Picker Point
  • Home Life & Family

  • April27th

    Guess Who’s Three!

    Author: Mary Beth | Posted in: Home Life & Family

    calebs-3rd-birthday-small61
    Today is my sweet little boy’s third birthday. Where did the time go? It feels like only moments ago he was a tiny little baby. Now he’s a big, loud, sweaty boy! I am so in love with my little guy and so incredibly blessed to be his momma. I wish I could describe him for you, but all I can say is that he is exactly what a three-year-old boy should be. He loves running and splashing and getting dirty, but he also loves bringing flowers to his momma and cuddling on the couch.

    As an example of his cute personality, I’ll tell you about our trip to the farm this week. Caleb has been fascinated with all things trucks and cars for a while now, but this week he found a new love . . . the Rhino. We went to visit some of Casey’s family at the big family farm where Casey’s mom grew up and where all of her family still lives. It’s always fun to visit the family, but Caleb especially enjoyed this visit. Casey’s Uncle Kirk has a Rhino that he uses to get around the farm and take care of his chickens, etc. He was kind enough to let us ride around in it some, and Caleb is absolutely smitten. He even prayed for the Rhino the night we were there.

    The day that we left happened to be chicken selling day at the farm. Casey’s uncle raises chickens and was selling probably around 60,000 chickens while we were there. Pops took Caleb over to watch the chickens being loaded into trucks. Caleb watched as the wranglers herded the chickens into crates and stacked them up on big semi trucks (I’m sure you’ve seen these chicken trucks on the interstate before). Caleb watched quietly for a few minutes and then said to Pops, “Chickens having a bad day!”

    Here’s a picture of Caleb with Daddy and some cousins in the back of the Rhino.
    gravette-trip-small12

  • April7th

    REFERRAL!!!

    Author: Mary Beth | Posted in: Adoption, Home Life & Family

    We are overwhelmed, blessed, and absolutely overjoyed to announce that we have received our referral! Monday evening, I got a call from Holt telling us that they had a baby boy waiting for us. He is 2 1/2 months old and itty bitty, but absolutely precious! My arms are already aching for him!

    I got the call Monday evening at 5:30 that our agency would be e-mailing us his pictures and information to review. Sure enough, the e-mail popped right up on my account. Then I had to wait an excruciating fifteen minutes for Casey to get home so we could see the pictures of our son together.

    I think we were both in disbelief for several hours. We weren’t expecting a referral until May or June at the earliest. After our agency had told us many times to expect a 6-9 month wait for an infant, I can’t believe we got our referral in a little over four months! We are praising God for his wonderful faithfulness and perfect timing!

    We are still working on a name for our baby boy because we thought that we still had a few months to think about it. We will use part of his Ethiopian name as his middle name, but we want to give him a new first name. We’ll let you know as soon as we decide.

    So what’s next? Now we will wait for our court date, which will hopefully be assigned in the next few weeks. Usually the court dates are scheduled 2-3 months in advance, so we are hoping for a June court date. If we pass court the first time, we will be able to pick up our son three or four weeks after the court date. If not, we will have to wait for a second court date. So please pray for an early court date and that we will pass the first time.

    Unfortunately, we can’t post pictures of our little guy on the internet until he is legally our son. But here is a video of Caleb sharing the good news with Daddy.

    And here is a picture of Caleb seeing his baby brother for the first time. And Roger and Abby, if you’re reading this, I just happened to be wearing my 7,990 shirt that day.

    img_4216small

    Thank you so much, all of our dear family and friends, for your prayers and support over the last several months. Please continue to pray for our little guy; we know God is answering our prayers!

  • March9th

    Just a little post about Caleb . . .

    Author: Mary Beth | Posted in: Home Life & Family, Parenthood

    2img_4005I have piles of laundry to fold and iron, book-keeping to do, and dishes to wash, but today I want to write about Caleb.

    I cannot imagine a cuter kid. He makes us laugh all the time. His favorite things right now include playing soccer with Daddy, listening to “George music” (aka Jack Johnson’s Curious George soundtrack), and playing with his many stuffed animals (especially the Chip and Dale that Daddy bought him in Orlando, the Larry that Aunt Laura and AnnaBelle gave him, and, of couse, the old favorite, Curious George). He is talking our ears off now! He talks constantly about anything and everything. The other day he was walking around the house saying, “I’m going to work on the computer to build a website.” His vocabulary seems to have doubled lately; there is little that he can’t explain or ask for.

