There's No Business Like Snow Business

We just got back from our much anticipated snow trip.
Our church had planned a get-away to lovely Mt. Shasta for 60+ people.
With all the packing I'd done, I felt like our family must have made up half of that number.
Good grief that was a lot of warmth.

The drive from home was almost 6 hours, so I had the idea to stop half way in Chico to visit my brother and sister-in-law and their family on the way up, and then go the rest of the way into Shasta on Saturday morning.
There was only so much,
"WHEN are we going to BEEEEEEEEEEEE there"s I could handle.
I wanted to break it up a bit.

By the time we finally rolled into town Saturday afternoon and found the house the group had rented and unloaded our gear and donned our snow clothes to go meet the group, it was almost 2:00.
We were approximately 4 hours behind them in snow-play, and we still hadn't eaten lunch.
We'd just been feeding the kids cheese to hold them off.
LOTS of cheese.
Like, Paige had eaten two full string cheeses and two pieces of Tilamook in 10 minutes, Lots.


Of course we hadn't gotten lunch.
Standard.

It's like we just can't ever get ourselves going.
Once we think we're ready, someone has to pee, or find their watch, or they can't get buckled, or their sock seam is crooked and it's ruining their chance at happiness.

I'm surprised we ever get ANYWHERE, actually.

Finally we'd bought our lunch meat and crackers and waters and various other snacks from the questionable local market and we headed up the hill.

Yes, Tessa. We're really going to the snow right NOW.
No.
We don't have to stop anywhere else.
Pretty soon we'll be in snow covered bliss with all your friends.

We followed the road up the hill that we'd been told to follow.
It just kept going on and on, it seemed.
Almost like we were being punked.
For miles we drove.
I think I saw vultures circling.
It was a never-ending hill.
Up in the hills and snow with nothing else around - Our gas light came on.
Where IS this place?!
Are we going to have to walk back?!
I've seen news reports about these types of things.

We kept driving.
Were we lost?
It was practically dinner time, it seemed.
The kids were starting to whine, Justin was starting to flare his nostrils and make The Face.
The Angry Indian Face, as we call it.
I started having a panic attack. Now I was remembering it clearly.
The 20/20 we'd watched about a family in Oregon lost for days in the snow.
Where was the flippin' group?!

Then we saw them.
One
by
one.

DRIVING IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION down the hill.

They were leaving.
They were done with the snow.
Afterall, they'd all been there for hours as we did our Green Family ritual of complete nonsense and chaos.

We had finally found it and they were leaving.

I wanted to cry.
From the looks of Justin, he wanted to chew someone's jugular vein like a Walker.

All this work and build up and excitement and they were all leaving.

We flagged someone down and pulled over and I hopped out, hyperventilating.
The kids all staring at me with the look they give when they're wondering why the sides of mommy's neck are pulsating.
My shadow on the hill looked like a Yetti.

Our friends told us that our friend Sara had sledded into a tree and possibly broken her leg, so they were all heading back to the cabin.

We opted to just go on.
Even if it meant playing in the snow alone.

We hadn't driven for hours and hours to turn back now.
Dag nabbit, we were going to have some FUN.
Even if it was the grit-your-teeth-and-pretend-to-be-happy fun.

I'm pretty sure if I'd laid down in the snow right then, I would have made a snow fire-breathing dragon, not an angel.

Once we got the the parking area, we realized that we weren't the only ones left.
We were there with the Lemleys.
A lovely family with three boys and a girl that were relatively new to our church.
Perfect.
At least we could hang with SOMEONE.

We got to know them better, that day, and I got to see that Spring, the mom, was my kind of mother.

I learned this in what was one of my favorite moments on the trip.
The moment her youngest son threw a giant fit over not wanting to share his snow tube, and when she stood up, walked to him, looked into his eyes - his face looking happy that he was going to get picked up and coddled in his bad behavior - yet the moment when, instead,
she plucked him from the snow one-handed, shoved him in an empty snow tube, and kicked the tube speeding down the snowy hill.
His cries just got more and more faint as he disappeared from view over a burm.
It was amazing.
I wanted to hug her.
That's my kind of woman.

The So-Help-Me-I'm-Going-To-Harm-You-In-Public kind of mom.
The REAL kind.

And it worked. When he returned, he was too out of breath from the climb up the hill to cry more.
Problem solved.

All was fine in that moment.
We were laughing and talking and we had recovered from our stresses of getting there.
NOW we were having fun.

