Birthdays

Every year I think where has the time gone. The girlies in our family all have close birthdays. AG will have hers in just a few days. MA and I have 20 plus days to go. I hate to see my babies grow up. They are getting so mature. Each day I pray for silliness. I want two silly girls forever. I don't want teenagers, at least not yet. I have so many plans for them and me sometimes I forget to just take it all in and enjoy them now. I still let them sleep with me when Dad is at work just because I know some day they will not ask to. That will be a sad day for me. I remember more than a couple of years ago we went to the pediatrician because our girls were sick. He told us that he had been sick and his daughter had been sick also. He said even at fifteen she wanted him to lay next to her because she felt so bad. He said I did and I was sick two days later. Stomach bug can jump. I thought about that a lot that day. About how quickly my girls were growing up and what life would be like for us then. I thought about Mark checking out the boys, threatening them, giving them the evil eye when they came to our door. I hope that we still have a close relationship. My girls mean everything to me and the thoughts of them getting older saddens me, but it also excites me. They are just becoming such wonderful young ladies and I can't wait to see how great they become. I pray each day that they continue their spiritual walk with the LORD and that they both choose careers that they are happy doing. All I want for them in this life is for them to be happy with the choices they make in life. I am pretty happy with choices I have made. I may not have always made good ones, but God always let the bad ones lead me to great people like my husband. I am blessed to have him and my girls. I love my church family and my friends from school. I have met some incredible people on this life journey and I am sure I will meet many more. GOD always brings wonderful people into my life and I am blessed each day because of it. Happy Birthday July and August birthday buddies.

Daddy Movie Date

My kids have a summer tradition. Each summer we travel to our local Chik restaurant and pick up a schedule of the free summer kids movies at the local theater. This is an annual event and we know summer is coming when we see that schedule on the restaurant counter. My girls look through the numerous movies and plan with their dad which ones they want to see. I then have to inform them which ones we can't go to because we have plans that week. The girls love to go to the movies with their dad and I am thrilled that he takes them. They normally go to one or two together and then at least once in the summer he will take them on a daddy/daughter date separately. They love it and most of the time he will take them out to lunch after the movie. Very cool for them. This year the movies were great pics and dad let the girls pick their daddy/daughter movie out. MA has her date coming up and the movie she picked HOTEL FOR DOGS. Has anyone seen this movie? It is cute and there are lots of dogs, but for a child that is adopted it is truly insane. Millions of questions stir for my child and you ask why let her watch it? She is completely obsessed with this movie. It is one of two that she currently watches over and over again. She saw this movie last year with her cousins and so dad bought it for her as a gift. Producers of this movie and STUART LITTLE really do not consider the consequences of their cutesy little movies. They don't get that children that are adopted might watch them. In both movies the parents are killed and that is how the child/children become an orphan. That leaves you open with a lot of questions. In Stuart the adoptive family does not find out that the birth parents died until late in the movie, so mid movie they give their adopted child to total strangers whom they believe is the child(mouse)'s mother. Okay, can you help a mother of an adopted child out here? What were you thinking when you produced that scene? An adoptive mother just gives her child to total strangers without fighting for her child or even checking to see who these people are? Mouse or not if a chic came