to us in Twi "white person!" I think that's funny.
-We went to the zoo in Kumasi and they had a highly venomous python in a tiny cage with chicken wire around it. I didn't get too close.

Leaving for Ghana

2011-07-24T06:14:00.000-07:00

We leave for Ghana today.
I will not write long, because I am soaking up every minute I have with my kiddos.
I can't seem to swallow the reality that today is July 24....July 24th. We've been telling people for weeks that we would travel on July 24th. I guess that seemed far away. But it's not. It's now.
I have bags packed. Full of my stuff (what do you wear in Africa? I clearly don't know!) Full of Ella's new stuff. Full of coffee creamer, because I'm a coffee addict that really doesn't like coffee without good creamer. I'll fall apart.
With a bucket of goldfish and Craisins,and food that will sustain us when we can't fill up on fish with eye balls looking at us.
My stomach is nervous. It has been since yesterday. What in the world is this going to be like?
We will meet our daughter for the first time in a little more than 24 hours. What will we say?
I am leaving my kids behind for longer than I ever thought I would. (I'm a homeschool Mom, okay? 2 weeks is like forever.)
How will they feel while we are gone? (Peace of mind for me: they are in AWESOME hands!)
There is so much opportunity to TRUST THE LORD. Trust them with my current children, and my child I've not met yet.
Trust him with every anxiety, every nagging fear, every creeping thought that if I let it grow will become a cancer in my mind of full blown WORRY.
I will pray. pray. pray. PRAY!
God has been amazingly faithful to get us this far. His hand has been on every single detail. If this thing were up to me, I would have totally screwed it up by now. This deal started more than two years ago, and when I thought it was all falling apart, questioned if this adoption would ever happen, God was at work. He was orchestrating every event to lead us to this. Looking back, it's been like clock work. Invisible clock work.
So I will trust Him. And I will beg every person I know to pray for us. So here is how you can pray:

1. For my kids while we are gone. That the weeks would go fast, but that they would lean on the Lord, and be safe and happy. We've obviously never left them for two weeks. Pray for my anxiety about leaving them and for theirs.

2. For safe travel. I am a little nervous about missing our connection to our flight to Ghana. If we do, we miss our court date! I am also nervous about the long flight over the ocean, so I'm praying we can sleep on the plane. That travel time would be calming and God would ready our hearts to meet Ella.

3. For our meeting and bonding with Ella. I have no idea how our little girl is feeling, and we can't expect her to be excited about us, but we are praying for immediate bonding, and for love and trust to grow daily! Also pray for our communication to be clear.

4. For her visa. This will require a miracle. But basically, if she could get her visa in three days time, she could come home with us. They have the right to review it for 60 days. We are the first family from our agency to adopt through the Ghana program, so we really don't know how long it will take, But we REALLY want to bring her home the first time. We have been told this is basically impossible. But we are asking anyway. Will you please pray for a miracle with us?

5. We have the opportunity to visit with her birth family while we are there. Pray that we would be a blessing to them, we could share the Gospel when given the chance, and would bring them peace of mind about Ella's future well-being. (Note: we won't be sharing publicly her "story" behind her birth family and reasons for this adoption. We want to protect them and Ella's privacy.)

6. Paperwork. Ugh. Please pray for every detail to fall into place with paperwork. Our adoption hangs on this.

Thank you for praying, and we will try to update our blog to keep everyone posted.

My baby is 5 years old!

2011-07-21T15:12:00.000-07:00

We are celebrating Treston's birthday today! I can hardly tell you how I love this kid. He's such a boy, we simply got a pile of mulch delivered to our house today for his party. When you're T-Bear, what else could you ask for? A pile of mulch and some trucks. He's in heaven.
He makes me smile and laugh out loud every single day. Last year I wrote him a birthday song. If you know our T-Bear, these lyrics will make sense to you.

Treston. T-Bear.
Everybody loves your hair.
Cute as could be, we knew you'd be our own.
Destined
for football
I'm not sure that's such a good call.
looking at you
I can't believe how you've grown!

Five years old so suddenly!
You make me and your Dad so darn happy.
I just keep wonderin' where the time does fly?
Treston, T-Bear, precious boy of mine.

Treston, the athlete.
Sure and steady on your feet.
At least when you tackle us you use impeccable form.
Amazed at
what God's done
We're so thankful for adoption.
'Cause in this family we're just not us without YOU.

Five years old so suddenly!
You make me and your Dad so darn happy!
I just keep wonderin' where the time does fly?
Treston, T-Bear, precious boy of mine.

Happy Birthday Treston! We adore you- high volume, all boy, and just so dang cute!

Psalm 127

2011-07-12T05:35:00.000-07:00

Unless the Lord builds the house,
it's builders labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
the watchmen stand guard in vain.
In vain you rise early and stay up late
toiling for food to eat-
for he grants sleep to those he loves.

Sons are a heritage from the Lord,
children a reward from him.
Like arrows in the hands of the warrior
are sons born in one's youth.
Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them.
They will not be put to shame
when they contend with their
enemies in the gate.

This Psalm spoke to me where I sit this morning. I awoke with a start and a knot in my stomach. I went to the refrigerator to take my Typhoid immunization pill. I go back to my white board and add three more things to my to-do list. It just keeps getting longer but nothing seems to get scratched off.
Last night we learned of three more government forms that have to be done perfectly to pull this off. It is a miracle we got this far, because the paperwork always makes me want to cry. I have great respect for every person I know that has done international adoption, because the paperwork and hoops to jump through seem endless to me!
There is so much to do between now and when we leave. Stress. It's sitting on me, feeling heavier and heavier.
Rusty and I prayed together last night that we wouldn't stress but would trust God. So I'm getting my coffee this morning, trying to remember that prayer, thinking of more things to write in red marker on my white board, and make myself sit down in my white Bible reading chair to visit with the Lord. I know I need a dose of His good Word this morning. But part of me would rather dive into the white board list instead.
But no, I go back and sit down. I wander to the Psalms. Do you ever have days you just need the Psalms? I depart from Ephesians 1 where I've been camping out, and go to the Psalms.
"Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain. In vain you rise early and stay up late- (like I was up until midnight getting "stuff done") toiling for food to eat- for he grants sleep to those he loves."
In vain...in vain...he grants sleep. I love sleep!
My footnote says "A good harvest is not the result of endless toil, but of God's blessing."
O Lord, I need you to help me not toil endlessly, but to trust you as I work! To rest in You!

Sons are a heritage...children are a reward...Blessed is the man...
This is so counter-culture for us. We don't see children as a blessing, but a liability, a burden.
This becomes more evident to me when we are in process with an adoption.
People tell us how amazing we are, how there's a special place in heaven for us, how lucky our daughter is, etc.
I feel uncomfortable in these moments, and probably never respond the way I should. But what I want to convey each time is,
Children are a blessing and a reward. Children from our womb, children in an orphanage in Africa, they are a blessing and a reward.
We all know they're a lot of work. True. I'm a lot of work too. Most everything wonderful and good that God calls us to is also really hard. But what a blessing! What a gift!
And just keep in mind, when my kids hear people say that to us, it sends the direct message to their little brains that they are not a blessing, but a burden.
I know those comments are meant in kindness. Thank you. But I hope our family is conveying that we are the blessed ones to have these little people. Just as you are blessed to have your little people, if you are parents.
I am guilty of thinking wrongly about this when I am annoyed, when I am flustered, when they make big messes, and my house goes from clean to post-frat party in minutes. Deep breath.
I pray He is re-shaping my thinking and yours on the blessing and reward our children are. We cannot wait to bring home blessing #5, Ella Bacak.

Getting ready!

2011-07-08T07:00:00.000-07:00

We have been a little MIA online, with no recent blog posts or FB action.
Do you ever have so much going on in your life and heart that you don't have words for it? A blurb or a post just seems wrong.
That's where we've been.
Rusty's Mom had a stroke about 10 days ago, and we returned from our Camp Ozark trip just two days into it to be by her side. Rusty was able to spend most of his time by her bedside. What a gift this was! She wanted to hang on so she could meet Ella. But she just couldn't. We spent her final days with her, and Bernadette Bacak passed away last Sunday. Losing a parent...well I have no words to do it justice...but it stinks. She was only 67. She had complicated health issues, and her body just gave out. But we are thankful for our time with her, and are missing her so much. My children are grieving with us, and Rusty's whole family, especially her devoted husband, Ray, is missing her terribly.
She was a great Grammy! She loved her grandkids, and I'm sad Ella will miss knowing her in person. But we will certainly tell her all about her Grammy, and my kids will surely fill her in. She was the Grammy with candy in her pantry and in her purse every time they saw her, that LOVED giving the kids presents and watching them play with them, and loved just sitting and talking with them.
We are sad for us. Terribly sad. But we can't help but rejoice for her, that she is with her Savior, with a brand new, perfect body. We can't wait to be with her again, because our hope is in heaven, and in Christ alone! When it comes down to the end of this life, it's amazingly clear that ALL WE HAVE IS JESUS! Nothing else matters! What we've done with Jesus and the Gospel message extended to us is IT.

As we have come home, and tried to catch up on life, we realize...
We leave for in Ghana in just over two weeks! What!? Time is flying, and there is much to do.
Check out her bunk bed that Rusty built! The top bunk is the bed Rusty built for Emma when she was ready for a big girl bed, about 8 years ago. He built a duplicate and stacked them on top of each other. Our girls will be sharing a room.

My favorite thing in Emma's room is this name board that my sweet friend Heather made for Emma's birthday one year. We decided Ella had to have one too. So with some help from Rusty and my friend Mallory, we have one for Ella.

Last night, we did some shopping to get some things ready for her. I am taking clothes for her to wear, and little things for her to do. Here are some of her cutest new outfits. (I'm totally guessing what size she is! I hope I'm right!)

Here is a book of paper dolls I bought last night. I got some coloring books and books to read as well. We have lots of hotel time, plus a loooong flight home before she sets foot in Texas.

Shopping for her is the fun part. Doing all the online classes and reading all the books about everything that could go wrong and all the hard stuff is not exactly fun. I know it's necessary, but not fun.
Having a bed ready, with sweet pink rosebud sheets is FUN.
A girl!!! We are a little heavy on boys around here. Every time I clean a bathroom around here, I have begged God to give us another girl. Thank you, Lord!

We also have made some wonderful new friends who have the greatest kids, Jian and Tanner, who are deaf and adopted. How awesome is that! Thank you, God! My friend Shelly gave us some signing DVDs that we can take along for her to watch, as well as some travel tips. Thanks Shelly!

What you can pray for:
* Pray for us as we grieve the loss of Rusty's Mom, and prepare to add to our family at the same time.
* Pray for Ella's visa to come in while we are still in Ghana so we can bring her home! The odds of this are slim, but we are praying for a miracle, so that we don't have to leave her there and make a second trip back to Ghana.

Adoption and Loss

2011-06-28T07:10:00.000-07:00

I'm a procrastinator. Sometimes. We have hours and hours of education that need to be done before we travel to Ghana, and now I'm trying to knock it all out. We are reading books, (Rusty can speed- read, and I can only slow-read; that's why I gave him the bigger books) doing online classes, and doing CPR certification. If you've adopted or fostered, you know the drill.
I did a class yesterday about adoption and loss. This is a huge piece of adoption that we don't talk about much.
Adoption is a beautiful way that God builds families. He takes little people who don't look like us and makes them our very own. Just like bio children, they are our babies, our kids, our most precious little people. It's magical.

We are excited! Adding to our family gives us much joy! Many people will say, "Ella is so lucky!" Well, she's no more lucky than my other children, or your children. We are blessed. God says children are a blessing from the Lord. We are the recipients of the blessing!

But adoption is a funny thing...in the midst of joy and excitement, there is grief.

The adopted child grieves what they have lost. They have suffered a blow, and we would be foolish, ignorant, even neglectful to ignore it. My little guys who came to us as babies, they will feel that grief at various stages of their development. There will be triggers that open the floodgates throughout their lives. Birthdays, "gotcha days", stupid kids movies that are fraught with adoption issues themes, (seriously! Kids movies need to come with a warning for all adopted kids! Kung Fu Panda- we didn't need that!) and even mention of anything related to their genetic or medical family history.

They lost a birth family. They lost a family who looked like them. They lost people they may never know. Some adopted adults would say the loss they felt was minimal, and some would say it was and still is intense. It's a loss that is necessary for what we all gain. But it's still a loss.

Adopting an older child internationally, I would think the grief is something we will deal with immediately.
She will need to grieve her birth family, her country, her friends, her culture, every familiar food, every familiar smell, everything she knows. It's all about to change.
Can you imagine more change happening at once? More goodbyes in one single day? More loss in one fell swoop?

I have to keep in mind, she might not be excited to get on a plane with these white, American, hearing people. That's perfectly understandable.

I am praying we can facilitate Ella's grieving. I pray we become, in time, a safe place to cry, to talk, to be angry, to share what she's feeling.

This is new territory for us. We are learning how to deal with adoption issues over time, as they arise, with our little guys. But we have never adopted an older child. We don't know fully what to expect.

I do expect to cry with our little girl when she cries. I pray we will be sensitive to loss, and welcoming to all things brand new in her world. I pray we will be patient, as she processes, adjusts, and adapts.

I pray God would give her a resilient spirit as she has already suffered what I deem unimaginable loss in her little life. I am praying for God's overcoming comfort to rest on her already.

This post is kind of a bummer, I know. Adoption truly IS beautiful, it's belonging, it's restoration, it's blessings!
But it all starts with a loss. And our God alone is the only ONE who can turn mourning into dancing, weeping into praise. We are praying that for Ella.

Happy Father's Day to Dad and Rusty!

2011-06-19T05:52:00.000-07:00

I am overflowing with thankfulness today! The older I get, the more deeply I understand the blessing it is to have Godly parents. Don't get me wrong...God redeems families who are broken in every way, and every family is broken somehow. But by God's grace, I had a Dad who was an earthly picture of my heavenly Father to me. For many adults who still struggle to comprehend that God loves them, I do not. (I have plenty of other struggles, friends, so no boasting here!) I believe I have always felt loved by God because my Dad so beautifully loved me. He was patient with me. He pursued my heart. He invested in me spiritually. He lovingly corrected me. He encouraged me and always told me he was proud of me. He was not perfect, because no earthly Dad is. But he loved us with a love that only comes from the Father. In 1 John it says that if you don't know God, you don't really know love. The One True God is the One who loves through us, and He loved me fully through my Dad.
One of the things that now amazes me about my Dad is that he didn't have a Dad. His Dad was killed in the Korean War, and his mother died a few years later. He was raised by his grandparents. He grandmother was a believer, and God used her to bring him to faith. His grandfather...well, I don't know that much about him. He was called Pappy, and I know he loved my Dad, but drove a truck for a living. I know he had one arm, lost the other to war. He was not always around, from what I understand. In short, my Dad was not a great Dad because he had an example to follow. He didn't mimic what he knew, or look to a role model. He started from scratch, and asked the Lord to make him a Godly Dad to his five children. What an example of God's transforming love! It sure is nice to have a Godly role model, but it's not always the reality. I'm sure God used other Godly men in my Dad's life to teach him. But my Dad's story could have ended very differently. He had every reason to. I'm so thankful for God's hand on my Dad and the legacy that he has produced in the brevity of one generation. My Dad now has five adult children who know, love, and serve the Lord wholeheartedly. He has seventeen (Ella will make eighteen) grandchildren that are becoming the coolest kids ever! We can't wait to see what they are going to do for the Kingdom! Are Dads important? I sure think so.

It's a funny thing, but I married a man similar to my Dad is several ways. Servant hearted, to the core. My husband Rusty amazes me. It requires very little sleep, a whole lot of caffeine, and a ton of Advil to pull of what he does each day, but he makes it look easy. My husband is a Dad of four, almost five little people, family practice Doctor, and an elder/ pastor at our church. A typical day for him entails getting up in the wee hours. This week he was preparing a sermon. Rounding on his patients in the hospital. (That's where he is at the moment.) Then on to whatever breakfast meeting he has for that day; mentoring younger men, meeting with his accountability group, or having a weekly elder meeting. THEN, his actual work day starts at 8am. When he comes home from work, he jumps on the trampoline or wrestles with the kids. He eats dinner with us and then leads us in family worship. I'm exhausted thinking about it! But he also suffers from a rare arthritic condition, so he pops the Advil like crazy all day to ward off the joint stiffness all over. He doesn't complain, and it humbles me when I think about what I would be like in his place. (BIG complainer!) But most of all, he loves us with all He's got. He is so faithful in teaching and loving us! Like my Dad, he is investing in us spiritually on a daily basis, he is loving and affectionate, he has made us a top priority above all of those other things. He continues with the madness that is our life with JOY. I love this man so much! I am so proud of the Dad he is to our munchkins. He's not perfect. Again, no earthly Dad is. But he is more than I could have prayed for! Rusty, I hope you feel honored and loved today. I am so thankful for this journey we are on together. And this journey of parenthood is about to take us as far as Africa together! This calling you have as a father is a holy one, it's an adventure, and it's downright sanctifying. Thank you! We love you! We are overflowing with thankfulness to God for you today!

Happy Birthday Jax!

2011-06-18T04:25:00.000-07:00

Nine years old!? There's just no way! I feel like such an old lady every time I say "It goes so fast!" But guess what? IT GOES SO FAST! The day Jax was born is a sweet memory. Well, first of all, natural child birth...WOW! That was interesting.
But then our firstborn son entered the scene, and he was a joy! He was easy-going from the get-go, and still is. This kid goes with the flow, just here to have a good time, happy to make the most of the day, whatever it brings.
He doesn't let the little stuff get him down. He is up-beat, positive, and a ray of sunshine.
He is one of those kids that loves to snuggle, thankfully even still at nine, and really LOVES to just talk. He says this to me all the time. "Let's talk Mom." As far as love languages go, he is quality time all the way.
He has recently hit a super cool stage. He doesn't smile at photos anymore. He's busy looking cool. He is nine going on 16, and is obsessed with music and especially Toby Mac.
He wakes up really early on fun days, like today. He jumps out of bed ready to go, and ready to talk. He's a party waiting to happen on any given day, but his birthday is definitely the best day of the year for him. This kid loves to celebrate! (He comes by that honestly.)
He is patient and servant-hearted, and seeing how he serves his sister, we have always said he's going to make the best husband someday! (Like his Daddy.)
Jax is a gift to us, and we are so thankful to God today for nine years with Jax!

I am pregnant with a four to eight-year-old

2011-06-18T03:48:00.000-07:00

Adding to your family through adoption has some commonalities with birthing children. The waiting period before your baby/ child arrives is still a waiting period. I don't go to the bathroom as much, and nobody asks me about her date of arrival while I'm in line at Target, but she's coming nonetheless.

When I was waiting for Justus, I very much felt prego. Well...in some ways. When I was pregnant, I threw up. A LOT. I was super sick and my body rejected pregnancy on every level. This is not why we chose adoption after we had Emma and Jax, but it sure confirmed for us that God had been leading us in the right direction. Our world came to a stop when I was pregnant with Emma and Jax, and I lay in bed or by the toilet, depressed, miserable with what felt like a stomach virus that would just NOT go away. (Young ladies, who have yet to birth babies, don't let this freak you out! This is not the norm! You'll be fine.) Was it worth it? ABSOLUTELY. Every second! But God had begun a work in our hearts before we ever said "I do" that we would add to our family through adoption.
So with three-year-old Emma and two-year-old Jax in tow, we brought home baby Justus. During that waiting period, I pulled out the baby clothes, washed and folded them, and put them in his drawers. We had the infant car seat ready. We did all of those things that waiting parents do. I threw up less, but I was keenly aware that Justus' birthmother, who had chosen us for her baby boy, was carrying him all the while. When we brought him home, we brought home our son, and we could not have felt prouder of him! The waiting was over. This was the part I knew how to do. The baby stuff.

Treston had a different story, and we didn't get him until he was four months old. There was a very short waiting period with him. We got a call about our Treston, and two weeks later- PRESTO! We had our beautiful baby boy with us. He was foster-to-adopt, but somehow my brain shut out the word "foster" almost immediately, and I felt like the emotional, brand new Mom bringing him to church for the first time. He was ours. I cried and held him and marveled at how much I loved him already.

Now we wait for Ella. This waiting period is very different than any other. We've been in this paperwork adoption phase for so long, I think people have quit asking me about it. Somebody recently told me they knew we were in process, but they never thought we would actually bring home a child. Me too, kind of! The day we got the call about our match with Ella, I was shocked! It was one of those phone conversations that went in slow motion almost for me. We were actually swimming at our neighborhood pool. I'm watching my kids splash and my husband throw them in the air, and it feels like a normal day. But it wasn't. It was the day she became real to us. I remember the slow-mo moment waiting to hear her name, waiting to hear that she was deaf, waiting for every detail our social worker had to offer. I felt a little pregnant. I had this amazing secret! No one in line at Target next to me knew. But I knew. I had a daughter named Ella. It was the first thing I thought about before I opened my eyes in the morning, and the last thing I thought about at night. I have a daughter named Ella.

As we wait this time, we are not pulling out car seats and baby swings. We've never adopted an older child, and it's a new world. In our preparation, we are sending documents, searching flights, making hotel arrangements, dealing with visas and passports, and gathering every sweet morsel of information we have about her and trying to guess her age. But my questions definitely outnumber my answers. We have just five short weeks to prepare her room (she is sharing with Emma), Rusty will build her a bed, buy her some clothes (hoping we get something that actually fits her), and most of all, SIGN, SIGN, SIGN. Our world is about to change. In the waiting, there is joy, anxiety, questions, anticipation, preparation, and a lot of prayer.

I'm so thankful for my Savior who is here with us, in the waiting.

Get your sign on!

2011-06-12T07:41:00.000-07:00

As we prepare to bring home Ella, I am trying to make the people in this house fluent in sign. This may be the most overwhelming task of all right now. Ella attends a school for the deaf right now with 500 other deaf students. She is immersed in the deaf world. And we will be bringing her home to a house full of white, hearing people. How could that not be a shock? I desperately want communication to flow easily. But this is going to be a process, and we need to be wholly committed to educating our family and friends for Ella to have real community.
For those of you who are interested, I want to begin equipping you with the resources you need. The best website I have found is Lifeprint.com. You can click here to go to the first lesson. I think the lessons are easy to follow. I want to have a class where you can come and learn and use the sign you're using, but here is a jumping off point.
I know it's not easy to learn a new language. It can be overwhelming! But let's take it one lesson at a time. And for every sign you learn, I want to say thank you! Thank you for loving us, and for loving the daughter we haven't even met yet!

My heart is in Ghana!

2011-06-10T06:25:00.000-07:00

This is a moment like on ER where they call a code and pull out those shocker paddles, and shout CLEAR! and ...SHOCK! I am doing that to my blog today. Bringing it back. Maybe not for forever, but to share our adoption journey.

Just to summarize who we are very quickly: Rusty and I live in College Station, where Rusty works as a Family Practice Doctor, and I stay home and school our four children. We have two biological children and two we have adopted domestically. Rusty is an elder at our wonderful church, New Life Baptist Church, and I also volunteer as an advocate for Compassion International. One of my biggest life projects has been Run For Compassion. It is my joy and privilege to work with Compassion!

