Nate the Great & Samantha

I was awakened this morning around 6 by the voice of wriggling and excited children. The kids are allowed to wear a costume to school as long as it is a book character. So we put the Transformer on hold for Vin, and I spent hours last night constructing this silly two-brimmed hat ala' Sherlock Holmes. I also put the finishing touches on Samantha. Charleigh was dissolved in tears since she thought it was time to wear her Clifford costume....later honey, later.

Mommy needs a nap.

Go To Your Crafty Place

For those of you who wondered what I would do if I didn't work on eBay, this is the answer...I would throw myself into crafty crafts. This weekend, we constructed Vin's Transformer's costume, I made this dress for Mattie to be the American Girl, Samantha, and while I waited for the paint to dry on Vin's costume, I finished the grouting on my mosaic table which I began so long ago. Since I had some grout left, I went ahead and started the other mosaic project that had been brewing in my mind, but I'll have to save up for another tub of grout to finish it (and sell it on ebay, hopefully!) While I waited for the grout to dry, I felted (ie, washed in hot water and dried) a stack of wool sweaters I have been stock-piling to make a few more sweater quilts, so nice for this time of year. I owe my sister one, as well as one for US, since I gave the ones I made last year away for Christmas. I still have one more costume to procure for Vin's reading character costume for school...which I am already plotting, using a pair of panty hose and some hats...you'll see....  
 

 
 
 

3 Little Pumpkins

 
 
 
 

Browns Fans All the Way

 
Yesterday was Team Spirit Day at the kid's school, where they could wear their favorite team's colors. Robb was more than happy to join in.

Who do you root for?

Halloween Sneak Peek

We are hard at work today on Halloween costumes. Here's a sneak peak of Charleigh's choice...which she thought up all by herself...(bless her heart, that is the hardest part!)

.90 cents for used red sleeper pajamas
3.00 ribbon
.99 cents red and black felt
1.47 red gloves
.97 red stocking cap

=
(and I quote) one cute "Clifford Big BIG Dog"

With "Christians" like this, who needs "Sinners?"

I love these shoes so much....

I actually considered squishing my size 8.5's into their teeny little 7-ness.

But they wouldn't fit. I tried. Twice.

Some Pastors Work for Peanuts

 
 
 
 

but some work for Apples.

Some wonderful crazy person at Vintage decided to surprise Robb with an iPod. What a shot in the arm! What a wondeful bunch of people! I can't wait to see how we'll get to pay this forward.

Bless your hearts, Vintage.

I hesitate to reccommend TV shows

...because of the obviously different standards of various people-groups. But this show makes me laugh out loud more than once in every episode. I just watched it online this morning since our new DVR is possessed by SATAN, and I laughed some more. If you miss the sitcom, you will enjoy The Big Bang Theory.

I'm not good at Happiness

I'm not good at happiness. I think that is why I am always studying it...reading quotes about it...trying to gain some new perspective on it. Sometimes during arguments, Robb has KO'd me with the big, "You're never happy." He's pretty much right, really. I am not a categorically happy person.

I've written before about how I am convinced that God is an optimist. Why wouldn't he be? I am not an optimist. I would like to be. And sometimes, I have great moments of faith-induced optimism, but as a general rule, I tend to fall on the negative side. I think I'm better than I used to be...and the reason I know this is because my son is just like me...and he is TRULY never happy.

I'm just so fiercely practical that I sometimes have trouble seeing the point of happiness. I mean, seriously, it can't last. The minute you let your guard down, something will jar you back to reality...poopy pants, chastising phone-calls, dvr malfunctions,annoying ebay customers, upset church members, accidents, loss, crime, world hunger, poverty...I don't know how to live in that tension most of the time. I'm afraid to feel happiness because I cannot own it.

As you might guess, this Nietzsche-like tendency can lead to some blue days. Lately I've been swimming in this question....If it's true that managing our money is a godly thing to do, and we blew that budget by spending a day at the craft fair, then doesn't that mean that enjoying ourselves as a family on Saturday was a sin? (Hey, I warned you up front in my profile..I think about things WAY too much.) Now before you throw your hands up in the air in disbelief, understand that this is the exact question I've been swimming in for over a month, with different contexts: wine, the wedding, etc. Basically it is a question of how do you measure the value of happiness?

