Lux et umbra vicissum…

I just got word that AWOP’s next trip, the one I had asked to go on but which hadn’t been planned until today, will be May 14th through the 26th.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok. Time to go take a shower. That’s the only way I get real down time to pray about things. 🙂

I’ve hardly been online today because we wanted to take advantage of the sunny weather to get our garden ready. My mother will be coming at the end of next week with ten beef steak tomato plants (I think), two cherry tomato plants, and two bell peppers. I also got seeds for Bush Champion cucumbers, Danvers Half Long carrots (which are still plenty long from the info on the packet), and Rosalita romaine lettuce. We’ll grow our own salads if all goes well.

So today we spent the day weeding the main garden (which wasn’t too bad because we had weeded it before), tilling the rows (Joel did that with a Mantis Tiller his mom passed along to us) , staking the edges, and then weeding the strawberry patch next to our shed. Oh, and we mowed a little bit.

While we were doing the weeding, the four younger kids were out with us; Alexis was in school. I decided it was time to help them understand what a “family garden” was, so I told them they had to help us by picking up all of the rocks they could find in the garden and putting them in a bucket. The younger two loved it – it meant they got to get nice and dirty. (As soon as we came inside they were placed in the bathtub.) Desta was very good about it, not complaining and looking for rocks for quite a while. Branwen, on the other hand, only helped under protest. *sigh* Well, it won’t be the last time she’s required to help out in the garden, so she might as well get used to it. I think she’ll enjoy planting the plants and seeds next weekend a little more. Weeding wasn’t really an option since either only the tops come off or the children are constantly needing my help which doesn’t allow me to keep working on my own area. So picking out rocks it was, whether they liked it or not.

We got a lot done. The garden is ready for planting. I’ll tie twine to our stakes to mark the boarders more effectively against rampaging children and puppies on the next good-weather day. I’ll also hang out some foil pie plates near the tops of the taller stakes to help keep birds away. I think I’ll get a couple for the strawberry patch for that purpose, too. We’ll put out the tomato cages once the tomatoes are in the ground. We’ll put some lime down before that, and then I’ll put egg shells in the holes with the tomatoes to give them some extra calcium. The other plants are more of an experiment since I’ve only ever had room for a few things before and have just grown tomatoes.

Oh, and apparently our dog doesn’t recognize a mortal enemy when he sees one. I saw a cat in the yard last night and decided to show it who was boss by letting the dog out at it. A few mistakes: our dog is very short right now and the grass was rather high. He couldn’t see the cat. I kept trying to point him in the right direction, but he just wasn’t getting it. I threw his toy ball closer and closer to the feline who was laying there waiting rather calmly. When I finally got the silly pup to see the other furry beast, he stopped, sniffed while straining forward so he didn’t have to get too close, then started bouncing around barking excitedly. So second mistake: he’s still very young and not at all sure of himself. He didn’t go any closer to the cat. Actually, his bounces mostly took him in an arc on one side of the beasty. It was cute, but entirely ineffective at ridding our yard of the encroacher. I finally walked closer (I was already only four feet or so away), and the cat decided it had had enough. It took off across the yard and ran through a gap between two of the fences. So you’d think the puppy would chase it, right? No. He was more interested in bouncing and yipping at Joel who had come out to see if he could help. Oh well.

listing to port – writing out your to-do list until it drives you to drink

1. Biting toes can only get you so far.  Prancing around pretending to bite toes will get you so much farther.  Especially if you don’t slip up and actually bite them in the process.

2. NEVER pee on the floor.  Play, yes.  Sleep, yes.  Pee, no.  Neither should you poop.  These things should be done in the proper place, out of doors.  It’s amazing how cute you can be when you lift your leg where you’re supposed to.

3. Stealing people’s socks and running around with them is adorable until you actually chew holes in them.  When that happens, you’re no longer cute.  You’re bad.

4.  Letting people hold you for a minute is extremely cute, especially when you don’t end the cuddling time by suddenly trying to play nip at their hands.  Nipping really kills the mood.

5. Sleeping with your legs stuck straight up in the air has a definite cuteness factor.  It’s not even completely gone if you open your eyes and whine.  However, the cuteness points you win can be completely taken away if you follow up this performance by rolling over right side up and barking piercingly.

6. When your owner’s hand is hanging down from the edge of a chair, it is very, very cute to come and stand under it thereby petting yourself on their hand.  The effect is diminished when you then try to nip at their hand to play.  (See the note on nipping in #4.)