Adoption has been a beautiful part of my life for a long time. My sister Jessica was adopted when I was a teenager. She was like my first baby. I took that sweet girl everywhere I went. My Mom has worked for New Life Children Services, facilitating adoptions and working with pregnant women in crisis for over 20 years. Adoption is woven into the fabric of who my family is.

We adopted Justus and Treston, the first of the grandkids to be adopted. My brother Brian and his wife Amy adopted two beautiful kiddos from Ethiopia, so now we have two more: Yeneneh and Sosy. They are definitely a piece of this journey for us. Brian and Amy's adoption journey to Ethiopia changed who we were and God used it to open our eyes to what the reality was for children around the world. We read a book, per Brian and Amy's request, called There is no me without you by Melissa Fay Green. God used this book to turn us inside out, break us, change us, call us.

So we responded to Him. We asked God to show us if we were to adopt internationally. We felt sure that this was where He was leading. We asked God to give us faith in starting that journey, and plunged in. We decided...decided sounds kind of strong...it was not even a question, really, that we would adopt from Ethiopia, from the same agency and home that our niece and nephew came from. It made perfect sense to us to continue adopting from Ethiopia. We began the process, and were very excited. We had read about Ethiopia, prayed for Ethiopia, learned a few Amharic words from Yeneneh and Sosy, and began a long-distance love relationship with the beautiful people of Ethiopia.

The adoption paperwork phase took over. Ugh. It overwhelmed me for a while. We were stuck on several points, just stupid things. Getting me life insurance...finding our marriage license...(I seriously went to bed one night thinking Rusty and I were not even married at all. Then I realized that we were common-law married if this was true, and that did NOT make me feel better. The bright spot was I was planning our wedding in my head.) Turns out we indeed did have a marriage license. Good news. It took us forever, and I was discouraged. I did not think of us as slackers. But our progress was slow. It was stagnant. It took us FOREVER to finish our second paperwork stage.

God had a plan.

Just after we sent in Part 2 (sigh of relief) we were ready to get our homestudy done and get the ball rolling! But news came in from Ethiopia. Adoptions were coming to a screeching halt. The Ethiopian government was concerned with some corruption discovered in their adoption processes. Understandable! So they cut back on their adoptions by 90%. This is devastating for orphans in Ethiopia waiting to be adopted. But with petitions signed and prayers for change, this is where we sat. We did our home study, but honestly didn't know what to do. Our time would run out due to an age requirement with Ethiopia before long.

We went to the Lord. What does this mean? What was His plan for this adoption? I felt like our adoption was falling apart in front of our eyes, and I didn't know what it meant.

We talked through our options with our social worker. Dillon International, our agency, had just opened up a brand new program in Ghana. They were looking for pioneer families who would be willing to give Ghana a try. We were very set on staying in Africa. So I called the Ghana director to get some more information on Ghana. In our conversation, I asked her about special needs they may have encountered in Ghana. Her answer took my breath away. She said they had really just encountered one...Deafness.

Did you say Deafness? She said that they were encountering a prevalence of deaf children in Ghana.

I was an interpreter for the deaf when I worked outside of the home, and a Deaf Ed teacher for Pre-K and Kindergarten. Rusty and I had always talked about adopting a deaf child. In fact, I had recently talked with a Dillon representative about specifically seeking a deaf orphan in Ethiopia if there was one that needed a home. For many people, deafness would be a huge hurdle to jump. For us, it was do-able. I am fluent in ASL (though I still have plenty to learn) and my husband and children are decent beginner signers. I have always loved deaf people and deaf culture! I enjoyed working with deaf children SO MUCH! It would be hard. NO DOUBT. But I felt like it was something we could do.

So we switched to Ghana. We knew we had to expect the unexpected, with it being a brand new program. We started to work on Ghana paperwork, and we prayed that if God had a deaf child for us in Ghana, that He would send her to us.

He did.

Last week we were matched with Emmanuella. (We will call her Ella.) It's amazing how much you can love a little girl by seeing four pictures and reading her medical history. But you can.

Emmanuella attends a residential school for the deaf in Ghana, and goes to her orphanage when they are on break. She is said and documented to be four years old. However, she looks much older and we believe she is older.

So here we are. Each day brings in a new piece of information that we try to digest. We are riding the roller coaster of information, about her, her family situation (of which I will share very little of for the sake of discretion and protecting her story), travel requirements, paperwork requirements, and the new 100 questions we have each day.

I will chronicle our journey here. Our projected time frame, which could change at any given moment...seriously...I could check my e-mail after this and it could shift it all around...but we hope to bring her home by the end of the summer.
We will likely travel to Ghana twice.
And we are working on getting every person in this house completely fluent in sign language! Lord help me!
Will you pray for us? For Emmanuella? For the details and for us to trust God with every detail?

This is what we already know.
ADOPTION IS BEAUTIFUL.
ADOPTION IS A PICTURE OF THE GOSPEL RIGHT BEFORE OUR EYES.
ADOPTION IS HARD, AND IT'S MESSY.
IT STARTS WITH LOSS AND GRIEF AND FLESHES OUT REDEMPTION AND BELONGING.
ADOPTION IS SANCTIFYING AND A CALL TO FAITH.

And we're all in.

(Here is a video made at Ella's school, Ashanti School for the deaf)

Let's Bite Back!

2010-10-19T18:23:00.000-07:00

Through working with Compassion, we have learned that malaria is the #1 killer among children in Africa. Almost every 30 seconds, a child dies from malaria, a totally preventable disease. I look at my children, and can't imagine if we happened to live in another part of the world, what devastation we would face. In our family, we have asked ourselves what we can do to make a difference? We can't pretend these children don't exist. We have to do something! And the Gospel of Jesus Christ compels us. So here we are, finding ways for us all to make a difference in the malaria epidimic. You can be apart of this!
It only takes $10 to Bite Back to provide a net for children to sleep under, malaria education, and life saving malaria medications if they do contract malaria.
You can donate to our Bite Back fundraising efforts at www.firstgiving.com/thebacaks
Donating to Bite Back through this website is simple, fast and totally secure. It is also the most efficient way to support our fundraising efforts. Go to www.biteback.net and learn more about what Compassion is doing!

One Act (Must Watch!)

2010-10-09T18:48:00.000-07:00

Help End Malaria - Bite Back

2010-08-23T18:27:00.000-07:00

This is a great way to be apart of what Compassion is doing, saving lives and releasing children from poverty in Jesus' name.
$10 can save a life, and allow a family to hear the Gospel. Watch this short video and learn something about malaria. I have learned so much! Why not partner with Compassion in their bite back program? It's so easy.
Go to www.compassion.com and click on bite back.

Treston sleeps...

2010-05-30T18:57:00.000-07:00

We are enjoying our seventh year at Camp Ozark, and the kids are loving every minute of it! I thought this video summed up well how hard they are playing. Who could sleep through this? Just a typical Ozark dinner, and Treston was unmoved.

My Birthday Wish

2010-05-16T05:43:00.000-07:00

Am I really turning 35? That's ridiculous, and can't be true. I don't feel that old, but I guess birthday years don't lie. So as I approach the mid-mark of my thirties, it's obvious to me that I have more than I need. (understatement) I don't need a birthday gift, but what I would like more than anything for my birthday is to raise some money for Compassion. When I consider the poverty that children are living in all over the world I must do something. And thankfully, Compassion is already there. They are doing the amazing work to release children from the darkness of poverty, and bring them the Gospel message of Jesus Christ, releasing them from the greatest darkness there is. How can I NOT be apart of this? I determined a few years ago I would not live oblivious to them anymore. I will not ignore them. Because real faith says that's not what believers do. So I want to take this opportunity, as my birthday approaches, to ask for the best birthday gift ever. Will you check this out and donate even just a few dollars to Compassion for my birthday? There has to be some consolation for being 35 in a college town, right?

2010-05-05T05:32:00.000-07:00

Moms, we don't really need anything, am I right?
There are things we would like, we would appreciate, but not nearly as much as these people would appreciate clean water and the hope offered them through the Gospel. So why not ask for this for Mother's Day? Or get this for your own Mom. I think this is the perfect gift!

Living Water

2010-04-21T12:25:00.001-07:00

Back to School: Uganda from Living Water International on Vimeo.

Chic-Fil-A tonight for Run For Compassion!

2010-03-29T06:37:00.000-07:00

Tonight, Monday March 29, we are having a profit share at the Chic-Fil-A in College Station! If you come in between 5-8pm and give us your receipt, Run For Compassion will get a share of the profit. This helps us send the more money to the Child Survival Program! (Insert Whoop! if you are an Aggie.)

Please register for the run if you haven't already, or register as a donor and or volunteer. If you donate $20 or more, you can get a t-shirt too. (You will be responsible for picking it up. I can't deliver or mail them to everyone.)You can do all of this on our site www.runforcompassion.com

I need volunteers desperately, so if you are available, volunteer on race day! It will be fun!

I have high hopes of reaching our goal of $8,000 to the CSPs in Haiti and Ethiopia. It seems impossible, unlikely, far-fetched, but I am still praying for it. I feel so privileged to be a small partner with the work Compassion is doing through the Child Survival Program. You can be too!

Defeating The Big 6 Baby-Killers

2010-03-03T13:15:00.000-08:00

Below is an excerpt from the Child Survival Program website www.rescuebabiesnow.org
Do you know the Big 6 Baby-Killers? Would you have guessed that they are all preventable? The right food, hydration, clean water, some medicine. These are all things our children have, but millions of children around the world do not. Subsequently, 25,000 children die EVERYDAY of the Big 6. Read about it.
This is why we are doing Run For Compassion! You can be apart of the solution! Saving the lives of children and helping to free them from poverty, IN JESUS' NAME! Not only do they receive physical life, they hear the gospel and are ministered to by the local church, partnered with Compassion.
Here is more about the Big 6...

In your household, diarrhea probably isn't a life or death situation. Yet in developing countries, diarrhea is one of the Big 6 Baby Killers, causing the death of 1.5 million babies every year.

All of the Big 6 Baby Killers—diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria, measles, HIV/AIDS, and malnutrition—are preventable or treatable.

Compassion, working through local churches and Survival Specialists, provides practical solutions like vaccinations, access to doctors, malaria nets, antibiotics, and education.

Be apart of the solution! Register to run or walk, or donate on our website, www.runforcompassion.com and 100% of your registration fee is donated directly to Compassion's Child Survival Programs in Ethiopia and Haiti.

Delight yourself in the Lord...

2010-02-16T05:10:00.000-08:00

Psalm 37:4 says "Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart."
Has anyone heard this verse quoted? Or quoted it to yourself? I have. And quoted it poorly. I remember when I was younger I felt like this was a jackpot verse. God was going to give me what I wanted! That's what I heard when I read it. The part that stood out to me was NOT "delight yourself in the Lord"...it was "he will give you the desires of your heart."
Wow.
It's amazing what selfish and self-centered beings we are.
It's so obvious in my own heart and mind.
I was born ALL ABOUT ME.
But, because of God's good grace, He has given me a heart that's for Him.
And while I still battle the sinful, selfish flesh, (and some days I am feeling the intensity of that battle) my heart is for Him.
God has been ripping me away from selfishness and pride, and showing me how to make the Gospel the "obsession of my heart", as Milton Vincent puts it in "A Gospel Primer" (BUY THIS LITTLE BOOK!!!)
Today I read "And He has created me with the intention that I might glorify Him by finding my soul's delight in Him and by living in joyful obedience to Him in all of my ways."
Some wonderful verses that went with this section:
Psalm 16:11 "...in your presence is fullness of joy; In your right hand there are pleasures forever."
Psalm 37:4 (I already quoted above)
Romans 11:36 "For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever."
I glorify the Lord when I am delighted in Him alone.
And here's the thing...I can be delighted and filled with the "fullness of joy" Psalm 16 is talking about, even when my life feels topsy-turvy.
Even when I don't know what the next day is going to bring.
Even when I feel on the outside, unimportant, unpopular, or uncool.
God and His gospel is my satisfaction and joy. In HIM is all fullness of joy.
I am so pleased with that Word this morning.
Thank you God for coffee and for reading this before I start my day. How I need it!

Register for Run For Compassion!

2010-02-08T05:07:00.000-08:00

I'm so excited to say that registration for Run For Compassion is up! You can register or donate today! 100% of registration fees go to the Child Survival Project of Compassion in Ethiopia and Haiti. In fact, when you register or donate, you will be giving us your race info. on our site, but then you will be taken to the Compassion site where you donate the required registration fee directly to them. ($20 for the 5K and $25 for the 10K.) That's the way I wanted registration to work this year. I didn't even want to touch the registration money. I wanted all of our participants to have the joy of knowing exactly where their money is going. Because I feel so passionate about what the CSP is doing in saving lives of babies and children ages five and under, sharing the gospel with their families, teaching Moms and Dads how to take care of and nurture their children, and providing food, medicine, clean water, job training...there's so much! I've seen some amazing videos where people testify as to what God has done to transform their lives physically and spiritually through the CSP and I cry every time. It's overwhelming.

You can pray in faith with me that we find enough corporate sponsors to cover the costs of the race. But I feel so confident that God will provide that and that Run For Compassion will be so much fun for us and for every participant.

Please, help us reach our goal of $8,000 to send to the CSP in Haiti and Ethiopia! Register or donate today! Early registration really helps us, as we purchase things like bibb numbers, t-shirts, etc. And recruit a friend to do it with you. You can know that $20 is being used in an amazing way!

If you are interested in volunteering for the race, there is a place for that on our registration page as well! We'd love to have you!

Haiti Lament (Robbie Seay song)

2010-01-30T12:08:00.000-08:00

You have to see this!

Great Article about Haitian Adoption

2010-01-27T13:47:00.000-08:00

This is a great, short article about the surge of interest in international adoption since the Haiti earthquake. So worth your time! I'm copying and pasting it below just in case you don't click on this link.
http://www.togetherforadoption.org/?p=5480

I DID NOT WRITE THIS: THIS IS A COPY AND PASTE ARTICLE!

Adoption agencies all over the country have been inundated with people calling in to inquire about adopting Haitian orphans. As I’ve noted before, the complexities of Haiti’s orphan crisis are enormous, especially when we add the question of adoption to the mix. In light of these complexities, I think it’s safe to say that it will be quite some time before Haiti is even able to open its doors to adoption again. Even before Haiti’s earthquake, the adoption process was anywhere from 2-3 years, and a difficult one at that.

Given the current situation in Haiti, here is my question to those who are interested in adopting a child from Haiti: “How long are you willing to wait to give a Haitian orphan a home?” My concern is that our compassion for Haiti’s orphans, our desire to give them a home, won’t have the necessary patience (endurance) to see it through. What Haiti’s orphans need once adoption opens back up is Christians who have gospel-endurance.

When God predestined us to adoption, there was no such thing as a watch or a second hand. As a matter of fact, God hadn’t even created the world yet! Once God did create the world, though, his work of adoption didn’t actually break into human history until after he sent his Son. When it came to adopting us into his family, God was extremely patient.

The day will come when the adoption process will open back up in Haiti; and when it does, what Haiti’s orphans will need is Christians who imitate the patience of their Father in heaven. How many of us who are now interested in adopting a child from Haiti will still be interested when the adoption process finally opens back up? I don’t know.

What I do know, though, is that if our desire to adopt a child from Haiti is fueled by the gospel, there will be more of us who are willing to wait than there would be if it’s not. How do I know this? Because the gospel produces gospel-patience.

So, here’s my encouragement to everyone who is interested in adopting a child from Haiti. First, continue giving to organizations that are providing immediate relief to Haiti’s orphans. Food, water, safety, and protection are still Haiti’s orphans’ most pressing needs.

Second, keep feeding your compassion for Haiti’s orphans with the gospel. If we are to imitate the adoptive-patience of God, it will be because of the gospel.

Child Survival Program

2010-01-20T08:34:00.000-08:00

You may or may not know, we are in the process of planning Run For Compassion 2010! Save the date, April 10, 2010. This run means so much to me. It gives me an outlet to pour into something I'm passionate about. Compassion International is doing so much in so many countries around the world, it's hard to sum up. You may be most familiar with their child sponsorship program. I'd like to also introduce to you the Child Survival program.

My brother Brian works for Compassion and is in Uganda right now. He just posted on Facebook that he held today a little one who has had malaria three times in the last year. The Child Survival Program saved that baby. He posted the link to the CSP- www.rescuebabiesnow.org
Here is a brief excerpt from that site.

3-20-2009

I still cannot believe I am going to have a baby. I am 17 years old. I am not ready for this. I’ve never been so scared. I hope it’s a boy. In my community, boys are praised, but girls are looked down on. At least if it is a boy, he could have a better life than me.

I don’t know if my baby will even survive birth. I’ve known many women who bought baby coffins before their baby was born because so many babies die in their first month. What will I name it? In Haiti, we do not even name babies until they are 5. We just call them all Ti Chape (little survivor). It hurts less that way. Will my little Ti Chape make it? I do not know what to do. That is all I can say for tonight.

Tomorrow will come.

For all of us here, having healthy babies, naming them before they're even born, it's hard to imagine this life. How could this not move us to action? You can read the rest of this woman's journey on the site for yourself.
The CSP partners with local churches to meet the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of women and children. It's named quite appropriately. It's about survival. I hope you'll read more about it and get excited about what we can do alongside Compassion!

Help for Haiti

2010-01-14T18:26:00.000-08:00

Our hearts are heavy in this house, as in yours, for what is happening in Haiti. My brother Brian sent our family an e-mail today asking for prayer for his co-worker Dan, who was there as a photographer for Compassion. He has a wife and a two and four-year-old at home, still awaiting word about his survival. We spent time in earnest prayer for them as a family tonight, and for all of the people who are experiencing the unimaginable in Haiti right now.
Here are some ways we can help. You can go to Aaron Ivey's blog (a Christian music artist) and buy a t-shirt that goes 100% to the organizations already there on the ground in Haiti doing relief work.
Also, you can go to the Compassion site or the Living Water site and donate directly to these two trustworthy and already present organizations.

More of the Gospel!

2010-01-12T09:51:00.000-08:00

I'm recommending another book, that I just started and love!!! I need to give a big thanks and hug to my friend Ashley for recommending this to me.
I know, I know, you shouldn't recommend books you haven't finished yet. In fact, I've seriously JUST started this book. But I already know I love it! It's called A Gospel Primer by Milton Vincent.
The last book I recommended on here was Gospel Powered Parenting. The Lord has really shown me that what I need more of, in parenting, and in EVERY area of my life, is the Gospel. I need to know the Gospel, the message of how Christ came to save us, and know it, and preach it to myself everyday. The more I know and love the Gospel, the more my joy and peace increases!
Just so I'm clear on what I mean by the Gospel, here is a passage of scripture where Paul clearly outlines the Gospel, in Ephesians 2. (Jeanna and I are memorizing this right now.) Here Paul is preaching the Gospel again, to believers, as he so often does in the epistles.
Eph 2:1-10
As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
NIV

In the introduction of this book, the author says that we have mistaken the Gospel for the message we accept at our conversion, and then move on to "bigger and better" spiritual things. However, what we really need is a deeper knowledge of, affection for, and understanding of the Gospel, day by day! I read recently that if you think you fully grasp the Gospel, you probably don't. The Gospel message is so deep and rich that there is more to dig into everyday.
This book breaks the Gospel message into pieces and gives you scriptures referenced below each section to go over. I am so looking forward to taking in the Gospel message, piece by piece, and knowing it more deeply. This morning I got a LOT out of what I read and the passages that it sent me to read in the scripture. Isn't this what we all need more of?
Yes! I realize when my children sin, they need to hear the Gospel from us. There is redemption, forgiveness, freedom from trying to be good on our own...there is so much there for us to share with them.
When I am in sin, I need- the Gospel.
When I am condemning myself for my sin- I need more of the Gospel.
When I am relying on myself to do something- I need a dose of the Gospel.
When I might fall into legalistic thinking- yep, the Gospel.
When I am prideful, the Gospel.
When I resist forgiving, even for a millisecond, Gospel.
Are you catching me? It makes me excited just writing about it. God is so good, rich in mercy, full of grace, the Gospel message is truly GOOD NEWS.

We're horse owners!

2009-12-29T15:34:00.000-08:00

I think Christmas 2009 may be burned into the memory of my nine-year-old daughter. The year she got a horse for Christmas. That's an unbelievably extravagant gift, I know. And not one we made hastily, I assure you. This has been a decision, years in the making.
We've been riding at our beloved Carousel Acres since Emma's third birthday. I think it's unbelievably rare to find out what a child is passionate about and gifted at when they are that young. It sounds kind of strange to say she started riding when she was three, but we felt we could hardly keep her away from horses. She was born obsessed, literally, before she could talk. She had a way, as a toddler, with these huge animals, and she was this tiny little girl. She had no fear, only affection for them, and they seemed to feel the same for her. She started lessons with Mr. Brad at Carousel Acres where she rides Peruvian horses. (These horses are gaited horses, and have a very smooth movement for the rider.) We've been out there ever since.
Subsequently, we've been riding lesson horses for more than six years. Lesson horses are good for a season, but when she started showing at Peruvian shows a few years ago, I began to realize the difficulty with staying with a lesson horse. A lesson horse is used to being pulled, yanked, and basically abused by numerous little riders, learning to reign, ever NOT so gently. They become immune to proper reigning after a while, and I personally grew weary of my daughter on difficult horses, especially in the show arena, where she didn't have a chance on them.
We began to pray about purchasing our own horse to board at Carousel Acres. This is a big financial commitment, and responsibility. We leased several horses in search of the right one. We prayed for many months about the cost, if this was a wise use of our money. Ultimately, we felt that investing in Emma's gift and talent, as she continues to grow and mature, is a good investment. One Dad put it to us simply. He said "Let me tell you the best part; my daughter is fourteen and she doesn't give a second thought to boys." I think that may have sold Rusty! Girls and horses, they are something! A girl who loves her horse and spends her time on a horse, caring for a horse, being responsible for her animal, is time well-spent.
I am so glad that God has given Emma this gift with horses, and we seek to show her how to use all her gifts and talents for God's glory! We talk about this frequently. He's also given us a little "horse community" which is a sphere of influence within out community. I pray God uses us there! As for me, I'm learning more everyday about being a horse Mom. My friend Shannan is a natural horse Mom, me not so much. Everything I know, I've learned over six years time. I'm getting there! On Christmas day, we went out for Emma to ride her new horse, and she rode around the arena while Rusty and I mucked the arena. (Yes, scooping horse poop.) Rusty looked at me and said "Who ARE you!?" I looked at him very solemnly and said "I'm a horse Mom."
So meet Virrenya, the newest member of the family! She and Emma are precious together.

Taking a holiday from what?

2009-12-27T08:44:00.000-08:00

The final lighting of the middle candle on Christmas Eve!

Our kids in their Christmas p.j.'s just before going to Santa's Wonderland.

