Absolutely. I am not big on surprises. I am a planner. :D

Amen

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well, I have to admit... It is pretty awesome living here. :D But the traffic.... Ahhhhhh!!!!!!!!!

Finishing up The Peach Keeper and then moving on to The Paris Wife. So in my quest for 52 Books ... 1. Relic 2. The Peach Keeper

Wow. How sad. It's quite the opposite. I am the one who is lucky to be part of HER family. I feel honored to be invited to HER family gatherings and to HER church. It is possible you know for an employer and an employee to become very, very close and for it to be a mutually beneficial friendship. One of my best friends is a teacher and I am her principal, her boss. And yet the friendship is real. I am closer to Prema than I am the majority of people in my family. It is so sad that people seemed determined to keep such a wall up that they can't conceive of a world where two woman could become like sisters even though they have other roles that are different. I guess I am even luckier than I thought! .

We bought a mattress cover that zips up and filled it with pillows. We called it the crash pad. We would bring it into the living room and our ds would jump off the couch onto the crash pad repeatedly until he wore himself out. We also bought one of those small, foldable gymnastics mats and would roll him up in it and "squash" him. And we bought a standing punching bag and gave him boxing gloves. A weighted vest, weighted blanket, A trampoline... Anything that gave him intense sensory input. And start OT early. As soon as possible. And locks on everything. :D Check this website out. It really saved us. http://www.abilitations.com

:grouphug::grouphug::grouphug:

That's too bad. Our lives are so much richer having Prema and her family in our lives and as part of our family. I never thought we would have experienced this and it didn't start that way but I am so glad it is this way. And I am happy that my kids are growing up with Prema as family and not as our "maid". It has been such a life-enriching experience.

My oldest was the same way... Until we put him on a a computer. Now he is a computer genius. Some kids are just like that.

Useless but funny. I missed this the first time around and it is cracking me up!!! :lol:

Ditto

I LOVE banana and mayonnaise sandwiches!!!!!! My mom made them for us all the time when I was a kid.

Shunning is unbiblical, ungodly, and awful. Those who do this to others need to repent.

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AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :svengo: .

:iagree: Beautifully put. Adoption is a complex topic. There is no one right answer. .

:iagree: "Begrudging someone else's existence just happens to be the most convenient way of validating your own." ~Dennis Miller .

Amen sister! Roll tide roll!!!

Rather than "I bet I am the only one" I will say "I HOPE I am the only one who..." ... During her wild college days, went on spring break, had too much to drink, entered and won a bikini contest, and ended up in a bikini on Coors Light posters in bars all over the country. How humiliating. :tongue_smilie: Well, there is the proof that God can change even the worst of us! :D .

If only it were that easy. It took us months to get this appointment. We are supposed to go home this summer for a visit but we cannot buy plane tickets until we know if we can get a visa. And her I600 approval is only good until May. So if we don't go tomorrow, we have to wait for another appointment which means risking having to start the whole process over again. It's basically my worst nightmare. The good news is that there will be massive police presence and the newspapers are filled with warnings to protestors about the harsh penalties if any of them get out of hand. We are praying that they heed the warnings and we are looking for alternative driving routes that will help us avoid as much of it as possible. I just can't believe the timing on this. UGH!!!!!! .

In less than 24 hours we will be on our way to Kuala Lumpur. We have an appointment at the U.S. Embassy for the final interview for our daughter's immigration visa. If all goes well we will FINALLY get the visa we need so we can take her to the U.S. to meet her family. It has been a long two-year journey but it is nearly over. But of course.... The same day we come to KL is the day that the verdict for Anwar Ibrahim, opposition leader in Malaysia, will be delivered. He is on trial for sodomy which is illegal here. Some believe he is being targeted as a political scam. So there are going to be huge protests right in the same area we have to be. We have already received warnings from the embassy to stay out of the area and yet we have no choice as we have to get to our daughter's appointment at the embassy! To be so close to the end of this journey and then have yet one more roadblock put in our path is very discouraging. Please pray for safety for our family and for a favorable outcome for her visa. My mom really wants to meet her granddaughter. .

We loved it!

I just got off the phone with my BFF who still works at the high school in Detroit that I left. Just this past week she walked into the bathroom and caught a girl performing oral sex on a boy. When I was there it happened frequently. I caught some kids having a threesome underneath the bleachers in the gym. I took a sawed-off shotgun away from a 7th grader. I have broken up more fights than I can count including putting kids in a headlock. One of my students shot and killed another one of my students at a football game. One of my students threw her desk out the window smashing glass everywhere. I've been threatened by gang members and I have been assaulted by students. yes it really is that bad. .

We have "help". We have a nanny/maid that lives with our family Mon-Fri and goes home on the weekends. She has been with us for two years ever since we adopted our baby girl. She is absolutely "family". She AND her extended family (her kids, her mom, her sisters, nieces, nephews, etc) come to our holiday gatherings, birthday parties AND we go to theirs. In fact, at most of our gatherings there are more of her Indian family there than there are of our "white" friends. And we went to her church for Christmas Eve service even though the whole thing was in Tamil and we didn't understand a word of it. We LOVE her and her daughters and we are paying for her oldest daughter's college tuition. They are our family. There are many, many maids here who are mistreated. It is awful to see and truly, it is more the norm than our relationship with Prema (we refer to her by her name typically when speaking about her... I don't call her our "maid" IRL... or we call her Natalie's amah which means "grandma"). She eats dinner at the table every night with our family and I usually make HER plate and hand it to her just as I do for all the members of our family. We go shopping at the mall together, have tea every afternoon together, talk about our family, our life, our hopes and dreams. In our home, she is FAMILY. The book and the movie hurt my heart because I know that people were and are treated that way and I know that Prema was treated that way in the past by other employers. It makes me want to cry that someone could treat her that way. She is like a surrogate mother to me and I cant imagine her not in our lives. .