Summer is here

In the past month, we have been busy bees.  John and Aaron spent a week at Boy Scout camp, which was a ton of fun for them both!  I considered taking Aaron myself this year, but the dirt, bugs, and continuous gas-related humor that kind of goes along with the general thickness of testosterone in the air talked me out of it.  :)  They had a blast, though!  Then a few days after they got back, I took the kids to Atlanta, GA for a martial arts training camp, and John met up with us there for that weekend for the martial arts competition that followed the camp.  The kids had a great time, but we came back exhausted, and were ready for a real vacation (one in which we had no schedule or work to do).  So a few days later, we left for a family trip to the beach!  My parents went with us, along with one of my brothers and his family, and one of my sisters and her son.  My kids Love spending time with their cousins and extended family, and they love the beach, so the so had a blast!  We played frisbee on the beach, my nephew brought his metal detector, and he and my two boys and my nephew all really enjoyed searching the beach for hidden treasures (which usually turned out to be a collection of bottle caps and a tent stake, but it's still fun to search anyway!).  We played games in the condo at night, cooked "real food" and in general had a fantastic time just getting away from regular life work and chores, and unwinding!  One morning, Sara and I woke up before John and the boys did, so we took a walk on the beach and found a few tide pools left from the previous night's high tide, and released a few baby fish back into the ocean.  It was so much fun!  

 

Here's a picture of Sara greeting the ocean that morning.  

 

And here she's throwing sand back into the ocean.  I always think it's so cute when kids do things like this.  I wonder if it occurs to them that they can never fill the ocean up with sand, but I don't think they care at the moment.  I think they just feel like adding some sand to the water.  :)

 

This is one of the baby fish we found.  

 

And a couple of beach pics of my family.

So we got back in town, did some laundry, and packed Aaron up again to leave for Covecrest Catholic summer camp.  He left the morning of July 4 (it was the only week our church could get tickets--getting camp tickets to this place is like vying for tickets to a U2 concert!), and just came back Saturday night after an unbelievable time at camp.  FYI, Covecrest is awesome!  Aaron and the other 7 young teenagers who went had a blast rock climbing, tubing, zip-lining through the forest, and participating in a Lot of team-building activities including a course through a mud pit, which (along with the water park) seemed to be the highlight of their week, held on Friday.  They were so proud to be a group of 8, who won "The Gauntlet" (apparently those words had a huge impact for those who went to camp, and knew what the Gauntlet fully was...I'm still gaining an understanding), :) beating teams of 20 to 40 kids with their hard work and teamwork, and walking away with very good-natured bragging rights, and lots of new friends, some as far away as Texas, or any other far-reaching area of the U.S.  


And NOW, my family is all back in town, all 5 of us at the same time!  Woohoo!  We are still missing Besse child #4, though, and haven't forgotten her for a minute, so it's back to work for us.  Regular work?  Yes.  Adoption work?  Yep, that too.  Adoption is a blessing that cannot be measured, the same as the privilege of having a child always is, but it certainly does take work, and a lot of it!


So here's the update.  We have applied with Small World Adoptions, in Mt. Juliet, and our application has been accepted.  We are now saving and raising some money before doing the home study, because the home study expires after a certain amount of time, and if we haven't completed our adoption before then, we have to pay extra to have the home study updated again while we work to complete the adoption.  In other words, if possible, it would be helpful to have all the adoption costs in the bank before we even do the home study.  However, most of the grants and any means of adoption-assistance require your home study to be complete in order to even apply.  So, we'll likely be saving and raising as much money as we can, then as soon as possible, going ahead with the home study with a lot of prayer and faith, and as much help in fundraising events as we can gather.  Once we finish the home study, the race is on!


We are working on several fundraiser ideas right now.  A dear friend has offered to head one up for me, so I am getting her a list of names of people to send an invitation to.  We are hoping to host it at a fun place here in Lebanon, as a kind of ladies' night out, but I don't want to announce it just yet, unless we have the place reserved and it's a definite plan.  :)  I'll keep you all posted on that!  Also, I have a meeting tomorrow with the public safety person with the Lebanon Police Department to discuss a 5K Run to Fund Adoption, or Forever Family Fun Run.  Which name do you like better??  I'd love your input!  I've got a hopeful course mapped out, so he and I will discuss the route, and if we get the OK from the city police, and we already have the general OK from the Mayor's office, then we will set a date and get to work on that!  It will be a Small World Adoptions fundraiser, and those people who participate who would like to donate specifically to our adoptive child need only to write on the memo line of their check "for the child to be adopted by John and Mary Besse".  :)  Also, we are still searching for a place to host a parents' night out, as the previous lock-in did not pan out as we had hoped.  We're thinking parents in general might be more likely to need a sitter if their kids are younger, so we're working on the idea of a PNO for a much larger (but younger) age group, and we have several of you wonderful people who have already offered to help, but we just need the location and date.  


That pretty much sums it up!  Now that I'm back home, and I'm back at the computer more often (and not running things myself while my husband's at scout camp, or something like that), I'll be updating our blog more often too.  Thanks again for all of your support and prayers!!