We're grateful for you!

Happy belated Thanksgiving everyone! I hope everyone's Thanksgiving was amazing and filled with friends and family. We had a relaxing day as a family and loved it. We also got our Christmas shopping done! So beyond exciting, now back to the point. I wanted to say how beyond grateful we are for all of you guys. You have all been rocks for us the passed year and I'm so glad we have this blog as an outlet for everything going on. It has brought us so many friends, I can't began to think of what our life would be like without this blog. I have had people thank us for sharing our story and it makes me so happy that our little family blog has helped people. I seriously can't think of enough words to express how much we love you guys, thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your support. I really hope you all continue to support us as we go through so much more on this crazy little thing called life. Here's to a new month and even more adventures :) Happy Holidays Love, The Butler Bunch

Thanksgiving Break!

We are finally on Thanksgiving break, because you know homeschooling is super difficult. The kids are so happy to be on a break, they definitely deserve it they have blown through so much of their school books that it's crazy. They we're ready for this and so was I, I need a little bit of time to get lesson plans done and get ready for Christmas. This next week will be so relaxing and the fact we only have two kids with us for a bit helps with that. That's one sad thing about having a blended family, sometimes our holidays aren't spent together and it's really upsetting. Our kids are troopers though, they understand sometimes their brothers and sisters have to go spend time with their other family members, but I know at the same time it hurts them. Brooke sees them go with their mom's parents and normally asks why she can't go. It's hard to explain to her that those people aren't related to her just her siblings, oh the joys of being a blended family. Now that I ranted a little, back to what we're doing over our break. Brooke has a gymnastics Thanksgiving party tomorrow so we're definitely looking forward to spending time with our awesome gym family. I work on Thanksgiving, as always, so Brooke, Jason, Ryker, and I are going to have a little lunch version just so we can say we did it. Then of course, Jason and I are being mature responsible parents and going Black Friday shopping. This week is going to be a pretty busy break, but I'm excited to spend time with our kiddos. I hope you all have a very happy, safe, amazing, and any other adjective you can come up with-Thanksgiving!

The Spirit of Giving

The closer we get to Christmas the more excited I get about it! It's not even just about the toys and all that jazz, it's about the spirit of Christ. I know, I sound cheesy. It's the truth though, our kids love giving and so do we. We just dropped off our Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes and finished shopping for our Angel Tree Child. It was a really fun experience to watch our kids think of what kinds of things they wanted to buy for someone else. We packed shoe boxes for a little boy and one for a little girl, both around our kids age. They had so much fun picking out Hello Kitty things and cars, they also put in TONS of school supplies, something I know they need out there. I really couldn't be more proud of them, but they keep shocking me by using their own allowance to buy various things for other people. I am so glad they realize that Christmas isn't about toys and getting the most. It's really and truly about giving. They keep asking what else they can do for others and it's amazing, and kind of exhausting to be honest. I hope this keeps up through out the year and not just for the Christmas season which seems to happen so often with other people. They should remember, people need our help all year round and it's our job as Christians to do the right and help them as much as we possibly can. These lessons are so important to everyone, but especially children. They are after all our future and I want our future to be filled with people who care about others.

A low carb Thanksgiving?!

Thanksgiving is coming up very shortly and our family is beyond excited. We love food so this holiday is perfect for us, however with having a diabetic child it has taught me food isn't easy. When you're diabetic you read labels on everything, you have to do fast but accurate math and be sure that you're doing it all correctly. If you have diabetic in the family or you are diabetic you know exactly what I'm talking about. There are days when I got about two hours of sleep and have to do multiplication problems in my head and it's not fun. Brooke has even made comments about eating low carb food making our meals a lot easier! So, that's exactly what we have begun doing. Thanksgiving however, seems like it will be a lot harder. I mean who wants to count carbs on Thanksgiving? The greatness of Thanksgiving is no one really judges how much you eat, but sadly this is our new "normal". We already decided mashed potatoes would be mashed cauliflower instead, turkey isn't a huge deal, it's really the stuffing that we're super worried about. Brooke loves stuffing-who doesn't?! We have yet to find a stuffing recipe that actually sounds good that doesn't have too many carbs in it. Diabetes is a very stressful disease and I kind of hate it. I'm really hoping they find a cure for this soon, because I don't like the fact my five year old is getting so good at math! In all seriousness though, I really hope all our "dia-buddies" have an awesome low carb Thanksgiving without any high or lows!

