the serious club

What do my kids do on the weekends?  They launch private organizations.

They hold their meetings in a fort extending from the triple bunk beds.

Of course, there are clearly laid-out guidelines.

Activities include leafing through daddy's vintage war planes picture book, because, as Bright noted, "The military is serious."

Also in the minutes, reading from serious literature. 

 At one point, I dared to use the commode in the boys' room, and Bright said, "Who flushed the toilet in the Serious Club's bathroom?!"

"I did," I admitted, "but I did it seriously."

"Oh, that's OK then," Bright said.  Whew!  I was pardoned.  I hate to think what my penance would have been. 

Like the tearing of Velcro

Next weekend we are having a tag sale.  Under normal circumstances, nostalgia (which is very strong with me) would win out and we would not be selling our baby things or toddler clothes.  However, these are not normal circumstances.  In fact, none of my circumstances are "normal," now that I think about it, but back to the point. Because the movers this fall will charge us by the square meter, we don't want to move anything we won't use again.   

That's right, we won't use our baby things or toddler clothes again.  Please pass the tissues, because I am over here burying my face in tiny hooded sweatshirts and stained receiving blankets, breathing in the faint scents of diaper rash cream and pureed squash.  OK, so maybe the scents are all in my head, but that doesn't mean they aren't real.  The pain of parting with this stuff is real, I can tell you that.  As real as the Velcro on my Eagle Creek purse that I've been using since college, and the tearing sound is just as loud.

There are, of course, a few things I will never part with.  What kind of mother would I be if there weren't?  Like my favorite flannel shirt of Bright's when he was a toddler.

 And the corduroy sport jacket that Zion wore on his first birthday.

And this hand-knit pea pod sweater of baby Brave's.

And the gingham dress that Jubilee was wearing on the day that we met her, sweet little thing.

I tell ya, I may not be a baby person, but I am a my-baby person!  Even though I am done, done, done like the last steak on the grill, and as ready to put this stage behind me as my parents were to see the end of Disco, there is a part of me that will always ache to hold one of my babies, just one more time.

girlhood dreams

This little girl was born in southwest Michigan in 1980, to a tiny, freckled young woman and a happy, hairy young man.  She was raised in a squat, sturdy brick house on 34th Street, where she ran around until dark with neighborhood friends, pretending she was Laura Ingalls Wilder beside the creek, or a mermaid princess in her backyard pool.  She wanted to be a writer, a wife, a mommy, and a professional athlete.  She dreamed of seeing the world and reaching the lost with the good news of CHR1ST.

Well here I am, blabbing away on this blog, married with four kids, and living and serving in East Asia.  If you consider blogging "writing," and you disregard the professional athlete part, it looks like all of my dreams have come true!  My legs don't look like that anymore, but thankfully neither does my wardrobe.  Check out that TV in the background.  Aunt Cindy, was this picture taken at your house?

29 years after me, this little girl was born, somewhere in Guangdong Province, China, to a woman who could not take care of her.  She was left on the ground in the middle of the city, her belly button still weeping.  She went to live in an orphanage with lots of other kids, where she awaited an uncertain future.

(Be a peach, will you, and disregard the unfolded pile of clean dishrags and the random mismatched cushion, and choose to focus instead on the cutie in her playclothes.)

On August 16, 2011, that cutie became our precious daughter, Jubilee Sue!  She will play in the creek this summer, and she will splash like a mermaid in the pool.  She will dream of being things, and of seeing things, and of going places, and we will do everything we can to help make all of her dreams come true.  XOXO

warming up

Bright has finally starting showing an interest in learning the language.  I was determined to wait until he was ready, but I was beginning to think it would never come.  Now I am so excited to add language class to our curriculum next year, along with typing (which I've decided to add so Bright's fingers can start keeping up with his mind).  Zion needs more art, and they both need spelling help, and a good geography program, and some sort out-of-the-box history (they inherited my blank-stare response to timelines).  If anyone has suggestions, I'm all ears!

Oh, sweet boys, I am so proud of you for wanting to shed some of your aversion to our host culture, and it warms my heart to hear you repeating a phrase or two.  If a certain group of people had been all up in my face for almost four years, petting my head, grabbing my arms, laughing at me whenever I fell down, and snapping photos even when I pleaded with them not to, I think it would take me just as long to want to speak their language.  You have been very good sports, my sons, and you make me smile.

You make your L0RD smile, too.

pasta perfect

Remember all that shredded mozzarella in my freezer?  Thanks to Paula Dean, I have four cups less of it, and one very happily-fed family this evening.  I suggest trying this fabulous pasta.