Then Tessa burst the joy bubble.
She had to pee.
It's one thing to have to pee at home or in a restaurant, but having to go to the bathroom in the snow, is a whole other animal.
You have to remove your gloves, then remove approximately 6 layers of clothes on the kid, then you have to hover, holding the kid ever so cautiously so that you don't drop them into the port-o-potty which always has a hole too big for children to safely sit on without risk. You have to make sure they don't pee on their clothes because wet pee ice is very un-awesome.
You visualize horrible things like your car keys flying out of your pocket while you hold the kid and having to decide in a split second which one is more important to save from the poo filled abyss.

It was a 15 minute ordeal that was more stressful than it probably needed to be.

Then there was the trek back to the car.
The lecture about not darting in front of cars.
The slip on the ice.
The comforting hug.
They eye-rolling while GIVING the comforting hug because this was the 18th time she'd gotten hurt that day and sometimes I get tired of saying I'm sorry for boo-boos and I just want them to buck the heck UP.

We had JUST made it back to the group, which was not a tiny trek, and she said the dreaded words,
"Actually, Mama. Now I need to poop."

Oh.
My.
Gosh.
Of COURSE you do.

Back we went.
She fell again.
She cried again.
This time I did not comfort.
I just told her to stand up and keep walking.

We made it back to the toilet and off came my gloves and her six layers of clothes.
I repositioned myself in front of the toilet and held her.
She needed to be scooted, she said.
I scooted her.
NO!
Not that far. More. More. There. No. A little more. Right. There.
I waited.
I waited more.
Was it HOT in here?
My legs hurt.
Why was I sweating so much?

Then she said it.
That beastly beast.

"Actually, Mama. I think I DON'T have to go."

Kill me.
Seriously.
Kill me now.

That bleeping bathroom ordeal took approximately 45 minutes in total.
45 minutes I'd never get back.

When we got back over the hill, Chloe was just heading down the sledding hill on her tube.
I watched and waved and said things parents say in the snow.
"Yeah, Chloe! Weeeeeeeeeeeeee! How fun!"
Except it wasn't fun.
That kid, who was nervous at first to sled, who I'd had to convince by showing her happy youtube videos of sledding that didn't end in a frozen death,
who I'd promised wouldn't fall off the tube and get hurt and that snow was soft and she'd love it,
flew right over top of the hill built to stop kids from going too far and just kept going,
right into a tree.

Now SHE was crying her loud open mouth cry that makes her head look open enough to double as an airplane hangar.

Oh for Heaven's sake.

I have to go DOWN THERE?!

Thirty minutes in and I had both kids sitting on camping chairs with red, tear-streaked faces from all the crying they'd done.
I'm pretty sure they'd each played for a total of 6 minutes in the snow.
The happy Green family on their trip to the snow.

Say "Cheese!"



Meanwhile, the baby who was in wet suede Robeez - unquestionably the worst snow shoes ever, and would most likely have to have toes removed from frost-bite, was as happy as a clam.


We played just up until the point when the kids were about to need therapists for trauma, and we decided to pack up and go.

The Lemleys were leaving, too.

We stayed and helped eachother deflate snow tubes and change wet socks and find water bottles and tether straps and after what seemed like forever, we waved goodbye and got into our vans that were parked side by side.

Oh no.
Their car battery was dead. Are you SERIOUS?!

Good thing we'd just had ours replaced. A quick jump and they'd be on their way.

Wrong.

We were both stuck in the snow.
Both.
Side by side.
The red-headed step children of the snow. The ones unable to just follow the bouncing ball.
Stuck.

The kids stared freaking out.
10 of them between us.
We told them yes, we were going to have to sleep in the snowy cars, just to be mean.

One of the kids had a brilliant idea to put on the snow chains and so that's what we did for the Lemley's van, which was stuck worse than ours.
It would have worked if we could have gotten the chain all the way around the tire.

Finally we had to flag down some guys who had some towing stuff to help drag us out.
They hooked it up and flipped their car into reverse and the Lemley's car started to move.
But so did the half-attached snow chain.
It moved right around the van's axle and got stuck there.

Yes, Kerri.
This was really happening.
Like we were actually not meant to ever leave that hill.
Stuck in a snowy future full of tears, hour long bathroom trips and wet socks with only a half box of Cheese-Its left.

