Wonder

We had the funniest conversation sitting around the table for lunch today about armpit hair. Kennedy has been involved in a basketball clinic all week, run by the high school boys team. Apparently she hasn't noticed this masculine feature before because she was pretty grossed out by it. The kids were all saying that if women had it, it would be disgusting, to which I only chuckled. She asked me if I knew about this discovery and I said, "Well how do you know they all have it?" She said, "Mom, they have to reach over us to get the ball sometimes and it's-- eww!!" She recoiled at the very real thought of it.

This brought a real sense of awe to me at the privilege of being able to watch each one of these children discover the world through their own eyes and experiences. Tre read his first sentence today, to me, under my instruction, after many (agonizing) long weeks of building on seemingly crumbled blocks. Somehow, somewhere along the way, it clicked and he got it. He's trying to read everything now, cereal boxes, book titles, anything he can get his hands on. It's amazing.

Ravi Zacharias wrote a book several years ago called Recapture the Wonder. I have never read it, despite it's annual appearance on my TO BUY FOR DALE Christmas list, but the snippet on the back of the book has kept this thought in my mind all these years. It's that God is filled with wonder at our discoveries, and shares that joy with us in our jubilation and triumph when we get to the other side of the mountain. Dale and I have had conversations about this many times, but most recently I recall him saying that maybe everything in the function of our planet isn't set on some schedule, but God is so pleased with the beauty of a sunrise, that He does it over and over and over again, new every morning. It's an awe-inspiring thought, isn't is? Maybe the birth of a child is so spectacular that He can't wait to see the tears roll down our cheeks one more time as the doctor places another life into our care. It's bigger than the fact that the little bundle of love will have to sleep in a laundry basket when it outgrows the car seat because the pack-n-play is broken.

And really, even if we did have a bed, a laundry basket is a lot more mobile, which makes life more convenient for me.

And that's really what this is all about, isn't it?

Gingerbread Houses

I waited two days to snap these pictures for you viewing pleasure and found that I was almost too late. There has been some minor demolishion in the village.

A few years ago we discovered that instead of making complicated frosting to stand our graham crackers up together, we could use almond bark, which dried much faster, melts much easier, and held the seams tighter. You can also use it for snow and ice.

The first gingerbread house we attempted was a kit with real gingerbread and frosting in it. We bought two kits, since the kids were small, and build two houses, which we spend hours trying engineer the impossibility of their construction. Finally Dale took an iron fist and smashed them both to bits and then we had a good laugh and went out for dinner to decompress.

After that I made my own gingerbread, set up the houses the night before and the decorating was a breeze. In my fragile estate, I didn't have the energy or the will power to make the gingerbread, so we built these old faithfuls and had a great time.

Dale and I always have an unspoken competition between us, which he was sure he had won this year, until Kennedy flew through the kitchen and knocked his house, and only his house, onto the floor. It was still intact, but his little reindeer and yard ornaments were a knocked out of place. Poor guy. I saw Leila eating the door off of his house today, which technically is her house so she can eat it. But I wanted to post pictures before they are all nothing but crumbs.

I thought this picture of me and Leila was so cute, I had to post it. She's filthy, but the only time she's clean is in the bathtub.

Dog from Space

Last week we took Max and dropped him off at the vet for his surgery. This is what he came home with!!!
This lovely little number is a 25 inch cone that he wears all the time for two weeks. It's been the longest, most agonizing week of his life. Poor guy can't lick anything but the cone, so that's what he does. He lays down on the couch and licks that cone! Micah insists that we call him Rhino until he gets the cone off because he plows through the house, already convinced that he's a lap dog, squeezing his nearly fifty pounds and 25 inches of plastic through tiny crevices throughout the house, knocking over furniture and small children that might be in the path. He just cracks me up!

Just in case you were wondering...

