Thankful!

I may have to declare 2013 as my very favorite Thanksgiving ever. 

 

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.  Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.  Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.  And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Colossions 3: 12-17

and since we've no place to go, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

Are you ready for some football?

nine.

Date Night!

 

Picture styled by Superman

Friday

People!  I've been married nine years!  Approaching a decade, and it's a little hard to believe/I can't hardly remember not being married.  I'm walking through life with the best possible man and I hope we get 50 more years together. 

Some good news, we even have anniversary plans!  We are going to see Les Mis tonight which I am excited for all by itself, but then one of Jon's geocaching buddies is in the chorus/choir/extra guys singing (I clearly don't know what this is called) and I'm looking forward to seeing him preform.  He is off to Florida soon, as he got a job as some prince down at Disney.  Ha!  Thinking about that geocaching Prince just makes me laugh. 

I'm sitting in front of my roaring fire playing cars with my son.  Old man winter has hit, with highs in the 20's and 30's all weekend.  But this is Texas after all, so I'm sure we will be back at the park in the next few days or weeks. 

Things that make me happy:  earlier this week the boys and I put Christmas lights on our house and it was 70.  Glad we got that done before this cold snap came. 
Things that make me bummed:  I bought a bunch of new outdoor Christmas lights last year on clearance at the end of the season and totally forgot about them because they were in the bottom of the storage container.  Please leave your comments and tell me to be rational, and not take down the lights on the house in 20 degree weather, simply to put up new ones. 

Okay, I'm off to make peanut brittle and try to oblige Bear's request of "let's do sumfin fun!"     

Veterans Day

Superman's first concert!  Classics such as "God plus America" were sung. You know the one, it goes "stand beside her and die her". ;)

Pictures!

Our motto around these parts:  Better late than never! 

Bear's best imitation of Momo. 

 

 A caramel corn eatin' fool. 

 

Superman's ghost! 

The before picture of Superman's new bookshelf.

I love, love the finished project!

Oh, Shoots.

I have much to report on my life in the past week. 

Like the fact that I finally learned what yolo meant while watching 20/20 with my parents.  What can I say?  #yolo

And that one of Bear's current favorite books is an astonishingly boring swimming lessons book distributed by the Red Cross, featuring a duck named Raffy and one of her friends named Plato Platypus.  Or Poopa Poopas according to Bear, which he has taken to calling me on occasion.

In fact, Bear has kind of been on a roll lately.  A few nights ago Jon and I heard yelling coming from the bathroom.  Bear appeared in the living room to complain it was all Soap's fault.  "Soap's not listening to me.  I'm mad at him."  The audacity of Dial!  How dare it not move closer when a three-year old can't reach it!?!  We were really in stitches when Bear went in later to finish washing his hands and we could hear him say, "Sowwy soap". 

We've also been on a board game kick around these parts.  I taught the boys how to play Uno, and was totally surprised that they totally got it and ate it up.  In fact, yesterday after quiet time I went in to Superman's room to find that he had already dealt out the cards and was waiting for Bear and I to play.  Can I just mention that out of five cards he had dealt himself 3 wilds?  It seems like something I would have done at 5.  Or 13.  When it's Bear's turn, I help him see the options that he can lay down and say something like, "Okay, you can play any green cards or a card with a three.  Oh you want that one?  Okay, play it!"  And then he holds that card to his belly and strums it like a guitar saying, "Don, don, don, don, don".  You know, he's playing it.  :)

Our other big request is Chutes and Ladders.  On that one we often lose interest half way through and just have our game pieces climb up whatever ladder fancies us and slide down all the really big chutes.  If you are not familiar with the game, it also has little pictures on it showing good and bad consequences.  If you help mow the grass, you get to climb up the big ladder and go to the circus for instance.  Or if you eat all the cookies you go down a chute and feel sick with a stomachache.  The other night we were eating dinner and Superman asked why there was mustard on the table.  Jon replied that Bear put it on the table because he knows that Ababa likes mustard on his sandwiches.  Superman to Bear:  "Oh wow!  You get to go on a ladder for that!" 

Milton Bradley's got nothing on us. 
 

Well folks, it looks like I’m going on a mini blog-cation.  But not for lack of fodder!  I wish that I knew more about writing or my writing style lent itself to capturing humorous stories with my kids, but I find that near impossible.  Just last week I laughed for days thinking about Bear sobbing when salmon was served for dinner, but finally eating it anyway to Superman’s delight, “that makes my heart so happy!”  I cannot even pinpoint why this was hilarious and made me chuckle all week, so maybe that’s why I find it so hard to capture in text?   

My evenings (ok, entire days) feel full right now and it seems something has got to give.  Here’s a brief rundown of the goings on around here before I sign off for a few days/week/weeks.  (And I have a feeling the run-down of goings on won’t turn out to be brief at all.) 

