Clean, Sanitary, and Orderly

The highlight of our week last week was a trip to the Hoover Jail....

To get fingerprinted. Billy set his status on facebook to...I just got fingerprinted at the Hoover jail, and was loving the responses until our brother-in-law ratted out that it involved a minor. All went silent until Billy explained he was actually just fulfilling requirements to become foster or adoptive parents.

Our social worker called today, because we had failed to fill in some information on our fingerprint cards, and I asked her to tell me what on our list needed to be attended to now, and what could wait. We have a checklist that I have gone over millions of times, but I pulled it out again today to look at the items she has instructed me were imperative and noticed (for the first time) it says ***HOME & PROPERTY MUST ALWAYS REMAIN IN CLEAN, SANITARY, & ORDERLY CONDITION!!!*** Notice the three stars, three exclamation points and bold all caps. Coke almost came out of my nose I was laughing so hard. I try to keep our home that way, but I have four kids - 3 of which are not in school yet. Clean - funny, Sanitary - funnier, Orderly - funniest (unless you count the hours between 10 pm and 7:15 am. My kids go to bed at 8, so by 10 we have picked up and can see our floor. My kids wake up around 7 and by 7:15 all things orderly are out the window.) I hope DHR has as much grace and mercy as God does for all of my shortcomings - and housekeeping skills!

Our weekend re-cap....
We got our favorite babysitter to come Friday night so we could go to dinner with some friends from church. In true Ivey fashion, we had excitement. I return from AB's swim team practice to a very dark street and home. Only our street was without power, go figure. I don't have flashlights because my kids have broken all of them. We have one candle which was lit and our only other light was by cell phone - we originally did get them for emergency's. AB was spending the night with a friend, so we are searching to pack her bag by cell phone. We sent the sitter to Chick-fil-a with the kids, not realizing the cow was there, and all of Hoover as well. The power was back on when they got home, so all was fine and we enjoyed dinner as grown-ups.

We spent Saturday at my aunt's house with family and came home in time to watch our respective football teams play. I graduated from Alabama, and admit to being a crazed fan. Billy's dad played football for Vanderbilt, so he is their sole fan. Wouldn't you know they played at almost the same time, so we switched between games - it made me DIZZY. Bama continues its quest for the national championship with a win over Miss. State, and Vanderbilt is bowl eligible for the first time in over 20 years after beating Kentucky.

Sunday - church. Church was amazing. November is national adoption month (orphans are my new passion, btw) and what more appropriate than the baptism of our children's pastors child who was adopted from China. It was beautiful and brought tears. Being a pastor, the childs father had the privilege of baptizing his daughter. Apparently, when they met Hope for the first time she ran straight to her daddy and wrapped her arms around him. Her earthly father used it as the perfect picture of her running to her Heavenly Father one day and embracing Him as her Lord and Saviour. I'm tearing up as I write.

Sunday night the preschool choir did sang for their parents. Below is Ben doing motions while singing for us.



Today we enjoyed a trip to Publix - yes, my kids enjoy it - cookies! And daddy raked awesome piles of leaves in the yard for the kids to enjoy. Abe was napping, so he missed the fun and AB was at school, maybe I can get some more tomorrow with all my sweet babies!





Love to all my dear friends and family!