It's OK. There was a jack. He'd just try to jack it up and un-wind the snow chain.
An easy plan if the van didn't keep slipping off the jack.

Once we finally came down off that hill and got to the place we were all supposed to be meeting for dinner, the whole group was there.
We were late yet again.
We found our seat and got our food and glared at each other for this issue and that issue.
I hissed some commands to Alena about being helpful and family duty.

Then Paige started wailing and every family in that place turned to look.
Her face was red and she looked like her head would pop off.
She was trying to poop.
Dead center in the restaurant - the family who couldn't quite get themselves together - was drawing attention yet again with their constipated baby because she'd been stuffed full of cheese.

Is it bed time yet?

I had to take her out to the van to change her poo pebble.
A stray dog crept up and watched me from behind.
Creepy.

Surprisingly, we all slept pretty well in one room packed like sardines, that night.
Exhausted from our day.
I probably could have slept in a YMCA shower stall, I was so tired.

The rest of the trip was great, actually.
If you remove the fight with Justin and the desperate need for FIVE FREAKING SECONDS where I was not asked for a snack of some kind.

I was asked to sing in a snow covered little church Sunday morning and was greeted by warm strangers with cheerful faces.
The sun was shining.
Paige had finally pooped.
All was well in the world.

My brother and his family even showed up for the day to play with us and he gifted me with the greatest invention of all time -
The snow Pack-N-Play, which is actually just a very deep hole dug in the snow, piled with blankets, to place babies in.
Best idea ever, made even better by pouring drinks in the snow around the rim so they can lick it like a snow cone.


That night I got to have Thai food from the lovely 'Phuket Thai Food' restaurant in town.
(A place that I do not recommend taking your children to if they really love practicing to read phonetically.)

"Chloe. STOP trying to sound it out. Because I said so. Just don't."

But we are safely home. Unpacked. Pictures loaded. Another memory and new friends made.

Family fun is exhausting.
And yet, I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Just as long as that heartbeat is a year from now.

Happy Balloon Suffocation!

I think if I coughed right now
cake mix would come billowing out of my mouth.

Today I baked my 10th dozen of cupcakes for the week.
This was after I'd baked two complete cakes.
Both of which Paige demolished within minutes.
Pudgy, dimpled fists pounding at it with a scary twinkle in her eyes like the pulverized crumbs were somehow giving her super powers.

One hundred and twenty cupcakes.

Um,

WHAT?!

If I had known this would be my January fate from here through the next 18 years because of the poor birth date planning on my part for Chloe and Paige, I might have planned better.
Their birthdays are four days apart.

This was Paige's first birthday, so of course, we had to do it up big.
I planned for weeks and made so many paper poms I felt arthritic.
I read about epsom salts on the internet, but was too tired to actually go get some.

And poor Chloe.
She didn't even get a card.
She got Paige's leftover party decorations and a half smashed cupcake in her lunch for school.
Her lunch which, for four days, had been 80% leftover party food from Paige's party.

When I opened her lunch bag to pack it again for tomorrow's lunch, it looked like a cupcake murder scene.
It took seven paper towels to clean it out.
She didn't seem to mind, really, or even notice.
She loved her gift and was super excited about the pencil she'd gotten from her teacher, and she seemed chipper enough as she sat down and made this drawing for herself.

Kind of sad when you have to make your own birthday card.

But I AM letting her have her very first slumber party tomorrow.
She's inviting her two best friends, Maddie and Kaitlin - Both of whom she's known since birth.
Her major plans for the evening involve playing ring toss and making Tessa be the yellow rings, eating pesto pasta, and having a dance party - but not to the song from Despicable Me because she's "kind of tired of that song now."

I've been fretting over how to entertain the girls, but I guess I need to just keep remembering that this is the kid that hugged me three times for writing "Chloe's Bakery" on a brown paper bag so that she could pretend that she was selling her wooden food from her wooden kitchen.

I KNOW I overcomplicate.

I don't know what it is in me that gives me the need to outdo myself.
I put so much pressure on it.
Are the cupcakes evenly frosted?
Are the poms hung at a precise level to achieve visual balance?
Do the lemon slices in the water match the color scheme, or would limes have been better?...
Seriously.
I think this.
And I blame Martha Stewart's Magazine for scoffing at me from the checkstand as I buy canned frosting and boxed cake mix.
But Martha doesn't have four kids who will need seven snacks in the period of time it would take to make a cake from scratch.
Martha's mixing bowls aren't being used as Barbie swimming pools that have been sitting outside for so long they are growing black slime.