Oh, how I love the holidays. For so many reasons. I feel like this year has been one of our best Christmases ever! Excluding one trip to Wal-Mart that will go down in history as one of the worst two hours of my life, this holiday has been restful and worshipful. That's a difficult combination to find in a house like ours.
If you're a student, Christmas BREAK is definitely a break! It's the sweetest time of year (unless you're one of those insane in the membrane people who take a mini-mester nightmare in December) where you have NO work hanging over your head. No paper looming, no tests, no reading, nothing. I remember that feeling. It's an unparalleled time of relaxation in your educational career. Enjoy it now, young friends!
When you're a grown-up, and you have a grown-up job, you might get time off. When I was a teacher, I vividly remember my break. It was pre-kids for me. So I recall staying home in my P.J.'s and baking Christmas goodies all day, watching Christmas movies, while Rusty was at work. It was so relaxing, and a blissful break from a fun but very stressful job.
When you're a Mom, there are not the same kind of holidays from our "work." My job as a domestic engineer is managing and cleaning my home while also trying to spend meaningful time with the kids. Does anyone else feel the tension in that challenge? I actually wrote "Do fun stuff with the kids" on my white board to-do list, because it's too easy to get caught up with laundry, cleaning, baking, cooking, and forget those little people who want to play games and do creative things. I want to do that too! As a homeschool Mom, any break we take from school is a time to clean. I don't have time to clean out my refrigerator or wash and scrub the walls on a daily school day basis. So that's what I've been trying to achieve. It's not the same as a Christmas break, you know what I mean? Christmas break can be awesome, or it can be chaos. I personally wither spiritually in the chaos. This year has been so good and here's a few reasons why.

So what do we break from?
This year, this was our question. Even though I have been cleaning, baking, cooking, I have also had restful, worshipful, fun time at home. Rusty and I have been thinking for weeks now about how to "holiday" without taking a holiday from things that matter most.
Our men's group met earlier in December to talk about leading their families spiritually during the Advent season without taking a holiday from spiritual things.(I'm so thankful for these guys!!!) Sometimes, when we get out of our routines, we inadvertently holiday from things like prayer, time in the Word, spiritual disciplines. Not things done out of legalistic rules, but things we do to maintain a close relationship with the Lord. The fuel we need spiritually, that keeps me going, keeps me focused on Him and not me. How quickly the focus can shift back to me when I forget to feed myself spiritually! I don't know about you, but I need His Word, I need to pray, I need to be thankful to Him, I need HIM!
So we're learning, when we vacation or have a holiday of some kind, we have to intentionally take breaks from some things. Some kinds of work. School work, which is kind of hard for me, but honestly, I've enjoyed it. Rusty's work. He needs the break. Of course our home, house work is still here, but it can be a joy to do together! We can take a holiday from BLOGGING which I obviously have. A break from FACEBOOK, which I pretty much have as well. We've tried to break from things that take up our time and energy.

Adding Advent and 40 Days of Prayer
I love that our church is in the middle of our 40 days of prayer and fasting during this season. It may seem like an odd time to do this as a church, especially as more than half of our church just left town to go home for Christmas break! But I think it's helped me focus on what I need the most! I hope it has for our students as well.
We also have done Advent family worship this Advent season. If you're like me, and grew up Baptist, you maybe are not familiar with Advent. But in the past few years, our family has taken advantage of this time of preparation for Christmas. No longer will we walk into a Christmas Eve service, trying to focus for the first time that season on it's meaning and full purpose. But it can also be hard to be diligent during busy December to our Advent worship. I love that Rusty didn't allow us to break from Advent, even during a bad virus we passed around and when we travelled! (We found Advent will travel. Flashlights and nightlights make good makeshift Advent candles!) Rusty kept us focused on the reason for this holiday. This Advent season with the kids was awesome! Even little Treston knew the names of the candles, and could answer questions during our Advent family worship times. It didn't always go perfectly, mind you. Far from it. Rusty and I laughed about some of the "Advents gone wrong" moments. I wish I had clips from our Advent bloopers to show you. If our whole life was video taped and we could go back and watch the highlights and bloopers, the Bacak clips would be very entertaining. Things like "Hark the Herod angels sing"...Justus was slightly confused on that song. But I love singing Christmas songs for worship, and what group of little boys doesn't love family worship with FIRE! That's like the ultimate for them.

Rest and Fun
We've enjoyed some amazing rest time this past week. Rusty got two days off from work, which has been AMAZING! (He's been on call the whole time, but still home with us, which ROCKS!) It's been restful, having both of us home, enjoying the kids, working in the house together, and doing fun stuff as a family! We did some just-for-fun stuff, and stuff that was meaningful. It's my hope we're making snapshots of memories for our kids. This year, we watched the movie "The Nativity Story" together as a family, and I think that's our new Christmas tradition. That was really neat, and brought the story to life for all of us. Again this year, we went to the nursing home on Christmas Eve to visit our beloved Mr. Gruner and some other residents. That makes our Christmas hopefully as much as it makes theirs. On Christmas Eve night, we bathe the kids and then they come out all drippy in their towels, to find new Christmas p.j.'s that have magically appeared in their stockings. (Okay, they know it's me.) They put on their new p.j.'s and we actually make hot chocolate for everyone and brought along the hot drink dispenser for refills, take blankets, and get in the van for a drive-thru of Santa's Wonderlands lights. (This plan was great last year, but this year Emma, who didn't wear shoes, had to find a port-o-potty for an emergency potty break. She had to put on her Dad's size 12 shoes to go in, since the rest of us were barefoot or wearing house shoes. Yuck!) We came home for our Christmas meal, Advent, and sit by the fire time. We also like to go to the movies together on Christmas night. While we watched a painful kids movie for us parents this year, the kids so enjoyed it. We've hit the amazing long awaited stage with our kids where we can all sit in a movie together. That's fun for all of us! I made some yummy Christmas meals, that were pretty darn easy as well. I think I'll post those later this week. Oh, and we made gingerbread men, which were very fun and messy to make with the kids, and fun to decorate, but it was my first time to make them and I will definitely be tweaking the recipe. They were a little too "spicy." We got to visit with Rusty's family, and even Treston's birth family, and the Seay family gathering is coming this week. This is all fun family time for us.

"Fail to plan and we plan to fail"
I think that's become one of my life mottos. It's not the Bible or anything, but it just seems to ring true in my life. We've learned more this year about not "breaking" from spiritual things while we're out of our routine, and planning has definitely contributed to that. Rusty and I took a date night to discuss this early in the month, and I think the preparation for this has made a difference. In some previous years, I think we have done this all wrong, due to lack of preparation and intentionality. We would end up frustrated with the kids, irritated with the chaos, and our time off seemed fruitless. But we are learning, year by year, and this year has been so good, and I'm so amazingly thankful! Around this house, it's still Christmas until New Year's, so Merry Christmas friends!

We're running the rock...

2009-12-12T05:08:00.000-08:00

That's right. Tomorrow (Sunday) Rusty and I will be running the White Rock half marathon. This is a race I've always wanted to do. I love to run in the cold, so a race in December is perfect for me. I'm running with Rusty, which I'm very much looking forward to. And thought this is our third half marathon, we are nervous!
We have been sick with a nasty cold for the last two weeks (downside to a December race, I've learned.) And if you are a runner, you know it only takes two weeks of not training to trash all of the endurance you have built up.
BUT- God is good about making sure this running thing keeps me dependent on Him. Because once again, even though this is my third half, I'm just as in need of Him as I was in our first race. Last spring, when I did the Nashville music city half marathon, my knees were about to explode and it was painful to even walk. And God was SO AMAZING to me! He gave me a great race I was able to do with my older brother Brian, and it was an unforgettable experience.
Here I am again, as needy as ever, for the Lord to help us do this. We are still coughing, haven't trained enough lately, and the list goes on. But we are going and I fully expect to make it and have a good time.
Let me remind you...I am not some super runner that has been built to run, former track star, natural athlete. Actually, it made me laugh outloud to type that sentence. Anyone who has known me for a long time would laugh too. This girl didn't run. EVER. In fact, exercise was just one of those things I tried to do, but felt like a big fat failure. After we got married, I definitely put on some pounds and was over weight and wanted to get it off, but felt so overwhelmed by it. I didn't know how to make exercise a real part of my life.
I never, ever thought it would be running. I didn't run. So I started with Jazzercise. Laugh if you must (and I understand, YOU MUST) but that's where I started after I had my first baby. And it was so hard, I would turn purple by the end and thought I would die. Every time. But I stuck with it. And something crazy happened. I was consistent for six to eight weeks, going about three times a week, and the pounds started to come off. And they kept coming. I was learning about how to be consistent and work hard for this, but the Lord had even more work to do in my heart.
And then, my husband was jogging, and I just decided I wanted to go with him. I like him. I wanted to share that with him, so I tried. And I started small, but I worked my way up to jogging with him, and I couldn't believe I was doing it. After a few years of Jazzercise, it was just too easy. I kind of graduated to something else. We also were adding children to our home rapidly and didn't have as much time as I used to. I found that running, while it was hard and not as fun as "shaking it" at Jazzercise, it was the most time efficient way to get a cardio work-out in.
God started doing in me what I thought I could never do. I found I could easily make exercise an idol, or make weight loss an idol. He had to show me how to keep my heart in check there. (How quickly I can go from one extreme to another!?) Finding that sweet spot of caring for my body, fighting against diseases like diabetes and other obesity related issues that were for sure looming in my future, needed to be part of it. But I think what I enjoyed most is seeing God do things in me that I never dreamed I would be doing. His dreams are always so much bigger than mine. What He has done in me or given to me by His grace, totally overshoots what I would have imagined.
I keep that in mind when I do any race. God is good. And He shows me spiritual truths everytime I do a long, hard run. I can't run uphill without thinking about perseverance as talked about in the New Testament. I pray as I struggle to breathe and keep my legs moving, 'show me how to persevere, Lord'. Endurance, discipline, these were all things missing from my physical and spiritual life once upon a time. God is such a good and loving Father to make me more like Him in these ways! He's NOT DONE. There is more work to do, I assure you. But it's all Him, and I am grateful.

Go to Spoons for Run For Compassion!

2009-12-10T08:46:00.000-08:00

Our first official fundraiser for Run For Compassion is here! Help us get started on Run for Compassion 2010. We have doubled our goal this year to $8,000 and we have every intention of making this year's run measure up to that goal. Here's the info...

When:
Friday, December 11, 2009
Time:
12:00pm - 1:00pm
Location:
Spoons
Description
This profit share is to help us raise money for Run for Compassion, April 10, 2010. Run for Compassion is a 5K/10K/fun run to raise money for children in Ethiopia through Compassion International's Child Survival Program. The Child Survival Program works with expectant mothers and kids from babies to five year olds to combat the high rate of infant mortality.

Watch this video to learn more:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_xTwOfbq0Q

Students, please take a break from finals and come help us help babies in Ethiopia!

I'm still crying from laughing so hard...

2009-12-08T10:25:00.000-08:00

This picture is of my longtime friend Jeremy Jansen, and his beautiful wife. I can't stop laughing, like ab work-out laughing from this photo he put up on facebook. (I put the normal beautiful family pic up, too, so you could see how attractive they are normally.) Evidently, they went to an ugly sweater Christmas party, which I am now dying to have. From now on, that's the only kind of Christmas party I want to have! Seriously! I love this!
I haven't had time to write about real stuff lately. I want to write about Treston's recent "Gotcha' day!" But my little people could set the house on fire if I sit here too long. Maybe later.
Did you see the sweater on the dog?! Seriously, crying!

Child Survival Program

2009-11-30T05:35:00.000-08:00

This is a short and powerful video from Compassion about the Child Survival Program. This is what Run For Compassion is ALL ABOUT. I can't watch this video without crying. We are so moved by what Compassion is doing through the CSP. The statistics are staggering. We are enjoying the perfect health of so many of our sweet little ones, but the mortality rate of children under the age of five just across the ocean from us is unbelievable. Please join with us in Run For Compassion, and if you're local here, you can partner in with your time as well! Now, watch...

Happy National Adoption Day!

2009-11-20T18:05:00.000-08:00

Today is National Adoption Day. Let me state the obvious. We love adoption. It's a huge part of our lives. It's become a huge part of the lives of families around us. Our sweet friends the Feldmans finalized their adoptions of Catalina and Celeste Feldman today. This day is a day to remember forever for their family! I look around us at church and am in awe of what God has done, moving in the hearts of families we love concerning adoption. He continues to move. The adoption ball keeps rolling around us.
I pray Christian families are asking God what role they play in his ministry to orphans. I pray we are asking God what role we play as professed "Pro-Lifers." I wouldn't presume that adoption is for everyone, but please know that there are crucial roles for all of us. If we did our part, New Life Pregnancy Center and adoption agency would never be low on money. But they are. If we did our part as the church at large, a Christian family would never be deterred from adopting because of finances. But they are. I love my church so much! They are in the process of setting up an adoption fund for church members who want to adopt. That is the body of Christ working for His kingdom! It blesses me to see how much our church cares about adoption and these little ones! I could cry at any given moment thinking about it!
I hope and pray, as people see our family and wonder about us, (because they do wonder about us...of this I'm certain) that they see Christ, and they see that we are no better or nobler than anyone else. But we were called to adopt. We heard that call and we are so blessed because of it! We will continue to listen to the Lord's voice in how He may want to grow this family. It's all up to Him!
Praise God for adoption! Praise Him for these precious children added to our families! Praise Him for the birthparents who are being loved and exposed to the gospel through these families! Praise God for agencies like New Life! I am thankful for all of this that God and God alone has accomplished!
Most of all, praise our God for adopting us as His beloved children through the blood of His Son Jesus Christ. Adoption is the word used in the scripture for those who have put their faith in Him, and it's irrevocable, it's forever, it's permanent.
Let's celebrate adoption today!

Gospel Powered Parenting by William P. Farley

2009-11-17T04:55:00.000-08:00

This is the best parenting book I've read yet. I know that sounds extreme, and I'm only through chapter four, but I love the approach to this book and everything about it so far. I feel like I can never say that about a book or writer! There's always a clause, a caveat, some kind of disclaimer. Maybe it's coming. But the title alone speaks accurately as to what this book is all about.
It's about the gospel.
The subtitle is "How the gospel shapes and transforms parenting."
Discerning Reader gave it this rave review.
But let me tell you why I like it...this book proposes that all we need for our parenting instruction is in the gospel. The heart of the gospel, if it drives us, if it informs our theology, if it shapes how we think, respond, instruct, correct, and live life as parents, is our complete parenting manual.
I feel like I could take a deep breath when I read this. I don't need a new method, I don't need to adopt someone else's style, and if our home is gospel-centered, I haven't missed the boat because I was caught unaware of the elusive methods of Godly parenting. It's all there, in the gospel.
However, what we need is to dive deep into the cavernous depths of what the gospel is and means. If you grew up in the church, you may remember the gospel message, when delivered in a sermon or somewhere else, tuning out, thinking "Yeah, yeah, I know this." I knew it was life-changing, but I hadn't done enough "gospel realizing" as Tim Keller puts it, to let it begin to soak in. I love how Farley says we don't need parenting books on technique because we act out of our theology, what we think about God and ourselves, and that is how we parent. What we need is right theology, an accurate view of ourselves before a holy God, and an ever-deepening grasp on what He did for us in putting all of our sin and thus His wrath on His Son Jesus in our place...His infinite love and astounding grace.This parenting book is covering the fear of God (and what that really means), God's holiness, His grace...and I'll have to keep reading to see how he extrapolates these things to parenting further.
He also continually shifts our focus of parenting as eternal. He says "Christian parenting is the process of preparing our children for the day of judgment." Our greatest goal for them is regeneration, where God and God alone gives them a new heart that loves Him and fills them with the Holy Spirit, giving them the power and desire to do what pleases Him. There is nothing, NOTHING, we can do to regenerate our children. But He points out that God chooses to use parents as the primary medium to evangelize our children.
There's so much good in this book, I can't write it all here. But I do highly recommend it, and would love to hear your thoughts on it also.
I'm discussing it with a small group of Godly women, and our discussion was as fruitful for me as the reading. God is using this book and other things to continually bring us back to the truth: Our lives need to be totally Gospel-centered and gospel-powered. There is such peace and joy in this!

2009-11-11T15:29:00.001-08:00

This cute idea was not my own. They rarely are. I think this came from Kendra, or Ashley. Not sure which, but they both have a cute thankful tree in their house too.
I loved this idea! We really try to focus on thankfulness during this season. Well, we need it year-round, but thank goodness, there's a holiday that helps us in the discipline of thankfulness.
Our theme verse this time of year is Col 2:7
Let your lives overflow with thanksgiving for all he has done.
I do believe that thankfulness is a discipline that needs cultivating in our lives.
I'm appalled at my own absence of thankfulness in moments of complaining and irritation. I need to put on thankfulness, as we say so often around here.
So we love the thankful tree! The kids each have their own color leaves, and each night we write what they are thankful for today on them and put them on our colorful tree. Rusty and I write ours on the tree trunk. We are kind of the "trunk" of this family...and my hands were crippled from cutting leaves.
Some of my favorites have been, I'm thankful for "monkeys" "I like Emma" "doing homeschool" "a happy family and happy parents".
I love this new tradition! (Thanks for sharing Kendra and Ashley!) Happy Thanksgiving season, folks!

Leader of the Day

2009-11-07T18:25:00.000-08:00

(photo above by Ryan Price Photography-check out his website! www.ryanpricephoto.com)
There are a million little tips out there that can help us run our homes smoothly. The more children we have, the more organized and creative we need to be to reduce the chaos. I love those little brilliant ideas that change your life. So in hopes that you all will share yours with me, here is one that we love.
I can't remember where I got this idea. I would give credit where credit is due, if only I could remember who it was due to. I think I read this in a magazine. Once upon a time, in a former life, I read magazines. I had more time to read for leisure then. I used to even have a subscription to Southern Living. Those were good times.
Anyway, I loved this idea and remembered it for years and we started doing it a year or so ago.
We have a leader of the day. Sun. is Treston, and Emma is Monday and Thursday, Jax is Tuesday and Friday, and Justus is Wed. and Saturday.
When you're leader of the day, you get the special priveleges, and special jobs.
For example you could choose the morning cartoon, or you would set the table.
Any special privelege opportunity that might arise immediately goes to the leader of the day rather than the kids squabbling about it.
I also grab the leader of the day when I need something done.
The Leader has daily leader jobs, such as gathering all of the laundry from all the baskets each morning and sorting it, wiping down a bathroom, and taking the sheets off of his bed to be washed (ensuring everyone's sheets get washed once a week).
The kids also get to spend their "nap" time (no one naps but Treston but they are supposed to be quiet and read in their room) in the play room.
The kids LOVE to be the leader, and it solves any dispute over who gets the special priveleges or chores. It's a great system that works well for us, so I thought I'd share it.
One day, and I don't know when, Treston will realize that he only gets to be the leader once a week, and he'll have to be okay with that until God adds another day to the week. For now, this system holds nicely.

Halloween 2009 slideshow

2009-11-03T05:02:00.001-08:00

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Director of Planned Parenthood resigns, Change of Heart!

2009-11-02T12:33:00.001-08:00

*This was a recent article in our paper. It seems the prayers of the faithful people on the sidewalk outside Planned Parenthood have been fruitful! This is AMAZING!

Planned Parenthood has been a part of Abby Johnson's life for the past eight years; that is until last month, when Abby resigned. Johnson said she realized she wanted to leave, after watching an ultrasound of an abortion procedure.

"I just thought I can't do this anymore, and it was just like a flash that hit me and I thought that's it," said Jonhson.

She handed in her resignation October 6. Johnson worked as the Bryan Planned Parenthood Director for two years.

According to Johnson, the non-profit was struggling under the weight of a tough economy, and changing it's business model from one that pushed prevention, to one that focused on abortion.

"It seemed like maybe that's not what a lot of people were believing any more because that's not where the money was. The money wasn't in family planning, the money wasn't in prevention, the money was in abortion and so I had a problem with that," said Johnson.

Johnson said she was told to bring in more women who wanted abortions, something the Episcopalian church goer recently became convicted about.

"I feel so pure in heart (since leaving). I don't have this guilt, I don't have this burden on me anymore that's how I know this conversion was a spiritual conversion."

Johnson now supports the Coalition For Life, the pro-life group with a building down the street from Planned Parenthood. Coalition volunteers can regularly be seen praying on the sidewalk in front of Planned Parenthood. Johnson has been meeting with the coalition's executive director, Shawn Carney, and has prayed with volunteers outside Planned Parenthood.

On Friday both Johnson and the Coalition For Life were issued temporary restraining orders filed by Planned Parenthood.

Rochelle Tafolla, a Planned Parenthood spokesperson issued the following statement: "We regret being forced to turn to the courts to protect the safety and confidentiality of our clients and staff, however, in this instance it is absolutely necessary."

The temporary restraining order contends that Planned Parenthood would be irreparably harmed by the disclosure of certain information, but does not bar Johnson or Coalition For Life volunteers from the premises.

As of Sunday evening, neither Johnson nor Carney had seen the complaint filed against them that prompted the restraining order.

A hearing about the order has been set for November 10.

Fall Family Fun Day 2009!

2009-10-29T14:42:00.000-07:00

Make a Smilebox slideshow

We love FFFD! It's one of my favorite days in the Bacak fam.
This was our seventh annual Fall Family Fun Day! I can't believe it!
It starts in the pumpkin patch.
I love pumpkin patch pictures.
The colors are unbeatable.
Then there's caramel apples.
The caramel apples were best ever this year! I made the caramel sauce with the wrapped caramels in a bag and added half and half to it. It melted into the best caramel we've ever made on FFFD. I have fine tuned the caramel apples for the least amount of mess and sticky as possible, and have increased the caramel to apple ratio. Cutting the apples just makes more sense. Everyone got their own caramel bowl this year, which was brilliant.
The pumpkin decorating and carving is fun too!
Enjoy the slideshow.

Run For Compassion 2010

2009-10-29T05:38:00.000-07:00

Our first Run For Compassion was last April, as some of you remember. It was a special time for this family as we gave our all for a cause that has moved us. We sponsored a Child Survival Project in Ethiopia from this run, and because of so many of you, sent almost $4,000, which was wildly exciting! Here is an excerpt from our Run For Compassion website about the CSP...

The Child Survival Program through Compassion is saving the lives of children. You can sponsor a child, beginning at age five, through Compassion. We do, and we highly encourage you to do the same! But the mortality rate is so high for children under the age of five, they have to live to five first. That’s where the Child Survival Program comes in. This is straight from their web site. Tragically, nearly 27,000 children under age 5 die every day, mainly from preventable diseases and related causes. Through the Child Survival Program (CSP), Compassion is battling for the lives of vulnerable children and their caregivers, providing: prenatal care ongoing health screening infant survival training for mothers and caregivers spiritual guidance and education Help save lives. It’s hard to sum up everything a Child Survival Project is doing in their work with children and mothers or caregivers, but in short, they are doing all that it takes to give them life, and not just physical life. Spiritual life as well. Your registration fee will not just possibly make a difference. It will make a difference. Lives will be saved and people will come to know Jesus as their Savior. What better reason could we have for running for Compassion? A couple of Christmases ago, my Mom and Dad decided our family was going to raise money for the Child Survival Program. My Mom’s life work is at New Life, a pregnancy Crisis Center and adoption agency in Houston. (Two of our kids have come from New Life.) She has given all she has to babies, born and unborn, and their mothers. It was not hard for my parents to connect to this work. So they gave us $50 and told us to make more money with that seed money. At the end of the year, we would collect our money and send it to a Child Survival Project. We did. It was exciting! God moved in us as He used us. So we got our $50 again this year. And the idea of a Run for Compassion was born. That’s where you step in to this story. Literally.