To summarize: You’re only truly cute when you’re good.  Bad puppies may seem cute to people who don’t own them, but those people are wrong.  Listen to your owner, and you will be the most adorable pup in the world… no matter what other people think.

Charis: (as she sits on the couch in our living room) Where is the whole world?

Me: Well, honey, it’s all around us.  It’s everything you can see as you look around.

Charis: (later)  The whole world is in our living room!!!

The following was a dinner discussion… since I can’t remember which child said each thing I’ll just designate them as Child 1, Child 2, etc.:

Child 1: Daddy, why can you eat bigger bites than me?

Joel: My mouth is bigger than yours.

Child 2: Look, I have a big mouth!

Child 3: Me, too!  I have a really big mouth!

Child 1: But Daddy has the biggest mouth in the world!

(you were asking for that one, Joel)

Eli’s version of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star:

Dinkah, dinkah tah, up a bubba… up a bubba… up a bubba… (repeat endlessly)

After meeting some other adoptive families in the area:

Branwen: I made three new friends!

Me: What were their names?

Branwen: I don’t know.

(I’m always amazed at the number of nameless friends they seem to have!)

During evening Bible reading:

Joel: (talking about one of Paul’s missionary journeys)  The people there didn’t know about Jesus.

Alexis: So they worshiped the devil!

(Life is so black and white at the age of six!)

Me: Ok, what’s your name, Desta?

Desta: DettasNigisAbebeFouse!

Me: Just your first name…

Desta: DETTASNIGISABEBEFOUSE

Me: Ok… just say, “Desta”

Desta: Detta

Me: Desssssta

Desta:  Desta

Me: Yay!

Desta: (smiling) D-D-D-Dettas!

Me: Ok… what letter does it start with?

Desta: *blank look*

Me: What letter says, “D-D-D”?

Desta: *pause* D-D-D… Em?

*sigh* (We’re getting there!)

And something Desta’s said several times: I don’t like you laugh at me!

Oh, child, I understand… but sometimes it’s so hard! 🙂

It’s funny, but especially within the first several months after bringing Desta & Eli home, one of the most common comments I heard was, “Wow!  They already call you mommy!  That’s wonderful!”  It sounded funny to me every time, though I didn’t really think about it that much the first couple of times it was said.   After all it was neat that they called me mommy after not even knowing me that long, right?

Then it hit me why the comment was really so amusing (and many of you reading this have probably already figured this out).  Hello?  The children didn’t speak English before we got them!  Of course they call me mommy!  That’s what we told them my name was!

I guess it just goes to show how we really make a lot of comments without thinking through things completely.  After all, what people were saying would make perfect sense if it had been a domestic adoption, but most (if not all) of the people who said it knew we had adopted internationally.  I don’t think the people who made the comment were stupid or ignorant, but even intelligent people sometimes say the first thing that comes to mind instead of stopping to think about how much sense it actually makes in the situation. 🙂

Oh well.  Honestly, once I thought about it and realized why it sounded so funny to me it started amusing me all the more when people said it.  I never disillusioned them.  I just replied with something a little more general like, “Yeah, it’s great how well they’re bonding!” which is really more what the people are saying anyway.  Maybe I just need to pay attention to people’s meanings more than their words.

http://www.cafepress.com/familyhope

In time for Mother’s Day, too, so look for gifts there!

I wanted to name our store “Help the Whelps!” but Joel thought some people might not be as amused by that as I was. So we settled on “Families of Hope” which is inoffensive, I think. I’m not sure why we had to name it, though, since the URL won’t allow that many characters and you have to make up a shortened form for it… and I don’t see the name anywhere else at first glance. Oh well. I’m probably just overlooking it. I’m awfully tired!

Many, many thanks again to Jeremy Sniatecki who designed all of our products for us! I was a little miffed to find that I couldn’t have more than one of each type of product in my store, so some of the designs couldn’t go on the colors we had originally planned for them… but they still look great! God bless you for your help, Jer!

So, once again, go shop! A portion of each purchase comes to us and will be used to finance our current adoption. Tell friends about Families of Hope, too! The more people who buy our products, the more money we will have raised for our adoption. If you have any suggestions after checking out the site, let me know!

Cowboarding – much like waterboarding, only as you lay blindfolded you have a cow dumped on your head

Did you know that wild onions make good bait for ice fishing? Well, it’s true! At least according to my dream it is. But it’s hard to get the fish to take the hook and not just eat the onion off of it from the side. Smart fish.