to my door wanting MA back it would be over my dead body. In no uncertain terms I have tried to explain this to my child each and every time she watches this movie. I let her know that this is a made up movie and real moms would never, ever do that. She thinks it is because he is a mouse. If he had been a boy they would have never done that. I normally agree with her and then give her more evidence that this would never happen in real life. I think she takes it all with a grain of salt because she watches the movie at least once a week. I do like the fact that it gives us the opportunity to discuss adoption and why we adopted her and how glad we are we did. I also discuss the other movie with her, but mainly we talk about why we don't lie, cheat, or steal. HOTEL is a great movie to use to teach a lot of the ten commandments. It covers more than a few. I should bring up the fact that if these kids were in church and prayed to Jesus they would probably behave better. I will use that one after she goes to the movie with her dad. I know the next question everyone wants to know is why I do not like to take my kids to the movies. I don't like theaters. Why? They are gross and if you turned a black light on in any theater it would explode within seconds. The germs there has to be beyond anything we can comprehend. I have had a little phobia about theaters since the first time my foot got stuck walking down the aisle when I was about six. EWWW!
No where around the entire world would anyone purposely go into a dark room with that many germs and eat food. Only in a theater do we find this appropriate. If it was daylight, and you walked into someone's home and their floor looked like a movie theater floor and their dinning room furniture looked like any chair located in a theater, you would not eat their food. You probably would not eat for the rest of the day just thinking about it. Yet we do this and pay big bucks for it. EWWW! I am spoiled when it comes to movie theaters. Many moons ago, before we were married, my husband took me to a little place called Cinema and Draft House. Let me give you a little glimpse into clean movie watching. This is the only way to watch a movie outside of your own home. You walk up to the ticket counter and there is a big list of rules. The first being no kids after nine, the remaining five or six explaining why you could be kicked out. You pay a very small fee to go inside and watch your movie. Once inside you go into the theater and sit at your table. You heard that correctly, TABLE! A nice clean disinfected table. A nice waitress would come up and she would wipe it down one more time and give you a clean menu. She would take your drink order which included coke, tea, beer and wine. She would return with your drink and take your food order. Yes, food order. The food was supreme. She would return about 15 minutes into the movie with your plate of food and condiments. People this is the only way to watch a movie. About 25 minutes before the movie was over she would clear the table and silently offer you dessert. At the end of the movie the lights came on and you paid your bill. Take this into perspective-- any place that serves food has a food inspector. The place was clean as a whistle top to bottom. My foot never got stuck to the floor I can assure you. It was an awesome place and I miss it. For years I had hoped that it would catch on on the southside, but it has not happened yet. Although alcohol was served, nobody ever got out of hand because it was a movie theater. You can't watch a movie when somebody is loud and acting like a nut. I preferred this place over Applebee's or Ruby Tuesday any day of the week because drunk people can be obnoxious there. When we were dating it was one of our favorite places to go out. Now you all understand that my husband spoiled me and I just have a hard time going to the grungy, dark, sticky movie and paying big bucks to do it. For the price of a popcorn and drink down the street, I could have eaten a whole meal and dessert at Cinema and Draft House. Good times. I do however, take my girls if daddy just can't, but he takes them most of the time. Especially, daddy/daughter movie date day.

