Happy Monday To Ya'll

Just thought I would write today since it will be a super busy week for me. Today Buckner will have a meeting on us and all of our information as well as with the Social Worker. She will state what she saw in our home and in our interviews with her. I will post when we hear something from them. Hope you have a wonderful week. Fall is right around the corner......and YIKES!!! So is Christmas! Guess I better get my list made out.

When is fall coming?

It was cooling off quite nicely and then it rains. All my hopes are shot down of the coolness staying. It is hot & humid still. Boy do I miss the Montana weather.
The days are just passing away one by one. It is mid September and my Christmas list isn't started yet nor have I completed my Spring cleaning! I have worked 4 days this week and I am wiped out. Last Weds. the social worker came to our home to make sure it was "child friendly." And we passed with flying colors. How...I am not sure but why should we question. God is in control and we have such peace about the adoption. Thank you for your prayers. They are helping us not be anxious and allowing us to be patient through this long process. This coming week I am hosting a coffee, helping with another coffee, having an open house and getting ready for our church picnic. Lance & I also signed up to be in Judgement House at our church. Lance will be Jesus and I am a principal in a pep rally at the high school. It is a walk through drama about a drinking & driving accident where some high school kids are killed. You see how their families cope and actually see the kids in heaven & hell. It is quite moving. Last year I was in it and it was about some kids that go in the Army and are killed. I had a great time. Almost 1000 people go through it. We are the only church in the area that puts this on at the end of Oct for 5 days.
Hope you are doing well. I don't hear from many folks that read this so I am hoping I get some feedback soon. Just press send a comment at the end and I'll get your response. Or send me a regular email. Let me know how you all are, especially our friends in Florida & Alabama. Take care & love & miss you all! Those of you in Montana, enjoy the cool weather for me :)

Strength At Home

Strength at Home
By BEN STEIN August 18, 2004; Page A10

(This is a letter I wrote to the newsletter of an Army unit called The Strykers, stationed in Iraq out of Ft. Lewis, Wash. The editor asked me what I would say to make the wives feel appreciated while their husbands are in Iraq. This is what I wrote to one soldier's wife.)

Dear Karen,

I have a great life. I have a wife I adore, a son who is a lazy teenager but I adore him, too. We live in a house with two dogs and four cats. We live in peace. We can worship as we please. We can say what we want. We can walk the streets in safety. We can vote. We can work wherever we want and buy whatever we want. When we sleep, we sleep in peace. When we wake up, it is to the sounds of birds.
All of this, every bit of it, is thanks to your husband, his brave fellow soldiers, and to the wives who keep the home fires burning while the soldiers are away protecting my family and 140 million other families. They protect Republicans and Democrats, Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists. They protect white, black, yellow, brown and everyone in between. They protect gays and straights, rich and poor.
And none of it could happen without the Army wives, Marine wives, Navy wives, Air Force wives -- or husbands -- who go to sleep tired and lonely, wake up tired and lonely, and go through the day with a smile on their faces. They feed the kids, put up with the teenagers' surliness, the bills that never stop piling up, the desperate hours when the plumbing breaks and there is no husband to fix it, and the even more desperate hours after the kids have gone to bed, the dishes have been done, the bills have been paid, and the wives realize that they will be sleeping alone -- again, for the 300th night in a row.
The wives keep up the fight even when they have to move every couple of years, even when their checks are late, even when they have to make a whole new set of friends every time they move.
And they keep up the fight to keep the family whole even when they feel a lump of dread every time they turn on the news, every time they switch on the computer, every time the phone rings and every time -- worst of all -- the doorbell rings. Every one of those events -- which might mean a baseball score or a weather forecast or a FedEx man to me and my wife -- might mean the news that the man they love, the man they have married for better or worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, is now parted from them forever.
These women will never be on the cover of People. They will never be on the tabloid shows on TV about movie stars. But they are the power and the strength that keep America going. Without them, we are nothing at all. With them, we can do everything.
They are the glue that holds the nation together, stronger than politicians, stronger than talking heads, stronger than al Qaeda.
They deserve all the honor and love a nation can give. They have my prayers, and my wife's, every morning and every night.

Love, and I do mean Love, Ben.

Mr. Stein, a television personality and writer, is co-author with Phil DeMuth of "Can America Survive," forthcoming from Hay House.