We are just as passionate about this cause this year, and more sure of what God can do through us, just simple, broken vessels for Him. We knew nothing about being race directors last year. Not one thing. But God did good things, despite all of our shortcomings. We have full confidence that He has a good work through this run planned for this coming April 10, 2010.
The planning has just begun. Basically, all we have is a date. But I have started assembling a team of precious girls who are going to help me this year, and make this successful and profitable for the Kingdom.
If you are interested in being on this team who raises sponsorship money, advertises, helps with race day logistics, works on the website, manages finances (that's not for me!), and collects prizes, let me know. We will have a chairman over each area of this race, and I would like for these chairmen, or chairwomen, to have a full committee so that no ONE person has to do all the work. It was amazing for us last year, but it was too much work for a few people. We need a team.
If you're interested in being a team player for Run For Compassion, let me know!
If you're interested in running, then get your shoes on! You can train to do the 5K or 10K this spring, no matter who you are! More to come on Run For Compassion...get excited!

H1N1 shots are in at the Amazing Dr. Bacak's office! FYI!

2009-10-27T15:25:00.001-07:00

Advent Conspiracy!

2009-10-27T05:42:00.000-07:00

I love this video! I posted it last year, but take just a minute and look at this inspiring and fun video from Living Water on what they call Advent Conspiracy. It's been a blessing for the Seay/Bacak family as we have heard God call us to deeper worship through giving in the Advent season and all year long.
Christmas is a special time of year. No doubt about it. But what makes it special for us, and what emanates from us during this time should tell the world what is hapenning in our hearts during Advent; adoration for our Savior, and a deeper drive to live like He did.
I hope this gets us started in considering what God has for us this Advent season!

The Flu Shot, and only in a doctor's house...

2009-10-22T04:55:00.000-07:00

I've done a few posts over the years about the occasional strange hapennings of a doctor's house. Like having a urine specimen in your refrigerator, or your child's favorite toy being the pap smear stick thingy. (If you don't remember that post from years past, don't worry...it's not as creepy as it sounds. It's like a tongue depressor they use during pap smears. You've probably never seen one because, let's face it, we don't know what's going on down there. But they're harmless little sticks that once were Jax's favorite thing to play with.)
Well, only in a Doctor's house does a child get a flu shot in his sleep.
I know, how scarred are my children!?!! Rusty had brought home our shots (NOT the H1N1 shots- they're not in yet. Still waiting) over the weekend and we realized on Sunday night, after tucking all the kids in, that he forgot to administer all of our shots. So we decided to see who was up, and go for it. Emma, always awake, rarely asleep, was the first victim. She started hyperventilating right away, turning ashen in the face, and then quickly it was over, and she immediately went back to normal and said "that wasn't bad, Dad! I hardly felt it. That's the last time I'm going to freak out over a flu shot." Wow! That went well!
Treston, who has been getting in BIG trouble at night, getting out of his bed, and doing terrible, terrible things in the house, of course, got out of his bed. Normally, he would have been disciplined for this, but instead...Rusty gave him a shot. Come to think of it...I don't think he's gotten out of his bed since then? Maybe we're onto something. Treston takes shots as stoically as a Marine. He is expressionless. Doesn't even wince. He takes his band-aid and goes on his way. Last year, I think he even smiled. It's really remarkable.
But the other boys were out cold. Rusty, my dear husband, was convinced that he could give the boys their shots in their sleep and they wouldn't even wake up. I, on the other hand, thought this was the worst possible way to screw up our children. Can you wake up to your parent putting a needle in you, and ever recover from that? That's what horror movies are made of, right? It's like a scene from Alias.
But my husband was fairly certain he could pull it off. I adore this man. He is right most of the time. But not this time...
Jax woke up, screaming, crying, and disoriented. What in the world were his parents doing to him? And WHY????? It took me about 10 minutes of snuggling with him in bed to calm him down and get him to go back to sleep.
We obviously aborted the plan after that one. Justus got his later on, and he was fully awake. So I'm guessing only Jax will need the intense therapy later in life.
Needless to say, we ARE getting flu shots this year. I've had a lot of people ask me, so yes, we actually always get the flu shot. We will also all take the H1N1 shot. Rusty feels confident in it's safety. He says the flu is more dangerous than the shot, for sure! I understand people's concern over the fact that this flu strand is new and therefore the vaccination is new, but Rusty says that flu strands are really different each year, so every vaccination is different. It's not so different with this swine flu. Because we are exposed to it more than most, being that Rusty sees the flu each and everyday, (please don't cough on him if you see him with the flu!) and we go to the office often as well, if the vaccination becomes available to us we will get it. Luckily, God has miraculously protected us so far! We have been exposed many times already!
Just so you know, we do have the regular flu shot available at our office. (695-3570) We personally are thankful for flu shots and other vaccinations that have been a protection from diseases that kill. As far as the flu shot goes, we know we could still get the flu. But we're going to do what we can to avoid it! And of course, Dr. Bacak would say prevention method #1- wash your hands with soap frequently! And wash your kids' hands with soap! Anti-bacterial gel is nowhere near as good as good ol' hot water and soap. There you go! Stay well, people!

Spoons: My new office

2009-10-19T06:19:00.000-07:00

College Station friends: A new day has dawned for us.
Frozen yogurt has been restored to us, after much waiting, anticipating, lingering in this barren land of strictly fatty desserts.
Spoons has opened! And this place is brilliant! It's a self serve yogurt shop, with fun toppings to choose from, and they just weigh it, and you pay it.
I love it! I went twice this weekend. Friday, on the Grand Opening, on a hot date with my husband, and then back on Saturday night with my sister.
I had to restrain myself from driving by on Sunday to see if they were open.
There are many choices, but I have a favorite already. Pistachio with Andes mints topping. It's like chocolate chip mint ice cream, basically, but it's only 100 calories per 1/2 cup.
I've decided I must do all business there from now on.
When I meet with college girls, we're meeting there.
It's my new office.
Why? Because Titus 2 says I should be mentoring younger women, and some versions of the Bible might imply to do that over frozen yogurt.
The owner checked us out on Friday, and he said this was a class project that took off! He got an alumni to be the investor, and here we are! Blessed with yummy frozen yogurt!
I might school my children there later.
See y'all there!
(This was in no way a paid endorsement from the owners of Spoons, like on the Biggest Loser when they do those oh-so-subtle commercials for products that will "help" them lose weight. This was completely inspired by my own excitment over pistachio frozen yogurt. But I am going to check with them to see if they'll pay me from now on...)

Butternut Squash and Sausage Soup

2009-10-16T04:52:00.000-07:00

This soup is THE BEST! It just screams fall to me. I love fall. I love soup. I LOVE Butternut Squash. I think it's even on sale this week! Yee-haw! So here's the recipe...
1 large butternut squash, halved, seeds removed (see if a strong, capable husband or male will do it for you. Also, using Cutco knives has helped me a lot!)
a little olive oil
1/2 t salt
pepper
1/2 lb. sweet sausage
1 large onion, chopped
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 t sage
1/2 t marjoram
6 c chicken stock or broth
1 t cider vinegar or lemon juice
1/2 c heavy cream

Lightly coat the squash with olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Bake in the oven until tender 45 min. - 1 hr. Scoop out the flesh. I sometimes do this in advance and keep it in the refrigerator.
In a large pot, cook the sausage and onion. Add the garlic, sage, marjoram, and cook stirring for 1 min. Add the cooked squash and chicken broth, stir, and bring to a boil. Reduce and simmer for 30 minutes. Then pulse in a blender in batches, or just buy an immersion blender thingy. That changed my life. I saw one on a cooking show and thought how cool it would be to have one and never have to pulse hot soup in a blender and burn myself again! Turns out, I had one in my kitchen all along. I got it for my wedding and didn't know what it was so I never used it. How crazy is that?
Finally, add the cider vinegar and the cream. Don't forget! I sometimes forget the cream and then get really mad at myself! How could I forget cream?
I have served this with a sourdough bread, made in my bread machine, and salad.
Be sure to invite me over for dinner when you make this, k?

Winkflash books for Christmas!

2009-10-13T05:41:00.000-07:00

Yes, I definitely have Christmas gifts on the brain already!
And these books were a great deal for us last year!
You can make a photo book up to 100 pages for $19.95!
You may find books you like better, but none cheaper that I know of.
I gave them to grandparents as gifts last year, and they loved them!
I just finished our 2008 book last night, and I finished at exactly 100 pages.
It's not as cool as scrapbooking, with minimal backgrounds, fonts, creative
possibilities, but you know what, I got it done! And I have three more
books to make before the special runs out on October 24th, I think.
So get busy if you are like me! I'm photobooking at every possible free moment, which are incredibly few.
It takes a while to upload your photos on the site, but I let my run for like
two days, highlighting all of them, and it finally finished and I was ready to go!
For next year, I'm re-evaluating. I'm thinking about a new system...but for now,
these cheap books are too good of a deal to pass up!

Where is your treasure?

2009-10-06T04:35:00.000-07:00

First let me say, I have not abandoned blogging. We are having serious internet issues. It's down every night, without fail. So frustrating!
During the day I could blog...if I didn't have a few other pressing matters around here!
So here is what I've been thinking about lately...
Matt. 6:21 says "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
This is a verse that should bring much self-examination.
I thought of this as I've been sitting on the sidelines of children's sporting events lately. Jax is playing soccer, and Emma occasionally competes in horse shows.
What happens to seemingly normal people when they're kids get on a field (or horse arena, in our case)?
The constant coaching and yelling and frustration from the parents, I want to just cry for these kids. And sometimes I want to punch these parents in the face.
And I'm embarrassed for the parents.
Now I know, this could easily be us. None of us is above this kind of junk.
How do we check ourselves to make sure we are not ridiculous, raving, sports parents?
The heart issue has to be where our treasure is.
And that question is "What makes us most proud?"
I read an article in the newspaper recently from a sports writer talking about how watching his son play football, he was the "most proud he'd ever been" of his child.
Wow. That stinks.
So what makes us "most proud"?
When do we want to beam, as parents?
When our kids score a goal, or when we see evidences of grace in their lives?
When they win, or when they are getting up on their own to read God's Word?
There's nothing wrong with winning. I'll be the first to admit, winning is fun.
And sometimes, we put a lot into our kids' interests and sports teams. It's nice to see them advance.
But it's fleeting...it's like the wind. It's not eternal. Col. 1 talks about setting our minds on what's above, what's eternal.
So I am checking my heart. What makes me most proud?
There is nothing in the world like seeing my kids grow closer to the Lord! That has to be our focus. Their spiritual development! Everything else can't even hold a candle to that. And if they perceive us as holding non-eternal things like sports us as so important, we are sending them a clear message.
That message is messed-up.
There's no time to re-read this or edit. I've got a day to start. It will be light soon. Hopefully I'll have internet regularly soon. Don't give up on me!

A drama-free slumber party...what's that?

2009-09-21T05:29:00.000-07:00

We celebrated Emma's birthday with a slumber party.
I approached this idea with great caution. Why?
Because I went to slumber parties. If you did too, you know what I'm talking about.
This is what I know about girls...we're born mean.
Oh, you might think that's an exaggeration, but it's not.
We're born with the tendency toward gossip, forming factions that gang up on someone else, and with the innate ability from the age of three on to merely whisper and giggle with another girl and destroy her in an instant.
Am I right? Can I hear an Amen?
I noticed this when my own daughter started playing with a group of girls at a very young age, and it all came rushing back to me. Oh yeahhhhh, I remember this.
We are horrible, horrible creatures.
They could make a movie called "pre-school mean girls" and it wouldn't be too far off.
Why? Because we're sinners. Plain and simple. We're fallen and born with a sinful nature that is yucky through and through. There's no denying it.
And what is the root of this ugly behavior in girls? Looking back, why did I do what I did?
Putting others down in any form or fashion somehow lifts you up. Whether it's being funny at someone else's expense, or trying to exalt your friendship with one girl over another (also at her expense) so that you feel more popular. Exalting ourselves to make us feel better can look like several things, but it's always destructive.
Are we grown-up girls still capable of this today? Of course. We all have to be aware of this, even as we can disguise this more mature version of ugliness in us still.
We have to work at our friendships making sure we look after others' needs and feelings as best we can, and including others as much as possible.
I have also guarded against this junk with my daughter. I think because she's homeschooled she's slightly ignorant of the enormity of this business.
But I had this very talk with Emma before her party...making sure everyone feels included...no one feels left out...being sure to put others desires above her own...all that good stuff.
I think intentionally teaching our daughters how to be Christ-like friends from a young age will help them resist the temptation to be a "mean girl." And ultimately, their relationship with the Lord gives them the power to overcome sin!
I was so proud of the group of girls we had at our house for this slumber party!
There was no drama, no ugliness, no factions, and no "light as a feather, stiff as a board" (anyone remember that one?).
We had a sweet time of devotional on loving others like Jesus, and I had the privelege of hearing their sweet prayers. What a blessing! I can't wait to watch these sweet girls grow up into Godly, young women who honor the Lord with their lives.
So there WAS pizza, there WAS cake and ice cream, there WAS pin the tail on Emma's horse, there WAS a dance party in our pajamas, there WAS whispering in their beds, but there was NO drama and ugliness, and I was thankful for that!
Anyone, thoughts on how we train our girls to guard against our tendency toward this sin, and encourage them to love like Christ? Older Moms, wisdom to offer?

Happy Birthday Emma!

2009-09-18T04:31:00.000-07:00

9 years ago today, after about 45 hours protest in labor, little Emma entered our world. She was obviously comfortable where she was, and didn't come willingly.
She was born at 2:55am at Northwest hospital in Amarillo.
She had the loudest cry of any baby I'd ever heard, and the biggest, most alert, blue eyes. They seemed huge to me. From the moment she was born, she seemed determined not to miss a thing (so sleeping was not an option, naturally) and it was as if she was sure she could tell us what to do and we would comply.
I remember bringing her home and having the revelation I think many young mothers do...about how much God loves us as a Father, how much my parents love me, and not believing how much I loved this new little person.
So of course, I cried, rocked and nursed her, and Rusty would tentatively say "Are you okay?" wondering where his even-keeled wife went, and who was this blubbering woman in the rocker?
I would sob "Yes. I just love her so much!" Sob. Sob.
Post-Partum. There's nothing like it.
So entered Emma into our lives, and what a precious life change!
We've watched her grow, from that super active, strong willed little one, into the little girl we know who submitted her life to the Lord and loves Him with all her heart.
Some of my favorite things about Emma:
1. How she loves God and His Word! (It's 6:30 and she's sitting on the couch right now doing her Bible Study book. What's better?)
2. The way she reads. She is a voracious reader, and that has been one of my great aspirations for my kids. She devours her library books, and then we must make an emeregency library trip when she's done.
3. She begs me for "homework" and lots of it. I don't seem to give her enough work, in her opinion. Clearly, she gets the "nerd" genes from her father. It pays to marry a brainiac.
4. She's so her own person. Maybe this is intensified because she's homeschooled, but she has always been an intense animal lover, seriously, since before she could talk. Her obsession with elephants came first,before she was two, then dinosaurs, then horses. That one stuck. And if you know my daughter, one of her great talents is being able to "run like a cheetah", and she'll gladly race you on all-fours. It's a little uncanny how quick she is. She's just Emma. Not a girl who likes princesses, purses, dresses, or pretty shoes, but can tell you anything you want to know about animals, habitats, and is what we call the "animal whisperer."
5. She's a little bit fearless. I think her desire and willingness to do what she does on horses, and then compete against a group of older, more experienced riders at horse shows demonstrates this. I love watching her in action! There is nothing sweeter to me than this girl and a horse.
So Celebrating you is our joy, Em! Happy birthday, love! I hope today is a memorable one.

Help me!

2009-09-17T05:41:00.000-07:00

I would like to find the ultimate photo sharing, storage site. I'm on winkflash right now, but I can't really access my photos like I'd like. I want to be able to store them on a site, but then access them to put on my blog, e-mail them to myself, or do whatever I want with them. I also want to make super easy photo books that don't cost a fortune, and have high quality prints. Winflash is cheap, and I love cheap! But I don't think the quality is the best, and it takes forever to load them on the site. Does anyone have a magic site you can tell me about? I'm wondering about sites like photobucket and seehere.com, but it's hard to find answers to these questions just by looking at their site.
Help me! Someone out there must have an answer for me!

A crazy Mom would...

2009-09-14T17:53:00.000-07:00

Emma and I just got back from her horse show.
It was great Mother-Daughter fun, and this horse Mom was tired, but thankful for the time we had together.
Sometimes it's the funniest things that end up being the most fun on these kind of outings.
Ours was an hour long game of "A crazy Mom would..." in the car.
We came up with about 102 answers to that question, which kept me awake while driving, in conjunction with some not-so-bad gas station coffee, and made us laugh outloud.
But here's my best answer to that question.
A crazy Mom would put her little girl in pageants.
Have you seen this show "Toddlers and Tiaras" on TLC?
Our DVR was broken for a while, and without anything conveniently waiting for us, pre-recorded, I defaulted to TLC. I think that's what I watched before the DVR. That, and "Little House" recorded.
This is one of those, drop your jaw, are you kidding? shows.
Highlights: fake teeth for the little girls, fake hair, spray tanning, Halloween level of make-up, and the saddest part of all, swimsuit competitions. (They don't allow g-strings, they said on one of the shows, just because it's hard to pull off without the perfect body. I couldn't sleep that night.)
The whole thing is a not-so-distant cousin to pedophilia.
I don't think that would be most parents' intent, but what in the WORLD are they thinking, sexualizing their little girls like that?
And that led to an interesting discussion I had with my Mom.
She is teaching soon to her ladies about ways that we sexualize our children early on. I think this is something we need to be very aware of.
How are we doing this, in our culture, and in our own families?
The obvious would be to put make-up on your child, dress them up like a hoochie Mama and teach them to dance around suggesstively in front of a panel of judges to be scored based on their hoochie dancing abilities, their bodies, and their facial beauty.
(Is this not obvious to them!?)
But what are more subtle things that we might be doing with our daughters that have become so accepted in our culture that we aren't aware of it ourselves?
I'm trying to be especially aware of this in the area of clothing for my daughter.
Any thoughts, Moms? Dads? Everyone else?
(Oh, and anyone who is feeling the tiniest bit defensive for pageant Moms, please watch "Toddlers and Tiaras" and then get back to me. If you are willing to go to bat for these pageant parents, I would love to understand why! Let's talk!)

What goes on the plate?

2009-09-08T13:45:00.000-07:00

I call this the honeymoon phase of our semester.
We have completed the first two weeks of the Bacak Nation Academy, and while I've been dropping in bed each night, exhausted (literally exhausted...once last week I fell asleep at 9:15pm. I haven't done that since I had the flu. And obviously too tired to blog!) we haven't had TOO much on our plate.
That sounds weird. Getting into the groove of a new semester, and especially teaching three kids, is plenty on my plate. So let me clarify.
My days are very full and I am full-time schooling, parenting, horse-Momming, cooking, hosting, etc. HOWEVER, some of the other things that tend to make my calendar threaten to explode, and me feel like I'm too busy to breathe, haven't really started yet.
The first two weeks of a semester, our nightly activities are up to our discretion, not pre-scripted and mandated.
So here's a question:
What are we going to put on our plate this semester?
If you are like me, it tends to be too much.
And I know me when it's too much. I'm not the best me. We're not the best us. And I'm not protecting my family and this home from OVER doing like I should.
As the manager of this home, I deal with scheduling our "stuff" most of the time, running questions by Rusty when needed.
And I think activities tend to multiply, don't you think? I think it's just a little thing, and then our activities started making babies like bunnies and it's out of control before I know it.
So I think we have to look at the bare minimum, and decide where to go from there.
The last two years have flown by so quickly, so busy, so hectic, that I don't think I enjoyed life, or savored it as I should be.
I think I gobbled it down whole and didn't even chew.
I don't want to do that! My kids are growing right before my very eyes. There are opportunities to share Christ, practically touching me, and I've been too busy to see it.
I don't want to live that way.
One challenge we face (and experienced Moms, help me out!) we have a lot of kids. And as they are growing, so does their level of activity.
Also, because we are homeschoolers, I want them to have opportunities to engage their peers, and for us to develop intentional relationships with lost people. The avenues opened up to us naturally for this are soccer, horses, 4H, for example.
So those things are important for more than one reason.
I don't want to strip away all activities.
Therefore, I think a conversation that would be helpful for me, and maybe some of you too, is how to be in something without doing everything. Every fundraiser, every class, clinic, every little thing that we put our names on sign-up sheets to do.
This is what kills us. Is this okay?
Is it irresponsible to be in something, and not do it all?
Or should we learn to say NO to things for the sake of our sanity?
I appreciated our pastor challenging us this week by asking us to stop and consider: What are our motives in saying YES to all we do? Is it recognition, or a true heart of service? And he even challenged us to have self-control in saying NO to good things, when they may not be for us. (I hope the "Rev. A. Diddy", as we affectionately call him around here, real name- Allen Duty, would not feel misquoted in this, but just in case, go to our church website and listen to a GREAT sermon from 9/6/09 called "Own the Vision." You will be so glad you did!)
So if you too want to ponder this, let's talk about what we put on our plates, and even hold eachother accountable to not having "eyes bigger than our stomachs" as we fill it up.

Happy 5th Birthday Justus!

2009-08-29T05:24:00.000-07:00

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Do you just feel like the Bacak birthdays never stop coming in the summer? It's because they don't.
Now it's Justus' turn. Our adorable brown baby is turning FIVE!
You gotta admit, this kid is handsome. I can say that because he didn't get it from me. You can see his birthmom, Kathleen, in one of the pictures. He obviously gets it from her! She's beautiful!
He can be a real charmer. He says to me regularly, "Mom, you're so bootiful" which I love, of course, but I find it's usually when he's doing something sneaky or wrong and he's trying to distract me from it.
He's good.
Our boy is wicked smart. He's been doing the older kids' work for years, only when he thinks answering Jax's question will thoroughly annoy him (and it does!) and for no other reason! We can't wait to see how God is going to use Justus' gifts and talents for Him! (Yes, someday He will use all this for good and not evil!)
Justus loves to snuggle at night, which I am trying to hold on to with my boys as long as possible! He can be the sweetest big brother to his "buddy" Treston you've ever seen. And he is absolutely the wittiest five-year-old I know. He's always had a quick-witted response, far beyond his years, that keeps us in stitches around here.
We are overwhelmed with gratitude to the Lord for his birthmom, Kathleen, giving us the greatest gift a human can give. We hold fast to God's purposes in that, and feel blessed to be Justus' parents.
Happy birthday sweet boy!

The Bacak Nation Academy is now in session!

