100!

Woo hoo! my 100th post! I never thought I'd get to this point and I have nothing even interesting to write about. Here are 100 things about me:

1. I hate writing lists like this.

Times 100.

The end.

(Here's some better lists if you need a list fix-which, you know, makes you kind of weird-just saying...)

Anyway, I have a funny "coincidence" to share with you all that happened this week. I have been searching for an ergo baby carrier that I could actually afford because I have had terrible back pains with other baby carriers and know a stroller is not really an option in Ethiopia and I like to wear my babies a lot, too. So, the price tag of the Ergo was keeping me from buying a new one but even on eBay they are pricey. Anyway, I saw an ad on craigslist where someone posted that they were looking to buy an Ergo so I emailed to person and said if they got more than one response, could they let me know b/c I was looking, too. Well, that turned out to be a person from my church that I know! So we laughed and then talked about the priceyness of the ergos and I thought that was it. Then, a few days ago she emailed me to tell me she had a person locally who had a used Ergo to sell and she didn't need it b/c she had gone ahead and bought a new one but did I want the person's contact info. I said sure and then emailed the person, explaining, for no other reason than the fact that I tend to bleed words sometimes, that I needed to but the Ergo for my baby I was adopting from Ethiopia especially for when we go there b/c we cannot take a stroller. For some reason I just felt like I needed to tell her that. She wrote back immediately to tell me that the reason she bought the ergos (she had 2) was to GO PICK UP HER 2 ADOPTED CHILDREN FROM ETHIOPIA LAST SPRING!!! What?! And she lives in the next town over, 10 minutes from me! (I will take a moment here to add that I live in a pretty small town area-although one that was slammed into the spotlight on April 16th, 2007, unfortunately-and while Blacksburg itself does have great diversity b/c of Virginia Tech, the outlying area in general is not necessarily a booming multi-cultural metropolis.) Crazy! Not only that, I went digging through some old Bible study notes I had where someone I know had given me the name of someone they knew who they thought had adopted from Ethiopia (get all that? they saw Ferris pass out at 31 flavors last nite....if you do not memorize random 90s movie lines, ignore that last part) and it turned out it was THE SAME PERSON!! I had never gotten around to calling her and yet here we were emailing back and forth and kicking around the idea of having a get together of families in the area with Ethiopian children b/c we each knew of one other family. Too funny! And so now, the same ergo is going to cross the ocean again to Ethiopia and back. That thing is a world traveler! Anyway, I just got such a kick out of the craziness of it all. It seems like God drops these moments in my lap just on the days when I get caught up in a swirl of fear and "what the heck are we doing?!" moments. He's good like that. I like Him.

Numbers

Well, we got our updated waitlist numbers yesterday and they are pretty much the same numbers we had before-#20 on the boys list, #25 on the girls list (we moved up one on that list somehow). I was startled to realized how disappointed I was that we hadn't moved further-I thought I was overwhelmed at how quickly things were happening and was looking forward to some time to exhale a bit and maybe even enjoy a bit of a wait so I thought I didn't have high expectations, but then my heart sank when I read our "new" numbers that really weren't new and my eyes were filled with tears for a moment. Sometimes in all of the hustle and bustle of paperwork and chaos and research of preparing for the adoption, it is easy to lose sight of what brought us here (the intense desire for another baby) and just get bogged down in details. Then, when you least expect it, that fierce desire to have that baby RIGHT. NOW. sneaks up and smacks you upside the head and heart and you feel like you are so far away from that happening, especially when you have not budged an inch on the wait list. Today was better and I was much more okay with things and I know that God has His timeline in place, but it is still hard to just want to know MORE MORE MORE about how things are going and when we might know something, anything, etc. Adoption is not for the faint of heart, that is for sure!

In other family adventures, Thing 1 had her first real sleepover with friends last night (she is 8 1/2) and my summation of sleepovers? Over. Rated. Ugh. The moaning, weeping, wailing and crabiness that ensued, AFTER her 2 hour nap from exhaustion when she got home, made for a very long day and quite possibly a Sleepover Embargo of undetermined length here at Chez Things. She did have a lot of fun, so I will give her that. (Who wouldn't have fun when you get to eat chocolate chip pancakes with chocolate syrup and ice cream for breakfast?! hello?!) And the fun mom of the friend at whose house this event took place is a Mary Kay rep so she did makeovers on all the girls, which they LOVED! So, Thing 1's assessment of the sleepover=good times.

Off to comfort poor Thing 3 who may just be perishing in her crib by the sound of her wailing "Mama!"-it is nice to mean the world to someone small :)

Oooooh, Shiny New Stuff!