I may not take on all her suggestions of planning my spring potting, but I do take on some pressure.

All the while,
the kid whose birthday it is sits in the corner eating their own boogers.
A connoisseur they are not.
So why is my upper lip sweaty?

They don't care about paper poms.
They just want to know if they can have my iPad after the guests are gone.

I don't even remember having birthday parties as a kid.
I know I did, but I don't really remember them.

The only one I remember was my third one.

My parents had hired a clown, which scared me half to death.

But it didn't scare me as much as the game we played.
(And apparently, after looking at this picture more closely, I should have also been scared of those orthopedic looking shoes I was wearing....?!)

It was a race won by pushing a balloon, without using your hands, across a finish line with just your nose.

I was petrified and refused to play.
Why was I petrified?
Because my mother, for as long as I could remember, had told me,
"Be careful, Kerri! Don't put that in your mouth or by your face! If it pops, you could inhale it and you'd suffocate on it!"

We used to get balloons at the bank when we went and I can remember wondering why they'd give out such traps of sure death to kids.
The bank clearly must hate children.

Looking back, I laugh, thinking about all the haphazard things that would have had to go wrong for me to have inhaled and suffocated on a balloon fragment.
I'd never met or heard of anyone else who even knew someone who that had happened to,
so surely it couldn't have been that common.
To hear my mom talk, though, you would have thought it was a sure thing.
Like it happened all the time.
A common childhood issue, such as Slap Cheek or Pink Eye.

Chicken Pox, Measles, Balloon Suffocation.

Balloons equaled death.
The end.

Death that was almost as sure as the one you would suffer if you twisted your swing and let it unwind and twirl you.
You could get your neck caught in the chains, you know.

But I love the planning. At least I THINK I do.
My family probably questions it as I go into convulsions over something or another.

I love thinking about colors and themes and favors and the cake.

It's what caused me to throw Alena the biggest fifth birthday bash the world has ever known.
Embarrassing, really.
A princess party complete with a castle for the kids to eat in. Each stone hand sponged.

I made Justin rent a dragon costume and come out screaming trying to grab the kids.
At least it was SUPPOSED to be a dragon.
In reality it looked more like a giant gray lizard that hadn't had its skin wet down for a few days and was about to meet its dried out death.

I wore a Pepto-Bismol colored dress I'd bought at Ross that I later returned because there was NO WAY I was wearing that thing again.

Her cake looked like a wedding cake.

And all this is funny because when I asked her what her favorite birthday ever was, it was the one where I let her have a whole bunch of friends over and they ran around like loons with no real plan to speak of.

I have made 20 fancy tea party hats out of paper plates and hand painted little tea sets for each guest before,

and she remembers the loons.

Standard.

It's all for me, I guess.

It's so that I can look back at the pictures and feel like I did something that showed them that their day was special to me, too.
Their Mama celebrated them.

And I do.

Every booger eating one.

And Bless

Every night before bed, we have our routine.
Bath
Tooth brushing
Laying in our bed for a lullaby and prayer time.

At least that's how it's supposed to go.
Before the six trips downstairs for sippie cups that don't have leaky lids, or trips into Alena's room to raid her stuffed animal box for yet another 'special animal' to sleep with.
Even though there are already 60 pairs of beady button eyes staring at me from their bunk bed.
Then, just when I think they're done and ready to settle, they have a new game they want to play of asking me to dictate various words so they can attempt to spell them.
Glorious little clean smelling nerds.

The end part has always been special.
Not only because it's, well, the END PART and I'm about to get my few hours of quiet time for the day, but because I get a chance to really connect with them.

We've done it for years this way.
I sing and they nuzzle, then we close our eyes and say our prayers.

They've grown up hearing me thank God for them, pray for their healing, pray for others that we love who need special mention.

So it was no surprise when, tonight, they asked if THEY could pray.

"Of course!" I said.
I closed my eyes and waited.

Chloe's was so heartfelt.
It always is. Full of thought and care.
Sweet little nurturer that she is.

But I realized tonight that each girl has an agenda.
And that agenda is to be heard by not only God, but by me.