2009-08-27T05:09:00.000-07:00

Make a Smilebox slideshow

I love the start of school. I put a lot of hard work into our school room in August. Work that I rather enjoy, to tell you the truth. I love a place for everything, newly organized shelves, fresh packs of clean paper, art supplies like beans and macaroni in jars, about 30 newly sharpened pencils (which will dwindle down to two in about three weeks- I don't know where they go? It's like my kids eat pencils!) Brand new school boxes, decorated with their favorite stickers, and...well you get the picture.
I had done much preparing, as this year I am teaching three different kids and grade levels. Emma and Jax are in third and second grade, and Justus started Kindergarten this year! Woo-hoo! I love Kindergarten! It's my absolute favorite year. Also, Treston is our three-year-old pre-schooler, and as you can see by the pictures, he LOVES his journal! I think that's precious!
So I lesson planned like crazy, starting in July. I got a pretty notebook and printed my lesson plans for the year. Then I came up with new systems to give me overviews for a week, or lesson plans in a glance, with the older kids and Justus' side by side.
All of this stuff makes me very happy, and my lesson plans have never looked so awesome, so I was feeling good.
But the first day of school, despite my planning, was not what I had envisioned. I had not done enough prepping. That's pre-cutting, printing, etc. for my lessons. (I was out of town with Justus visiting his birthmom over the weekend, which was just poor timing for our first day of school.) Consequently, our first day of school didn't go as I had planned. Actually, it was pure chaos for the most part. Not the parts caught on camera here. I obviously don't pull out the camera to capture chaos in our home. No, these were the good, happy moments in our first day. But the schedule I had agonized over all summer and posted on our wall was not quite accurate. I had never taught this many kids, so I was behind and a little overwhelmed. I was wondering on Monday if I could do this.
But God was so good to remind me that He is the one who called us to do this. Not because it's for everyone, but because as He dragged us kicking and screaming toward homeschooling (which I swore I'd never do, naturally!) He had a good plan for our family in it. And it has been so good! And I enjoy teaching so much!
So Tuesday was a new day, as I told the kids.
And it truly was! It was a thousand times better, and yesterday was a thousand times better than that! I do love teaching and schooling my kids.
It's not easy. On MOnday, I couldn't help thinking about all the parents I had seen standing at the bus stop with their kids as I was jogging that morning. I was wondering what they were doing, as I dealt with a three-year-old tantrum, cleaned up his potty accident, while juggling a reluctant (to say the least) Kindergartener and confused about what was expected of them older kids.
But we are starting to settle into a rhythm, and it feels good. Truly, I wouldn't miss this for the world. I enjoyed teaching little ones when they were other people's kids, and I especially enjoy teaching my own little ones. Besides, I am pretty sure I was totally ignorant before I started homeschooling. I can't imagine how educated I will be when I get up to fifth grade with them.
So The Bacak Nation Academy has begun, and it's going to be a great year!
Here are some first day of school pics.

Happy Birthday Rusty!

2009-08-19T17:51:00.000-07:00

My sweet husband wanted to skip his birthday.
They are getting less fun, you know, the older we get.
But there's no skipping birthdays in the Bacak house!
Oh no! There is cake, and dance parties, and presents.
We celebrated early because I am in Las Vegas on his birthday with Justus and my Mom
visiting Justus' birthmom Kathleen.
This was sadly, the only date my Mom could go with us.
But here are pics from the party we had already.
The boys made confetti out of construction paper (hopefully not the new pack I bought for our school year) and threw it everywhere for the dance party.
There is nothing better than watching all four of your very different kids bust their moves. Emma was river dancing, Jax was break-dancing (which we decided is somehow instinctive in all boys. Don't know where they would pick that up- they just do it!) and Justus and Treston hopefully are retaining some sort of non-white rhythym that God gifts them with. Rusty is convinced that this house full of white people is sucking them dry of rhythm, but I disagree.
Also, I made a cake.
I am very critical of my cakes, to the point of driving my husband crazy.
If there is something to do wrong with a cake, I've done it. I've learned the hard way. This cake was good but not the best cake, but the very best icing I've ever made. It was my cream cheese icing with real strawberries cut up in it. Divine! The real problem with the cake, however, was that it was three layers, and it leaned very definitively to one side. Not the prettiest shaped cake, but it was good. My husband asked for a strawberry cake, and I made a cake with real strawberries in the batter and the icing. I like that. I intend to make small improvements and develop it into the best cake ever.
But as for my husband's birthday- there's no way we could NOT celebrate this man.
I adore the day he was born, because I adore him so.
He is way more than I deserve, and consistently loving to all of us.
One of my favorite things about him: The kids and I never wonder if he loves us or approves of us. He is so affirming. Did you read the blogpost he wrote about me on our anniversary? Ridiculously flattering to me, and just an example of the way he loves us.
I am thankful for his life and all God has done in him.
Happy Birthday, love! I'll be home soon.

Emma got her ears pierced!

2009-08-19T13:25:00.000-07:00

This was Emma pre-piercing.

This is Emma post-piercing.

Emma has been asking about getting her ears pierced for a while. We had decided when she was little that we would wait until she was older and make it a privelege that she looks forward to.
I also wanted her to be able to clean her ears herself and handle the aftercare. So we waited...she would bring it up and I would remind her that it hurts a little. She would drop it.
Then she decided she was brave enough. So Rusty told her she had to prove she was responsible enough by keeping her room clean for two solid weeks.
She did, so we had a special Mommy/Daughter date to the mall, just the two of us.
First, we got her hair cut. It looks so cute, don't you think?
Then we had a pretzel together, just us girls.
She was super excited, and a little nervous as we went into Claire's.
We stood and watched a little girl in front of us get her ears pierced, and she went from a little nervous to terrified.
My girl is pretty tough. She hardly flinches when she gets shots, so I think the anticipation got to her.
But look at her face- she was beside herself in fear.
I'd already stood there with her for a long time and filled out the paperwork, so I decided she was not backing out. We had built up to this day, and what were the chances that I was going to work out another time to go with her alone? So I told her she'd be fine. She was going to do it.
The lady doing the piercing lied and told her it wouldn't hurt. Come on, it hurts a little. We all know that.
But she did it! She said it did indeed hurt, that it felt like they stapled her ears, but not for terribly long, and she was so pleased with the way her cute little ears looked!
She got to pick out some earrings to wear when she can remove the gold balls. She chose cupcakes, the letter E, and bumblebees.
It was a precious day with my growing-up, third grade girl.

What is clean?

2009-08-17T20:05:00.001-07:00

What is clean?
Clean is definitely in the eye of the beholder.
I'm not an expert or anything, but in this house, the clean standard is set by me.
So it's not clean until I think it's clean. Am I right, Moms?
In fact, one of the things we heard my Mom say ALL the time, was "Would I think it's clean?"
We would usually have to go back and try to see it through my Mom's eyes.
I think I was a grown woman before I understood that.
One of the things I'm trying to equip my children to do is determine what is clean?
One of the struggles we are having with keeping their rooms clean is not just laziness, but truly "seeing" the mess.
They just don't see it.
So I have to help them see what needs work before it can meet the cleanliness standard.
And it's not fair to ask them to do things that are totally subjective in their eyes, really. They are kids. They need black and white clear directives.
So here is the clean chart for this year.
This has evolved over time.
When they were young, I had pictures of them putting their toys away, and making their beds.
But this clean chart has graduated to higher standards.
The little ones just have to try to keep up.
I put things on the checklist that they just aren't seeing. Like "corners clean", meaning, there's just junk piled up in the corners. And they don't seem to notice. So everyday they have to check the corners of their rooms to look for piles of junk, and I'm teaching them to sort through a pile of junk and make piles, according to where it goes.
(We have just had the summer end Organization/Clean-Out Blow-Out around here, so everyone has had some practice lately!)
I could clean it for them each day, or I could teach the kids to fish, and hopefully end up with kids who know what clean looks like by the time they leave this place.
I am certain their college roommates and spouses will thank me someday.
Each day, when they check off each job (approved by us) and color in the smily face, they work toward an allowance.
My kids have never made an allowance before.
Honestly, we feel like we don't owe them any money. Any work they do around here is to be a contributing member of the family. It's just expected.
But we do want them to learn responsibility with their money on a higher level, and also give them the ability to give generously of their own money to what they feel led to, as well as tithing their own money to the church.
So we explained to them that though we don't owe them money for work done, we are choosing to let them earn allowances with their daily jobs for those reasons.
One task on the chart is Leader Jobs.
Each day we have a leader. The leader gets to choose the cartoon, or the flavor of ice cream, or anything special like that. The leader also has extra responsibilities. Collecting all laundry, sheets to be washed, and cleaning a bathroom.
I love new school years, new systems, new organization, new schedules.
We are doing a lot of that this week, so I will try to write more about it as the week goes on.
We've been doing the charts for two days, and so far, their rooms look great! But the real test will be two weeks in.
I'll let you know.
I would love to hear things you do with your kids to help them know clean, or things your Mom did with you to teach you to clean.
Tips?

The Mosiers

2009-08-13T20:22:00.000-07:00

I love this town. I meet so many students that I fall in love with.
The problem with these wonderful people is most of them leave, and I have to watch them drive away.
People I love, who have become apart of the rhythm of our week, who have bared their hearts in our living rooms.
There have been many tough goodbyes in the past six years.
I could list atleast 10 of you that I'm still secretly plotting to find you a job here and convince you it's God's will, and some of you have been gone for years!
This month has been killer.
We have been bombarded with tough goodbyes, and I've tried hard to stay in denial about all of them so I can survive it.
But tonight. Tonight was the hardest goodbye of all.
(Erin, if you're reading this stop right now, because it won't help you stop crying.)
Matt and Erin are such a part of this family.
They started out in our HOPE group, these precious kids, still in college.
I knew they were going to be a favorite of ours when they ASKED us if they could come pick up our kids and take them out for pizza.
They were around when we got our little Treston, and for the whirwind that was for us. They became regulars for dinner, and Sonic dates, and such.
Erin and I hit it off quickly, and she became my mentee for Her Hands and took Countdown at the same time. There are just some people that are so comfortable and easy. That's me and Erin. It's just so easy.
We grew very close to them before they were married, and even more so after!
My children prayed hard, and Matt ended up doing grad school here. It was the power of the pure-hearted prayers of the Bacak kiddos.

Matt and Erin became some of Treston's godparents, and they have faithfully loved, adored, spent time with, and prayed for our little boy.
We went on vacation together that summer, with all Treston's wonderful godparents, Matt and Erin and Nick and Carissa. That will always be a great memory for all of us!

Erin ended up working for us, here in the house with me every morning, and in the office with Rusty in the afternoons. She knows this house like her own. She has watched my kids grow, pray, be disciplined about a million times, read them hundreds of books, and folded their clothes. Matt and Erin have been at probably every birthday party we've had since we met them, and my kids even gave Erin a Bacak birthday of her own.
I remember so well the day she told me they had started praying about starting a family. She came over to lie out with me on a Spring afternoon and the two of us were lying on the trampoline talking.
Shortly after that, Erin was pregnant with Cade.
She called me when she saw the two lines.
I was there the day he was born, waiting in the waiting room.
Watching Matt hold him up through the nursery window with tears in his eyes, and tears in mine...helping Erin nurse for the first time.
I watched our little Matt and Erin morph into parents. Real live grown-ups. They did it so well.
Somewhere along the way...and I'm not sure exactly when...Erin went from being a mentee to just a wonderful friend and peer.
I have been so proud of them!
They are light years ahead spiritually, for their age, and their commitment to the Word and His Ways encourages me so much! They are just solid.
They were never allowed to leave here, as far as I was concerned.
I was certain we could pray that away. We'd done it before.
But God obviously had a different plan.
Matt got a great job with the weather service, and off they go tomorrow to Ft. Worth.
I've cried many tears these last few weeks.
I watched my kids cry many tears tonight, telling them goodbye, and it was hard.
It's going to be hard. I will miss our weekly lunches and the comfort of being with them at church weekly. I'll just miss them in the day-to-day life.
But as Erin and I keep saying, we have to put on thankfulness that Ft. Worth is not so terribly far away! They could have gotten a job in Washington State, so how can we complain?
I love these people.
I would let them move into our house and live here if I thought they would.
But I have to let them go, and I know that God is going to use them where he plants them.
They're going to transform lives as the Holy Spirit uses them to teach others what they have soaked up here.
I can only pray that they have people come under their care that were as teachable and moldable as they have been in their time here.
I guess it's time to share them.
But tonight, I feel incredibly selfish. I don't want to share. I haven't stopped crying yet.
But God is good, and I would be remiss in writing this if I didn't acknowledge how grateful I am for the sweet people and friendships he gives us. It just doesn't get any better than Matt and Erin.

OUR ANNIVERSARY - AKA "MARRYING UP" BY RUSTY

2009-08-09T05:32:00.000-07:00

11 Years ago I pulled off one of those monumental, one-in-a-lifetime, David vs. Goliathesque, 1980 American Olympic Hockey team over Russia type of a feat: I married Jennifer Seay! It was like all of those cheesy 80s movies where the complete dork ends up with the hot babe (which is ironic because I still live in those movies in my head!). See you have to understand the significance of this event (and I am sure knowing and looking at us - it comes as no surprise at all for those of you who know us): I totally "up-married." I highly recommend that for all of the college guys I am around here in BCS - find a wife that is Godly, intelligent, nurturing, funny, and gorgeous and then allow God to pull off something only He can do: make her actually fall for you! God is good! Prov 18:22 says " He who finds a wife finds what is good
and receives favor from the LORD." AMEN!!! And Prov 19:14 " Houses and wealth are inherited from parents, but a prudent wife is from the LORD." And of course Prov 31 let's us know to aim big when it comes to your wife:
" 10 A wife of noble character who can find?
She is worth far more than rubies.
11 Her husband has full confidence in her
and lacks nothing of value.
12 She brings him good, not harm,
all the days of her life. "
Gentlemen: totally up-marry in the Lord (I should write a book - I bet I could make millions: "Your Best Wife Now" - I could put a picture of us on the cover and lonely single guys would say "dang... if that guy can pull that off, there is a God and a hope for me!")
You see my wife is a one in a million find. She is a woman who seeks after the Lord's heart; is incredibly intelligent (blows me away); funny (although her laughing at my same jokes for 11 years may discredit her in this category); caring (she hasn't locked the kids in the closet yet - which is a pretty amazing feat in itself); supportive and encouraging; an incredible manager of our home; a phenomenal mommy to our kids not to mention educator for them; and is hotter every year I know her (an admitted bonus for me!). OK - if you are a college kid who we are encouraging the courtship model to : "do as we say and not as we did"; but when I first met Jenn she was being pursued by EVERYONE! She had stinking 3 dates the first weekend we went out! Yes - 3 dates! I had less dates in the last 3 years of medical school than she had that weekend alone! She was a catch and the fellers knew it. How the heck the Heart of Texas Rodeo and Fair date wooed her away from all of those suitors is totally a God thing (although I did pull out my dance card on the first date - my ace-in-the hole... but desperate times called for desperate measures). So men - count on our God to provide (Go watch "Facing the Giants" or something)! He will! He gave me the most incredible wife, now of 11 years, and Lord willing for another 40 years +. I am more in love with my bride now than ever and can not wait to see what our future holds together. I do not deserve her... but our God is good.
Happy Anniversary Babe!

Countdown

2009-08-05T05:24:00.000-07:00

Our Fall Countdown class will begin this semester, only about a month away, and we still have three openings!!! This rarely happens, so please pass this along to anyone who you think might be interested! Anyone who is engaged, or is about to be engaged, that is. Below I have copied an excerpt from our Countdown blog to give a fuller picture of what this ministry is all about. We are passionate about marriage ministry, and though we've taught it for more than six years now, it's equally as fun and exciting each semester when my living room fills up with these adorable couples on the brink of something great. Read all about it, and if you're a Countdown alum, feel free to stand up and testify in the comment section...

Is Countdown for You?
You're engaged! You have a ring! You are looking at churches, cakes, invitations, and a lot of family tension! Congratulations!
The engagement period is so exciting.
It is a journey between two people falling deeply in love, and going from two to ONE!
This time can be totally consumed with planning the "Big Day," as it's called, but we would like to challenge you...put aside wedding planning for a bit and do some marriage planning. That one day is so special, but it's just the beginning. Having the wedding of your dreams needs to take a backseat to having the marriage of your dreams, so to speak.
What kind of marriage do we dream of? Is your goal to stay married without totally hating each other, or do you really long to be old and gray, and as in love as you are today?
Well, the adventure you are about to embark on is exciting, it's passionate, it will thrust a mirror in front of you that will reflect your selfishness and sin like you've never seen, and it's a new birth. The birth of a family, of a ministry team, of a new YOU. It will change who you are, your relationships, and your view of the world.
Have I scared you? I hope not. But this thing called marriage requires more preparation than any of us realize. We invite you to explore God's Word for what His purpose for us is in marriage, and what the fullness and abundance of His plan for us in marriage looks like.
We want to teach you how to build your marriage, and every aspect of it, on the rock solid foundation of Jesus Christ. Everything else is sinking sand. "When the floodwaters rise and break against the house, it stands firm because it is well built." Luke 6:48. You have already started building your house. What is it built on? If it's built on compatability, romantic love, friendship, or shared interests, these are faulty foundations. They are foundations of sand. They are blessings in marriage, but they cannot bear the weight of your house. There is only one foundation that will never crack. Our God.
We say this all the time, but we believe everyone wants a fantastic marriage. But good marriages don't just happen. Desire is not enough. We must be taught. Taught from the Word, the ultimate, flawless authority in our life, totally relevant to our every need and desire. Without being taught, we are floundering for elusive bits of advice to apply to our real lives. It is like water through our hands, trying to grasp the reality of God's gift to us: marriage.

What, When, and Where do we teach?
Countdown is a 9 week class, taught in our home on Thursday nights from 8:30-10:00pm. We teach a class every semeseter. The semester is concluded by an overnight retreat.
We teach a curriculum written mostly by us, from our marriage, incorporating written assignments from us and also from Byron and Carla Weathersbee. They are our mentors in Countdown, founders of our parent ministry Legacy Family. (legacyfamily.org) Rusty and I were students in their Countdown class in Waco, Texas when we were engaged in 1998. They founded this ministry to engaged couples and families in 1995 and have been used by God to change lives since then! We feel blessed to be under their ministry, and to have been trained by them personally.
In Countdown, we will discuss a different topic each week. The topics include: God's Purpose for Marriage, Roles and Responsibilities, Money Matters, In-Laws, Spiritual Growth, Sexual Intimacy, Commitment, and Communication and Conflict Resolution. Each week couples complete their assignments, some seperately, but mostly together, before coming to class. It is an informal, discussion oriented time. Everyone comes ready for dessert first, and we have a great time!
Part of the fun is walking through your engagement and learning alongside other couples. Couples who are experiencing the same things you are. We often see friendships among the couples forming, and we have a few social events for fun. The retreat culminates all we have learned in a semester, and is the highlight for me! We have so much fun, with a few surprise for our couples.

Lemonade stand

2009-07-30T05:04:00.000-07:00

I think every kid should have a memory of having a lemonade stand in the summer, don't you?
We stopped by a lemonade stand the other day (because I think you have to be pretty cold-hearted to drive right by one, unless you just don't happen to have fifty cents anywhere in your car) and I had an inkling that this was going to start something with my kids.
Sure enough, we came directly home and they started working on their signs.
The next day (yesterday) the Bacak kids and a few of their friends (Feldman kids) were real life entrepreneurs in the lemonade business.
(I made the lemonade, just so it wasn't disghusting. Ever been to one of those lemonade stands? I have.)
In the morning, we set it up in front of our neighborhood pool so that none of the children would die of heat stroke. I figured when someone got near to death or combusting before our eyes, we would just send them over to jump in the pool. Good plan, hu?
I thought that surely they would give up after 30 minutes of watching people drive past them. I even called Heather and told her to go buy some lemonade just so they'd have a customer.
I was wrong.
They made nearly $20 in the two hours they spent out there.
And then they went back into business in the afternoon at the end of our street.
My little red-faced children chanted "Awesome lemonade! Awesome lemonade!" to every car that drove past.
It's hard to be rejected by the cars that don't stop, but a good life lesson.
Not everyone thinks they're as cute as we do.
They ended up making $26 for the day!
Wow! If I'd known this was a valid source of income, I would have put them out there months ago!
They had various approaches to what to do with their profits. Some noble, some not.
But Rusty decided we could use it for a patient of his who lost her job because her bike was stolen, and it was her only mode of transportation.
The dollar signs in my kids eyes faded, and some were excited about this project, while others were not thrilled.
But isn't the sin of greed and selfishness in us constantly in need of stripping away?
So now they're on a bicycle mission, and we will get to frequent all the Pawn shops in town (always interesting) for just the right bike for this woman.
So don't discount the lemonade stand if you need a little fundraiser!
Or if you're kids are asking you for money. Put them outside with a cooler and a card table.
I think a lemonade stand is awfully hard to resist.

Happy 3rd birthday Treston!

2009-07-26T05:23:00.001-07:00

Could my baby be three?
Hard for me to believe, but today he is.
What a kid...how can I describe him...LOUD! Always loud!
He has no other volume but BLARING!
Rough! He is all-boy and has not yet refined gentleness, but he can sure be sweet sometimes.
He's funny. And he knows it.
Hair. I couldn't love his hair more. I know it's looking a little fuzzy right now, but I just adore it.
Enthusiasm. He's got it. When he's excited, there is nothing cuter than the way he talks.
We Bacaks love birthdays, so we are thrilled to celebrate three years of life for our T-Bear.
I'll be honest. His birthday is bittersweet for me. I wasn't there. I wasn't even close to there.
Treston went into a loving foster home under New Life's care when he was born for four and a half months.
I mourn that time lost for me and my baby boy.
But I quickly remind myself what a miracle he is to us.
And can I just say, I THANK GOD for New Life when I think of Treston's life.
Where would he be without New Life? God uses them in such amazing ways!
God did an amazing thing through New Life in Treston's life, and more babies than we could count.
If you are not partnering in any way with a ministry like this, I would ask you to think and pray long and hard about this.
If you are pro-life, then let me challenge you that a bumper sticker or your token pro-life vote is not going to change things. Supporting a ministry like New Life who is dealing with pregnant women in crisis EVERY SINGLE DAY, offering them free pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, financial assistance...this is how Treston came to New Life. His birthmom needed help, and New Life was there.
They had no idea when they assisted her at that time, that the result would be adoption. No one knew. But God knew, and New Life was available to minister to her. He used them to do great things with our family and our sweet baby.
So I know God's purposes are grand for our Treston. We pray salvation over him everyday. God has already done heroic things for him already, so I wait expectantly for the day He saves him for all eternity.
We are THANKFUL today for Treston Jeremiah. Happy Birthday T-Bear!

The Summer of Organization

2009-07-14T18:45:00.000-07:00

Summer is a time to organize.
Okay, mainly it's a time to sweat.
But for me, it's also a time to organize.
I recently read Carolyn Mahaney's book "Feminine Appeal." It has so much take-home! I highly recommend it!
But one area she points out, along with many others, that I want to continually grow in is planning and organization.
I feel like we are pretty well structured and organized. We love schedules. Okay, maybe I love schedules, but the kids like knowing what's happenning when too.
But I'm also finding the more kids I have, the more grades I teach, I am having to step up my organization game, big time!
I will be homeschooling three grades this year. This is a little scary for me, so I'm getting a head start on my yearly planning.
This week I actually got all my lesson plans for my older kids' unit lessons printed out, hole punched, and organized in a calendar for the fall and spring semester, all put together in a pretty notebook.
Whew. What an amazing feeling.
And that's the thing.
Planning and organization make our lives a little easier.
Carolyn Mahaney points out that we can reduce the stress level in our home and for our husbands by being good planners and organizers.
So true! How stressed are we when we can't find something? Losing stuff is going to happen. But my job is to make sure we have a place for everything, and that place is made known to my family.
Planning ahead for this school year is already taking some of the fear and stress out of my year. I can breathe a little easier and sleep a little better at night knowing lesson plans are tucked away in the pretty notebook.
And the summer is also for all of the projects in my house that I don't attend to during the school year when I'm teaching.
Like cleaning out closets. Cabinets. Drawers.
I try to re-think some of our systems that need updating.
Perfect example, our shoe cubbies.
Those little cubbies have served us well. The rule is you take your shoes off and put them in the cubbies AS SOON as we get in the door. I think I say "Go in, take your shoes off, and put them in the cubbies" 99% of the time that we pull the van into the garage.
A one millionth reminder is really not superfluous with my children.
But something strange has happened. My children have grown. And so have their feet. And those cute little cubbies just wouldn't hold Jax's tennis shoes and Crocs anymore! So shoes were always mismatched, always falling out, always on the floor in the hallway, and it was driving me crazy.
(I'm literally thinking right now- is anyone interested in this? I may be typing in vain. This seems silly to write about...but here I am.)
So Rusty and I spent a date night at Target finding a new shoe system.