They say that all parents urge their children to be one of three things: Be good, Be successful, or be happy. Be good, I've got. Be successful, I get. Be happy? I have absolutely no construct for that. You should be good because that affects other people. You should be successful because that is being a good steward of what God has given you. But why should you be happy? Doesn't that only benefit you?

So I sense that my life is severely out of balance. I can acknowledge that happiness is a part of life that God may have intended humans to have. But I need some structure for that. I can't just randomly add "happy stuff" to my day and expect it to stick. I need to create a file for happiness so I know where to put things in my life.

And I'd like to be happy. I'd like to figure out how to retain a bouyant perspective despite set-backs and struggles. I'd like to know how to feel satisfied even when the plan gets slaughtered. I'd like to know how to be cheerful, even when we can never seem to get ahead. I realize now, looking back, that happiness for me as a kid was a lack of constraint...The whole backyard and the woods to play in, endless summer days that started with dewey mornings sneaking peas from the garden and ended with hide and go seek in the dark... My life now is a series of fences...from a postage stamp yard to days packed full with interruptions. The answer is not to get a bigger yard and banish all interruptions...the answer has to be formed in me, being enough of a grown up to have fun.

And understand that I mean happiness and not its gold-standard, JOY. I don't need a sermon on the difference because I've heard that one. I'm talking cheap, tin-foil happiness. Where does that belong in the life of someone who is theoretically grace-based, but functionally is really a cross between an Amish and a Catholic?

ok, talk amongst yourselves. Just keep the "She is so screwed up" comments to a minimum.

When the Going gets Tough,

The tough move the furniture around.
 
 
 
 

This is how i feel right now...

"I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that."Lloyd Dobler

Can't help living for the weekend

What a great weekend! Robb and I agreed by about 2 p.m. on Friday, that some fun was in order for this family. So I put supper in the crockpot and took the kids to the park in the late afternoon, where Robb met us after work. The kids played long and hard and we returned home hungry. We gobbled down sloppy joes and finished the last four phases of the card game we began earlier in the week. (Note: Phase Ten is a really long game for kids just learning how to play cards, but it's fun when you drag it out over several nights like a long story). By then it was "late" and the kids were ready to be tucked in...after we brushed most of the sand off of them from the park.

Then we snuggled down to watch a movie we had taped on the DVR. I might have missed a little in the middle after falling into that deep and wondrous sleep you only get on the couch.

We slept in the next morning til nearly nine, when we were awakened by the sound of the microwave in use, which is a questionable activity for our children still. When we finally dragged our sorry butts out of bed, we discovered that Mattie had made one of her favorite breakfasts: Johnny Cake (or cornbread for those of you with little imagination). We like it with butter and syrup for breakfast and at 29 cents a box, you can't beat the price!

Mattie is still pretty new to the cooking scene, and "couldn't find" the directions on the box, so she relied on her memory for making the cornbread...which resulted in forgetting the egg. Heretofore, it "didn't look right" when she took it out of the oven, so she popped the two METAL pans in the microwave for a while, which actually turned out pretty good. And the microwave still works, amazingly enough.

 
 
 

 

It was a PERFECT day here, sunny with a cool start that worked it's way up to 80 degrees. We headed off to the War Eagle Mill Craft fair, which was phenomenal. I had no idea it would be so large, but I estimated 10 acres of parking alone. This will definitely become a tradition for us. The fair has been a tradition since 1954 and had a number of really great exhibits. We got a great parking spot and enjoyed it much more than we expected.

The fair takes place on both sides of this narrow one one way bridge, and I got a kick of watching people cross like ants, single file, to allow cars to keep passing.

Then it was time to wander home, stopping at various yard sales, including a-buck-a-bag church sale...my favorite!

In the evening, Daisy came to babysit the kids, while Robb and I attended a reception and dinner for our friend, Amber, who got a photo exhibit in one of the great coffee houses here, Common Grounds. My favorite was an image she captured at a Peace Rally in the spring. I was so proud of her and may I just say how cool it is to have such artistic friends? Musician, photographer, bead-work genius...she is so freakin' cool.