THIS IS WHAT I THINK ABOUT..

As I sat at a doctors appointment on Monday with MA, a family came in. There were two little boys and the mother was extremely pregnant. She had dad with her because she could barely handle one toddler. I felt for her cause you know girlfriend was feeling the heat. Pregnant in July, not fun! As we sat the little one was truly a handful and he was running circles around her. She finally had DAD take care of wild man and she took on the mild child. I laugh to myself. I remember those days. AG just sitting at all of MAs doctor appointments watching her climb up the walls and anything else like a monkey and me running around like a monkey trainer trying to contain her. As I think back about it its comical. We spent about an hour and a half with this particular family because they basically take you from one room to wait to another room to wait until you finally see a doctor and have your tests run and leave. As we sat in the second waiting room with the same family and the little wild man continued to come and visit us, I really thought to myself. "What would it be like to be able to just have a baby? How many kids would I have today? If I could just get pregnant like that one right after the other? What would the number be? three, four, five, six? If it was that easy for us where would we have decided this is it?" Today, I don't feel that 19 would be the number. GOD BLESS THAT DUGGAR WOMAN. I do feel that two would not be it. If I got to choose how many babies I had, I know we would have more. Mark always asks me if you had a million dollars what would you do? If somebody gave you 50,000 dollars what would you spend it on? If somebody gave you 20,000 dollars how would you spend it? I always say the same exact thing, "Start another adoption." Every time. I think he always expects something different, but he always gets the same answer. It is funny and I don't know why he thinks it will be different. I know families that have just continued to follow GOD's call to adopt. Some have adopted up to 10 kids. There was a precious little girl that we just fell in love with in China at MA's orphanage. I so prayed for her. She was older and just beautiful. She came home two weeks ago at the age of 9 to a family of ten all of the children are adopted from CHINA. Wow! I am not that brave I don't think. Our house would get small very quickly. Do I feel cheated? At times. Am I envious of others who can think pregnant and nine months later have a baby? At times. Most of the time I am thankful for the wonderful kids GOD has truly blessed us with. When I say blessings, they are truly blessings. I would not give up my mild child and my curious George child for anything. Nor would I give up the processes that we went through to have both of them. They are just amazing. MA calls me her lovely mother when she is feeling especially loving. I thank the LORD for her each time she does that. She just makes me smile everyday. I would not give up her shenanigans for anything in this world. We absolutely were a boring family until she showed up. We were predictable and just simply boring. AG is an amazing child too, but her personality has just excelled under the management of her little sister. She is more brave today than she ever would have been. MA is pushy and she pushes her older sister to live outside of her comfort zone. She also pushes me. I am thankful and grateful for both of them daily. I think about all of this and wonder what adding one more would do to our dynamics as a family. I can not imagine how things would change. I am not even sure if I could handle it, but I would be willing to try. Kids are just a gift and when you consider so many are out there unwanted living in foster care and orphanages it just makes me sad. I could be somebody's mommy that needs me. I do deal with this daily and it can be difficult at times, but I still look at there precious little faces and pray that somebody will call them son or daughter soon. I was of course scanning one of my favorite waiting child lists the other day and this little guy just happened to be there. He is just the cutest. But what made me stop is that he looks like one of us. Like one of us as in our family. He has on a t-shirt and shorts and these croc like Chinese shoes. He could be Mark. That is Mark's summer uniform. Goofy shirt, jean/khaki shorts, and crocs. The Mark costume for six months out of the year when he is not at work. You know it is hard for some people to imagine an adoptive child in there family and I have to admit that there are some special needs that I know I just could not do. This little fella just looked like us and I have to say that is rare. It definitely made me look twice and now more than three times. I have looked at hundreds of children in the past five years and this is the first time I have seen a boy that I could say, you know he could be one of us. He would just fit right in. He just has something about him. I don't know. Babies are different. I could adopt any baby and at some point he/she would just become one of us. This guy is not a baby, he is just a boy who needs a mom and dad. It was not a thing that made me cry or anything like that. I saw him just standing there on the gym set and laughed out loud, "He looks like Mark." I showed his picture to AG and she said the same thing- "He is dressed just like Dad." I showed him to Mark days later and he was like, he's cute but I don't get the me part. REALLY? He could have just looked in the mirror. He even had on the same color shirt at the time. I know there are parents out there for the little fella and I hope they appreciate his little goofy Mark outfit picture as much as we did. They are going to be so lucky to get him. I appreciate him and he is not even mine. Life is crazy. I would do anything to have another child and there are people out there who want to get rid of the kids they have. My mom and I were recently at a local dollar store and this nut in front of her in line had three beautiful kids. They were running around like little bored kids do and this guy(who happened to be drunk) offered to give his kids away to my mother. She told the guy she would be blessed to have them and this guy proceeds to tell his little kids that he is going to give them away to my mother. They all run and hide behind their mother. It was nuts. I think my mom was about to cry. At times I just don't understand people and at other times I know this is all part of GOD's plan. You know loosing a child truly makes you grateful for the children you have and it makes you grateful for all the children born on this earth. Good, Bad or just plain rotten all children are a gift from GOD. When I taught at the alternative school, I always kept that in mind. Every student I taught was somebody's baby. I really would work hard to connect with students especially those that did not have very supportive or encouraging parents. I just wanted them to know that somebody in this world was proud of them for going to school and trying to be somebody. I always made a conscious effort to do that. I also keep that in mind when my own two are driving me a little nutty. I yell at times and I regret it. I apologize. I fuss and let them know why I fuss, but at the end of each day I love them even more than I did the day before. GOD blesses me each day that I am with them and at times I mourn over the day they will leave this little nest for a little nest of their own. Although, MA says she is not leaving this house ever, never and that I will live with her and keep her kids. I am not sure what her plans are for her dad, but I know I am the live in grandma babysitter. I am so looking forward to it. I tell her each time she says that I will be glad to keep her babies. She told me just the other day that she will have calm kids to help me out. I asked where these kids were coming from and she informed me CHINA. I informed her that you never know if a kid is going to be calm or not you just have to love what you get. She said, "like me, I was a wild one." I said, "and the best thing that ever happened to this family."

I end with this:

Father to the fatherless, defender of widows — this is God, whose dwelling is holy. God places the lonely in families.

Psalms 68:5-6

And anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf is welcoming me.

Matthew 18:5