This makes me so happy!!! Each child has their own shoe drawer, hidden from sight. How neat and organized does that look? And I was always piling my purse and stuff on top of the cubbies, but now I have my own crate for that stuff. What an improvement! And this really removes one of the most irritating things to me in our house.
It just makes life easier.
I also have a new cleaning schedule for me and the kids. I do certain chores on certain days, I wash certain bed sheets each day, and since I noticed my kids are growing, I gave them extra chores for each day.
We have a leader for the day around here.
The leader gets to do the extra stuff, but also gets the extra priveleges, as they arise. The leader sets the table, helps with gathering laundry, etc. But the leader also chooses the TV show if they're watching something, gets to carry the pool key, etc. This eliminates bickering over the little things.
So now there are leader jobs. I bought all the cleaning wipes: disinfectant wipes, Windex wipes, and dusting wipes. (Because the kids are quite wasteful and spray happy when they clean.) So they do bathrooms now each day as a part of their leader job.
That's also a new system in place around here that I am loving!
So that's what I'm doing.
If you haven't noticed, I'm not blogging. I'm cleaning things out. I'm trying. I don't want to make my plans the mini-god of my life EVER, don't misunderstand me!
But I do think good planning and order in this house makes life nice.

Moustache Mania

2009-07-09T09:51:00.000-07:00

This is the new thing around this house...if you fall asleep, you might wake-up with a marker moustache.
It started last Friday when Emma and Jax were reading together during our nap/quiet time in the afternoon. Jax fell asleep, and Emma's direct quote was "I just couldn't stand it, Mom. So I drew a moustache on him."
She giggled.
She just couldn't stand it.
She had a marker, and an unconscious brother.
What makes this pop into her head?
Ever since, it's been ON in the Bacak house.
Emma and her friend Emma stayed up super late the night of the fourth and did a number on Jax and Justus while they were sleeping. Full face beauty treatment via washable marker, plus baby dolls in the bed, and more.
The boys didn't take it lying down.
It's been a prank war since.
We are learning a lot about taking things like a good sport, paying back pranks in a fun way, not a vengeful, angry way, and trying not to cross the line into hurting feelings.
This is a delicate balance with a house full of male egos.
But nonetheless, the moustache war has been fun.
Emma woke up this morning, sleepy eyed, and came right to me and said "Good morning Mom. Do I have a moustache?"
This is our new way to wake up!
We are loving the summer of 2009!

Layered Potato Salad recipe for the 4th

2009-07-04T06:20:00.000-07:00

Every holiday is somewhat about food for me. Just being honest.
So here is my recipe for Layered Potato Salad that I often make on the 4th, and am making today!
Let me preface this by saying I usually care very little for potato salad.
Especially store bought potato salad. Are you kidding me? That stuff is gross.
This barely resembles traditional potato salad. In fact, I think the only thing it has in common is potatoes.
I think it's amazing, and worth the trouble on the 4th of July!

Here we go!
The recipe calls for 4lbs of cooked potatoes, specifically red potatoes, but you can choose. *You can also adjust the amount of sauce to your amount of potatoes. That's easy to do.
8 oz. sour cream
3/4 c mayo
2 T spicy/ creole mustard
1/4 t salt
1/2 t pepper
1 bunch of green onions, chopped
3/4 c Italian parsley, chopped or dried (I'm positive I omit this ingredient usually. My kids get spooked at green stuff, and it doesn't add much flavor wise, if you ask me)
4-5 slices cooked bacon, crumbled

Boil and mash or cube your cooked potatoes. Let cool.
Then mix up your sauce: mayo, sour cream, mustard, salt and pepper. (Adjust this to your liking. I think I like extra spicy mustard.)
Layer 1/3 of potatoes, then sour cream mixture, then green onions and parsley.
Repeat twice more. Chill for at least an hour, covered. Sprinkle bacon on top just before serving.

I am making this along with baked beans, and our hamburgers today. I think we might grill some corn and make corn paint too. I love holidays!

My Mom's Story of Healing

2009-06-28T06:40:00.000-07:00

*This is my Mom's story of physical healing. I wanted to share it with all of you because it is one of the most tangible evidences in my family's life of God's goodness, mercy, and grace. The greatest evidence of that in our lives is that He reached down and saved us, when we didn't deserve it. In the same way, he touched my Mom and healed her in a MOST dramatic way. The difference we saw in her pre-healing/post-healing was EXTREME! She literally could not get around before...well, I'll let her tell you the story. Be blessed as you read about a miraculous act on the part of our good and gracious God.
____________________________________________________________________________________

"My Journey to Healing" by Cindy Seay

My journey began with a decision in 2005 to go forward with a total knee replacement. It would be the 7th surgery on my left knee. I spent many hours in prayer and did all the research before making the decision to have the surgery. I was convinced that God had given me permission to go for it.

Days before my surgery brought anxiety and even fear. I am not usually one to panic so this was new to me. I prayed a lot and talked with close friends. Both brought reassurance and peace. I was able to confess out loud that God is Sovereign – in Him alone I put my trust!

I had some very specific prayer requests before my surgery –
1. That I would not be “freaked-out” the morning of surgery – that I would be filled with PEACE!
2. That the nerve block would not be painful
3. That I would wake easily from anesthesia

The day after surgery I wrote in my journal…
"Finally I am past the surgery that I have both anticipated and dreaded for a long time. Of the 3 specific prayer requests – God answered all of them in amazing ways.
• I had an amazing peace when I woke up the morning of surgery and it continued after I got to the hospital. No panic!
• I don’t remember anything about the nerve block.
• I woke up from anesthesia with absolutely no difficulty. This is a huge miracle for me.
I stand in awe of a mighty God who hears and answers my prayers."

Two weeks later I wrote in my journal of unimaginable pain, tortuous physical therapy and an inability to read or write due to severe nausea. I wrote this…
“I had hoped for some incredible spiritual experiences during my recovery but all I have been able to do is try to survive.
I have to believe that God has more in store for me.
Lord, help me to be quiet, rest and wait on you.”

After this, I continued to have pain and ultimately another surgery 5 months after the knee replacement. The recovery from that surgery was horrible and from that point on I was never free of pain. A couple of months later I found myself at the very bottom. My health in general was falling apart due to the chronic pain.
Doctors had no answers and God continued to remind me that He was my answer. There were countless numbers of people praying for my healing. Some came to my home and laid their hands on me as they prayed for God to relieve my pain and heal me.
There was so much I wanted to learn spiritually during this time but I still could not read my Bible or write in my journal. God revealed to me that if I journaled at this point in my journey I might manipulate the words and would miss what He was teaching me. And so I waited and prayed and cried. Pain was consuming my world. There was no comfort – there was no sleep – everything was hard.

Then, one Sunday morning during the prayer time, I felt the Lord say to me, “Are you ready to receive my healing?” My heart broke and I asked God to show me what this meant. Over the following weeks the Lord began to reveal to me that there was a process and a preparation for healing. I continued to wait and search for God’s process.

After waiting 7 weeks to be seen by a specialist and receiving no real answers, again the Lord said, “It is me you need, no one else!” By this time we were approaching a trip that had been planned for a very long time – a trip to California for a worship ministry conference. I whined and complained and begged Ed to let me stay home. I just didn’t know how I would do it. Ed, who is always sensitive to my needs, said that the tickets were non-refundable and insisted that I needed to go. We would see California in a wheelchair. I was not happy but I yielded to his leadership.

We left on a Wednesday morning, with Steve and Holly Ray. We worked our way through the airport with a wheelchair. I was so sad that the other 3 people with me were going to be stuck with a cranky invalid in California.

Wednesday night we went to the first session of this conference and immediately encountered the presence of the God. We had an amazing worship time and my spirit was truly refreshed. Earlier that day, I felt the freedom to journal just a few words. This was the first journal entry since a couple of weeks after my surgery. That journal entry went like this…
"I feel that I have been drowning in words and emotions that so needed to overflow from me to paper, but God has not allowed me to journal until now. I do so today with great care. I don’t want to twist any truth about lessons learned during this journey to make them more palatable. I stop now to pray that the words I will write here will be from the Lord and not a humanized interpretation of what God is doing in my life."
I went on to list some of the things that God had revealed to me during this time and trust me, there were many lessons. The very last words I wrote were these,
“Help me to not be afraid of healing!”
As I re-read these words, I don’t even remember writing them. I had never verbalized this fear, though I had struggled with many issues related to healing.

The next day was a long day and I was in a lot of pain. I went back to the hotel in the afternoon to get some rest and somewhat begrudgingly, went back that night for a worship service that I knew would be mostly in Spanish.

From the moment we entered the building that night I sensed the presence of the Holy Spirit, even through the chaos of more than a thousand people eagerly making their way to their seats. The worship time began in Spanish and we were surrounded by Spanish-speaking people on all sides. We found ourselves completely given over to worship and were singing confidently in Spanish. We were a people that night of one language. It was more than amazing!

Later, we all agreed that there were times that we thought we could have spoken fluent Spanish that night through the power of the Holy Spirit. I can only imagine how the apostles must have felt the night of Pentecost. During this part of our worship time, the Hispanic man sitting next to Ed leaned over to him and told him that he had a word from the Lord for him and this is what he said -
“The thing that you have been willing to receive but have not truly sought will be given to you soon.”
How great is our God! He knew the struggles we faced in our faith and chose to give healing even in the midst of those fears.

I couldn’t really tell you much else about the worship except that we were totally at the feet of Jesus and unaware of anything else going on around us. During the last half of the evening Brian Doerksen led us in ENGLISH worship. We actually felt a sense of disappointment that we would now sing in English because we had already had such an incredible time of worship – how could it get better.
Brian is truly a minister through music. He has had much hurt in his life with two sons who have severe birth defects and other losses. His music and his ministry that night reflected a heart of joy in the midst of pain.

As the service began to come to a close, I was sitting and praying. The pastor came to the microphone and called us to a time of prayer. The only thing I really remember hearing him say was “Someone in this room tonight needs healing”. I remember thinking to myself – I bet there’s more than one person in this room in need of healing. I returned to a sweet time of prayer and at some point realized that Ed, Steve and Holly all had their hands on me praying for my healing.

From that point, the service seemed to end abruptly. Ed left to go get the car, which had been his routine since I couldn’t walk far. As I stood up to walk out of the sanctuary I sensed the Spirit say to me –“If you use your cane to walk out of here you will be in disobedience”.
I found myself saying this out loud and Steve looked at me and said “then don’t use it!” It wasn’t until I took several steps that I realized that I was pain free.

The night before as we tried to exit the sanctuary, I was almost knocked down a couple of times, so the thought of maneuvering through the crowd was a little overwhelming. The enemy tried to convince me that I couldn't do it, but I did. We got in the car and no one knew what to say. Ed asked about the cane and I told him what I felt the Spirit say to me and we all then sat in silence. The silence was not uncomfortable – it was more of a time of reflection on what we had experienced in worship and an excitement for apparent healing.

We stopped at Starbucks on our way back to the hotel. Ed asked me if I planned to use my cane to walk in and I said "NO!". We went in, had our coffee and again did not really talk about it. We mostly just sat smiling and reveling in our time at Jesus feet. It was a “holy ground” time and to try to define it with words was impossible.

I slept amazingly well that night for the first time in many months. My first real sense of healing was when I got up in the night to go to the bathroom. I was usually in a lot of pain when I first stepped on that leg and was always fumbling for my cane. I got and walked pain free. I went back to bed and immediately went right back to sleep. As I look back I would have thought that I would have laid awake all night in amazement. God was so gracious to give me sleep that night.

The next morning we walked out of the hotel to meet Steve and Holly “cane-free”. They both stood at the car and watched in wonder at how easily I was moving. That day was an amazing one. The conference was over that afternoon. At the beginning of the trip we had encouraged Steve and Holly to decide what they wanted to do in LA on our off-day since they had never been there. They wanted to go to Universal Studios but feared that it would be too much for me. I had assured them that I would get a wheelchair and it would be fine. Little did we know that just a few days later I would be walking all over Universal Studios. We spent over 7 hours there and I walked the whole park, stood in lines and rode fast rides. It was amazing! I can’t tell you how excited I was! This was the first time that I could move around and walk easily in almost a year. By the afternoon, we could no longer contain our excitement. I had been healed and 7 hours at Universal Studios was proof!

I can’t begin to tell you how this has affected me. It is powerful and overwhelming even now, 3 years later. It has changed who I am. It has changed my perception of God. It has caused the Word of God to come alive to me and I feel that I have a responsibility to share what God has done. God has a greater purpose for my healing – it is not about me!

It is about this church and many others who need to know that God still heals. It has led me to a search for truth in His Word about the ministry of the Holy Spirit and how we have fallen short of believing the Word.

Romans 11:33-36
33Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
34"Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?"
35"Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay him?"
36For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.

During the months of intense pain I prayed for healing and many of you faithfully prayed for my healing. But I have to admit that, though I desperately wanted to be healed, the whole idea was very scary to me. I felt unworthy – my problem was not nearly as serious as those who have terminal illnesses – why should I be healed when they had not. And what if God didn’t heal me? What would people think? - that I had a lack of faith or that there was unconfessed sin in my life.

Eventually it all came down to 2 questions…
1. Did I believe that God could heal me? ABSOLUTELY!
2. Did I believe that God would heal me? Honestly - Not really.

First, He said… "Are you ready?" This required that I do a heart check. I prayed Psalm 139:23-24 … "God, please take your highest powered spotlight and shine in into every corner of my heart and show me if there is anything there that is offensive to you."
I knew that I needed to be ready with a clean heart.

Secondly, I had to be willing to receive. This required faith to believe that God could heal me. James 5:15 says that a prayer offered in faith will bring healing.
As I explored this process, I discovered what I believe about healing...

It is a deliberate act of God – not a result of the natural order of life, such as the sunrise and the sunset.
It is the result of an intentional touch from God.
I believe that it happens as a result of intense and persistent prayer and a faith that is willing to receive it.
But most importantly, it is meant to glorify God.

I am not worthy to receive His healing – I am not special because He healed me. For His own purposes, God chose to heal me.

I pray today that through my healing God will be revealed to you in a whole new way.
Please know that there is no illness that is too small – nothing that is too unimportant to place before the Father.
Even now I pray that you will take a moment to consider what is happening in your life that needs healing. Are you ready to receive His healing?

Nurse Needed: You can help!

2009-06-26T05:20:00.000-07:00

Behind every good doctor, is a good nurse.
Well, at least the doctor hopes he has a good nurse. It makes all the difference in the world! Every doctor and ever patient knows that.
I think Rusty is fabulous, but if he doesn't have a strong staff, people will leave dissatisfied with their care.
We have had a wonderful nurse with us for the past few years!!!
If you're our patient, you know Gabbie, and she's been a treasure to our practice.
But Gabbie's husband is a pastor and they have been called to a church in Illinois.
They've decided her commute would be too much. Whatever.
So we are in desperate need of a wonderful nurse, soon!
I'll have to say, one of the best things about Gabbie has been her heart for ministry in our office.
Rusty and Gabbie met on a mission trip where they worked together, and they knew doing ministry at home would be profitable for the kingdom! Gabbie gave up her much higher paying hospital position to work alongside Rusty, and minister to patients.
I have written on here before, I couldn't be more proud of my husband's ministry through medicine.
What I love about him is he has never separated the Godly man, leader, servant, and teacher he is to us at home from who he is at work.
He holds the Truth of the Gospel up in his life, wherever he goes.
He has made Abundant Life Family Practice an outpost for the gospel, fearlessly (from my perspective- he appears fearless! That may not always be so!) sharing the gospel and praying with patients, giving spiritual questionnaires to every new patient, and even sharing spiritual answers to their physical problems. (They get a little more than they come in for sometimes.)
Gabbie has been in step with with him in ministry every step of the way.
This does not make our practice perfect. It doesn't mean they don't make mistakes or have bad days. But their desire is to share Christ, and I'll confess my own sin...it makes me a little nervous sometimes.
Rusty will come home and tell me about an exchange with a patient in which he boldly shares Truth, and I am thinking...the law suit is coming. Surely, we're going to get sued for this stuff.
But so far, God has totally protected us. He's so good!
If you know of someone who would be interested in our office, let's talk.
I'm praying God would use this to get the word out to just the right person.
So pass it along. And if you've been blessed by our office, please take a moment to pray for God to grant us the staff member we need. Thanks!

Price Matching

2009-06-22T18:43:00.000-07:00

FINALLY, I'm lowering my grocery bill. I didn't think it was possible.
It was looking hopeless. My grocery bill was climbing, and I could only see it climbing steadily from now until they all go to college. It was starting to make me feel sick each week, dreading the total as we checked out each week.
I have been so challenged over the last year by some amazing women in my church who know how to stretch a dollar and find amazing deals. I think some of them have grocery stores paying them. They should wear capes while they walk around those stores with their coupons, calculators, and sales pages.
So I got in the game.
I feel like grocery shopping has become a game show.
I wasn't sure which route to take on this money saving game.
I've actually tried a few different things over this year.
I think I found the thing for me.
PRICE MATHCING + COUPONS AT WAL-MART
Did I just say Wal-Mart? I know, I know...
It works, but there are pros and cons, of course.
If you don't do this or know about it, I will break it down for you.
Price Matching means that you check all the sales ads in the paper that come out on Wednesdays. I check the Kroger, HEB, and Albertson's sales pages.
I didn't know this until I read this on Kyle McVay's blog about a year ago...but Wal-Mart will match the sales prices of any other store in town!!!!
I have found that this excludes in-store coupon deals, and buy 1 get 1 free deals.
But if Fuji apples are on sale for 88 cents at Albertson's, then Wal-Mart will give you that price. (That's actually one of the great deals this week that saved me more than $2 in apples.)
All you have to do is show them the add and match the exact brand, or if it's for the Kroger brand or HEB generic brand, then you have to have the Wal-Mart generic brand.
If they don't have the same size or brand, it doesn't work.
But most of the time, it's worked for me so far.
I've saved a large chunk of money doing this, plus coupons, plus Wal-Mart has the cheapest prices on almost everything that we buy of all the stores.

DOWNSIDE:
You're at Wal-Mart.
This is huge. It took me a year to get over this hurdle.
I try to go super early on a Sunday morning, or some other low-traffic time, if there is such a thing at Super Wal-Mart.
Also, the produce is stinky. I had to get my lettuce and a few vegetables at HEB this week. I am big on salad and good, fresh vegetables in salad and to grill, so if they're not looking good, I'd rather get them elsewhere.
Also, they don't double or triple coupons, so if you are awesome at the coupon thing, and you know how to double and triple them, you can't do that at Wal-Mart.
I'm getting fairly good with coupons, but not as good as the experts.
But Wal-Mart's prices on everything I'm buying is so cheap, that saving on certain items at Kroger but paying inflated prices for everything else on my list wasn't working for me.
Also, Wal-Mart is a new store to me and I don't know where anything is, but there is no one wandering around to help you. Even if you find someone who works there, they have NEVER ever known where the item I was looking for could be found. You're basically on your own. If you can't find it, you can't buy it.
Lastly, I think the people behind me in line this past week had every right to hate my guts.
The first few weeks I went, it was early in the morning, and it went smoothly with my checker. However last week, it was Saturday afternoon, and my checker was a little thrown off. So it added a lot of time to my check-out and I felt horrible for the people waiting behind me.

UPSIDE
I have saved about $50/week so far doing groceries this way.
That's potentially $200/month.
The first time Rusty did this with me, we were searching everywhere for Craisins, which were naturally found right next to the diapers...sure...and we'd been searching everywhere, and Rusty said "Is this really worth it?"
I said I didn't know, we were going to check out and find out.
But I paid less than $100 for groceries for the first time in years!!!! So I decided yes... it was worth it.
I feel like I'm getting away with something.
I feel so smart.
I really want to tell people next to me when I'm picking up Pillsbury items for 88 cents each that they too can save $1 on each can if they want to!!! Or they can get a 4 pack of Angel Soft for only $1!
All the deals in town, I can get in one place.
This is sounding like a commercial.
It's not, because I still hate Wal-Mart, and I think that some kids in sweat shops somewhere are making those cheap clothes they sell.
But I am a bit on a grocery high on the way home, checking my receipt, seeing the great deals I've made.
I'm still fine tuning how to organize my list and make this as quick as possible, and if any of you have great tips, I'll take them!
I'm thinking with all this money we're saving, we can take a vacation to Mexico, right?

The Story of Jax

2009-06-18T18:51:00.000-07:00

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Jax was born on June 19th, 2002. Emma was less than two years old and my surprise baby had been persistently giving me pre-term contractions that were concerning to both us and my doctor. For six weeks I had been sitting on our couch on "bedrest" (which basically means I was on house arrest with a rambunxious Emma toddler) ballooning out, puffy and swollen, hooked up to an IV giving me some sort of speed that slowed my contractions but made me jittery, irritable, and super-tired of being pregnant. At 37 weeks I was taken off the IV drugs and my Doctor allowed me to contract away.
And I did.
But he still didn't come.
So, ironically, I was induced. Mostly because I'd had a hellacious marathon labor with Emma. We thought that girl would never come out.
So on this night, seven years ago, I had that panicked feeling.
Some of you know what I'm talking about...I'd been wishing for this baby to GET OUT for weeks and weeks, and suddenly, I was hours away and I was telling God "I'm not ready! How can I be ready?" I was so worried about how little Emma would respond. I was sort of mourning our last few hours with just one child, as strange as that sounds to me now. And most of all, I was fearing the great, big change that was upon us.
It turned out to be one of the best "changes" of my entire life. But I was afraid. I snuggled with Emma, who was still furiously trying to bump her way back into my lap that had vanished into thin air one day, knowing my bag was packed and my Mom was there. Everything was in place for us to be at the hospital early the next morning, but I was terrified and just cried. 60% due to hormones, and 40% due to legitimate fear.
The next morning my Mom, Rusty, and I headed to the hospital. We did the check-in and regular inducement thing, and then waited. I just waited for those pitocin contractions to get started.
I didn't have much of a birth plan. I found out with Emma that plans seem to be futile in the world of pregnancy and child birth. Not one smidget of either one was what I had expected. So I just planned to be unplanned.
My contractions got good and going by 10am, when the Price Is Right was on, and I got to work.
For some crazy reason, all sense of reason left me, and I decided not to get an epideural in there somewhere. Actually, I don't remember making that decision, I just failed to make any decision. I wanted to see how super-heroish I could be during child birth. People had talked up natural childbirth like it was far superior in comparison to people who get the sweet relief of paralysis and numbness, and since Emma's birth was such a nightmare, I guess I wanted to see how far I could go and if it was really so great.
I don't remember really exploring these thoughts, thinking them through, or discussing them with Rusty beforehand. Maybe I did and I just don't remember.
All I know is I was at an 8 and it was too late.
I visited a planet of pain I'd never known. It truly is another planet.
It's hard to describe or even revisit mentally.
But at no other time in your life do you make "those sounds."
I remember earlier in the morning hearing a woman laboring loudly next door to me and thinking "what in the world is that sound? Is that human? Is there a whale giving birth next door? And am I going to sound like that???"
I was sure I would not, but sure enough, those bizarre, birthing sounds started coming out of me.
I would have given anything to get to a 10. Anything!
I was stuck at a 9, and my Mother being the brilliant birthing coach that she is (truly, that's one of her real jobs and gifts in life) moved me to a different position and magically got me to a 10.
I pushed with Emma for an hour, (rather pleasantly of course. Paralysis. Numbness. I would pay for one of those right now, I think). Turns out that pushing goes a heck of a lot faster if you can feel it.
So 10-15 minutes tops, and we got that beautiful boy out!
*(Just in case you're wondering, my recovery and birthing experience did not personally feel enhanced by the natural nature of it. In fact, I felt more out of it than with the epidural because I was visiting that alternate planet of pain.
But somewhere deep down, I felt proud of myself. And a little crazy. But proud that I had done it. I have only given birth two times, so getting to experience both ways was kind of cool.)
At 1:31pm, Jaxson Steele Bacak arrived. He was incredibly lovable from the start.
He has been pure joy to us. He is one of the most amiable personalities I know. He is rarely upset, always looking for a good time, and usually ready to supply it.
He is pure entertainment around here. He lights up our house.
He's pretty much happy from the moment he wakes up until he goes to bed at night.
He loves the Lord and His Word.
He is learning to be more and more obedient, respectful, and helpful.
We feel incredibly blessed to have had Jax everyday of these seven years.
Happy Birthday Jax!

