meet the faulkners

today we spent the morning on the gladney campus. they had their annual true colors seminar today. we went last year and it was good. but this year was awesome!!!

we pulled up around 9am and i immediately realized that i forgot my camera and that was upsetting b/c ryan and abby brown were standing outside so we got to talk to them for a minute! but i consoled myself b/c i heard they and belay will be at the 120th gladney celebration later this month so i can take pictures then! yay!

so we head inside and get to talk to all of our gladney family! everyone can’t believe how BIG deacon is getting. neither can we. we drop deacon off in the playroom and head into the conference room. after grabbing some sausage rolls we settle at the front table next to 2 other couples. i think the ones across from us have 2 african-american kiddos. the couple next to us are in process for ethiopia. it was fun b/c the ethiopia couple had a ton of questions for us and i love nothing more than to talk about our awesome experience!

the first part of the seminar was on hair care! i have been struggling with deacon’s hair for about a month, so this presentation was so practical and useful!!! thanks to the ladies from just for me hair products! deacon’s hair is super curly, but has been kind of frizzy and i’ve tried about 8 different products on it and we started washing it every other day and i just didn’t know what to do anymore! best part was the huge gift bag of products they gave everyone. it has like 6 different things to use on his hair. most of the stuff they talked about had to do with little african-american girls, but it applies to boys too! deacon’s got an image to maintain! also, the stuff smells delicious!

after the hair care part we had a break and an activity about stereotypes. then the keynote speaker came out. this year’s speaker was jaiya john.

wow. amazing speaker. amazing message. i can’t even begin to paraphrase or sum up his words, so i won’t even try. i suggest you buy his books and if he is in your area you see him! his book black baby white hands has been on my amazon list forever so i got to buy it today at the seminar and have him sign it. i actually asked that he make it out to deacon and he did! his wife also took a pic with me, deacon and jaiya (still kicking myself for forgetting camera!). unfortunately, that is the moment deacon decided to break down in tears…i guess what stuck with me from his talk was honesty creates safety and that life is messy and it’s when all of our messy parts are shared that we find the beauty in each other. again, my attempt at communicating his words are lame, so buy the books!!!! check out the website soul water rising.

we had so much fun and i think deacon had toooo much fun, b/c he hasn’t taken a nap yet and it’s 3:30 which is way past naptime for him. he is still fighting it out in his crib right now.