They're going to be Butlers!

For the passed three years I have been beyond involved with taking care of Hunter, Callie, and Skyler. Their grandma has full custody, but allows Jason and I to take primary care of them. She told me once I got married, if the man was willing to, we could adopt them. I am beyond happy to announce, we are taking the first steps to adopting these three! Part of Callie's anxiety with the Trump situation is that he will make her go by her legal name, which is Noah, so we really wanted to get this ball rolling to ease her worries-no I don't think Trump will do that but I want to help my kid! We haven't told them yet, because we want to be a little further a long in the process first, but we are beyond excited to move forward. Our kids have considered each other siblings for almost two years now so it's an amazing thing to finally be a "real" family. We're going to be telling them in a pretty creative way if I can figure out a really out there way, I want them to know this is a big deal for the entire family. We are ready for our entire family to be part of "The Butler Bunch" and hope you guys will continue to support us during this awesome journey.

Ryker's Adoption

It's crazy to think a year ago a social worker called and asked if we had room in our house for one more. After praying about it, Jason and I said yes! That was the beginning of a beautiful adoption process for our little man, Ryker. His adoption was pretty stress and drama free-something we aren't used to considering the adoption of three of our kids is still going on two years later. Since it was a family adoption it made things a lot easier. It was beyond exciting to share the news with everyone even though some people weren't as happy as we were, regardless our entire family was excited to add him to our family. The hard thing about adopting an one year old is you don't really know what they need. With Skyler being a newborn when we got her we knew she needed bottles, newborn sized clothes, and some baby toys. With Ryker it was us attempting to remember what we used when our kids were one. We honestly just waited until after our adoption to buy most of the things. Which by the way, I don't really suggest that unless you are like us and have no problem with doing it all online at an ungodly hour. It was a pretty hectic time trying to get him everything he needed on top of making sure our other eight children were okay, but somehow we managed. I still can't believe it's been a year, I can't believe he'll be two soon and that he's made amazing strides. When we first adopted him he couldn't even do things that Skyler could do(Skyler was eight months old) and he was developmentally around six months old. He is now able to walk and say some words very clearly-car being his most clear word. He's smiling more and eating better, I can't believe this is the same kid. I am beyond grateful to God for helping us through this passed year because I know without him we wouldn't have made it nearly as well. I am hoping that he continues to make such amazing strides in the future and does amazing things with his life. We love you buddy and we're beyond happy to have you in our lives.

He hates me doesn't he?

I just got out of the doctors with my daughter who is now on antidepressants and anti anxiety medication, she's five. She woke up today and asked us if she had to become a boy again, something she has feared for the last few months. We sat her and the rest of our kids down and decided to have a serious conversation. We talked about what Trump plans on doing and how we as Americans can help. We told them they should respect him and pray for him despite how they feel about him. We said a prayer for our new president and thought all was good. The kids were doing their normal routines of getting ready for school, I could hear them fighting over basic things as usual. Nothing seemed wrong until Hunter came running down the steps to tell us Callie locked herself in the bathroom. Jason ran up and told her to open the door she refused and he heard her crying so he forced the door open. There she was, razor in hand ready to do it. Safe to say Jason took that sucker away and brought her downstairs. It's crazy, that this election came to this. It came down to a five year old trying to kill herself. This is now becoming a super personal matter. So this is to you Mr. President, I will vow to respect you if and only if you promise me that you will take care of my daughter and all the people like her. Make the promise that you will allow my little girl to be a little girl. That you will allow her to wear pink frilly dresses and allow her to dance and be herself. I want you to promise me that I will never have to send my daughter to conversion therapy, something I know you support. I want you to promise me that you will "Make America Great Again" not just for the privileged white people, but for every single American regardless of age, gender, sexual orientation, race, or religion. If you can promise me these things I will support you and I will be the best American citizen I can be.

