Maynard Mayhem

So sorry for the lack of posting...I have had a few emails from you guys asking if I was okay! So lets do an update so I can bring myself to current!

-We had a crazy Christmas Eve. My uncle who is fighting brain cancer was rushed to the ER . He was seizing in his home alone and called my mamaw, she could not get in so firefighters had to break in...they had to put him on a ventilator etc. Once he was off the ventilator they finished out his radiation treatments and sent him home. We are waiting to hear what the next step is from the doctors. Unfortunatly his tumors are growing in size and in number despite the radiation treatment (which has stunned the doctors). This is very hard on my entire family...from those needing to stay with him, to running his errands and getting him fed..etc. Please pray for "Uncle Bubby".....

-We did recieve the BEST CHRISTMAS GIFT EVER on Christmas Eve. The Scott family has stopped by our orphanage and took packages to our boys for us. So we recieved pictures of our boys wearing the outfit we sent, eating suckers we sent and playing with the toys we sent! Best of all we saw pictures of their referral day!!! They were looking at our pictures!! It was so emotional to see them holding pictures of their sisters!! We also got the first picture of them together. It has often saddened me wondering what their relationship is like at the orphanage becuase little one is in the baby room and big boy is in with the big kids! Thank you THOM!

-Our home is nearly busting at the seams with all of the Christmas toys...I am sure you can all imagine! We ended up not opening up gifts from Paul & I to the kids until this week!! It is pretty sad when there are gifts under the tree for days and they do not even ask for them!

-We saw The Tale of Desperaux (sp?) and Bedtime Stories over the Christmas break. Bedtime Stories was VERY cute and funny....just rent the other!

-Daddy did get a Wii for Christmas...and I am officially one of the terribly out of shape persons who is complaining of sore back, arm and shoulder from ONE game of tennis!! I also now will openly admit that my 8 & 5 year olds can manipulate any gaming system better than I can.

-I cannot fit into an XL clothing from aeropostle....Teaque can you? ughgh Juniors sizes!

- I have made much progress in my scrapbook room. I have made much progress in my scrapbooks!!YEAH! I am really bad about skippin' pages while scrapbooking or planning on going back to complete something , so I have been filling in the gaps....I like it! I made the mistake early on when I had one child to make him a book for every year of his life...plus making the normal family album..well lets do some math: Carson is entering his 9th year of life so he has 9 scrapbooks (plus the boy scout album) so 10 plus Madelyn has 6 plus Annie has 4 plus the family has 10 plus 4 Disney, 1 Cruise, 1 Up North vacation, 1 Arizonia vacation.....and 7 mini Disney autograph albums...... so that is a total of : 44 albums....so you can imagine the mess I have going on over here! And please no one remind me that 2009 is here plus I have one for each of the boys.....But seriously I LOVE it and the kid love it! We actually scrapped tonight while the boys watched the UL/UK game...Annie and Maddie loved it and they were actually good...looks like mommy got her 2 scrapin' buddies!!!

-Oh and my great friends the Sanders who we began the adoption process with back in March PASSED COURT yesterday!! They are now the proud parents of Mikias, a beautiful 5 1/2 year old little boy. We had hoped he could travel with Paul to pick up the boys together but now it looks like they will be traveling a few weeks before us :(

-I am preparing my home for my best friends 4 kiddos!! She will be induced late Wednesday night. We do not know the sex of the baby (I love that surprise!!) but I will be an aunt again soon. The cool part is that her younger two children are the ages of our two Ethiopian cuties so it will be fun to have a near 2 year old and 2 ,3 1/2 year olds in the house in preparation for our new indeavor!

-We start school tomorrow. We will be working on an Africa all month (unless it snows, then I like to pull out a snow unit!). Next week we will be attending our co-ops J-term which is on Africa too!! It should be amazing, we have speakers, missionaries and more coming in to speak to the children.

Oh and my next update will have pictures!