ITALIAN CHICKEN AND PASTA BAKE
1/4 cup butter
1 cup chopped onion
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup flour
1 cup milk
2 (14.5 oz) cans diced tomatoes with basil, garlic, and oregano (I couldn't find diced, so I used stewed tomatoes with basil, garlic, and oregano, which I pureed in my blender before adding to the sauce)
1 (15 oz) can tomato sauce
3 cups chopped cooked chicken
4 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
1 1/2 t. salt
1 t. ground black pepper
1/2 t. sugar
1 (16 oz) box bow-tie pasta, cooked and kept warm

Preheat oven to 350.  Spray a 9 x 13 with cooking spray.
In a large skillet, melt butter over medium-high heat.  Add onion and garlic, and cook 5 or 6 minutes or until tender.  Add flour, and cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly.  Stir in milk, tomatoes, and tomato sauce; cook for 5 or 6 minutes or until slightly thickened.  Stir in chicken, 3 cups cheese, salt, pepper, and sugar.  Stir in cooked pasta.  Spoon mixture into prepared dish, sprinkle with remaining 1 cup cheese.  Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until hot and bubbly. 

I followed the recipe exactly (other than the tomato switcheroo) and it was fantastic!  Daniel asked me to make it again very soon.  I served it with roasted broccoli.  My kids devoured it.  Thanks, Paula Dean.

By the way, did anyone ever make that Love By Chocolate Cake?  If so, did you almost weep because it was so good?  Just wonderin'.

four more weeks

In the next four weeks, we must have a moving sale, organize our entire home to be packed for our move to a new province, pack for our trip to America, fly Zion to his eye doctor in Hong Kong, throw a 5th birthday party, say goodbye to Xiao Fu, say goodbye to our friends, eat up all the food in our deep freeze (consisting of mostly shredded mozzarella cheese, which means eating lots of baked spaghetti), finish up home school, and board the six of us on a plane to Arkansas.

That is not including whatever is on Daniel's checklist.

I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

How will Jubilee do on the big flight over the pond?  That's anybody's guess.  To be honest, I'm more worried about Bright and his new night-terror problem.  At home, we rouse him at 10 p.m. to keep him from plunging into a fit of craziness, but we have heard that night-terror kids are a real...well...terror on the overseas flights.  Our friend Tim has to toss his daughter, Natalie, into the airplane bathroom and let her go nuts until she finally wakes up.  Hmmm, things could get interesting.

 

Our schedule in America makes the next four weeks look like a long vacation.  Jubilee has the most to do, including being re-adopted, becoming an American citizen, and undergoing surgery to get her "pretty owie" removed.  Life for us continues to be one big opportunity to recklessly trust the L0RD. 

Four more weeks, friends.  Chick-Fil-A, here I come!

on the job

This morning, as my husband loaded his man purse messenger bag at the door, I said, "Bye, Babe.  I love you."  Then, with a look around the apartment at the breakfast mess and all the rest of it, I added, "Sometimes I don't like my job."

"Sometimes I don't like my job," Daniel said, "but in those moments I ask myself, 'Is it worth it?'"

With that, he was gone, and I was left with my lukewarm coffee and my bedhead and four kids with four thousand needs each.

There are lots of jobs out there, and they all have their pros and cons.  Take my job at the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, for example.  I LOVED that job.  I literally couldn't wait to go to work in the morning.  Still, even that job had its downsides.  I had to go to Sam's Club for a birthday cake every time someone in the newsroom had a birthday.  It was a big newsroom, and I hate Sam's Club.  Without fail, I would end up in the checkout behind someone buying 45 boxes of frozen shrimp and 100 crates of insulated disposable coffee cups, or something like that.  The smell in there always bugged me, too, like a combination of freezer burn and dirty cardboard.

We all have a job to do.  Some of us, like my husband, can see very clearly the importance of his job.  If he didn't tell them, they wouldn't hear.  Others of us, like me, can see fairly clearly the importance of our jobs, though the gratification is delayed considerably.  Still others work blah jobs simply to pay the bills, or to put their kids through school, or to keep their wives (or husbands) from having to work. 

In the country where we live, people don't like their jobs.  Most people hate their jobs.  The government tells college students what their majors will be, based on what kind of jobs need to be filled.  If mathematicians are needed, a musically-inclined individual will be told she must major in math (unless she is an amazing musician, and then she will be told she must be a musician).  Daniel has asked several people if they like their jobs, and they just look at him blankly, as if he just asked them if they chose the weather that day.  In many ways, this aspect of the culture here is sad, but in other ways, it seems freeing.  The pressure is off to find a job they "love," and they can focus instead on why they are working, and who they are working to bless.

Which brings me back to my lukewarm coffee/bedhead moment.  The question isn't, "Do I love my job?" but rather, "Is my my job worth it?"  Oh, the answer to that question is easy.  Though it is so hard it sometimes feels like it will kill me, my job is certainly worth it, because those who are blessed by what I do every day (Bright, Zion, Brave, Jubilee, and especially Daniel) are worth more to me than everything else in the world.