And then, BAM, before we knew it, it was time for church on Sunday...I love Vintage so much...I got into a sour mood during set up, but my friends are so good to me, I couldn't help cheering up. I was in the nursery this week, but I heard the sermon was great. Can't wait to see the video. And during tear down, a great group volunteered to get Daisy moved into her new apartment. I wish I brought my camera, because the queu of pick ups, SUVs and cars toting her stuff (much of which used to be our stuff, which is very like Karma...you can't escape it) was amusing. In about an hour and half, it was out of the storage unit, into the second floor. I stayed for another couple of hours, getting it looking cute and homey. She is now nicely ensconced with her two kitties. Now we just have to get her driving, and she'll be set.

Arrived home where the kids had just settled in for peanut butter toast and hot chocolate and we all snuggled in to watch AFV.

Yeah, it's hard not to live for weekends like this.

Charleigh's Lifebook

So thanks to my dear friend Elizabeth, who regularly "borrows" Charleigh to help cheer up her son, who's big sister has gone to school, I did indeed accomplish something yesterday. In fact, this is a project that has been hanging over my head for over three years!

Yesterday, I was finally able to put Charleigh's lifebook together. What is a lifebook you ask? I learned about lifebooks at a seminar Donna dragged me to...thank goodness. It is a book of information that tells your adopted child about their life BEFORE they came to your family. Most typical baby-books are not very adoption friendly and in fact, can highlight a lot of painful stuff. A lifebook, on the other hand, is a combination of documentation of the things you may forget but your child will want to know. I wrote the body of the book when the details were still pretty fresh in my mind, but not so fresh that I was still angry about them. (When you foster to adopt, there are things that tick you off). Putting it all together can be daunting because you want to be open and honest, but not overwhelm the kid with the information. This lifebook will be suitable for Charleigh for her childhood. When she is nearly an adult, I will likely put together a more detailed, adult-type book with all the info I have collected.

While I did utilize many scrapbook type techniques, this is not the kind of album you leave on your coffee table and let anyone read. It belongs to your child and they have the rights to it, to show it off, or keep it to themselves.

It is also the tool you utilize to have conversations right from the beginning. It could never be a secret that Charleigh is adopted (although you should see the looks I get sometimes when I am out alone with her...prejudice is alive and well in NWA). Her lifebook is a way to start those conversations and have them regularly and naturally as her questions develop.

So obviously, I can't really show off my work to everyone, but I'm pretty thrilled with it, so that's why I'm posting about it instead. I went through it with her last night for the first time, and she wanted to sleep with it...I'd call that successful!

I know, Donna, you are going to say that I need to photo-copy the pages...I'm on it!

"Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them."

Bill Vaughan

Dense Quiet

kids are at school
hubby at work
and
Charleigh at a playdate

dense quiet

time for a project...Charleigh's baby scrapbook, shampoo the carpet or grout my mosaic table? maybe all of them :)

Clockwise or Counter clockwise?

I saw this on Karen's blog and haven't been able to stop staring at it; at first, all I saw was clockwise and then mysteriously, she switched. Clockwise reveals right-brain thinking (emotive, symbols, creativity) and counter-clockwise reveals left brain thinking (logic, reason, math). Get the whole story here.

Beauty

A few weeks ago a friend posted this question on his blog: "What is beauty?" I didn't post at the time because babies have killed the brain cells that allow me to think quickly (For example.... I lost track of time in the grocery store yesterday trying to locate the perogies and figure out which brand of granola bars were cheaper and ended up being late to pick up the kids from school...and completely forgot to get toothpaste and packing tape.)


But I think I finally came up with a definition for beauty. Beauty is when you wouldn't, even if you could, change a thing. And yes, that means I don't find myself beautiful most of the time but I find my kids beautiful, always.

However, my couch... I don't find my couch beautiful. Which is why I entered the Pioneer Woman's photo naming contest again. Hoping to buy this: But then again, let's be honest...when have I EVER purchased a new piece of furniture? Maybe in a couple of years, I can find it at the Salvation Army.

So, back to beauty....today, I heard about the new "Campaign for Real Beauty" commercial by Dove. Yeah, don't change a thing. Beautiful.

Blue

A little blue today...for no real reason. I think I'm just tired. So much has been going on lately; I noticed that my blog posts are more like a quick pictorial journal than the "deep thoughts" I used to post. Still, there's an external-ness to my life right now that I really enjoy. I've never had a pack of girlfriends to keep up with, not to mention the Vintage community. And the children seem to have so much going on too. I know it will only speed up from here as we contemplate music and art and karate for them since I can now take them places. I miss the insulated quiet of 3 small kids, but I'm glad that our lives are now so entwined with other people.