Chloe:
"Dear Jesus,
Thank you for this day.
I thank you that right now you're healing Mama and her hurting back.
I thank you that she will rest good and tomorrow she will wake up feeling better. Please be with our friends Mike and Beth as they are across the ocean getting their little adopted kids.
We are happy we get to meet them.
We hope that one day WE get to go across the ocean and get kids for our own.
I don't know if I will like a brother, but maybe we can get one.
Maybe in Burundi.
We know we will have to talk to Daddy about that, though, and that maybe he needs a couple of years, Mama said.
In Jesus' name, Amen."


Tessa:
"Dear Jesus,
Bless Mama's hurting back and leg.
Bless that you will heal her so she will stop making that scary noise she was making at nap time.
I didn't like that noise and it maked me not be able to sleep.
Bless us to sleep well now, though, so that in the morning we can have a good breakfast with Panda Puffs and orange juice and milk and circle sausages.
And if I am still hungry I can have more.
Then bless lunch and dinner, too.
Bless that I can not have a yucky dinner that I hate and I won't have to ask Mama "How many bites do I have to take?"
Bless all the things.
Bless.
Amen.


Now I have seen it all.
Multi-purpose prayer.
Where one can take their intentions of adoption, requests for peaceful sleep, and their breakfast orders to God.

Kerri Green - Two Thousand Thirteen

Ahhhh.

A fresh year.
Coming to us smelling of hope and excitement.
A time for resolutions that this time we will surely keep.
Right?

We're determined.

This time is THE time.

Or at least that's what we think until roughly two weeks from now when all resolve is out the window and we're right back to eating Lindt truffles in the bathroom with the door closed, breathing as shallowly as we can as to not alert the children to our whereabouts.

I'm as guilty as the lot of you.
And don't pretend you're immune.

Vowing total nonsense like,
"I'll eat only carrots from now until the end of time", or,
"I'll be able to ooze peace and tranquility at every moment.
A virtual pillar of calm.
Wearing weird golden headbands with my eyelids at constant half mast" and the like.

Who am I kidding?
That's not the truth.

It's just that we struggle with being honest with ourselves.

Exhibit A -
I've been on Weight Watchers for three months now,
and I'm already struggling with journaling my food.
A mere three months.
Journaling,
which is the very basis of Weight Watchers.

Yet, somehow, all I managed to record today was the date and two eggs.

Maybe it's all just too lofty.

Maybe I've been aiming too high.

It's scary to jump into deep waters.
It is NOT, however, scary to wade in to your ankles with water wings on.

Therefore, I
have decided to make 2013's list more achievable.
Surely this will lead to an accomplished sense of my year, come the start of 2014.

(2014, which will be great all on its own for the mere fact that there will be a new Target within two miles of me, and also the year that Breaking Bad finally - for the love of God - returns from its hiatus,
but that is a whole other Oprah.)


SO here it is.
My list of resolutions.

*clears throat*

1) I, Kerri Green, so solomnly promise to actually take the things upstairs that I put on the stairs to take up.
Laundry, shoes, toys, pop-bead bracelets.
I will not even have Alena always do it to get around the technicality of this resolve.

2) When I tell my kids "This is the last time I'm saying it," it's going to be.
If you say, "We aren't putting our fingers in other people's noses" more than one time, then actually, yes we ARE putting our fingers in other people's noses. A lot.
Stop the madness.

3) I will make desperate attempts to not spill something on every single thing I wear.
90% of my clothing has a mystery stain dead center.
Justin is constantly picking at my clothing.
That's just unacceptable.
I do know, because of money and time and my status as a mother of four I will never again be fashion magazine ready.
I can, however, be suitable to appear in, well,
PUBLIC.

4) I will put a cap on my baby pajama buying compulsions.
I will at least try.
Unless there is a really good sale at Carters.
Or unless they involve some sort of image of a fat animal.
I am powerless against fat animals.
Especially fat WOODLAND animals.
In that event,this resolution is void and don't you dare judge me.

5) I will post even MORE pictures of my kids on Facebook.
Why pretend I even want to stop?
Why fight it?
Be prepared for upwards of 4000 images, people.
Consider their cherubic faces medicine to your soul.
If you don't.....Sucks for you.

6) I will stop harassing Justin about his gas light being CONSTANTLY on.
Even though he works at a place that sells DISCOUNTED gas.
Even though it's
RIGHT.
THERE.
Every. Single. Day.
If he wants to be stranded in the middle of his drive to work and ruin his fuel injected engine, and he's forced to work a second job to pay a car payment on a new car, leaving him so exhausted he wishes for swift death,
so be it.
We all have different aspirations.
Who am I to crush his dream?