Diabetes Awareness

Diabetes Awareness Month is a pretty big deal in our house, my daughter Brooke was diagnosed with Type One Diabetes over a year ago. Though we've had over a year to adjust to our new "normal". I'm going to be honest, prior to her diagnosis I had very little idea of what diabetes really was and didn't know what symptoms to expect. I expected her to get super sick or something that screamed"Blood sugar issues!". Instead it just looked like the flu to me, she truly just looked like she'd bounce back. Then she had a seizure, this isn't something normal that my kids do(obviously) so naturally I freaked out and we rushed her to the ER. She was then diagnosed and they planned to send us home until I threw a fit and said I couldn't do it on my own! So she was admitted for 24 hours so they could teach me how to feed my four year old. It was a lot to take in, there were so many medical terms that I didn't understand and still barely understand. What I did understand though, is how differently I'd look at food. I used to just eat freely, never read labels except to see if it was gluten free or not, and we just ate until we were full. Now we read labels and see how much of everything is in there. I get mad when Jason throws away the cereal box before I get to write down everything and I've seriously dug labels out of the trash to make sure I adjust everything accordingly. Brooke has learned how to measure out cups of food and how to portion things out. No child should have to live like this, she shouldn't have to be so worried all the time, but sadly she has to be. This is a disease that won't go away until we find a cure and it sucks. This kid and many others like her have to take at least four shots a day, sometimes more and then finger pricks as well. When she was first diagnosed she would cry and scream about these things. Now she just sits there and cries silently. She still has moments when she tries to get out of it, but she realizes she needs this. I pray for the day that Brooke and kids like her don't have to prick their fingers and can eat whatever they please whenever they would like.

It's a big month for us!

November is apparently a very important month in our family. Despite the fact no one in our family has birthdays this month it's still super busy and hectic. For starters, it's like every awareness month you can imagine. It's diabetes awareness month, transgender awareness month, and adoption awareness month. That's pretty much all of our kids. So naturally, this means all of our blog posts will be about these various awesome things. I'm pretty pumped about all the possibilities with writing. This month we'll cover Brooke's diagnosis with diabetes, Callie's current struggles with being transgender, and of course our favorite topic-adoption. We have some awesome news actually regarding adoption within our family. This is the most exciting time of the year and I'm so excited to share it with all of you guys. I hope you're ready for some reading because there will be a lot to do this month. Enjoy!

Why isn't it gluten free?!

With the holidays coming up our kids are asking for tons of different things, but know that Santa can only bring two gifts per kid, so they have to narrow down their lists rather well. Brooke has been sticking with the same things for the entire year, she just really wants an Easy Bake Oven and the boy from the Descendants movie(Belle and the Beasts' son). It seems like a very easy list, until you realize she has Celiac's Disease and can't eat anything that she can make in her Easy Bake Oven. It's kind of frustrating, I remember getting one for Easter from my grandma and playing with it for hours. There's actually a picture of my grandma and me using it and I look extremely serious about whatever I was making. It's a memory I will always hold with me and I want my daughter to be able to experience these moments as well. I'm beyond certain that my daughter is not the only child who wants to make some food with this awesome toy, but sadly can't because of allergies. It's just shocking to me with as many things that are becoming gluten free there aren't any gluten free options for the Easy Bake Oven, they could make so much more money if they had it. I guarantee that other parents in my situation would be more than happy to get their kids a gluten free oven, even if it's a little bit more than the "normal" stuff. Parents will do almost anything to make their kids happy and I really wish I could do this for her, especially since she really wants this one thing for Christmas! Please, Easy Bake Oven hear my plea and get this on the shelf before Christmas, I will buy two of them just to prove my point!