This is what I look like today. The last time I posted a picture of myself, I laughed and laughed about that post because it was so awful and who posts an awful picture of themself just for kicks? One of the kids had walked in with my camera, snapped the picture of me, still pajama-clad, and I was not quite ready but started to smile when it flashed, which left me with a strange expression on my face. I don't know, I did it for a laugh. And then I got a few comments, live comments, from people who were upset by the post. Not offended, just worried, I guess. My poor family. I think they all know I'm a little nuts, but that really tipped the scales past my normal insanity. So, I promised to post a better one. And for my friends far away that have requested a belly shot, here it is. One of the kids took this one too and I'm not as excited about posting it as I was the other, but it shows my tummy, and that's what we need here. Plus I don't look so pasty and, well, over the edge. It's real. There is life growing in there, and the evidence is undeniable. You know how I know that? Five outfits failed this morning because they weren't quite long enough to cover the top of my elastic waistband. *sniff* ...all those hours around that track down the drain... Might as well make a pan of brownies and celebrate new life!

Hair cuts: Before and After

Giving Thanks

These are the days we will remember.

The novice Thanksgiving feast turned out to be better than I thought it would. Besides scorching the green beans and water-logging the potatoes, I was pleased with the way it all turned out and so were all who feasted on it. I announced that the children would be doing all the clean up since I had already washed all the pots and pans and scrubbed the counters, but Dale went to bat for them and commenced the clean up himself.

We watched the parade from start to finish, had a huge meal, fell asleep on the couch to the Cowboys game, and then headed to the park for a rousing game of kickball. And football. And Basketball. And swings. Then we loaded up in the truck and went to Albertson's to get supplies for our Charlie Brown Thanksgiving feast.
This was Kennedy's contribution to our feast: fruit shish kabobs on a cantaloupe boat full of whipped cream.
I love Charlie Brown. I love the music, the characters, the simplicity, the novelty; I love it all. So every holiday I play the corresponding Peanuts cartoon repeatedly until the season passes. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, the kids suggested that we watch it one last time and have the same feast Charlie Brown serves all his friends at the end. So, our dinner consisted of popcorn, pretzels, jelly beans, and toast, along with hot chocolate in lieu of the ice cream floats. It was so fun and festive and they were thrilled. A couple of the kids saved their plates until the meal started on the movie. It was adorable. And then, one last time for the day, we gave thanks to God for the bounty of blessings He continues to lavish on us in every conceivable way.

My heart is never void of thanks, I can tell you honestly. The trials of this life have given me a sincere gratitude for the simple pleasures in life. Things like Leila standing behind me in her diaper singing "Oh Sawah, oh Sawah..." Or our giant puppy sniffing under the door wishing he could come in and lavish his own love on us. Or looking up from a project to see Dale watching me with those dreamy eyes. Or the way my mom and my mother-in-law and Sandy answer the phone so excited to hear from me every time I call, even if we just talked for an hour the day before. I love life. I have my days, and I have my moods that swing us all from the rafters, but I love this life that God has given me, so I am truly thankful.

Thanks Giving

I had this great idea a week ago. It was the idea that if I started early, I would be able to pace myself being that this is my first time EVER to prepare the Thanksgiving feast. In the past I had no idea how much work went into the feast and I didn't lift a finger to contribute. For that I offer my sincere apologies. Later I began to recognize the exhaustion of the host as a symptom of a project that must've taken a lot of work and volunteered my services in the clean-up. Most recently living in Richmond, every year I would ask, "Do you want me to bring anything?" to the feast for nearly fifty relatives and Dale would quickly say, "No, no, you don't have to bring anything, they've got it," and give a nod to his mother like he had *handled* it. I never was offended by this because generally I had to work that night or the night before and knew it would be difficult to juggle the stress of bringing anything to the table that didn't compare to the down-home goodness that we've all come to know and love. (One year I did bring little pilgrim hats made from striped shortbread cookies upside-down a chocolate dipped marshmellow on top, and a little yellow buckle made from frosting. They were cute. Not much of a contribution, but cute.)

This year, I have accepted the fact that we are going to be all by ourselves out here and decided to compensate with the only permissible substitute, which is the same feast we would've had if we were *d0wn home*: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, corn, homemade rolls, dumplins, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, and custard pie. So I thought it would be a good idea to start early and pace myself since I'm on my own. Last week I thought about making the pie crusts. Then Sunday I put it on the list to make the pie crusts. And Tuesday I really intended to get it done, but then I cleaned the tub instead but managed to quick mix up the crust and stick it in the fridge. When the hour was up, my pie crust still looked like biscuit dough, which made me nervous. So this morning I tried the recipe again and the results were the same. I don't know if every recipe makes four crusts, but I can't stand to waste that much stuff by some error, so I froze the dough in hopes of developing something fantastic later. And then I called in the cavalry, I called my mom. She read the recipe back to me and I had miscopied it; instead of 1 1/2 cups water, it should've been 1/2 cup water. *sigh* So I bought more flour and more Crisco and I tried it again and I gotta tell ya, I was pretty nervous.

