A friend has asked,"How big is your home?"

Well I was hoping to share some pictures of our home and will... but I will answer this question first and post pics maybe tomorrow.... We have lived here now for 9 yrs in WV. We have done 3 seperate additions.... Our main house when we bought it was new and had only 4 bedrooms and 2 and a half baths. We preoccuppied our home at first when the first addition was built and then settled 2 months later even though we had been in our home already. We added a huge sunroom- with a full basement and made our loft our 5th bedroom. We have a lg. eat in kitchen with an island and a seperate dining room area that is open... off to the side is our original dining room that I never use like that which is our school room and old playroom . It was our first living room until we added the sunroom. Then when Mary Kate had Ava we built for them an addition on the left of our home that is over 500 sq ft... it includes a walk in closet and room that is ready to made into a full bath but she uses it as Ava's bedroom. You go into it by a door from the school room. When she gets married we will have a nice master bedroom on the main floor if we like. Then we have been working on our other additions since April... Our old 2 car garage is now another 400 sq ft. playroom, guest room with the storage space turned into another bedroom.We then have added a 3 car garage... included in that is a lg. laundry room and full bath... kids can enter it from the garage and back yard.... upstairs is a huge dorm room and full bath-it is 900 sq ft.. All total we have over 4700 sq ft of finished space and another 1,000 unfinished space. We will have 7 bedrooms and the lg. dorm room with 5 and a half baths and at least 4 playroom areas and did I say... WE ARE LOVING ALL THIS EXTRA ROOM. It is wonderful to be able to spread out... as you can imagine.... 22 plus living here. Winter will be fine this year :) We are almost done just in time for my birthday... next week :) My next post will have pictures and some daily ways we do things.. like a picture of our chore chart...

Funny thing our son, Ben had his gfriend over tonite for dinner for the first time... one of the things he wanted to show her was our chore chart... I thought that was cute.

I was tagged twice recently... and so I will answer both

I am not to with it when it comes to my blog so here is my very feeble attempt to answer the tag issue. THE RULES::* Link your tagger and list these rules on your blog.* Share 7 little known facts about yourself on your blog.* Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.* Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Well here goes:

1. I am not a picky eater at all. I especially love fruits and veggies. My favorite food would be a pasta with some shrimp in it with lots of veggies.

2. I love to eat out... does not matter where either. McDonalds to Red Lobster or someone's home. It all tastes better when someone else cooks :)

3. I love gift cards... my family hates to give them but I think they are wonderful. They want to buy "something" instead of a gift card. Seems to easy and my brother thinks it shows a lack of caring or something but I think they are the best. We use a Discover Card for purchasing everything... food, gas, clothes because we get rewards... gift cards. I have a seperate wallet in my purse to hold all of our reward gift cards.... 25, 50 dollars at lots of wonderful places. This is one way Paul and I go out for our date nites by using these extra rewards.

4. Gardening is my favorite "down" time activity. We grow a large garden in the summer of vegatables mostly for fun... meaning we do not depend on it for food but it does help. Nothing like fresh tomatoes and cukes. I have a peace garden in the front yard, and lots of flowers all over our 2 acres. We live on 2 beautiful acres that was an old orchard... great soil.

5. I also love nature.. I am an avid bird watcher and feeder. Paul's degree was in natural resource management- He was a park naturalist. So we both share in this love of God's creation.

6.My favorite family vacation spot is the beach- the Outer Banks of North Carolina... all of us love this place. We usually go once a year and have fond memories of it. We have been going there now for 19 yrs.

7. Now my favorite place to go to and has been for many years is to an orphanage. We spent our anniversary once in Russia for our first adoption trip when we adopted Anna and Mya. When Paul called me to share that we had gotten travel dates for our first trip ( when Russia required 2 trips) he said,"How would you like to celebrate in Moscow?" I was so thrilled... you would think after having so many children it would get old but nope that is not the case. We love playing with all the kids... yes it is sad but we feel we have shared some rays of hope and light to the ones we have been in.

Now I am suppose to tag 6 other blogs but I am not. Mostly because all the blogs I could have either just did this or will be thru one of my daughters or friend's blog... so sorry about that part. Maybe one of my readers or all could just consider by reading mine that they are tagged... It is wonderful to get to know some of these things so come on......

My Peace Garden and my helper Josiah

This is our old garage- but a new playroom

We are just about done with our addition... this is just a small part but one we have already loved. We got the carpet in a week ago... Last nite the 9 youngest spent the nite in there. It still needs some touches like the framing in the windows and of course furniture... but it has been wonderful to have this extra space now. Winter will be ok . This is only 1 of our new rooms too.

Daddy Keith and his little girl...

A beautiful Saturday afternoon here....

I forgot to mention that Abraham is blind..

If you read my blog from the beginning you would know this. If you just read this page you would not.. that is what makes his piano playing even more amazing. He has been blind since birth...Dr. Maumenee at Wilmer Eye at Hopkins has followed Abraham since he came home. She thinks that he has Norres disease which is a congenital disease carried by females and given to only the male children (similar to hemophelia) . He also suffered a severe beating at the age of under 2 . He was in a body cast and had both of his legs broken... the doctors think that contributed some to his medical issues. He has some minor brain damage with a learning disability because of the beating. This again just adds to the amazement... he has a genuine , soft and gentle heart.