I'd rather be... (again)

2009-06-15T05:34:00.000-07:00

A toddler urinal!? Who knew this existed!!! Hilarious.

(This is my old post from potty training Justus. It's that time again. Same story, insert new child. Treston's turn. I woke up with a sense of dread. Today is the day it begins. Where is the potty training toddler camp? There's bound to be one! I'm calling the children's museum today to check. My only comfort: all my three older children are currently 100% toilet trained, so I must have gotten there somehow.)

I'd rather be doing a lot of things other than potty training.
It's NOT one of my new favorite things.
It may be my least favorite part of my job.
I'd rather go to the dentist.
Heck, I'd rather to to my yearly gynecological exam!
I'd rather play limbo.
I'd rather listen to the Newsboys.
All painful things for me.
I'd rather NOT be cleaning poop from the trampoline. (Emma bounced in it before she noticed it.)
This is why diapers are BRILLIANT! Have we ever stopped to thank God for diapers? Imagine the life of a Mom before diapers. As if our job isn't gross enough already?
You would be on constant pooper-scooper duty.
No thanks.
But look at this adorable boy? Success is sweet. We get up and do the "Justus tee-teed in the potty" dance, and have some M&M's.
My favorite thing he does now that he's potty training is when he's decided he's done sitting, he stands up and makes a flushing sound and puts the lid down on his little potty.
He's so cute!
If you have brilliant potty training tips, bring em' on! I'm all ears! I want this job done by the time we leave for vacation in 8 days.
Everyone stop, and say a prayer. Thanks.

Nana, Pop-Pop, and 17 cuties!

2009-06-13T08:26:00.000-07:00

This is a picture my sister-in-law Liz took while we were on the Seay family vacation this past week. I love it! This is my Mom and Dad and the seventeen grandkids they are so proud of! (I'm pretty proud of these kids too!)

Home, sweet home

2009-06-12T15:16:00.001-07:00

I am finally HOME! Home from almost two weeks of vacation. Our first week was at Camp Ozark, our yearly family trip. Rusty is Camp Doctor (an easy gig!) and we just play. Emma and Jax were campers and had the time of their lives, and we got to sneak peeks at them and play with our little ones. Highlight for me: hours of Mod Podging in the Craft Store everyday! Heavenly! Low for me: about 1 million chigger bites. I hate those things!!!
I didn't write on my blog that we were gone because of the creepers.
You know the creepy bloggers. You can shorten that to creepers. I don't know if any creepers read this blog. But if they did, for sweet little Jeanna who was still home alone in our house, we didn't announce our vacation agenda.
I figure child stealers are not going to travel all the way to the Ozark mountains to steal our kids. And if they did, they would come to find out that I am heavily trained in Body Combat. Oh yeah! I took Body Combat at Gold's Gym for atleast three years. I don't know what belt that makes me, but I do know that with the right music and work-out instructor, I could crush anyone. Anytime in the class I wondered to myself "when and where would I use this?" I imagined someone trying to steal my children, and then I was Jennifer Garner on Alias. In my head, it's awesome.
After Camp Ozark we joined the entire Seay family in Galveston for our yearly beach vacation. 17 grandkids in one vacation! Can you imagine? It's pretty great. It's crazy, and fun, and I enjoy being with my family more than anyone else I could imagine. Late nights with my brothers are the times that I laugh so hard my abs hurt. They are the funniest people I know. It was great. I feel triumphant as a Mom because none of my kids got sun burned. That's a serious victory with four small children to sunblock and re-apply every hour. If Justus and Treston did get burned, we sure couldn't tell! They just look a few shades darker and it's awesome!

JELLYFISH ALERT!
This is the informational portion of this post. When we got to the beach the first day of our vacation, the jellyfish stings started immediately! We were there for maybe an hour and a half, and I think the total reached 10 children stung. It was not happy times! My brother Chris was on jellyfish clean-up patrol, and he put 22 jellyfish in the trash.

You don't want to know how we treated these severe stings.
We swore we'd never speak of it again.

All I'm saying is, we later found out there was a "jellyfish alert" and that is not to be taken lightly, I tell you! Evidently the little boogers were migrating through our little spot in the gulf of Mexico, and there is NO sharing the water with them!
By the next day, they had moved on and we had the beach back.

My next post I've been wanting to write: Price Matching at Wal-Mart. I'm doing it, and I'm so proud of myself!!!

iPhones

2009-06-03T07:05:00.000-07:00

I got an iphone for my birthday. This is a whole new world of "apps" and texting (new to me) and 24/7 Internet access.
My favorite app so far: pandora.
How does pandora know?
How does she know when I put in don henley that I also love Bryan Adams? And journey? Pandora's brilliant!
I'm texting this and I'm tired now.
iPhone cult members, give me your tips , favorite apps, etc.
Also, I can't figure out how to attach my photos to e-mails.

It's my fake birthday cake

2009-05-27T14:23:00.000-07:00

Today is my fake birthday.
I have a real birthday. It's on Saturday. But we will be driving all day and I will just be honest...I'd be feeling sorry for myself having a birthday in the car in my mini-van, handing out snack bags, and listening to one more annoying kids movie.
So we made today my fake birthday! I'm enjoying it very much! I had lunch today with some ladies I love very much at one of my favorite spots, Frittella.
And sweet Jeanna made me my birthday cake already!
I usually have an amazing Carrot Cake that takes about forever to make and produces a sink full of dirty dishes. It's a homemade carrot cake with a buttermilk glaze and cream cheese frosting. It's three seperate recipes from Southern Living. My very own husband who loves and adores me has made this cake for me more than once before anyone reading this blog was even awake. He's so amazing! (He also knows one of my primary love languages is food. The other is service. That combines those two and makes me feel like the most loved woman alive.) But I asked him not to go through the trouble this week. I think it's just evil of me to prefer this cake.
So I am including the recipe for a pound cake that came in as pinch hitter birthday cake this year. Fake birthday that is.
So this is my fake birthday cake. This recipe comes from Ashley Garratt, and I tried it because the name is "Grocery Store Gossip Pound Cake."
I really like good names of recipes, and that was a unique one!
Here it is. It's so easy! You might have these ingredients waiting for you in the kitchen right now!

1 box butter cake mix
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup oil
5 eggs
8 oz. sour cream

Mix all ingredients together and pour into a bundt pan. Bake at 350 until brown, about 50 min. - 1 hour.

Tonight I am putting strawberries with it.
Why? Because it's my fake birthday.

Memorial Day Remembering

2009-05-25T11:03:00.001-07:00

Today we remember Earl Martin Seay.
This is my Dad's Dad. He's actually an Aggie! If you're a frequent visitor in the Bacak living room, you may have seen our framed newspaper story about him.
My Dad didn't know his Dad. He fought in WWII and then lost his life in Korea. My Dad was just six weeks old. His sacrifice is still felt, generations down the family line, and is not forgotten.
Despite the tragedy of my Dad's parents' death (my Dad lost his Mom when he was young as well; she served as a nurse in the service) God provided for my Dad generously. He was raised by a hard-working Grandpa and Godly, homemaking grandmother. Their imprint is forever left on who he is.
We are thankful today for all of those who have defended our freedom. Our pastor challenged us this weekend not to take for granted our freedoms, especially to worship freely. Week after week, we pray for the persecuted church around the world. That has made us more mindful of the value of this freedom.
We are so thankful!

I can't believe I liked it!

2009-05-23T18:44:00.000-07:00

Rusty was surprised, but I am most surprised.
I really liked it. I have always been repulsed by the Star Trek TV show. I think it's those scary, monster-looking people they have. Creepy. They did have one woman in the beginning of the movie with freakishly large eyes. I think I had nightmares about her last night. I just don't like that sci-fi business. It's not for me.
But I had heard that the Star Trek movie was really good, and that J.J. Abrams did it.
That man is a MAGICIAN!
(He's the creator of LOST and Alias- two of our favorite shows ever.)
J.J. Abrams can take a show I HATE and make a movie I really liked out of it.
It wasn't deep, dark, and fraught with religious overtones like LOST, but it was entertaining.
Who knew?
I actually liked it.
I especially liked being on a date with my husband and seeing a movie. That was the best part.
Next stop at the movies: Night at the Museum 2, and then Up!

Newest member of the Bacak household

2009-05-21T05:05:00.000-07:00

I know I've written about Jeanna many times. She has been my mentee this past year. We met last fall, as she was looking for a mentor. We didn't know each other at all! Jeanna is on the quieter side at first, so we slowly got to know one another and she got to know this crazy family.
I've written about the rewards of mentoring! Wow! This year has been so much fuller for having her in it! She trained with me for a half marathon. That was amazing.
She was my partner in the Run For Compassion craziness.
And now, she is a member of our household.
Jeanna moved in this past week for the year! So exciting!
If you know us, you know that we have had many people live here. Some we knew, and some we didn't. We have been a shepherding home for New Life, taking in pregnant women and sometimes their kids because they needed a place to stay. I learned about a million things through those experiences! Hard and really good things.
We have had other college girls that we adore, and needed to save some money, come and stay with us. It's only a bonus when they leave some of their clothes behind for me. I'm happy to take college girls leftover clothes, just so you girls know!
And now we have Jeanna! (Who is totally my size, by the way! I've already scanned her closet.)
She is rooming with Emma for now. Emma is way excited! Emma put a J on the wall next to her E, how precious is that? She is working hard to keep her room clean, after much lecturing from us on being a good roommate.
This is such a great teaching point for us and the kids, teaching about hospitality. Our home does not belong to us.
Not just literally, because it belongs to the bank I guess, but because all that we have been given is ours to share. That's what we teach our kids. We tell them nothing belongs to them. It's "yours to share." We don't have Jax's toys, and Justus' toys, and Treston's toys, we have "toys to share."
Well we feel convincted that our home is no different.
I'm not going to lie, sometimes sharing our home has been amazingly fun and enjoyable, and sometimes it's been hard.
These girls get to see the good, bad, and the ugly around here. That is humbling sometimes.
But who are we to hoard the gifts He's given us? Why should our house be an exception? Why do I sometimes find myself with my fingers curled around something tightly as if it were mine, and I earned it? Yuck.
1 Peter 4:9 says "Cheerfully share your home with those who need a meal or a place to stay."
The Bible talks many times of sharing our homes, hospitality, and the apostles always stayed in homes. Do you think it's possible that we have become so closed with our homes in the U.S. culture, that it is a place to hide? A place to protect our images, keeping people on the outside periphery of our lives?
All I know is, there's room for more around here. No, we don't have unoccupied bedrooms, but we can always put more kids a room. They're little. We have the space to house others, and we want to!
We are SUPER EXCITED about having Jeanna here all year! She is already such a blessing to our home!
Jeanna will be blessing us by babysitting our kids weekly for our date nights. We have told her, we think this is better than rent! We have a babysitter on retainer. How cool is that?
We're so glad you're here Jeanna! Thanks for sharing our lives with us!

Psalm 19

2009-05-17T18:32:00.000-07:00

In my read through the Bible in a year program, we have come to the Psalms. Yay! Leviticus was a trip, but getting to the Psalms has been just nourishing. I feasted on Psalm 19 this morning. It is so good! I just had to share!
Psalm 19
For the choir director: A psalm of David.
1 The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
The skies display his craftsmanship.
2 Day after day they continue to speak;
night after night they make him known.
3 They speak without a sound or word;
their voice is never heard.[a]
4 Yet their message has gone throughout the earth,
and their words to all the world.
God has made a home in the heavens for the sun.
5 It bursts forth like a radiant bridegroom after his wedding.
It rejoices like a great athlete eager to run the race.
6 The sun rises at one end of the heavens
and follows its course to the other end.
Nothing can hide from its heat.

-I want to see God's glory in all things...in all His creation...I want to enjoy the sun and the skies and let them scream "CREATOR" to me. Nothing CAN hide from it's heat, especially here in Texas, and I am not thinking about how cool that is. I'm thinking about how much I HATE Texas summers. I do NOT have a thankful heart when summer approaches. I dread the sweating and scorching days when it's too hot for my kids to be outside. But I'm missing the point. It's true! Without a word, just as He tells us in Romans 1, God has spoken His existence into our world, even evidenced by the sun. No evangelist required. We are without excuse because we can see what He's done. There's great comfort in that.
Stay with me...that's just the intro.

7 The instructions of the Lord are perfect,
reviving the soul.
The decrees of the Lord are trustworthy,
making wise the simple.
8 The commandments of the Lord are right,
bringing joy to the heart.
The commands of the Lord are clear,
giving insight for living.
9 Reverence for the Lord is pure,
lasting forever.
The laws of the Lord are true;
each one is fair.
10 They are more desirable than gold,
even the finest gold.
They are sweeter than honey,
even honey dripping from the comb.
11 They are a warning to your servant,
a great reward for those who obey them.

-Let's make a list of what He's saying God's word is! His Laws are:
perfect, reviving the soul
trustworthy, making wise the simple (Praise the Lord! There's hope for us all!)
right, bringing joy to the heart
clear, giving insight for our lives
true, fair
more desirable than any material thing
sweet
a warning
a great reward
WHAT ELSE COULD I WANT!? I'm so thankful for His Word, that He didn't leave us here to figure it all out on our own! I'm pained that there were times in my life when I didn't consistently desire it. What was I thinking? What was I desiring more than Him? I must have thought I could find my own way, and it would be just fine. I was so wrong! I need God's Word so desperately. I regret ever going a day without it. Not because it's a duty that must be done and checked off my list. But because I need it. I want it. I am starved and spiritually anorexic without it. The Bible coupled with coffee is God's greatest gift to me in the morning. Thank you Jesus! He is willing to meet with me and speak to me, and He invented the coffee bean to help make it possible. God is good!
What is more important to us than our time in the Word?
Sleep? Homework? E-mail? Blogging? Our beauty? People? I've been guilty of everyone of these. In those times, I was obviously not seeing His Word like THIS.
And I need to know His Word...for the next part.

12 How can I know all the sins lurking in my heart?
Cleanse me from these hidden faults.
13 Keep your servant from deliberate sins!
Don’t let them control me.
Then I will be free of guilt
and innocent of great sin.
14 May the words of my mouth
and the meditation of my heart
be pleasing to you,
O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

What a prayer for me to pray everyday! I want to take all of my sin this seriously, and I truly want the words of my mouth AND the meditations of my heart to please Him. That covers just about every sin issue.
Look at all that good stuff packed into one little Psalm. Wow!
I'm so enjoying these Psalms and writing them fast and furiously in my journal. This is good stuff!

Bacak family photos by Ryan Price

2009-05-13T05:11:00.000-07:00

Make a Smilebox slideshow

I have to tell you about our friend and talented photographer, Ryan Price.
I love these photos so much! We took them out at Carousel Acres where Emma rides horses. It was such a perfect spot! Ryan captured it so well! And let me tell you, it's not easy doing that with four squirmy kiddos.
When did my daughter get so big and beautiful? And what's more beautiful than a girl on a horse? He also got all of the boys and their personalities! I think that's what I love most about these pictures. They're not just still shots of us posing. They're real. Love them, Ryan! You rock! Check out his site at www.ryanpricephoto.com

Motherhood

2009-05-10T08:46:00.000-07:00

(This amazing family photo was taken by Ryan Price- commercial for him coming soon!)

First of all- I praise the Lord today for the mother I have! What a godly example for me and source of wisdom she is! Yesterday, I had the rare opportunity to go to lunch with her just the two of us. It was awesome! The hours flew by while we talked non-stop and I treasure that kind of precious time with her. I love you Mom!

I'm telling you, I think Mother's Day is better than a birthday.
First, because you don't get a year older.
But mostly, because it's just a day to celebrate motherhood. And that is something that I enjoy very much!
Being a Mom is the best job I can imagine.
It's hard to explain motherhood before you're there- it begins quite appropriately with giving birth. What could be more difficult and painful and beautiful and joyful at the same time? It's seemingly so contradictory.
Being a mother is definitely sanctifying, challenging, trying.
But it's brimming with joy and beauty. It's the highest vocational calling I could hope for. It's teeming with purpose and big picture value.
The Lord has heaped his rewards on us through a full house of children. I can only be thankful today!
My day started with breakfast in bed brought in by four beaming little faces. They were so proud of the work they'd done! They had been planning this breakfast all week, and they awoke with a start and a purpose in making me feel loved this morning.
Treston wandered into my bedroom with crazy hair and sleepy eyes and said "Happy Birfday Mama". Seriously! What is cuter than that!?
I then got to watch an old movie I'd had from Netflix for a month but haven't had time to watch, while I cut out my Sunday coupons with little helpers on the bed. It's called "Woman of the Year" and was made in 1942. I just grab all the old, old movies I can find on Netflix because I really can't tolerate movies made in color anymore. I just adore the classics! I didn't know what it was about, and strangely enough it was a poignant statement about womanhood and the feminist movement from it's early days. Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy (who I now know I love! I wasn't familiar with Spencer Tracy so much) were the stars, and it's a story of a marriage between a career man and frontrunner in the femininist movement and career woman. Turns out, she is the "woman of the year" in her career world, but not-so-much of a wife and "no woman at all" according to her husband. This is not the kind of statement and real-life conflict you will find in the movies anymore. But it's legit.
In my prayer hour this morning, my heart was heavy for women to value their place in the home. Our roles as wives, helpers, mothers, managers and workers in the home (Titus 2), and servants in the church are all biblically mandated. I want us to see our work as God does! This is more than being a maid and a chauffeur. Under the leadership of our husbands, we are teaching and disciplining and loving our children, and it's all about pointing them to Christ! What is our ultimate goal for them? It is for them to love God with everything in them and serve Him wholeheartedly. What I'm doing with them daily has everything to do with THAT. We are not just washing clothes just to get dirty again, or making meals just to watch them disappear before our eyes, or even cleaning floors that get muddy moments later. Our real work is not futile. All of it is valuable, even the tasks that appear futile on the surface. This is the work God has laid out for us. God knows what is good for us. He has given us these roles based on the skills and gifts He's equipped us with. And in Proverbs 31:28-30, he reveals something vital to our understanding of this role. "Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he blesses her: 'Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.' Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her the reward she has earned, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate."
Why do we seek reward, satisfaction, and recognition elsewhere? Fearing the Lord and serving our husbands and families is where it's at.
This is not an indictment on women doing any work outside the home. So don't e-mail me ugly things. I know the Proverbs 31 woman turned a profit with her handiwork. But she was an excellent manager of her home first and foremost. She was a blessing to her husband (v. 11-12). She was...well I'll save the full-blown Proverbs 31 Bible Study for another day.
This is simply to say: Today I feel celebrated. I feel that all I'm doing in the home is truly of eternal value and I am overwhelmed with the satisfaction of it all. Remember what I wrote about sanctification and trials? I'm not discounting that. I'm quite familiar with it, in fact.
But God's plan for women is good. And I feel blessed beyond measure to be a wife and mother and manager of this home. When I see these things as being anything but a blessing, I have lost my proper focus and slipped into a selfish and ungrateful attitude.
I recently read an amazing book called "Feminine Appeal" by Carolyn Mahaney. I highly recommend it for married and single ladies alike. I was challenged by so many areas I would like to grow in as a wife and mother! I have much room to grow! I took intense notes while I read this book to discuss it all with my husband. What a fruitful time it was! I want to be humbly asking the Lord, as we celebrate motherhood, what can I do better? This life is a blessing, and I want to be a good steward and make all I can of it.
Happy Mother's Day, Moms!
I hope you feel blessed today too!

Praying for our children

2009-05-06T14:03:00.000-07:00

Mother's Day is coming! Yay! I love Mother's Day! I love being a Mom so I think we should get a whole week to celebrate motherhood! What a high and sacred calling for us women!
As I think about my role as a Mother and contemplate what I ought to be doing well, I know that the most important thing I can do as a Mom is pray.
But sometimes my prayer time for my kids seems scattered and unfocused.
If you are like me, you pray for you kids. No brainer. But sometimes I'm overwhelmed by all that I want to cover in prayer for them. And I have a lot of kids!
I want to be a Mom who is on my knees for them, fighting daily in the spiritual realm for the big things and the little things, but I have needed a little more focus in my prayers.
Our church has a prayer guide that we all follow throughout the week. On Monday we pray for a specific gov't leader, and Tuesday, for a specific church leader; Wed. is for a person or individual by name in the church, and so on.
I found, like everything else in my life, I love this structure! I love knowing exactly what we're praying for each day and that our body is praying in unison for these things.
So Rusty and I decided to have a prayer guide as we pray for our kids.
Here is what I've come up with for Rusty and I to be praying specifically for our kids each day of the week.
(Sorry- if I had more time I would list all the scripture references to verses related to what we pray- we do pray scripture over these things, but I don't have them handy! I encourage you to do this though! There is power in praying the Word!)

SUNDAY: We pray that our children would love worship and value their place of service in the body.

MONDAY: We pray for salvation for our yet to be saved children, and for our saved children to share the gospel with others.

TUESDAY: We pray for purity and holiness in their lives! We pray that they would never wander away from the Lord and to serve Him faithfully all their days. We also pray the same for their future mates.

WEDNESDAY: We pray over their education and learning, and for God to give me wisdom as I teach them. I pray over any trouble areas they are having in school work.

THURSDAY: We pray for their obedience. We pray over any obedience struggles they are currently having and for God to give us wisdom as we lovingly correct them.

FRIDAY: We pray for the gifts and talents God has given them. We ask God to help us develop those gifts and talents in them for HIS GLORY!

SATURDAY: We pray for birthparents and related adoption issues.

This is a new thing we are trying out and already I LOVE it!
I just thought I'd share it with all of you!