7) I will only allow, at most, THREE layers of clothes on the top of my dresser at any given time.
More than Justin would like, yet fewer than would require a retaining wall.

8) No more short order cook.
So what if you want eggs and she wants oatmeal?!
You're both getting cereal because I said so.
And if you look at me wrong for it, it's a dreaded BREAKFAST BURRITO for you, Miss.

9) Earlier to bed for me.
Not to be mistaken for EARLY.
I mean, I'm not 80.
Let's not get ridiculous.
Just earliER.
As in, early enough to avoid the running commentary on how "red and cracky" my eyes are all the time.

and finally

10) I, Kerri, resolve to continue finding the funny in my crazy everyday life as to entertain the masses.
It is my duty.
My pledge.
My honor.

Achievable?
Yes.
I believe it is.

Farewell, 2012

Well,
The year is coming to an end.
In two hours and 30 minutes, to be exact.

I have to say, I cannot remember being more excited to see a year end.
When I think of this year, I think of pain and fear and waiting.
Of holding my breath.
I think of worrying it would be my last.
Of the talks I had with Justin about what to do with the girls if something happened to me.
How I looked at my newborn daughter and prayed to be able to see her grow up.

But now, here I sit.
Alive.
Thankful.

Watching my kids head-bang to the celebrations in New York that are playing on TV.
Saying things like, "We don't put our broccoli in other people's faces."
All the joys of life in this crazy house.

And I realize it's all perspective.
I could focus on the fear and the illness, or I could focus on what coming out of that fear and illness taught me.
To trust.
To live in every moment.
To be thankful for what I have because I don't know how long I'll have it.

I can focus on my round-faced baby girl.
The best thing that happened in 2012.
On how, in my darkest moments, her sweet breath against my skin soothed me.
Like I was breathing in her newness and innocence.
The soft sounds of it assuring me.
The meaning her tiny fingers curled around mine held.

I can choose to think about my best friend announcing, after years of unsuccessful trying, that she was pregnant.
On the excitement that brought.
On the tears of joy we cried.

I can remember my Asante girls and how they changed my life completely and filled me with a love I almost cannot understand.
This year was so much about them.

It can be about the bad or it can be about the good.
Some of which came as a result of the bad.

All of my best growth has come painfully.

This has been a year of struggle.

This has also been a year of answered prayer.
Of relief.
Of second chance.
Of reconnection.
Of recognition.
Of creativity.
Of REAL LIFE.

So, I bid goodbye to 2012.
Goodbye and,
well,

Don't let the door hit'cha.

Orphaned No More

It's the final day.

Today.

The day we say goodbye to Capi and Divine forever.
Or at least until we board a plane and fly across the ocean to their village in Burundi.

The pain lives in my chest and seals my lips and then comes spilling out of my eyes.

Constant actually physical pain.

This morning, I mentally willed them to leave some of their things behind.
Things I could look at and hold later when I'm facing what is sure to be an unbearable void.

We loaded in the car and headed out in the rain to make their 9:20 drop off;
My sadness not lessened by the sounds of Sarah Maclaughlin singing "I'll Be Home for Christmas" on the stereo.
Sarah can make anything even more sad than it already is with her voice.

I don't remember most of the drive.
I feel like I had spend the majority of it looking at their faces in the rear-view mirror.
Trying to memorize them.
Their eyes.
Their beautiful and perfect smiles.
They just sat silently looking out the rain drenched windows.

It was as if the gray of the outside had invaded everything
- spreading like a drop of ink in water and turning everything murky.

I thought about the last 6 months.
I thought about the first time I saw them.

I had been disappointed they were so old.
I'd thought the little ones would be cuter.

Cuter.....

I had no idea the impact those two girls dressed in pale blue Asante shirts would have on me and my family.

That our lives were about to be permanently intertwined with girls we had never seen from a country we'd never even heard of.

I remember trying to even understand what they were saying their names were at first.
I made Capi say hers four times.
Capita? Capitola? Capitilli?

Capitaline.

Just call her Capi.

I remember thinking Divine looked sad and feeling that that look of needing nurturing behind her eyes was perfect work for me.
I wanted to fix it.

The first day, in a sea of dark faces, they'd looked all the same.
We had trouble figuring out which one was which.
Which ones we were taking.

But now, after all this time, we can pick them out in a dark room, just by the way their shadows walk.