    Over the last few weeks, he has started to pretend a lot more. He likes to pretend that he is Curious George, or Larry the Cucumber, or Christopher Robin, or Mickey Mouse. Of course, if he is George, or Larry, or Christoper Robin, or Mickey, then Casey and I have to fill the complementary rolls of “the man with the yellow hat,” or Bob the Tomato, or Winnie-the-Pooh, or Goofy. And, naturally, all of the actors have to be prepared to change character at a moment’s notice. One minute, I think that I am Minnie Mouse, and I am acting my heart out when I am suddenly informed that I am actually Junior Asparagus! I am certainly getting the chance to polish my nearly non-existent acting skills.

    Caleb also loves to read books, which, of course, is one of my greatest desires for my children. He will sit through as many books as we will read to him. For such an active and crazy almost-three-year-old, his attention span is really great when it comes to books. In the past we have mainly read picture books with plenty of bright colors to keep his focus, but just this past week I started reading to him The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne. There aren’t as many pictures in this book, and sometimes there will be two or three pages with no pictures at all, but he is still content to sit in my lap and listen to the stories, which are much longer, with more character development, than most little children’s books.

    Some of my favorite childhood memories are of my daddy reading novels out loud to our whole family. Because I have two brothers, I was forced to sit through Kidnapped and Treasure Island, but he also read Silas Marner and others. There is something so beautiful about hearing the words of a story spoken out loud and imagining it in your mind instead of being fed someone else’s interpretation through their images.

    I hope that Caleb will continue to develop his attention span and wonderful imagination. Casey and I already have a long list of books that we are eager to read aloud to him when he is ready. He is such a wonderful blessing; we are cherishing every moment of being his parents.

    Just another little moment that I want to remember: Several nights ago I crept into his room while he was sleeping to pray for him. We had had a rough day, and, after he went to bed, I spent the evening flipping through parenting books, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. While I was praying by his bed, I was having one of those anxious parenting moments, wondering if he is going to grow up to know what is right and to love God, or if I am completely ruining him with my own flaws. As I prayed over his life and his future, in his sleep, Caleb began to sing out loud, “God of wonders, beyond our galaxy, You are holy! Holy!” Wow! It brought tears to my eyes and gave me peace over all my anxious thoughts. I felt like God was reminding me that Caleb’s soul and future are in His hands, and not mine. What a relief! What a blessing to get to watch this little soul fall in love with God!

  • February11th

    Something to remember . . .

    Author: Mary Beth | Posted in: Home Life & Family, Spiritual

    I shared this incident with some friends recently and realized that it was something I want to remember, so I’m sharing it on our blog.

    There are so many parts of being a mommy that you can never understand or be prepared for in advance. When I imagined being a mom, I knew that it would be hard. I knew there would be lots of dirty diapers, sick days, and messy meals, but there is a big difference between expecting those things and actually living them. Until you’ve experienced it, you don’t understand what it is like to live daily with someone else’s snot on your sleeve; you don’t understand what it means to come in contact with poop several times a day or to find yourself cleaning up a bed of vomit at 3AM. But this is normal life for a mommy, and, even though there are so many beautiful, priceless blessings that come with motherhood, the messy parts can be draining and exhausting. There are no standing ovations for mommies, no promotions, and few “thank you’s.”

    I love being a stay-at-home mom. There is nothing that would make me want to do anything else because I know that these years are fleeting. Caleb needs me so much right now, and someday he won’t. But, even though I feel so convicted about staying home with him, there are still times when I wake up and think, “I can’t believe this is my life! I can’t believe I went to school and studied so hard for all those years so that I could be a janitor.” Something about being a mom can make you feel so invisible, unappreciated, and unimportant. I know that these things aren’t true, but sometimes, without realizing it, I find myself living as if they were.

    A few weeks ago, Caleb woke up sick. He had thrown up all over himself in bed. You can imagine the mess. How does one even begin to clean up something like that? Casey was out for the evening, so I found myself facing this mighty mess all alone. Usually I have a pretty bad attitude about situations like this. I hate messes, especially when I’m tired, and toddlers are so uncooperative when it comes to cleaning. But, for some reason, I approached this mess with a deep, calm peace. I gave Caleb a bath, put him in clean pajamas, and changed the bed sheets. The only thing left was the blanket that he had thrown up in. I wasn’t sure how to clean it. It was too big to rinse in the toilet, but I didn’t want to throw it in the washer with all of the vomit still on it. So I spread it out on the floor and tried to scrub it with a washcloth.