It was my birthday today and I got wonderful gifts from my sweet hubby and the Things :). I got 2 wonderful books that I have been dying to read : I'm Chocolate, You're Vanilla by Marguerite Wright and There is No Me Without You by Melissa Fay Greene, both of which discuss very significant issues in transracial parenting as well as the AIDS epidemic in Ethiopia in the Greene book. I have been wanting to read them for months and the library didn't have them and now I have my very own! Woo hoo! I also got this beautiful pendant which I LOVE LOVE LOVE!!! Just such a sweet picture of motherhood and such a great memorial of sorts of this period in our family's history as we pursue our sweet new addition. Finally, they gave me cherry Twizzlers and Reese's peanut butter cups (my favorites!!!) which are kind of a "tradition" on my birthday. I love traditions-they just make things very special and give so much to look forward to, I think. It is true, I am cheesy that way :) Plus, one of my very best friends brought me a DOZEN asiago cheese bagels from Panerra bread for my b-day! (I have great family and friends but I do not think they are trying to help me in my weight loss goals!) My family is such a blessing and I just wanted to take this day to tell all the folks on the innernetwebs how great of a family I've got and how thankful I am for them!!! So, thanks you guys-you are the best family I could ever want and God sure knew what He was doing when He put this crazy bunch together!

A Day in the Life....

Here's a recap of the other (typical) day around here:

-Drop Thing 1 off at Theater Camp and hope I do not have to walk her in b/c I have not showered in days

-Get home and decide to weed the neglected jungle, er, yard while it is a teensy bit cool for once b/c of some recent rain

-While weeding, watch Thing 3 sit in large muddy puddle and another large puddle in her clean, only-worn-for-30 minutes clothes

-Try to keep Thing 3 from running out in street after Thing 2 who has decided to ride her bike in said street

-Decide to try to contain children in yard b/c it would really ruin my day if they were run over by a car

-Search for Thing 3's shoe while slowly realizing the last time I saw it was when she was playing, in the road, near the storm sewer (thank goodness that home study is over, eh??? I kid, I kid...sort of)

-Try to pretend that said shoe is somewhere other than the storm sewer

-Spend 45 minutes retrieving shoe from the storm sewer with cleverly constructed device involving a steel ceiling hook and rope while throwing my shoulder out, getting my hair in gross muddy water and trying not to cuss (in front of the children at least)

-Run inside, realize I have to be at the post office in 10 minutes for our passport appointment, and smooth hair back with the help of the aforementioned muddy gross water that has gotten in it (ooh, a silver lining!)

-Get Thing 3 off middle of kitchen table where she is sitting in her diaper and drinking/spilling my Coke Zero down her adorable little face

-Wonder why she looks funny (besides the Coke puddle around her) and realize it is b/c she got into the markers while I was fishing her shoe out of the sewer and has "decorated" her mouth, eyes and buddha belly-nice.

-Try not to berate Thing 2 for leaving the markers in reaching distance of her little sister

-Decide shirt will cover the belly and her face will just get dirtier at lunch and decide to ignore it even though I am going to the post office where we will be visible to other people

-Get passport taken care of and realize there is NOTHING ELSE for us to do other than wait wait WAIT for our newest Thing!!!

-Take Things 2 and 3 out to lunch and wonder why watermelon has impenetrable staining power and is only attracted to my child's (second) clean shirt

-Come home to temporarily fixed AC, hoping I did not miss the AC man who was supposed to finish the repair (and who still has not shown up, 2 days later) and crash upon sofa for a few minutes

-Put Thing 3 down for a nap (oh thank you LORD for the sweet blessing of nap time for the wee children!!)

-Vacuum 20 billion pounds of dog fur off of everything in the whole house, and wonder how it got there when I had just done the same thing the day before...and the day before...and the day before (why does my dog still have any fur?!?) while it gets very dark and rumbly outside

-Listen to Thing 2 read, and read, and read to me-she is a machine!- while we put dinner in the crock pot and I smugly congratulate myself on getting dinner planned and ready ahead of time for once

-Pick up Thing 1 from camp in the pouring rain and listen to her tearful recounting of her forgetting her lines in front of everybody and try to reassure her that it is ok and that is why God invented rehearsals (and silently wish more things in life had rehearsals where I could get my goof-ups out first)

-Watch everyone turn their noses up at dinner, refuse to eat it b/c it is "too yucky" and Thing 3 gleefully throw it on the floor for the dog

-Get all Things to bed amid tears and wailing and gnashing, I mean brushing, of teeth-and get them to bed and get them to bed about 50 million times b/c there are concerns about forgetting lines again, what to wear tomorrow, if the hamster is lonely at night, what bed the American Girl doll should sleep in, and the injustice of having to clean up their room enough to be able to clear a path to their beds

-Thank God that I get to be a mom as my full time job every. single. day. (yes, even the ones where I am hanging out in dirty storm sewers with hair sculpted with funk-water and my kids and house are a mess-those are often the best ones!!)