We've memorized them.

That Capi prefers her breakfast hot, and denies she snores.
That she's a joker and full of mischief.
That she likes saying "No" to a question just to get a rise out of you.
"Capi, Do you see the house with 5000 lights right in front of you?" "No."
That she likes being tickled and loves to help with the baby,
which I gladly let her do anytime she wants now after finding out about the time she walked, at the age of four, with her sick baby brother on her back for miles in the jungle trying to find help for him.
Help that I don't think ever came.
So I let her hold all she wants.
She coos.
She sings.
She strokes.
Then she teases Paige about being fat with love in her voice.
Her voice that sounds like a song, somehow.
In spite of the unimaginable she's suffered.

I know that Divine is by far the Fresh Beat Band's number one fan.
That she loves thoughts of mystery.
We taught her about the tooth fairy.
She taught us true Christmas as she literally danced with joy over a gift of a bag of Doritos, which are her "best food."
What a lesson to learn.
Divine is smart and quiet.
I can see something deep and painful in her eyes, but her laugh sounds like Tigger and it brims over with joy.
"Hoo hoo hoo!"

I thought about how our pictures with them span the seasons.
That the first ones we have are of us in the yard painting and spraying each other with the hose. We were warm and smiling unsure smiles.
Not knowing really what to expect from our meeting.

Now they are all wearing hats and coats and we're looking at Christmas lights and the looks in our eyes say FAMILY.

We went to the fair.
We went swimming.
We went to a movie.
We went to In N Out.
A LOT.

Now each time we do those things, they will be haunted with the memory of the two girls who changed our hearts forever.

I don't know how I'll do it.
How I'll let go tonight and turn around and walk away.
How I'll make my hands un-clasp.

I don't know how I'll comfort my kids who will be devastated.

I want to lay in front of their bus,
but instead, I make sure their travel bottles of shampoo are filled.
Crying as I do it.

It's too little.
It's not enough.

They've made my own needs feel small.
What a beautiful, meaningful gift!

What a blessing and a relief to take our eyes off of ourselves.

I wrote them letters that I will give to them tonight as we watch their final performance and say goodbye.

This is what I wrote, in a way they could understand:

and

I hope they never forget us.
I know we'll never ever forget them.

The orphaned girls who were orphans no more.

Ejector seats for EVERYONE!!!

Chloe cried the entire way to school this morning.
Actually, LONGER than that.
She was crying before we left the house.

Why was she crying?
Because she didn't WANT a breakfast burrito.
She wanted oatmeal.
So, rather than just adjust and dream of the oatmeal she could have tomorrow, instead, she tilted back her head and wailed to the heavens; praying God would hear her cries and send down a lightning bolt into our car striking me and my
breakfast-burrito-making hands.

For 30 minutes straight.

Drool was produced for dramatic purposes.

There she sat in the back, hoping to make eye contact with me in the rear-view mirror so I could see her ultimate distress.
She craned her neck to remain in my view and shot lasers at me with her eyes.

Alena was in the passenger seat huffing her breath in between pages of her library book because little sisters are just SO IRRITATING and CAN'T I TELL HER TO STOP?!

I was driving.
And dreaming.
Fantasizing about reaching for the latch on my door and just rolling out into the grass beside the bike path, laying in wait, and then hijacking a stranger's bike and riding as fast as I could in the opposite direction of the car.
Never...to be heard from...again.

I thought about how great it would be to have an ejector seat.
There are far too few of those in this world.
I actually wish for one often.
For me.
For others.
Just one touch of the button and I could be soaring off into the big blue in slow-motion while a Coldplay soundtrack plays as background music.

I guess it's a coping mechanism.
It's the only way I can function sometimes.

To just pretend that the situation I'm in is a different situation than it actually is.
Sort of a "laugh to keep from crying" mentality.

That's not a van full of fighting, screaming children that I want to choke.
It's a group home for the mentally disturbed and I am their leader.
They can't help it.
They were born this way.

That's not dog throw up I just stepped in with bare feet.
It's lotion and I'm about to get a glorious foot massage!

It's not so bad to have an emotional break-down, right?
Rocking in a corner earns me Weight Watcher Activity points.

But I just about lost it when I looked back in the car at one point and saw Chloe picking all the hash browns out of the burrito strand by hashy strand.
She doesn't like "mashed potatoes," she sobbed.

