The Making of M.O.M.

Here in NC, our local station runs a program called "Wednesday's Kids." Our local news woman, Wanda Starks, interviews a child waiting to be adopted. Each of these kids has a story and is desperately in need of love. Halfway around the world my friend Lindy is seeing her own version of Wednesday's Kids.

On Saturday, Elizabeth will have her 4th birthday party. Since she turned 2 (and we started having "friend" parties for her birthday), we decided that instead of presents from her friends, we would help her choose a charity and each child could bring something as a donation. When she was 2 we asked for canned food for our church's food pantry. Last year we asked for items for the local Children's home. This year we are collecting clothing for children in Kenya. We will mail the clothes to our friends Chris and Lindy and they will distribute them to some orphans/children at a nearby "school."

This afternoon, I checked Lindy's blog as I do religiously. Please click here and read this tender story. Near where they live is a "school" and the children there are so malnourished.

Above is a picture of Lindy holding a 4 year old boy who attends the school. It breaks my heart to see him so little, especially since Elizabeth is turning 4 and looks to be about twice his size.

Here's another of what appears to be the same little guy. Please read Lindy's blog and find out what you can do to help.

"With knowledge comes responsibility"

As I said in my last post, Britt has been staying with us while Matt's doing missions in Romania (I can understand how you might not have caught that, in the hillarity of my last post).

Anyway, last night we went over to my Mom's house to eat, then we went out to Britt's family's land. It is absolutely beautiful. Almost her entire family on her mom's side lives on the same land, her grandparents, parents and aunts and uncles. Out there, you can just feel the sense of family. It was awesome. Mr. Yates (or Gates, as my kids said) took us for a ride on the Gator. Afterwards, it was down to the real reason we went to the Hill Estate...APPLE PICKING! Her uncle runs an orchard on the land, but her family also has personal apple trees that they eat from. These apples are all natural...organic! I'm not totally into the whole organic thing, but I do know that anything that hasn't been sprayed or altered is better for my family. These apples are delicious!

Basically, the kids (and Luke and I) had a blast. It was so cool to watch my kids pick apples straight from the tree. As we sorted through the ones that had already fallen, we also found some good ones. Lucas likes the rotten ones too (yuck), but all in all I'd say my kids ate about 6-7 apples a piece. We came home with 3 Wal-mart sacks full of tastiness and I'm fearfully anticipating the aftermath of last night's "snack" in the twins' diapers.

Here are some pics of our time pickin' apples! Bon Appetite!