Memory Lane

This week our friend Steve (and amazing painter extraordinaire) has been transforming our house from a mainly beige, fairly boring home to a home with some serious spunk!  The kitchen is now a gorgeous chocolate brown, the fingerprints covering (and I do mean covering) the living room/dining room have disappeared, and the fireplace wall is a sizzling "Ruby Lips" red!   I am a huge fan of change when it comes to my house, and this has been even more fulfilling than the usual cure of furniture moving/husband grumbling.  I almost feel like I have a whole new home!

On top of having a gorgeous new look, this painting finally forced me to tackle one of those jobs you know you need to do, but really, really, really try to avoid - at all costs.  In the drawers of the old buffet table (which belonged to my Grandma Ruth - eat your heart out cousins!), were stuffed all the photographs I swore I would one day organize.  

Today, that day has come.  (Well, at least phase one has come!)

I must have spent an hour looking through old photographs and artwork drawn made of child hand prints.  I have avoided that drawer for so long, just dreading the mess inside, that I forgot about how much joy it might bring me to take a quick trip down memory lane.  I laughed, I almost cried (seeing my sweet Aunt Bonnie sneaking corn to a very young Jude a few years before she passed away from breast cancer), and I wondered how it is that I have been blessed with such a sweet life.  

Here are a few other things I learned from digging through that drawer:

1.  You can make any animal or seasonal mascot out of a child's hand print.  And every creative idea brings the same response from this mommy - sweet sighs of delight.

2.  Jude looks just like my dad when my dad was young.  Found a picture of my dad in elementary school.  Wow.  Jude is a little Ekdahl!

3.  Cal Henry sure loved his binks.  And he was born slightly defiant.  I love the picture of him sitting in his crib, at about the same age we were trying to break him of the binks, with two binks precariously stuffed in his mouth at once and a slightly devilish twinkle in his eye.

4.  My house has apparently always been pants optional for the under 10 crowd.  Those of you who know us well know that often when you stop by the boys have to scramble to cover their character underpants with some clothes.  It is a baffling phenomenon to me, but looking back through pictures I see it has always been this way.  Underwear, diaper - just no pants.  Poor Sintija.  We must remedy this in the next three weeks!

5.  I chose the right wedding dress.  I always pictured myself in a huge (as in needing its own zip code huge) wedding gown with sequins, lace, bows, etc.  Instead, I was married in a very simple, elegant white satin gown.  Sometimes I look back and wonder why I didn't go for one of the big, glittery dresses I always imagined myself wearing, but as I looked through wedding candids, I know I picked the right dress.  I can see me.  And I can remember how beautiful I felt.

6.  My boys have always been amazing.  I see them every day, and yet when I take a moment to look through pictures of their short lives, I realize how cool my sons are.  They are so very different - like night and day in a lot of ways - but they are each extraordinary in their own ways.  I love seeing glimpses of who they really are in these pictures.

7.  I adore Grandma Ruth.  Not just for letting me have her dining room furniture (a precursor to the grandfather clock, I am hoping...), but for being so fabulous.  I found pictures of her with my sons, and I don't think any other photos touched my heart like those.  Gram loves her grandkids and great-grandkids.  Really loves them - we all are sure we're her favorite.  What a gift it is to see her delight in my sons.

It was a daunting task, tackling those overflowing drawers, but I was blessed by the job this morning.  It was sweet to take a trip down memory lane.  

Now if I could just learn to scrapbook...

Sintija (Sin-tee-yuh)

For those of you who don't know, this blog post title must be a bit confusing.  So let me start at the beginning...

For awhile now, Mark and I have had this deep, somewhat unnerving feeling that our very comfortable lives were going to get a shake down from God.  I doubt that either of us knew which angle this shake down would come from, but we could both feel it coming.  Fortunately, He went sort of easy on us...for now... and we are embarking on a wild adventure this summer!

Right around Easter time, my sister forwarded me an email from a friend of a friend with information about an orphan hosting program called "New Horizons for Children".  I curiously opened the link, and learned about an amazing non profit organization that brings older children living in children's homes or foster homes in Russia, Ukraine, and Latvia to the US to spend approximately five weeks with a Christian American family.  What could be hard about that, right????