I've never made a turkey. I've never made stuffing except for Stove Top. I've never made dumplins, not like Mawmaw's. With the first attempt already on shaky ground, I rocked my confidence. The big day is creeping up fast and there's no trial run on Thanksgiving.

My other great idea was to set a cookie sheet on the bottom shelf of the oven for spill overs so that I wouldn't be scrubbing out the bottom of my oven after a long day of slaving in the kitchen. So I set it in place, and then carefully set the pecan pie over it. After half the cooking time had passed I realized it wasn't going to spill over, and I moved the cookie sheet to the other side. Next I poured the custard into the pie crust and carefully covered the edges with foil, so proud of myself for thinking to cover it before I put it in the oven. The filling was nearly too high, but I love custard and assured myself that I could get it in without dumping it. When I picked up the tin, it dribbled down the side. No big deal. As I turned to set it on the oven rack, it ran in a steady stream down the cabinet, across the floor, down the oven door and then sloshed into the oven, pooling atop the cookie sheet and overflowing into the oven. *sigh*. This made me more nervous about the stuffing and turkey and gravy and everything.

The other three pies turned out to be very lovely, and they are pictured on the previous post because as a mother, I don't get many things accomplished and there aren't a lot of new tasks to master in these four walls, so I feel accomplished in this one thing. I know I can bake a pie.

I have been genuinely excited about this event since the passing of Halloween. In a way I feel like it's a rite of passage. I know, that might seem dumb because I'm thirty-one and I have six kids and I've been married almost as long as I was single. You'd think I would feel all growed up, but it's a flagship of womanhood to be able to achieve the impossible and survive, which I have to say, is trademark of the preparation of a Thanksgiving day feast, in my case anyway.

Today I baked the pies, made the stuffing, froze the dumplins, peeled the potatoes, prepared the sweet potatoes, made the rolls, and thawed the turkey. I think I'm ready for tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes. My excitement has only been dampened by my current exhaustion, which I'm sure will reignite with the opening sounds of the Macy's Day parade.

So here's to all of you mothers: Mom, Dana, Grandma, my Aunt Kim, who have slaved over this event for hours and spent piles of money to make a feast for the rest of us to eat up and then take a nap without a thought, THANKS TO YOU. You're the real heroes.

These are a few

of my favorite things.

A Formal Farewell

There's bittersweet air about us as we say our final farewell to football. Today is the superbowl and we lost our tickets to our loss last weekend. Today is the party where all the kids will get trophies and run around together just for fun, probably for the first time since the season started. When I found out we'd have practice everyday for the first five week and then games all over the state every weekend, I went a little cuckoo. But once we got the groove, I looked forward to being out in the cool of the day with the sun shining because I could just sit and watch while the kids ran and played and screamed and wrestled with the other siblings. It was a little intimidating at first too, to have to load the troops at 5:30 in the cold to drive long distances to watch our peewees play games, but that too just became part of the routine. Now that it's all said and done, I'm a little sad that I won't have all the same kids to cheer for next time, or the same parents to labor with through the season. But I'm also relieved that we will have a few Saturdays to rest before basketball takes off. I don't know if I'd have ever done it if I hadn't watched my good friend, full-time business woman, single mom to five do it for years, running all five in different directions like it was as natural as breathing. She gives me hope and joy in this season of life; the running season. And it's a good thing because we're looking forward to about fifteen years of it.
So long football; thanks for the memories.

Hope

Therefore having been justified by faith
we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ
through whom also we have obtained
our introduction by faith
into this grace in which we stand;
and we

exult in hope

of the glory of God.
And not only this, but we also

exult in our trubulations

knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance;
and perseverance, proven character;
and proven character, hope.

And hope does not disappoint,

because the love of God has been
poured out within our hearts
through the Holy Spirit
who was given to us.

And hope does not disappoint.
Love never fails.
We have fixed our hope on the living God.
This hope we have as an ANCHOR of the soul.