Well you know what I don't like?
A kid dissecting a burrito and wailing in the back of my Volvo before I've had my coffee.
That's what.

It didn't help that I've been SO stressed out lately.
I actually think I'm having some sort of hormonal issue.
At least that's what I keep telling myself so I don't have to face it if it's just a run of the mill nervous-breakdown.
I'd rather blame it on something that doesn't make people look at you with bulgy eyes and take a step back with their arm over their children's chests as if to guard them from the crazy lady.

I think I'm just past my limit.
Far past.

And I am
So.
Tired.

I haven't slept past 8:00 or gone to bed before 11 in what feels like years.
When I mentioned this to Justin last night before bed and asked why I always had to be the one to get up and take the kids to school and why he got to sleep in all nestled in with his C-Pap his response was,

"You're just BETTER AT IT than me."

People.
This man is lucky to be alive and mobile today.

D.
N.
R.

Better at WHAT?
Setting my alarm?
Feeling the weight of responsibility of having our children groomed and educated?
Better at pressing on, regardless of fatigue so strong that SEVERAL times a day I have to fight the urge to just lay down flat on my face wherever I am; be it Kitchen, Garage, or Costco line?

Better at it.
Hmph.

From now on, I will strive to be better at sleeping in than him.
That's the kind of competition I'd love to win.

My friend Beth came over tonight to pick up one of my Namescapes for a silent auction prize I'm donating to help her raise money for her upcoming adoption.
Beth already has three kids under the age of five.
She will be adopting two kids from the Congo, both under the age of three.
Beth is virtually dripping with stress.
Beth looked like a zombie.

When she came in, I was upstairs wrestling Paige into her footie pajamas.
No easy feat.
It's comparable to trying to put a cat
in a dress.
A 25 pound cat.

Beth trudged on upstairs to chat with me while I did it and INSTANTLY I recognized her look.
The universal look of mothers.
The look of wishing to be clubbed over the head with something blunt in order to have just a few minutes of unadulterated rest.

She actually wasn't even looking at me.
She was looking past me at my Cal King bed.

"Can I just LAY DOWN?!" She asked, and I laughed.
Only she wasn't kidding.
She really really wanted it.

This is when we had the conversation about over stretching ourselves.
About taking on more than we actually should.
About how freaking TIRED we are.

It's kind of the burden of a creative soul.
You feel like your light has been snuffed if you're just doing mundane tasks, so you add in some creative, but the second you do, you realize you just added ONE MORE THING to your list that's already twelve pages long.

It's all Pinterest's fault.

It calls to me with it's Siren Song.

I probably don't really have time to make homemade individual Vicks Vapor shower steamers, but gosh darn it, it's almost cold season.

And I've been on the hunt for good pallets for months now, not even sure what I'd do with them. There are just SO many good options....

I mean, sure,
I'll just hammer out a floating pallet shelf right after I drive carpool, and do daycare, and grocery shop, and make dinner, and design a logo, and practice a song, and paint a MURAL.
Let's not even get STARTED on that.

Meanwhile, my stress rises to levels that have me questioning DAILY if I'm having a stroke or not.
Is my face numb?
Why does my mouth feel weird?

I have stood in the mirror on SEVERAL occasions assessing whether or not one side of my face looks more droopy than the other.
Poking it to see if the sensation is even.

I'm yelling more.
I'm threatening more.
And still the girls just fake to listen and try not to smile as the veins in my neck bulge out so far that the shadow of my head and neck look like the shadow a trophy cup would make.

Then the second I turn my back they're whispering,
"Chloe, did you see Mama's face? (*snicker*) Her eyes looked like they were crying and she had black stuff under them."
*joint laughter*

They don't listen.
That's crazy talk.

We just took them to see Wreck it Ralph a few days ago, which I'm sure was intended to make people identify with the two outcast type characters.
Not me.
I identified with a whole different character.

Qbert.

He always looks forlorn and no one can understand him.
He opens his mouth and all that comes out are symbols that sound like gibberish.
He's powerless with no hands, but he has feet and boy does he hop around.

He probably feels trapped in his round little body.
The only one of his kind.
Unable to communicate his wants and desires and need for sleep past 7:00, and not wanting,immediately upon waking, to make six breakfasts that aren't appreciated followed by 30 different snacks FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE STOP WITH THE SNACKS!!!

Poor,
misunderstood
Qbert.

#?!*$#&!
I bet Qbert would love a breakfast burrito.