Vay-Kay-Sean!

Our vacation is coming up. 15 days. We haven't taken a vacation since September of 2007. This will be our FIRST family vacation with KIDS. Chris picked out Colorado.

dun dun dunnnnn

A 12 hour road trip out to the middle of nowhere (but there are mountains, Rylee.) with 3 small children and a dog. There are BEARS in Colorado!

Chris - "We can go hiking!"

Me - "There are bears in the woods!"

Chris - "That's why you tie bells to your gear."

Me - "Oh good. So like ::RING RING:: Dinner walking! Come and geeeeeet it!"

I would have picked somewhere with a beach. Yes. I'm serious. A person with a phobia of fish can still enjoy the beach. Which I'm pretty sure by definition is the LAND that touches the water. You don't have to get IN the water and a shark has never chewed someone's leg off on land. Just saying.

Palm trees, warm sand, margaritas... yes ma'am! I am so picking the next place we go.

This is why night owls don't hatch early birds.

How do people just switch off and sleep? I don't understand how you can will yourself to unconsciousness. It must be relatively easy. We expect our babies to master this skill and here I am practically elderly in my twenties and can't figure it out. For my eyes to close, one of two things has to happen. 1- the sun has to rise or 2- I have to iterally collapse from exhaustion. That either makes me a vampire (there was that terribly unfortunate incident with the glitter. Glitter is like the herpes of craft supplies. It's. Forever.) or I'm battery operated. Either way.

Maybe this is okay. My kids are becoming terribly inventive. There were only so many ways to wake the practically dead. Now my youngest shouts out, "Hi! Hugs!" from her crib and what zombie mother ISN'T going to come running lest she miss out on one of the only freely given hugs of the day. Priorities, you know. I wonder how this will translate on her climb up the corporate ladder. "Hugs? Hug anyone?" Don't mind if I do.

I'm out of the "baby" stage. It's becoming abundantly clear since, you know, BABIES don't speak in sentences. It's really my own laziness to blame for our youngest still sleeping in a crib. I mean who wants to take the whole thing apart and put a toddler bed together?! All my kids sleep through the night (95% of the time anyway) and they even entertain themselves for a reasonable amount of time when they wake up at the stinkin crack o' dawn. I should be sleeping! That's my trophy for changing diapers for 5 and a half straight years! For getting up and feeding a baby every 2 hours for the entirety of my early twenties. But am I snoozing? No. Am I rested (like every other mother of 3 kids 5 and under clearly is... ::chuckle::) No. And it doesn't look to be solving itself any time soon.

A small update

Yesterday was my 4th anniversary. I've been married for 4 years. Is that sounding crazy to anyone else?!

We bought this house back in July of 2009. Since then we've put in completely new central heat and air with all new duct work. We've replaced the hot water heater. We put on a new roof. We've majorly remodeled a bathroom. We've replaced all our windows. We've had insulation blown up in our attic. We've ripped out landscaping and cut down trees. We've replaced broken pipes. We've fixed the fence and the gate. ::deep breath:: We've replaced our front and back doors and we're in the process of replacing our garage doors.

Wow.

How awesome is that?! This house is on it's way to being brand new. :) We are so blessed.

Disgusting things

I've JUST put the kids down to nap and I'm supposed to be furiously busy working on my crazy long list of things to do, but I had to take this time to jot down what this day has had to offer so far.

This morning, I woke up... and kept dreaming. This doesn't happen very often. When it does, it's very confusing. When you finally come out of it, it takes a while to realize what your actual reality is. Turns out I'm NOT an Olympian runner. Who knew? I wondered why running for miles and miles was so easy.

Then after the usual morning shuffle of showers, "good morning"s and "Okay, I love you, bye-bye"s - I was tasked with getting the kids some breakfast. Got them seated at the table and went to the cabinet for some bowls at which time I discovered MAGGOTS everywhere. Y'all, maggots aren't a regular occurrence around here. As a matter of fact, the last time I had seen one was YEARS ago at our second apartment back before we ever even moved to the city. OH. MY. GRIEF. I still get nauseous thinking about it. The trash didn't get to the curb on trash day last week and here we are.