    Caleb perched a few feet away from me and just watched. As he watched me struggling with the mess, he smiled at me and in his quietest, sweetest voice said, “Good job, Mommy.”

    I was so startled by what he said that I immediately started crying. It hit me like a bolt of lightning that Caleb was not the one speaking to me. I heard unmistakably the voice of my Father saying, “I see you; you are not invisible to Me. I see you, and I am pleased.” Wow! How’s that for a standing ovation!?! I would clean up a mess like that every night for a year to hear those words from my Father. It was a beautiful moment that I want to cherish always.

    “So she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, ‘You are a God of seeing,’ for she said, ‘Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.’” ~ Genesis 16:13

  • December27th

    Caleb’s Christmas Story

    Author: Casey | Posted in: Home Life & Family, Tech

    Merry Christmas from the Pickers!

    Watch the Video

  • November3rd

    Recent Happenings

    Author: Mary Beth | Posted in: Adoption, Home Life & Family, Travel

    We haven’t posted much in the last several weeks, so I thought I would post a Picker Family Update. October was a very busy month for us, and now that it is finally over, we are spending the next few days lying on the couch, trying to recuperate.

    In mid-October, Casey tore his Achilles’ tendon while playing basketball with some buddies. The next weekend we were supposed to go to Chicago with Allan and Lindsay to visit Billy. After several doctors appointments, the doctor determined that Casey’s tendon was completely torn and gave him permission to go on the trip, provided he wear his walking boot and schedule surgery for a few days after we came home.

    So we were able to go on our trip as planned. We were so glad to see Billy since it had been almost three months since we had seen his face. We all had a great time seeing all the sights in Chicago, and Casey was able to hobble around with his walking boot. While we were in Chicago we took the opportunity to try our first Ethiopian food. I’m not really much for any kind of ethnic food, unless you consider Tex-mex ethnic, so I was a little skeptical about whether I would like it or not. I have to admit that it was better than I thought it would be. All the food is served on Injera, which is a pancake-like sourdough bread. We tried several different entrees which included chicken, beef, and lamb dishes. Overall, it was a good experience, and I’m so glad that we got to try Ethiopian food before we go to Ethiopia. Allan, Lindsay, and Billy were great sports to go with us and even pretended to enjoy it a little bit.

    Casey had his surgery after we got home and is now hobbling around the house with crutches. We hope that in two to three weeks he will get another walking boot and be done with the crutches.

    Last weekend we had a HUGE garage sale to raise money for our adoption. My mom and I have worked for several weeks cleaning out her attic, so we had lots of stuff to sell. I also cleaned out SIX boxes of Casey’s old toys and sold the ones that he didn’t want to keep. Since Casey has been incapacitated, I needed a lot of help pulling the sale together. I had many precious friends volunteer their time and energy to make sure our sale was worthwhile. We had friends bring tables, transport stuff, donate stuff to sell, and help us run the garage sale. My sweet friend Kasie helped my mom and I sort and price a mountain of garage sale items. Isn’t the body of Christ wonderful? I really don’t know what we would do without our friends. The sale was very successful, and we were able to raise a chunk of money for our adoption. We are considering having another sale this spring.

    We took a break from all of the garage sale festivities to let Caleb celebrate Halloween. He was the cutest cowboy I have ever seen. He let me paint a mustache on his face, and every time he looked in the mirror he would say, “I like your mustache.” Even though he didn’t quite understand the trick-or-treating part of the evening, he had a great time dressing up and playing with his buddies.

    We polished off our very busy weekend by having our Home Study on Sunday afternoon. We have been waiting for over a month for our social worker to have time to do our Home Study, so we jumped at the opportunity to do it Sunday even though our weekend was already so busy. The study went really well and wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought it would be. We are very blessed to have such a wonderful social worker; she was very easy to talk with. She will hopefully have our Home Study report written in the next couple weeks, and then we will submit our Dossier to Holt and begin filing paperwork with Immigration. I’m not quite sure how long all of this will take, but I’m hoping we can get on the waiting list by the first of the year. After that we will just be waiting to be matched with a child.