Oh, and some crazy person kidnapped one of my kids because he wanted me to get him a translator. I never did figure out which one he abducted, because they all seemed to be there, but I was very upset none the less.

Yes, our nights have been rather interrupted lately by coughing (both me and the kids) and because my back’s still acting up. Anyway, I guess it makes for interesting dreams.

The van thing actually isn’t a dream. Joel and I have been praying for God to lead us to a van for our family as most of you know, and I decided to throw the door wide open by starting to look around. (Maybe God will decide to just land one in our driveway with a bow on it, but since that’s a rare blessing indeed I figured it wouldn’t hurt to see what was out there.) There’s a promising possibility about an hour away that we’re thinking of going to see, but we want to see if a mechanic friend of ours would go with us and look it over. Even if he says it’s in excellent condition, we wouldn’t make a decision that day. Here’s what we talked about doing:

Whenever we see a van listed that might be a possibility, we’ll pray about it for several days before making plans to go see it. If in that time it’s bought by someone else, then it wasn’t the one for us. If it isn’t, then we’ll go see it and pray about it while we’re there, asking God to show us anything that’s wrong with it or any concerns that could come up if we bought it, and asking for his wisdom in decision making. We won’t make a decision there, but will go home and pray for at least a day or two longer, giving us time to settle down from the initial adrenaline that I, at least, inevitably feel when we’re looking at a big purchase. During that time we’ll continue to pray for wisdom and peace with the decision one way or the other. If we decide to purchase and the van we decided on is still available, then we’ll have to have faith (after all of the prayer and seeking wisdom, etc.) that it’s the one God had for us. Y’all could join us by praying for wisdom and discernment for us… and if you wanted to pray for that van with the ribbon to land out front that would be ok, too! 😉

Ok, so much for my dreams… night ones and day ones! Oh, the wild onion dreams came from the fact that there are so many wild onions growing in our yard. I’ve dug some of them up, chopped them up, and cooked them up in hamburgers. Not too bad, really. 🙂 Not sure where the translator dream came from though it probably had to do with adoption somehow…

Now to go see if Joel needs help with the pancakes… though I don’t think the wild onions would be the best addition there…

I got one of those cheap, big plastic bats for the girls to play with along with some of the cheap whiffle balls.  They’ve been having a blast!  The older ones are even learning good ways to throw the ball and hold the bat.  It’s fun to watch. 🙂  They’re learning to throw a frisbee, too… especially Alexis.  She’s actually pretty darn good!  Desta likes to throw it, but she tends to throw it… er… underhand?  Meaning it flies vertically instead of horizontally.  Oh well.  She’s having fun.

There are some beautiful butterflies out there right now, but if you mention them the first thing I’ll think of is this costume for Alexis.  I have a few weeks to finish it, and it’ll be enough if I actually have a chance to work on it. 😛  Makes sense, huh?  Anyway, I got the fabric today, so now I need to make my pattern and start sewing.  I have an image in my head of what I want it to look like, but I know from experience that it probably won’t end up quite like what I’m picturing.  Generally the things I make turn out a little different than what I’d imagined, but they’re still acceptable.  Actually, there have been times that I even decided I liked the end product better than what I had pictured. 🙂

Fun tangent: when Alexis and I were getting the fabric today, a very friendly mother and son duo asked her what we were going to make with it.  When we told them, the boy (mid teen, I’d guess) said, “Ah!  Theatre…” and pointing to the fabric in his hand, “Cinematography!”  Turned out he was working on a project of some kind and was buying blue fabric to make a blue screen (you know… they use them to project pictures onto for the camera that the person can’t actually see, like weather maps for forecasts and such).  That in itself was interesting, but he turned out to be even more… er… interesting than that.  He was one of those people who you could see having his little group in college that completely got each others’ senses of humor and loved every minute together, but who everyone else avoided.  He and his mother proceeded to tell us about this project where he’d be talking to himself in Spanish, then about a previous film he made about their cat blowing up (using special effects and whatnot), and a version of Monopoly he had created for a middle school project.  He called it “Monopolitis” and all of the squares and game pieces had to do with various diseases and medical issues.  (Apparently one of the pieces was a person with frostbite… the head had spiky hair with ice-cycles hanging off and a blue nose as well as a rather cold expression to the face.)  And instead of “Go to Jail” it was “Die” or some such thing.  Amusing in a morbid way.

I’m glad there are all kinds of people in the world.  Without them life just wouldn’t be as interesting.