I think it will be good to have another baby in the house b/c things are so dull around here.

Stupid Hot

Wow, it is HOT here. Like 90 degrees and 500 eleventy million percent humidity. And I have afro-prone hair. And our A/C is not working. Good times. But it is all good-our paperwork is back with the thumbs up from D.C., will be making it's little trip to Ethiopia early next week and we will finally be getting our fingerprinting done on Tuesday. That was a HUGE relief to get the appointment notice for that and also to only have to drive 2.5 hours away to do it instead of the 4.5 we were expecting-double woohoo to the Lord on that one! As an added bonus, since the appointment is at 8 a.m. and I have a hate-affair with the wee morning hours, we are going to go the nite before ALONE and have a tiny little getaway without the kiddos. OK, it is kind of lame to call going to Charleston, West Virginia for federal government fingerprints a "getaway" but we will take what we can get :)! Plus, working air conditioning!! This could be the best trip EVER! (Oh, well, maybe not as good as the little one where we go to AFRICA and all....whatever)

In other family news, Thing 2 had the end of an awesome week at theater camp today. The fine arts teacher at their school holds this camp every summer and this is the first time we have participated-totally worth it!! They performed the musical Bugz! and she was a honeybee-too cute! When will I ever stop crying at these events??? Oh the weddings will kill me! Not to worry, I have 40 or 50 years till those, right??? They worked so hard and it was amazing the cute little performance they pulled together in a week. I was so blessed by watching my timid, shy little honey bee just sing and dance away up there-God is so good to our family! I will post a picture of my honey bee when I am awake enough to find the camera and get the pictures from it-until then, imagine a cutie pie buzzing away and singing her heart out! Thing 1 goes to the bigger kid theater camp next week where they will learn and perform Life School Musical, a Christian take on a semi-well known little Disney movie :) Should be interesting!

One more evidence of God's blessing today was connecting with some of the other families from AGCI who are at the same point in the adoption process as we are. It felt like college when you meet your new dorm mates-only better! Come to think of it, it actually feels a little like my sweltering dorm room at the beginning of the school year in here, too...

Eek!

It is official! Our dossier is done, reviewed, approved and we are OFFICIALLY on the waiting list for our little sweetie! Yikes! This is both exciting and terrifying all at the same time. You see, we had initially thought it would take longer and we would have a longer wait, but it is now looking like things have moved quite quickly and we may have our baby much sooner than we were thinking. We have not specified gender so we are on a list for either one and there are not a tremendous number of people ahead of us. Like I said, exciting and terrifying. We were thinking we would be traveling to Ethiopia in the Spring but it may be as soon as early winter. But we know God's timing is perfect and so we will keep looking to Him in everything. It was a year ago this week that God stirred my heart into a frenzy about adopting, that my husband said no thanks, and now, we are a few months away from meeting our newest family member! Feel free to join me in saying---
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!

Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries

So, Sunday nite we had the worst hail storm I've ever seen in my life. Here are some shots outside our house post terror-inducing storm:It was eerie and weird and scary. And SUMMER. Not winter, as it appears in these photos. We went to bed wondering what damage we might find in the morning. But alas, God had a nice little surprise for us! We have this gigantic cherry tree in our yard that produces bazillions of cherries-none of which are reachable without a fire department ladder and/or some possible circus-like acrobatics of climbing that may or may not bring about death (and which have been used in seasons past nonetheless). I was just lamenting yesterday that it seems like such a waste to have all that fruit and not be able to get to it. Well, when surveying the yard today to see how many of my plants were destroyed and what clean up was necessary, one of my daughters called me over to look at the ground. "It's covered!" she yelled. And sure enough, the ground was blanketed with cherries, some squished, some perfect. The hail had knocked them down off the branches-woohoo! I spent an hour gathering what I could, along with my trusty little "helper" till my back just couldn't take the bending over any more and I had more than I knew what to do with anyway. (Note the plethora of leaves all over the yard-leaves that just yesterday were considered "branches". Also note the lovely attractive fence that is destined to make it onto the cover of Better Homes and Gardens any day now. Hush up-we're working on it.)

Hope your trials turn out to be "sweet" in some way, too-God is good like that!

PS-have any good recipes for wild cherries?????