So after completely dousing my entire kitchen with bleach (and splashing myself in the face with some burning hot bleach water with maggots floating in it) I got the kids some cereal. And vowed never to eat again. Is it trash day yet?!

Noah and I are reading The Wind in the Willows. I'm excited that my 4-year-old son is interested in classic literature and also that he asks me several times a day if I will "take a break" and read to him. :) After a chapter of our book, Isla had decided it was time to get down from the high chair. I pick her up, put her on my hip and *squish.* Seriously?! Her first blowout diaper since she was 2 weeks old. (I wish her teeth would hurry up and come in! AGH!) I get her undressed and wiped down enough to get into the bath. She's standing on the side of the tub watching me adjust the water temperature aaaand she pees. All over the floor and me, since I'm standing right next to her. This is actually a record. I don't think I'd been pooped on AND peed on in succession like that... by this particular kid.

Get her in the bath and all cleaned up. While she's in the bath, Noah starts yelling for me. He's in the other bathroom and needs my help. The poor kid has chronic bathroom issues. After I got Isla out of the tub, I sat on the other bathroom floor and talked him down from the proverbial ledge and gave him some medicine. As I'm cleaning THIS up, Chris comes home for lunch... early... and provides me with a list of things he needs me to do. He's right. It's Friday. I don't want to need to get this stuff done.

I tell the kids to get in bed and Selah Jade tells me her bed is wet. It looks like a piece of cereal or something. I pick it up and it squishes in my hand. See, vomit just doesn't hold together when you try to pick it up.

And to think I pushed having my wisdom teeth extracted to next Friday. That sounds wonderful right about now.

not really a blog post

K, so I have this thing...

No, I'm not 14, but it needed some kind of introduction. (This is me stalling................)  (.............)

Every time I eat, I get sick. Not sure why or to what end, but any time I put something in my mouth, shortly after, my stomach is killing me. All this to say... I'm coming up with nothing here.

Oh and it never fails. I'm 3 sentences in and the baby monitor lights start going crazy. I turn the sound up and hear "ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba" and my suspisions are confirmed. There's a very alert baby in there.

I should clean something. Yep. Oh, and grocery shop. I'll get started right after I decide which one I want to do less. :)

WHERE IS MY PHONE?!

Taking a stab at it

I think I'm going to go in to screenplay writing. My first movie is going to be a horror film about a family with three kids ages 4 and under living out a day without baby wipes. I know. Scary stuff.

My second film will be a mothers journey to try and convince her baby to tell her where she hid her grocery money. We'll laugh, we'll cry... ultimately, we may end up killing ourselves. That's good cinema.

A Lifesong Update!

Lives Are Being Transformed!

“I remember the first time I saw Vanya because there was something different about him. Yes, he was the only black kid in the orphanage, but more than that, there was something about his eyes that intrigued me.

“Vanya is a smart kid.” Denis, our director, told us. “He was abandoned as a newborn. His parents were students at the university and he is very smart.”

I smiled at him and he smiled back. His outgoing personality was evident as he tried his hand at English. I met a lot of kids at that summer camp in 2004, but Vanya is the one I remember."

-Marla Ringger, Orphan Advocate

Vanya, then 13, was just learning the power of Christ’s love in his life. Recently Lifesong for Orphans had started a program at his home in Sachnovsheena Orphanage. And though Vanya resisted the Gospel at first, through the examples of volunteers and staff members, Biblical mentorship, and educational support he began to see Christ’s love in action, and knew this was something he wanted for himself.

Now at 19, Vanya continues to rise above standards and expectations. He lives in one of Lifesong’s Transition Homes in Kharkov, a home designed to support those aging out of the orphanage system, studies English at the local college, translates for Americans who come to visit, and mentors younger boys at the orphanage in the same way the Lifesong staff once mentored him!

We praise God for success stories like Vanya’s and are thankful for our partners who continue to support those like him both financially and in prayer!

 

Vanya from Lifesong for Orphans on Vimeo.