Here’s some background for the first happening: In the last five years, a little quilt and fabric store in Jon’s home town has bloomed.  I’m not even kidding you when I say that they are drawing an international crowd.  In fact, they have even bought additional buildings along Main Street and set up a little sewing retreat center.  The idea I suppose, is that you can pay to stay and sew to your heart’s content with all the whimsical fabric you desire, a mere block away.  I finally went there for the first time a few weeks ago when we were home.  My sister-in-law came with and she was slightly afraid she had over-hyped the fabric selection to me, but I reassured her there was no over-hype.  In fact, while we were shopping a tour bus pulled up.  Can you believe that?  A tour bus of people coming to a quilt store.  Apparently that is not at all unusual.  My mother-in-law, who works at the post office, told us that a few days before we arrived they shipped out 2,000 packages in one day for the Missouri Star Quilt Company.  So yeah, Joann’s has got nothing on this place.  The choices were darling, the ideas falling out of my head just walking around.  You can see where this is all going right?  Yep.  I’m making a quilt.  My mother-in-law had a wonderful suggestion about buying me an early Christmas present and I was all in.  We got some fabric and I have been doing my best to make something beautiful out of it. 

And now let me tell you what I have learned so far about quilting.  It is truly art.  You can’t just slap those pieces of fabric together willy nilly and get something amazing.  Why didn’t I know this before?  I can’t really tell you.  But I have been arranging and rearranging my fabric again and again trying to get them to sing.  If I am going to make something to sleep under all the days of my life I want to totally love it.  I know I am being uncharacteristically (maybe characteristically?) dramatic about this, but for some reason that knowledge just adds fuel to my fire.  I don’t really have any good pictures to show you so far, but here’s some of the fabric store. 

I took this picture because I love it, and because I think it would be totally awesome to have our family pictures taken in front of the wall of chevron.

 

And here is a sampling of some of the fabric my MIL bought for me. 

 

Ooooookay.  Moving on. 

Can I just take a minute and tell you how much fun Halloween was?  The last few years have been a complete bust with kids who where way over stimulated, and venues that were just completely nuts.  I think the Church wants Halloween desperately and fights hard for Trunk or Treat, but can I just tell you how much I hate it?  It is just waaaaay too much activity in one place for me.  With the bounce houses, popcorn vendors, cars crammed into the parking lot, and gads of people, I just don’t think Trunk or Treat is for us.  It pretty much reminds me of the fair, which I would never, ever go to during peak hours.  But that’s just me, the person who avoids SAM’S and the mall on Saturdays at all costs. 

This year we just pulled the costume chest out from the closet, let everyone pick something and went door to door with some family friends.  And it felt lovely and even slightly old fashioned.  Am I weird for thinking that?  Probably.  It reminded me of my childhood, although Jon did not share in my nostalgia since it was his first trick or treating experience, right alongside of the boys.  Hands down, my favorite part was when Superman the Pirate yelled at each person after receiving candy, “ARRRRR!  THANK YOU!”  And I loved that it was from his own head, no promptings of politeness from Mama or Ababa.  

After Halloween and in an effort to prepare our kids for daylight savings, we had a few later evenings last weekend.  We did manage to escape the seemingly inevitable terror of falling back: chillens asking for pancakes at 4:50 am, but boy have we been tired this week.  And moody.  And grumpy.  Pray for us that we get our wheels back on because we have had a few crash and burn days this week.

I’ve also been on a big reading kick.  Right now I’m reading Khaled Hosseini’s new book and I haven’t been able to put it down.  I would go as far as saying I like it even better than the Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns.  If you are like me, I was kinda afraid of picking up And The Mountains Echoed because of all the terrible heart-ache in his previous works.  While there are still themes of deep grief, it seems so much more.

We are also still waiting to be licensed for foster care.  Honestly, I thought we would have had our first placement by now, so it seems a little crazy that we are not even licensed yet.  Craig, our social worker and “home developer” has been totally great, but lately Jon and I have given him the apt nickname of “two-week Craig” because that’s the response we get every time we contact him to check on our status.  We have been waiting a little over three months for our homestudy to be written and in Craig’s defense a lot of unseen things have come up for Buckner.

And I’m guessing that’s just the name of the game for fostering.  Lots of unseen things come up.  While I feel we have been paperworked to death and obviously have experience with adoption, I feel like we are still totally unsure of what lies ahead.  I think Jon finally pinpointed it for me; we don’t yet know the child(ren) that will come into our home.  When I think over and over again, ‘what’s it going to be like?’ I think I am really asking ‘what will he/she/they be like?’, which of course no one can answer for me. 

Seven months ago we started the process to become a foster family and hopefully soon I can tell you what it is like.  In the meantime, when foster care darts through my brain, I pray for the kids and families we will come into contact with.  Good thing the Spirit intercedes for me because my prayers are a huge cycle that hardly make any sense.  God, please help prepare us for the kids that will come into our home.  Help us love them and prepare us to meet their needs.  Help their families during this difficult time to see you clearly and be reunited with their children.  In fact help their families now, so they do not need to have their children removed from their homes.   See what I mean?  In the end though, while I will continue to pray that families no longer need foster care, I’m guessing we will end up with a placement.  Please join us in prayer about that because as I previously said, we have no idea what that will be like.  Pray that we would rest in God’s grace now as He prepares us and later when parenting. 

Ok, last happenings.  Superman still loves school and is even learning to read and spell.  Cuh-ray-zee.  Bear has learned all his colors, although for a while it crossed my mind that he may be color blind.  After answering, “I don’t know” every time we asked him a color for weeks I upped the ante and brought candy into the mix, declaring he could only eat the candies he knew the color of.  And wouldn’t you know it, that little trickster knew every single color, including black, white, and brown. 

Trick or Treat!