Ballet Recital

More pics and videos to follow...

Poems

The kids have a poetry contest at school. They had to choose from several specific kinds of poetry.
Naomi chose to use our phone number hidden in the poetry:

Birds and Their Colors

There are so many kinds of Birds

five of my favorite birds are
Blue Jays, Robins, Titmouses, Cedar Waxwings and Cardinals
colors are

blue and white
red, brown
yellow, green, pink, and gray
all amazing!

Jacob chose a Concrete poem

41

41 speeds around the track

in the breeze he goes fast

he's in the lead and ready to win

but the other cars are right behind him

his wheels spin; his engine roars!

vroom, vroom, vroom!

he sees the finish line

he's almost out of time

faster and faster he goes,

who's going to win? nobody knows.

Grandad's Birthday!!

The Birthday Boy

Evidently, all Grandad wanted for his birthday was hugs from his five grandkids on the same day!

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Fishing from Grandad's dock.

cousins : )

Fish caught the only fish. 

After the lake house, Grandad and Granna took us to Bennet's Farm. 

It was a GREAT day!

The NINA and the Pinta

On Thursday afternoon, the kids and I headed downtown to the river to see life size replicas of the Nina and the Pinta.

Looking around the ships would have been cool in itself, but the guided tour was really fascinating!

(I love home schooling because I learn so much!)

Some of our friends joined us. Ella Kate (on the left of Bethany) is in B's kindergarten class.

The Nina is an exact replica of the original. This replica was made in the exact same way as the original as well--the boards were finished with steaming and pine tar, there were no power tools made in its creation, and it was made by original descendants of the original ship builders. 

(Wow!)

Here we are looking down in the hold of this small ship. The current crew lives down there.

On one of Columbus's journeys in the Nina, he was sailing with many other ships (16, maybe?) and they all hit a storm. Every ship went down except the Nina! Columbus picked up as many of the other ships' crews as he could and tried to sail back to Spain with 120 people on this little boat!

The kiddos with the Pinta in the background. The replica Pinta was actually built 9 feet longer and 7 feet wider than the original Pinta.

And Naomi in front of the Nina.

If you're interested in seeing these ships yourself, check out their cruise schedule HERE.

Corrie's Visit

Corrie was here for the weekend and I was so blessed to be able to go out with her and Lisa on Monday night. It was pretty much the perfect girl date. 

We walked around Covenant's campus and reminisced about our roomie days.

Then we went to 1885 Grill for dinner, where I was far to hungry to take a picture of our fried green tomatoes or my veggies and cheese grits. They were delicious, though!

We weren't quiiiite done after that, so we went in search of some chocolate. I found mine at Rembrandt's: some dark chocolate truffles and a cup of mint tea. 

Thanks, girls for a super fun time!

Sunday Night at Coolidge Park

Adoption Update

So we're waiting again.
We waited for a baby. (2 1/2 years)
Then we waited to be chosen for a domestic adoption. (1+ year)
Then we waited to be matched with our Ugandan boys. (a few months)
Then we waited to get our paperwork finished. (a few more months)
Then we waited to get the affidavit and send it in. (a month and a half)
Can I just say that at every part of the waiting, as excruciating as it was, God has been present and active. And He has a good plan for all this waiting! As a good friend just pointed out today, out little Amos wasn't even born when we started this process. Wow! God is good.
This time it really does seem to be the last stage of the waiting. All of the completed paperwork is sitting on a busy Ugandan judge's desk waiting to be signed and given a court date. When that happens, we will be notified and we will:
1. Have a dance party in pure joy!
2. Buy 5 round trip humanitarian flights to Uganda.
3. Pack our bags.
4. Go get our boys!
This date could be as soon as the end of October, though as the days pass and we still don't know it, I begin to think November is more rational. We will see.
We would love to go around the end of October (well, I would love to leave tomorrow, really!) and be back by Thanksgiving, but that is another big "We'll see!" Maybe it would be nice to have some holiday time there since Nate has no time off and will be busy in every spare moment getting his job done on the internet.
Anyway, we could definitely use your prayers. We so want to introduce these boys to all of you when we get home!

Play Time!

As you know, Legos are the THING here in the Oster household. Here's a small robot created by Jacob.

Bethany is the turtle and Jacob is the...turtle trainer?

She just looked so pretty when she was ready for school (Hilger Homeschool Tutorial) that I had to take her pic!

Horseback Riding Lessons on Lookout Mountain

The militant squirrels and the makeshift feeder 

(after the squirrels destroyed the first one)

And more Legos