I gathered more information, and one night Mark and I spent some time praying about whether God wanted us to be a part of this ministry.  Quite frankly, the amount of money we needed to host a child was daunting.  We didn't have that kind of money sitting around, and we didn't really see a way we could come up with the funds to participate in time.  

I laugh even today when I remember what happened next!  I went to bed thinking of ways we could fund raise enough money to host a child.  I tossed and turned and fretted and prayed God would show me what He needed me to do.  Ha!  The next morning as we were waking up, Mark's blackberry went off.  He received an email from our accountant friend telling us that our tax return this year would be more than she had anticipated - the exact amount we needed to pay to host a child!  I love when God not so subtly reminds me that I am so not necessary - but that for my sake, He'll let me participate in His business! 

We spent the next two weeks up to our eyeballs in paper work (it is not as much paperwork as adoptions require, but a fair start on that much...), and we prayed over a list of children approved for the program hoping God would guide us as we "chose" a child to host.  We finally chose to host a beautiful young lady from Latvia named Sintija.  She just turned 13, likes red and pink, animals, and cars.  The car part sealed it for us I think - she may be too young to drive a car, but we must own just about every toy car ever made!

We have been busy preparing for Sintija's arrival on June 24th.  We've purchased a few clothes for her (guessing at her size until we can see her), attended an amazing training in Atlanta with the NHFC folks, and we are getting ready to paint the office and turn it into her bedroom for the summer.  While Sintija is here, we are required to take her to the dentist and the eye doctor, so we are making those appointments now as well.  Besides all those preparations, we are preparing our hearts.  It sounds like it will be all rainbows and warm fuzzies, but we know there will be hard times and lots of confusion (did I mention she doesn't speak much English and our Latvian is hilarious at best???).  In light of everything, I definitely have moments when I fully realize how in over our heads we are.  But as Michelle at NHFC reminded me during one slight freak out, God equips the called.  He doesn't call the equipped.  And in the practical sense, we are so not the equipped.

I will be sure to keep you all updated as we prepare to welcome our "summer sister", as the boys affectionately call Sintija.  Please pray for us!  I am not sure what God has in store for any of us, but Mark and I have agreed to just be obedient.  (And I am trying not to panic...)

I Know. I Know.

I have become that blogger I hate.  You know the one.  The one who reels you in with witty and wise banter (I flatter myself), and then BAM!  Nothing...  

It isn't that I haven't thought about blogging lately.  Actually, I have thought about it a lot - more specifically, why I haven't been blogging.  Things have been super busy at home, with the end of schools and a trip up north and preparing for a crazy summer, but if I am honest, that isn't the sum total of why I haven't blogged much.  I can't put my finger on it, exactly.  Maybe I am so busy enjoying my newfound energy that I want to "do" instead of  write.  Maybe I feel like there is so much going on in our little world that I don't know where to start.  Maybe I feel like I have nothing to say.

But if I am honest (and what is a blog for, if not honesty?), I am pretty sure I haven't blogged lately because I have needed some silence.  I think that all the "blog vulnerability" caught up with me, and I just needed a breather.  Mark and I have been making some decisions about our life and what we value and how to walk that out, and I think that process warranted privacy.  I love when people comment on my blog (hint, hint!), but some things aren't to be spoken into.  And when you are a recovering people pleaser like me, the less input, the better. 

There are lots of things to update you all on - we are on a new, somewhat out of our comfort zone adventure this summer.  I am also learning how to live life on a very specific diet, and that has led to some thought provoking moments.  So I am  back...hopefully.  

I hope you (three) are back with me, too!

Daddy's New Toy

Ever since I have known Mark, he has wanted to own a Jeep.  (Wrangler, for those of you who think a Grand Cherokee is a "real" Jeep.)  Finally his dream has come true!

We don't have any pictures of the new addition yet, but suffice it to say - it is one beautiful vehicle!  He chose a two door, soft top, sunburst orange 2009 Jeep.  It is SWEET!  

The cool news is that he has even let me drive it.  About a mile.  

What a rush!

Congratulations Mark!  You deserve this.

Our Little Author!

This spring Jude entered the Reading Rainbow Young Authors and Illustrators contest for our local PBS station.  We found out a few weeks ago that his literary masterpiece, The Confused Mailman, won Honorable Mention! 

There was a small reception on Sunday at the Nashville Children's Theater where Jude and the other winners received certificates and little goodie bags.  Jude was such a proud author!