Humbled by my beautiful life

Walking our babies - September 2005

Still waiting for a baby.  Still waiting for the phone to ring.  Still answering "I don't know" when my children ask when "their baby" is coming.  Still wondering why the wait has been the length of two pregnancies.  Still worrying about it to my husband. Still wondering why in the midst of the wait, our nursery and everything in it burned.

However, I wouldn't trade it.  Because I'm...

Still grateful for the three "babies" I have.  Still thankful that the phone rang three times to announce their arrivals.  Still believe that our 4th child is out there growing somewhere and finding its way to us.   Still loving my husband and his devotion.  Still blessed that I have an able body and was able to help my three children escape our burning house.

Need inspiration today?  Here it is!

Beautiful Heartbreak by Hilary Weeks

I heart kindergarten

I love being in kindergarten again.  Of course I'm not IN kindergarten, but close enough.  I love having a child that changed his Halloween costume every few days for a month (gnome, Bobba Fett, cheeseburger, lego guy, vet) and has finally settled on a policeman with a cheesy mustache.  I love that he comes home from school with papers that look like this:

and this:

And I get to go on field trips, even if it is to the Fire House.  Nothing against the firemen, but well, you know.  It was strange to have first-hand knowledge of all that they talked about.

This is how our week looks - busy!

Yikes!  What does your week look like?

Water

Water.  I sit here like an American snob drinking my water out of my new Tervis tumbler.  Water tastes delicious out of my Tervis.  The purpose of the Tervis was to help me drink more water and less sugary drinks, like my beloved Pepsi, and its working.

I follow a lovely blog, written by a beautiful woman appropriately named Love.  She lives her faith and leaps to follow God's path for her and her family.  She just returned from Uganda with her two gorgeous boys, which brings the number of children for her and her husband to seven.  What a lucky mommy she is!

When Love was in Uganda, she visited a village that does not have clean water, sadly not uncommon in Africa.  If 250 people will donate $32, the mothers in this village can have a well built that will give their children clean water to drink, to bathe in and to cook with.  Imagine if tomorrow morning, when you woke up, you and your children walked to a dirty pond to drink and bathe.

Please read Love's post and consider donating here.  She went there, she saw it, she acted on it, all we have to do is click.

Scenes from my house

I have spent a lot of time at home this week.  Reason one:

Owen's sprained ankle.  Biking on wet leaves is not a great idea.  However, if you are a science guy and not a sports guy, it is sort of fun to say you have a sports injury.  Also, if you can't walk on it at all, you get to stay home from school.  But mom can still pull up to the frozen yogurt place and run in and get you a little treat.  I'm just saying - not really a bad deal for him.

Reason two:

the needlepoint deadline.  I think this might qualify me for the crazy club.  I really do think I have one foot on the train to Looneyville.  My local needlepoint store has a deadline of Saturday to turn in completed stocking canvas to be finished by Christmas.  Okay, that's all fine.  The crazy part is that I am making this for baby #4.   In the adoption process, we do not even now if this baby will be here by Christmas.  But the thought of having a baby at Christmas, and no 6th stocking hanging on the mantel- oh, the horror of it.  Quite honestly, I have loved working on it so the process is a huge part of it and its given me something to do during the waiting.  But it is embarrassing to be making a stocking for no one.

Let's refocus this post away from my craziness and back to this cute face.

In other news, Harold took a bath in the sink after this trip to the germy ER.  The excitement never ends here this week.  Does he look relaxed?  Or am I just crazy?   (I need to get out of the house)

Spoooky! Not really.

Surely you remember the fire.  Well, the fire swallowed up all of our Halloween decorations.  A few banners were stored with flags in the basement, but the rest - toast.  Really, it all looked like toast - the burnt kind that you toss in the garbage not the yummy kind you eat with your tea.  Anyway, I've been combing the stores looking for some fun Halloween decor.  I found this owl, which was a must have:

from Pottery Barn Kids, of course

It's even cuter in person.  I liked that it looked a bit vintage, like maybe we had owned it since the kids were babies.  Here is what I don't want.  I don't want to be the woman at Hobby Lobby who fills her entire cart to overflowing with silk harvest sprays and pumpkins carved with sayings like "Welcome to my Autumn Harvest."  I'm looking for Halloween decor with some personality.

I'm also noticing lots of creepy decorations out in the stores.  I'm not interested in fake blood, body parts or the living dead.  Not sure my children would enjoy a bony skeleton with some "flesh" still attached wearing a black bridal veil.  Who makes this stuff?

The kids were trying to remember all of their previous Halloween costumes, so in looking at the old pictures, I came up with some inexpensive, yet personal Halloween decorations: framed pictures of previous Halloweens.

All it takes is a handful of frames (some from my stash, some from the 50% off sale at Michaels), a glue gun, ribbon, a letter C button ($1 section at Michaels, had to color the C in with a black sharpie), a faux flower and a trip to Sams Club to print out the pics.

The kids love it because its all about them and I love it because it looks like a collection that has built over the years.  Can't wait to add this year's picture and pack it away in our new and improved attic.

Not feeling up to it?  Here is by far the cheapest Halloween decoration tip I can offer-

baby pumpkins + sharpie marker + kitchen windowsill = not too spooky.

Dream House revisited

Didn't you just love the Fisher Price house?  The blue "siding", faux brick kitchen floor and the DING! door bell were all features of my first dream house.  This is how the real estate ad would read:

"2 story colonial.  2 bedroom, no bath.  No staircase, must hop to second floor.  New yellow roof with dormer open-air windows.  2 fireplaces (includes brick oven in kitchen), single car garage with cobblestone driveway and door to back yard.  Kitchen has wooden cabinets and double oven.   Includes master bedroom dutch colonial "furniture" and nursery "bookcase".  Handle on top for easy relocation."

My home owning  dreams were realized when I owned this house.  I played and played, moving around furniture, squeezing children into the one extra bedroom, driving the one car into the garage.  I expanded my properties to include the school, the town, the camper and longed for the elusive Sesame Street playset.

I treated myself to the Hallmark ornament version of the Play Family House last week.  I love that Hallmark gives a nod to vintage Fisher Price every year.  While it was sitting on my kitchen counter, I noticed it matched my just completed kitchen curtains.  Brainstorm!  A bit of eBay bidding and a week later, I placed my childhood dream house in my grown up dream house.  Its been played with, inhabited by Star Wars figures, surrounded by Brio train track and admired by neighbors who remembered their own first dream house.  Its a sweet reminder of how I began, how far I have come and how most dreams are rooted in simplicity.