I fell asleep watching the Discovery Health Channel's airing of the Dugger family who have 17 children and live just a few miles away from me. Of course, everyone here knows them or knows of them and some of my friends have even babysat for them. They seem like nice people and they seem happy. I had weird dreams though, after I feel asleep watching.

It's a rainy day and I am off to grocery shop and start looking for a winter coat for miss Mattie. Vin is about an inch away from outgrowing every single pair of pants he owns, so I'll be hitting "Once upon a child" with high hopes. And of course, I will have to eat crow and go to the library to pay my fine for the ONE movie that always seems to escape being returned with the others.

I am SO thankful that I didn't have to get ready to go with Robb this morning and maneuver the whole day around picking him up from work. How amazing is that???

Late Summer Garden

 

 

 

 

With the post-pool patch of grass-less yard, I needed SOMETHING to make the yard look a little less depressing. Most of the flowers are spent, but the green stuff just keeps going, including a watermelon vine that won't produce a single melon, but is taking over a whole corner of the yard, and tomato plants that are a huge jungle, but are still producing some tasty tomatoes. I no longer feel blue when I look out the window...now if I could just get around to washing the windows...

EEK!

 

 

While doing some yard work yesterday, I found this flower pot in a remote part of the yard, which was weird. So I flipped it over to pick it up and promptly dropped it again when caught sight of the Black Widow inside. You can see she had a pretty nice set up with her giant freeky egg sacks. I worked up the courage to photograph her, and even thought she might be dead. It was only when I poked at her with some sticks that she uncurled her legs, revealing her true size of about a fifty cent piece. I did not kill her at the time, because as I told my friend, "If I start killing my own bugs, what DO I have a husband for?"

By the time Robb came home, however, she had taken the largest egg sack and headed for parts unknown. Which of course, caused me to lie awake for about an hour thinking completely incoherent thoughts of terror for my babies who could die of that spider's bite. It was not until I devised a "rational" guess of where she had gone (which did not include the front yard where every kid in the neighborhood runs barefoot) that I could relax and go back to sleep.

From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggetty beasties and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord deliver us.

The Infamous Syphilis Debacle

Oh you greedy blog readers...a cross country road trip, a wedding, a NEW CAR, and a bridesmaid-gone-roller-derby was not enough for you in one week...Well, all right...it is Friday and you need something to help you through your day...

When I was a poor college student (as opposed to a poor Pastor's wife) during my very first month of school, I heard about a great little money-making venture . All you had to do was find a dingy building in Scranton, be ushered into a moderately creepy room of what looked like dentist chairs, sign a waiver that you wouldn't sue in the event of a problem, and get hooked up to a machine that sucked out your blood, spun it madly to remove the red blood cells which were then squirted back into you, leaving behind a bag of pinkish liquid which you were then paid 20 dollars for. Selling your plasma is money in the bank, Gang!

So me, being the motivated little seller that I am, made a couple of trips with various groups of people I barely knew to earn the money I needed to make the Dominoes Delivery Man arrive at my dorm with the regularity I craved.

On my last trip to the Plasma Market, however, I signed in and waited for my moderately creepy dentist chair. And then my name was called. A nurse (or someone similarly disguised as one) asked me to step into "this little room." Confused, I stepped inside with the nurse.

She then proceeded to explain that in their routine battery of tests, my plasma had tripped the test for syphilis.

I barely knew what syphilis was, but I was dead-on about how you got it. Getting a disease you barely knew about ranked pretty high on my list of reasons I had never done THAT. In that awkward moment, I felt 10 percent amused, 35 percent misunderstood, and 55 percent down-right-bummed that I wasn't going to get paid.

In the next moment, the nurse was kind enough to explain that I would need to see a doctor and get a note before I could give plasma again. Since that was long before I learned the principle that you have to spend money (ie....see a doctor) to make money, I just walked away in disgust. And also, I had the distinct impression it was incurable anyway. Why else would all those Romantic Poets have died from it? Anyway, I knew I didn't have IT and wasn't too worried about what was wrong with me since I felt fine.

The next week, two things happened: my wisdom tooth erupted into a full-blown, nasty infection and, my Grandma sent me a card with 20 dollars and the note, "Please don't sell your plasma anymore."

OK, Gram, I won't.

Maret's Bouquet...Look Out!