Adventures in Parenting : How I know this is My Son from Gavin Richardson on Vimeo.

i vaguely remember names and as the years have gone by the faces get blurry, but the impression of having so many kids coming through our home hopeful for a permanent home placed in me a heart for them. tho, at the time, admittedly i wasn’t always the nicest of boys to them.

fast forward some 20 plus years i have adopted Miriam’s Promise as one of my causes that i champion. they are a methodist affiliated program (which means they get support from our church in name and personal devotion alone, they are not funded by the umc) and that partnership has allowed me to get to know them very well. they have a wonderful staff and board of directors made up of people i respect tremendously. i have a number a few youth from our youth community who have been adopted through Miriam’s Promise which is neat to connect with. and who knows, even though we have Brooks now, erin & i have talked a number of times of adopting into our family because we know the need is out there.

they are having their annual golf tournament fundraiser on October 12th and i am trying to raise $4,000 dollars for our teams totals.

as i see some numbers, if everyone in my readership of blogs, twitter, facebook, and newsletters “chipped in” $10 then we could easily achieve this goal. $10 dollars is not ordering 1.5 starbucks drinks, 1/2 of a meal on the town (for one person). that isn’t much. if you can give $20 or more, that’d be amazing too. you can set your giving, but please give. just use the “ChipIn” little meter above, it is secure, i’ve used it many times in giving to other causes.

help me help children find a new home, give to Miriam’s Promise

shalom, -gav

our little boy Brooks, turns 1 month old today. how does the Richardson family celebrate? a photo shoot of course.

Anna is a good friend of ours and offered to take photos for us after my nikon was stolen last spring. we were stoked to have her take photos, she’s a whole lot better than me as a photographer.

Brooks was quite the awake child (though this photo doesn’t show that part) for his b’day photo shoot. this made it tough to get some of those ’serene’ pics you usually see, but i suppose we already have some of those sleeping peaceful baby pics. Brooks was quite the trooper in modeling for about 2 hours with some sporadic breaks.

you can check out Anna’s blog posting with some of our photos from the photo shoot. when she’s had time to go through more of the photos we will link to those so people can order prints if they like (and i know you all want your Brooks professional print).

if you are looking for a photographer, i would highly recommend Anna.

It is game day week! This might be the best time of the year for Erin & myself.. or it can be the worst. We are terrible, but we love our teams and many times our highs and lows hinge on the results of the football scores. Right or wrong, a bit much or totally understandable, it makes our falls a little more interesting.

We are excited that our teams have started off with wins, might not have been the move impressive of wins, but they are wins none-the-less. University of South Carolina Gamecocks beat North Carolina State & the University of Alabama beat #7 ranked Virginia Tech.

We, my brother & I, have had this little tradition going on for a number of years that we call “Family Night.” It used to be us going out to eat with Davey (our then roommate) to watch a wrestling pay-per-view or football game. Well, Family Night continues, but not always for a wrestling match. But as you can see from this little video capture, who needs the wrestling to have a good time.

So me & the boy are up late.. How does one get a preemie newborn to sleep when they are obviously awake in the middle of the night.. well, here’s my plan

Every fall, the first Sunday of November the Richardson family gathers in Banks Alabama for our annual family reunion. Its generally a weekend deal for us. We go to Birmingham, meet up with the siblings & parental units, then head down Banks on Saturday for the ‘fish fry’ then gathering on Sunday morning.

Here’s some of the photos from our Richardson Family Reunion in 2008

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