    We are praising God that the adoption process is moving again after what felt like a very long wait and will keep you updated as we make more progress.

  • October8th

    Fireproof

    Author: Casey | Posted in: Home Life & Family, Spiritual

    Last night, Mary Beth and I saw the movie Fireproof, which was filmed by the same people who did Facing the Giants. I wasn’t a huge fan of Facing the Giants (I thought the message was good, but the acting was bad), so I was a little skeptical about this movie before I saw it.

    The first 15 minutes of the movie confirmed my suspicions with bad acting and cheesy lines, but after that it started to get really good. The basic storyline is about a couple whose marriage is crumbling and they have “fallen out of love.” The husband, played by Kirk Cameron, gets advice from his father about what to do save his broken marriage. He then proceeds to follow that advice, even though the feelings of love are gone.

    I won’t spoil the movie for anyone, but I think every couple should go see this movie. Whether your marriage is struggling or maybe just a little stagnant, I really believe that every marriage can benefit from seeing this movie.

    So, husbands, take your wives out on a date this week and go see this movie. You will not be disappointed.

  • September12th

    Are you adopted?

    Author: Mary Beth | Posted in: Adoption, Home Life & Family

    Obviously, we have been thinking about adoption in our family a lot lately, and I’ve noticed that adoption is more common than many of us realize. In our last post, we mentioned our spiritual adoption as Christians, but there is another kind of adoption that is also very common.

    I’m talking about marriage. When we meet someone, and fall in love, and eventually marry, we are in essence adopting them. Once our families are established we don’t seem to think about this much, but it is interesting to remember that married people are not related by blood at all. In fact, most of us don’t know and love our spouses from infancy, but we would label this relationship as the deepest and most important relationship of our lives.

    Casey and I had a wonderful time last weekend with the Picker clan. One of Casey’s cousins was getting married, and the entire family came from all over the country to be with each other. As you can see in our family picture, there are a lot of us (and this is only one side of Casey’s family; the other side is as large or larger). The only person in this picture that I am blood related to is Caleb, who is sitting in my lap, but I have come to love the rest of this family very much. I didn’t meet any of them, even Casey, until I was eighteen years old, but from that very moment they have loved me and treated me as their own. They even shared their name with me. I guess you could say they adopted me.

    This all got me thinking about how very few of the most important relationships in my life are blood relationships. Before my blood-family gets all up in arms over this, let me assure you that you all make the list. But there are many, many people that I love like family that are not blood-related to me at all, spiritual aunts and uncles, cousins, and brothers and sisters that I have loved for my entire life, not to mention my own sister and all of my wonderful in-laws. If I can have cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents, brothers and sisters, and even parents that aren’t blood relatives, my new son is going to fit right in! Maybe blood is a little over-rated anyway.

  • September3rd

    Big News . . .

    Author: Mary Beth | Posted in: Adoption, Home Life & Family, Spiritual

    Prayer MagnetWe’ve been waiting for weeks to share our big news, and the time has finally come. After tons of prayer and thought, and sharing and praying with the people closest to us, we have decided to adopt a baby boy from Ethiopia.

    Ever since I went with my parents to adopt my little sister from Romania when I was eighteen, I have known that I wanted to adopt someday. When we visited the baby orphanage in Romania I was overwhelmed by the rooms full of babies, rocking themselves because there was no one to rock them. Many of them no longer cried, because they knew no one would answer. It breaks my heart to know that my little sister was once one of those babies. At the older orphanage, the children ran to us the moment they saw us; the littlest ones climbed into my arms, clung to my legs, and called me “Momma.” I have never forgotten this. It is staggering to realize that there are over 143 million orphans in the world just like this.

    We know that God has a heart for the fatherless; His word is full of instruction to care for the abandoned. In Deuteronomy, He continually reminds His people to provide food for the fatherless; Psalm 82 says, “Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and destitute. Rescue the weak and needy . . .” and James tells us that “pure and undefiled” religion is to care for the widows and orphans. We have felt God tug at our hearts, and we are finally answering.

    Since we have decided to adopt from Ethiopia, we have been overwhelmed by the incredible need we see there. In 2005, the Federal Ministry of Health reported that Ethiopia has 4.8 million orphans. These children have lost their parents because of sickness and disease and because of the terrible famine that Ethiopia has suffered for so many years. Our adoption agency estimates that in Ethiopia three out of four people do not have enough to eat. It is overwhelming to think of how easily we could change a child’s life simply by bringing him into our home and giving him three meals a day.