Emma's horse show

2009-05-04T04:27:00.000-07:00

Here are the pictures of one of my proudest Mom moments...I sewed a bee costume.
This was more daunting to me than running a half marathon, and that's pretty daunting!
I don't sew. A few years back I learned how to do some basic sewing, making a square baby blanket and sew ribbon on burp cloths, but half the time I get the thread all tangled up in my machine and give up. So when Emma needed a costume for herself AND her horse for her horse show, and I knew we were WAY too cheap to spend over $100 on the ones I saw online, I knew I had to tackle this task myself. Holy Cow. A costume for a horse? The fitting session was not the easiest, I tell you. In fact, after I'd sewn this thing and we tried it on her, Esplendida totally freaked out and ran at full speed around the arena, completely trampling it! I thought to myself- first, we might all die here in this arena with this horse raging around in a bee costume, and second, I'm not sewing another one.
But there were just a few minor tears and she eventually gave in and wore the costume, begrudgingly though. She acted crazy up until the moment she entered the arena with Emma. And then this show horse pulled it together and she and Emma were the cutest little bees you ever saw!

The costume class (each competition is called a class) was on Friday night and Emma competed in three more events throughout the weekend. The age division is 6-12, and she was the youngest competitor in her class, so we were super proud of the way she handled her horse and competed like a champ!
Who knew when God knit this precious girl together in my womb that she would be so naturally gifted in this? It certainly never crossed my mind as a possibility! Our children, whether adopted or biological, are a complete surprise to me sometimes! God has truly given them unique gifts and talents. Emma was born completely in love with horses and there was no holding her back from them.
This horse Mom has learned A LOT in the last year!!! I was able to care for the horse almost completely independently this time around and that is HUGE for me! I started out in this thing feeling like an idiot much of the time, totally clueless to this foreign horse world. But I am getting there, and let me tell you- being a soccer Mom is much easier! But it's so rewarding doing this with my daughter. It requires a lot of hard work and care, and I gotta tell you, it blesses my heart to see her mucking stalls and doing the work.
Emma added eight new ribbons to her precious horse room and what made Rusty and I THE MOST PROUD, was despite her her great desire to be a blue ribbon winner, she was content with whatever place she got! Praise the Lord! Competition with the right perspective can be difficult no matter what sport or talent your child has! I realize how quickly I could become a psycho stage Mom if I let us get wrapped up in that. But we are intentional in talking with Emma and praying with her about her gifts bringing glory to God, and doing our best is our only goal. She never onced whined or complained when the much older girls took first, second, and third place every time! She gladly welcomed her colorful fourth, fifth, and sixth place ribbons, and that made our hearts swell with pride for her more than a blue ribbon ever could!
Thanks to our friends and family who came out to watch her! I hope you had fun! We certainly enjoyed having you there! It meant a lot to Emma!
Please pray for her teacher, Mr. Brad, who was thrown off a horse on Friday night and taken away in an ambulance. This was scary for everyone, and we were so thankufl Rusty was there. We are thankful he had no broken bones! But he had a nasty fall and we are praying for a quick recovery for him.

Anxious thoughts

2009-04-30T13:42:00.001-07:00

The week before my half marathon I fought off that anxious feeling about the pain in my knees.
How was I going to run 13 miles when running at all hurt so much?
Walking hurt.
Basically everything but sitting with ice hurt.
I knew there was no way I was quitting, and I would cross the finish line, but would I have knees when I was done?
But as always, even a hint of anxiety proves fruitless and, well, ridiculous.
God sees me.
He seems my needs and he even sees my desires.
He doesn't always do what I want, when I want it (Praise the Lord!) but He is good and faithful.
He just bestowed His goodness on me in making my knees better at just the right time, so how stupid of me was it to spend time thinking and worrying about this?
It's a waste of time.
It's a waste of energy.
And worry is sin! Philippians 4:6-7 says "Don't worry about anything, instead pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank him for all he has done. If you do this, you will experience God's peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus."
That's pretty comprehensive.
Don't worry
pray
express your need
be thankful for what He's already done (which is a LOT)
let peace fall on you
a peace you can't even understand
It protects your mind and heart from your own destructive thoughts
THANK YOU!

Does anyone else have to learn the same lessons over and over again?
I wish I didn't. But I'm glad he reminds me.
I think I might remember this better in big things, but I let the little things consume my mind.
Running with broken knees...sewing a horse's costume when I don't sew...trying to use mind control with the weather for Run For Compassion, which clearly doesn't work.
When something arose today that might have caused me to worry and tailspin into anxious thoughts, I remembered.
God is good and faithful, and while His ways are higher than mine and I might not know how things are going to work out, He does and He is sovereign.
My job is to be faithful in the meantime as I rest in Him and remember all that He's already done with a thankful heart.
Friends, feel free to remind me of this when I need it. I'm putting on peace and thankfulness, even in the tiny details.

My Music City half marathon

2009-04-28T04:16:00.000-07:00

I did it! I survived, crossed the finish line, and was not one of the hundreds of people passed out on the sidelines! YES!!!!! Nashville had record high heat on Saturday, so it was hot, but no hotter than it might have been here. So I didn't die. Pure success! What an amazing race!
This was so fun and I will never ever ever go back to a small-town race again.
Let me give you the highs and lows of my half marathon in Nashville!

HIGHS:
Hands-down, highest high was running this race with my brother Brian. It was such a cool experience to have with him and we had a blast! There are TONS of people there to cheer someone on and hold up signs for them. No matter whose name was on them or who they were shouting for, we decided early in the race it was for us. So we were very interactive with the crowd. Nearing the finish line, a guy held up a sign that said "I think you're HOT!" I thanked him as I rounded the corner in mile 12, but he told me it was for the guy behind me (my brother.) That was a high!

An amazing high was that I didn't feel my knees while I ran. They literally did not hurt and they'd been hurting like crazy for weeks. My run the week before had been so painful! Everything had been so painful, but they felt great! God was so good to me and I am so thankful! Why do I stress and become anxious about things? He always proves Himself faithful! I had spent the last week so anxious about this race because my knees were in such bad shape, but God even cares about the little things for us and He has made my knees better purely out of His kindness. He's such a good God!

The music was a high-with my favorite songs played being "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Livin' on a prayer". There was also a worship band out there and I loved that!

Another favorite moment would be when my brother grabbed what looked like a tongue depressor with a glob of something at the end of it at a water station where it was being handed out. He gave it to me and I asked him "what is this?" He said "It's the power goo" (if you don't know about the power goo, you will hear more about it in my lows. But you swallow this stuff and it gives you supernatural energy to keep on going!)
I said "Are you sure?" So when he went back to get himself one he asked the woman what it was. She said "Vaseline."
Can you imagine if we had tried to eat that stuff!!! That was a hilarious moment, only because we did NOT eat Vaseline! That would have ruined our race. (If you are wondering why they hand out Vaseline, it's because some people have chafing issues when they run long distances and runners use Vaseline to prevent that.)

It was just fun! It's an enormous race with lots of energy. When we started, there were runners in front of us as far as we could see, and runners behind us as far as we could see. That's pretty crazy! More than 30,000 racers participated.
It was a cool way to see the sights of Nashville. The course winds through downtown, and while it is somewhat hilly, it was a great course.

LOWS:
No one warned me. I've been asking experienced racers for tips for months now and not one person warned me about the port-o-potty situation.
Okay, no one likes port-o-potties. I'm no exception. I wasn't excited about it. But we left Brian's house at 5:30am and the race didn't start until 7am-and our corral, because it was a stagger start, didn't take off until 7:30, so OBVIOUSLY we're going to need to pee before we run 13.1 miles!
We waited in line at the first group of potties forever just to find that they were...well...defiled by nervous runner racer poo. Brian and I decided that we were the only two people out of 30,000 who didn't poop in the port-o-potties. And not ONE of them had toilet paper left. NOT ONE.
We abandoned those potties and went ahead and took our shuttle bus from the stadium parking to the starting line. We hoped for better potties there. From the stench, we knew we hoped in vain. We got in the more than 30 minute line to wait to pee (which wasn't optional for me! I had coffee on the drive in) and I was panicking on the inside. I could squat and touch nothing like any respectable woman knows how to do but NO TOILET PAPER. I couldn't do it.
And then I spotted a group of women a few lines over with their own handy dandy roll of toilet paper! They were passing it out among themselves! I immediately ran over to them and begged for some- and they so graciously gifted me with my own toilet paper! I so wanted to hug them! And then I wished I had gotten their addresses! I would have sent them a heartfelt thank you card...and maybe a gift card.
So I got to pee beforehand and told my body in my most firm voice that I would not be needing to use the bathroom again until we left the race and went to kinder bathroom facilities. That didn't end up being until 2 or 3 in the afternoon because Yeneneh, my nephew, had double header soccer games right after the race, but I made it.
Next year: BRINGING MY OWN TOILET PAPER. And probably building time into our morning schedule to stop somewhere decent just before we park at the stadium. I never want to potty where 30,000 nervous racers potty at once again.

Parking. Parking was a nightmare. Not only do you have that many racers, but you also have all the supportive friends and family members who come to cheer them on. Like my sister-in-law Amy and her six kids!!! They came at the end and poor Amy had to park her enormous van where everyone one, including us, had to park illegally so that we didn't miss the race. Somehow Amy did it and somehow she found us after the race which was purely miraculous! The crowds were unbelievable. The foot traffic after crossing the finish line took us about 35 minutes to get through before we could even find the parking lot. And there was Amy and six kiddos! With posters! She deserves the medal if you ask me. (But I didn't give her mine. It's mine!)

Power goo. I've heard about this stuff for a long time now and had never encountered it before. I've heard it's gross and I've heard it works. I had read on the website that it would be available at mile 10 so we had decided we would partake of the goo to keep us going. However, I almost threw it up. It was so nasty, it's like swallowing giant globs of snot. I started gagging and couldn't finish it. So I will not be partaking of the goo again. I will be finding it in another form and taking it with me next time. It must have worked though because endurance wise, I was great! I honestly wanted to keep going at the end! I was wishing there was a finish line somewhere between the half and the full. I would take on that race if I could next time!
I think that's in part due to the slower pace and running method we used. My brother uses a run walk combo, and I think it just preserved my energy in a way that made this race easier to finish. I think I'm a believer in this method now!

That's my summary. I honestly want to register to do the Music City race in San Antonio in November! I loved it and I think I might be hooked on races now. It's good to have a goal. It's good to work toward something huge and accomplish it. And it was super doing it with my brother!
So-November...who's with me?

"Planet Earth"

2009-04-22T19:31:00.000-07:00

Today we learned a little about taking care of our planet in the Bacak Academy.
Tonight we went to see "Planet Earth" at the movies. We love this show! It's unparalleled in footage of all kinds of nature. I think it's a must see for the whole family. I enjoyed it very much, minus the five bathroom trips required of my children and one two-year-old fit. If you were in the theater with us tonight, I apologize.
As I taught on Earth day this morning, we had a good discussion on WHY we ought to give a flip about Earth day and taking care of the earth. Even my kids can tell you, this is not our home! Our real home is in heaven. We're just passing through.
So why should we care about what we do with it while we're here?
The kids and I had a great discussion about being good stewards.
Good stewards of things that He's given us for a time, but not forever.
God blesses us with things that are good...

Like our bodies! While you may not feel grateful for yours, you should! The human body is amazing, as my husband often points out in the marvels of medicine, and a working body is a gift! We ought to be good stewards of the bodies He's given us.

Like our money. Our money and possessions have no eternal value. As the Bible points out, it all will collect moths and rust and we can't take it with us. But you better believe, He expects us to be good stewards of the money and things He's graciously given us.

Like our planet. Romans 1 tells us that God is made evident through His creation. Experiencing God's creation does make us feel closer to Him, keenly aware of Him and His magnitude, and His desire to bless us with good things we don't deserve. Think of the most beautiful place you've ever been in the world. Do you have that place in mind? For me it's Lake Louise in Canada. The mountains are amazing and the water of the lake is a color blue I've never seen in my life. I couldn't take my eyes off of the scenic view the whole time we were there. God didn't have to give us that. But I felt like He revealed to me another facet of His goodness by experiencing it.
Why wouldn't we take care of what He's given us?

I'll admit, the Bacaks could go greener. I would like to learn how to do more. But we do love to recycle, because it's so easy and we're doing SOMETHING.
I'm just wondering today, why does it seems that being a Christian and being environmentally conscious seems to be forever at odds? It seems like we ought to be the opposite. Is it because we care more about human life than animal life? Does that set us up on different sides of the fence?
Whatever it is, I just wonder if we could do more in good stewardship of our planet while we're here?
And let me tell you- I'm praying it's not much longer. I'm desperately longing for Jesus' return.

Those are my thoughts on this Earth Day. Happy Earth Day!
(My old computer is still crashed and I wrote this whole post having to stick a pencil into the period and comma keys to make them work- every single time! So I'm worn out now. If I haven't emailed you back it's because I'm just tired of sticking a pencil in my computer to make keys work- or trying to write an e-mail without using a period or a comma. I just can't ignore the rules of punctuation!)

Run For Compassion FINISH LINE!

2009-04-20T16:53:00.000-07:00

Run For Compassion 2009 has come to an end. Yes, the t-shirts sell on, but it is truly done.
We did it! Rain, lightning, and mere 24 hour days tried to hold us down- but no!
We still had 75 out of our registered 158 runners participate despite the rain delay.
So many were first time racers, and it was just sweet to cheer you on!
So many of you wonderful people gave, ran, and volunteered your time and talents. I really need to say thanks.

Thank you to EVERYONE who volunteered on race day. I'll admit, nothing went the way I expected, but the end result was still good.

Thanks Jeanna! There's absolutely no way I could have done this without your help! You were the crucial piece needed to make this possible. I adore you, of course!

Thanks Charlie- who designed the super cool t-shirts that are selling as we speak. And for the website too! Charlie, your gifts were definitely used for the kingdom! Thank you for being willing.

Thanks Jim and Rachel Jobe! You were just so willing to help with everything needed, and I might have drowned in it all had you two not been there.

Thanks to our sponsors- who gave so that all of our registration fees could go to the Child Survival Program!

Thanks friends who cared, contributed, ran errands, spread the word, and just plain came and ran your hearts out- THANKS!

We turned $50 into $3800 and counting. I just know we can sell every t-shirt and reach our $4000 goal!
My whole family sponsors 6 CSP's and this costs $2000 for the year. We're doubling that! Praise the Lord!
As we Bacaks cross the finish line, this passage is on our hearts:
31"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

34"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

37"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

40"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

Watch for it next year. We'll be back. And if you have any feedback on the race, please let me know your constructive ideas for our next Run For Compassion!

Postponed

2009-04-18T07:43:00.000-07:00

Dang lightning.
So we are postponing the race until 1pm due to the lightning. We figure it's probably not safe to run past a power plant while it's lightning. As long as it is not lightning, we will still have the race at 1pm, even if it rains.

Rain or Shine!

2009-04-17T07:31:00.000-07:00

We are having this thing, rain or shine!
Running in the rain is AWESOME, people!
Please pray...a virus crashed our computer last night. Seriously!
But God is good and faithful. Pray for the computer demons to be gone!
We are using our computer for EVERYTHING with this race.
The Joy of the Lord is our strength today!
See many of you at the race...it's gonna rock!

Peaceful and beautiful?

2009-04-16T08:48:00.000-07:00

I have not abandoned this blog.
Or my normal life.
Well I sort of have, but just temporarily.
This has been a hectic week, as you might could guess.
It's race week! Hooray! God is bringing this good work to completion, and I'm so excited!
But it has been a little overwhelming at times.
Sometimes I realize my visions are bigger than my abilities.
That's a good thing to learn about yourself.
I'm so thankful for the people in my life who keep asking me "what can I do? What can I take from you?"
Sometimes I know, and sometimes I don't know where to begin.
I have been battling a spreadsheet this week. I'm not sure I've been winning. It's my first spreadsheet. I think Excel has been laughing at me.
And to top off yesterday, we had our family pictures taken.
They weren't originally planned for this week. Seriously, THIS WEEK!?
You Moms know what it's like to make six people look coordinated, shiny, and beautiful, right? It's sort of a nightmare.
And we hired a really talented professional photographer, our friend Ryan Price. We needed to make this shoot worthy of the time, money, and talent.
I couldn't even clear my head enough to figure out what I wanted us to wear.
I was shopping 15 minutes before it started for a white dress for Emma to wear.
(I think it turned out stunning, my daughter wearing a white dress, riding bareback on a horse. I CAN'T WAIT to see these photos!)
I e-mailed with my Mom a few hours prior to that, and mentioned I was stressed with race details and making us all "beautiful".
She wrote back and said to be "peaceful and beautiful."
I needed to hear that. I was quoting scripture to myself yesterday, but I knew it was not penetrating the reality of my day.
I was frazzled.
I went to bed last night, after painting 15 giant arrows on posterboards (you know, so you people don't get lost during the race. Kind of important!) and felt unsettled.
I had a headache, and my superhero husband sent me to bed and took what was left on my list and accomplished it like only he can.
But I still felt amiss in my spirit.
I went to each of the kids' rooms and kissed them again, while they slept.
I missed them. That seems strange, since I'm always with them.
But I have not been WITH them all week.
I've not been present in my life. I've been here, but glued to my computer and my spreadsheet while my children enjoyed the beautiful weather and sunshine. The registrations have been pouring in, and I have fought to keep up with them.
This is not me complaining! This is me LEARNING.
I have already begun a list in my handy-dandy notebook of "What I need to know next year." I will do a lot of things differently. I will start the spreadsheet earlier, and I'll know how to set it up.
I'll assemble a team of people, besides just me and Jeanna, who will give their all to this event. I know some of you would have been willing. I was just afraid to ask.
I'll start getting sponsors earlier.
I'll close streets along our route.
The list goes on.
I'll learn how to take this on, and be "peaceful and beautiful."
Today, when I woke-up and spent time with the Lord, He told me not to go to my exercise class this morning. He told me to stay home and be present with my children. I needed to not waste this day, neglecting my number one job as wife, Mom, and teacher.
Inhale. Exhale. Peace.
I'm so grateful to have heard Him speak.
I've been too busy to listen lately. I have been glued to lists, notebooks, and computers. I've literally wished outloud for a white board in my shower. Too many things pop into my head when I'm showering.
I've dreamed about the race, and have been rather consumed.
I stopped this morning and played trucks with Treston for a good 15 minutes. When was the last time I did that? Not this week. (It took me a long time to learn how to play trucks. You just have to make a LOT of sound effects. I've got it down now.)
But we are here, nearing the finish line.
I'm overwhelmed with gratitude that this event is successful and we've already broken the $3000 mark going to the CSP in Ethiopia. Can you imagine what that money means to them?
I'm overwhelmed with what God has chosen to do in changing women in my church's hearts about being good stewards of their bodies and breaking years of bondage as they've trained for this thing. I didn't see that coming, to be honest. God always overshoots my expectations.
I believe race day will be no different.
I'm thankful, and peaceful in this moment.
And I'm going outside to swing my kids.
Peace out.

Here It Goes Again...

2009-04-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

My brother Robbie sent this to me.
I desperately want to try this, when I get 6 treadmills, and about 80 free hours.
Anyone else in?
Have y'all seen this before?

Inspired to Action interview

2009-04-10T20:24:00.000-07:00

This really neat site interviewed me for the Run For Compassion. You can read the interview and check out this site!

Happy Adoption Day Justus!

2009-04-08T05:46:00.000-07:00

On April 8th we stood before the judge's bench as a family, and he confirmed legally what had been done for a long time.
Justus Joseph Bacak was always a Bacak. God had ordained it from the beginning of time. When I first got that beautiful baby, he didn't look my like my others, but he was ours. He had hair. I didn't know my babies could have hair! He was light brown, and got a little browner everyday. I was kind of excited to get up everyday and see a new shade of beautiful brown. That was exciting! I didn't birth him, but he was my baby.
He was ours forever.
He was loved, by his birthmom and by us. She mourned while we rejoiced. We loved her and hurt for her before we even met her.
Adoption has taught us so much. There's no way to measure it.
And what a good time for us to reflect, during Easter season, how we have been adopted.
If you know Christ as your Savior, you are adopted.
He chose us. He picked us up and made us His own. His very own, forever. There's nothing we can do to make Him love us less or be less a child of the King. Adoption is forever.
What Jesus did on the cross took all our sins for all time, and there's no backs.
Once you accept Christ's sacrifice, your sins are gone, forgiven, and you can't take them back.
In the same way, Justus is a Bacak forever. He couldn't do anything to be less a Bacak or make us love him less.
God is good! April 8th will always be a day to celebrate!
I can't imagine the Bacak family without Justus!? We would be missing a great deal of comic relief, for sure! We wouldn't be the Bacaks. We would be incomplete. Justus filled a hole in our family that only God could fill.
This family is SO thankful for adoption, in every way!
We are thankful for Kathleen, who loved Justus first and put his needs above her own.
We are thankful for New Life who does the hard and never-ending work of ministering to women, children, and families.
We are thankful most of all to our God, who adopted us, and blessed us with adoption in our family.
We are thankful for you, Justus Joseph Bacak!

Painful Training

2009-04-06T05:31:00.000-07:00

24 Remember that in a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize. You also must run in such a way that you will win. 25 All athletes practice strict self-control. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. 26 So I run straight to the goal with purpose in every step. I am not like a boxer who misses his punches. 27 I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified.1 Cor 9:24-27

I am training for a half marathon. If you read this blog last year when I was training I wrote a lot about it. I haven't written as much this year, but I continue to learn the same things from the Lord through this process.
Let me just tell you, today my knees hurt like they've never hurt before. I ran 11 miles yesterday! 11 miles! Yesterday, before I left, I was so nervous. I thought, 11 miles...that might as well be 30 miles, it sounds so daunting. Even though I did 10 last week. I had been nervous, but I did it! Still, I was terrified.
But God was so good, and taught me as I ran. It was somewhat windy. Thankfully, I had sweet Jeanna to do the last six miles with me. When I'm running uphill, against the wind, and it feels like I'm running in slow motion, I wonder how in the world I will finish. It's too hard. My knees might explode. At about mile 8 yesterday I had to admit to Jeanna, I'm struggling. She encouraged me.
Training is hard. You continually push yourself to do more than you think possible. I've been working out with a group of women at church, and it is so inspiring to watch women do more than they've ever done with their bodies.
And isn't that just like God? He's always doing more than we can imagine when we depend on Him.
We can step back and take a look at ourselves and think...it's too big. Too much needs to change. But He is more than able. And in the face of what seems like 30 miles, He does the work for us.
I love what training shows me. When I start out, I'm thinking, sometimes I struggle to get my three miles in a day. How in the world will I get to 13?
But He takes me one step at a time, and each time I run I have to celebrate the small victories. 4 miles...5 miles... 6...Wow! 8 miles...9...10!? Really God?...11! How did I get from there to here?
But He reminds me of Who He is! And I'm most reminded when I'm running uphill, against the wind, at mile 9.
There's purpose in every step. He's teaching me something with each mile. I don't want to miss it.
It's not easy. My knees want to give way today. The discipline of my body and mind is draining. But 11 miles are behind me. What else could God do through me if I just asked Him?
I'm thankful for training and watching God do BIG things! Why am I surprised when He comes through? Faithfulness is who He is! I obviously forget He's able, He's stinkin' BIG! He's God. When I rely on myself, I quickly remember I am not.