    Of course, we believe that we have much more to offer a child than proper nutrition. Our primary goal in raising this child, just as it is as we raise our son, Caleb, will be to share with him the love of Christ and to help him grow into a faithful man of God. We believe that one of the greatest resources we have to share with our new child will be our beautiful family and friends. Can you imagine the overwhelming love and joy that are waiting to greet this lonely child? It can only be compared to the overflowing grace and mercy that, because of Christ’s love and sacrifice, surround us, who were also once so lonely. In fact, we believe that there is no better metaphor for the gospel of Christ than adoption. When we had absolutely nothing to offer Him, Christ gave up everything to bring us into His family. As Ephesians reminds us, through Jesus Christ, God has adopted each of us as His sons.

    Please pray for us as we begin this process. We are told that it will probably take 12-18 months for us to get our baby boy, and we will be traveling to Ethiopia to get him at that time. Pray for safety and health for our little boy, who is probably not even born yet. And please pray for Ethiopia; there is so much suffering there, and our hearts have been burdened by their pain.

    We will have so much more to share as we travel this journey, so expect many more posts to come. We thank God that we have such wonderful friends to share our news with.

  • August24th

    Family Day: Obedience

    Author: Mary Beth | Posted in: Home Life & Family, Parenthood, Spiritual

    We’ve been having a little trouble with obedience here at the Picker house, so I was inspired by Andrea and Elijah to have a special family day to learn more about obedience. I felt a little overwhelmed by the idea at first, but once I started it was really easy to plan activities that emphasized obedience. I only spent about twenty minutes brain storming the night before.

    Caleb and Daddy started the day by reading a book about cars and trucks and traffic rules. They talked about how even Mommy and Daddy have to obey rules when they drive the car. They talked about how there were rules about how fast to go and when to stop and that obeying the rules is what keeps us safe when we drive.

    Then after breakfast we played a game called “Mommy Says,” which is a lot like “Simon Says” only Mommy says it and there is no tricking. With a little help from Daddy, Caleb thought this was pretty fun. We then went on a drive to look for stop signs. We talked about how good Daddy was at obeying the rules when he drives and how it makes God happy when we obey.

    After Caleb’s nap, we tried a little obedience practice during snack time. I put three cookies on the table in front of him and said, “Caleb, Mommy wants you to eat this cookie first,” and I pointed to a cookie. Well, Caleb didn’t appreciate being told which cookie to eat, so after thinking about it for a minute he reached for that cookie and threw it on the ground! This exercise made it pretty clear that Caleb is strong-willed; he would rather not eat a cookie than eat the one that Mommy said to eat. This is something I will be praying for wisdom about.

    After the cookie incident, we moved out to the driveway. We drew with the sidewalk chalk, and Mommy and Daddy drew roads and stop signs to let Caleb practice driving his car and obeying the signs. Caleb thought this was pretty fun, but it bothered him that the stop signs were pink instead of red (we didn’t have any red chalk; do they even make that?). After driving the car for a while, we went to the back yard and played Red Light/Green Light. This was probably Caleb’s favorite game; he got all sweaty running back and forth.

    Later we read the story of the Battle of Jericho in Caleb’s Jesus Storybook Bible. We talked about how the Israelites had to obey God’s instructions exactly and how God protected them because they obeyed. We pretended to march around Jericho (the coffee table) and made as much noise as possible.

    For supper, Caleb helped Mommy make pancakes. We talked about how we had to obey the instructions in the recipe or the pancakes wouldn’t taste good. After supper, we finished our family day by watching the Veggie Tales Jonah movie. Caleb loved this so much that he cried when it was over. Veggie Tales are his new favorite, though he still loves Curious George. We talked about how sad it was that Jonah decided to disobey God and how he got in trouble for not obeying. I think Caleb understood this pretty well; this morning when I asked him about Jonah he said, “Jonah not obey.”

    We really had a fun family day. I hope we can try to do this again soon, maybe monthly. I know that Caleb really enjoyed all the special attention and games, and we felt good that we were all having fun while teaching something very important. I don’t know if this will help with Caleb’s obedience or not, but it has certainly given us more opportunities to talk about obeying.

    See more pictures from our family day.

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »
Return to the Homepage