I Stand Amazed

I’m not sure if that is a title to a song or not, but it should be.  I am standing in amazement, once more, at how God brings people into my life EXACTLY when I need to hear what they have to say.  I hope I am that person to others.  People that I’ve known for years…. but right NOW I needed to hear their life experience that I had not heard until I needed it.

One such person is about ten years ahead of me in her mom-life-situation.  She gave me some hind-sight advice that is so valuable.  She started by saying, “If I could turn back time… THIS is what I would have done.”  It was all very applicable to me and my life RIGHT NOW.  It was wise council.  It was pointed and direct.  It was true.  I needed to hear it.  And God knew I wasn’t ready to hear it until now.

Another such person has been through several rough patches in life, which have given me insight that I did not/could not gain on my own journey.  THAT is why God gives us friends who have walked different paths, tried different things, made mistakes, and offer excellent “travel worthy” words of wisdom from a been-there-done-that standpoint.

I’m thankful that my mind and heart were open when they needed to be.  Not when it was too late.  NOW, when I needed wise council.  Thank you, God.  I stand amazed at your timing and mercy.

Headline News for May 2010

Once again, headlines and subtitles are all I have time and energy for at the moment.  Thank you, faithful readers, for still coming here and reading my blog when I’m bogged down and not blogging.

FREEDOM FOR SUBURBAN MOTHER – homeschooling is done for the year!  Whoo oHOoooOOOooooo!  Well, there are some lethargic children still finishing math, but I AM done!

INTERNATIONAL VISITORS SPARK SANITARY AWARENESS – that means my in-laws are coming for a visit from Canada and if you’ve got two arms and two legs and live in this house… start cleaning something NOW!

FIRST EVER HSG FOR AZ FAMILY- (kind of like HCG but without hormones) – we almost have a homeschool graduate!!!  Larisa’s graduation in next Friday night!  That means I survived 11 years of schooling that lovely child.  Neither of us have bald spots so we’re both pretty darn proud!

DESERT HORTICULTURE DILIGENCE WILL PAY OFF – that means it’s time to pull out all of the dead winter flowers and plant the summer flowers.

PHOENIX LIBRARY HAS RUN ON 1850 NOVELS – Yes, I’m prepared for my summer reading program to begin…. June 6th, baby!  I got four books by my bedside table making me drool with anticipation.

HARD WORKING CHILDREN REWARDED – That’s the nice way of  saying  that we made our children work to go to summer camp.  Some are still working. There is a car wash planned for Saturday and a garage sale on Sunday.  Keep it up, kids!  We are proud of you.

MEAN PARENTS FORCE CHILD LABOR – same as the last one, just worded like liberal media.

Ok, that is all.  I’m looking forward to sharing more when time permits.  Enjoy your Memorial Day weekend!

 

American History Ends!

Yes, the Mayans were right!  2012!!  THE END!  American History was the topic this past year for my homeschool class of high schoolers… and it ends day after tomorrow.  We started in 1440 (Go ahead and guess why we started there!) and ended in the 1970s.  I told the kids if they want to find out what has happened in the last 42 years, they are on their own!  The Vietnam War ended and we were done.  Kaput.  Finis. 

We did add a bit of culture and art to the study to keep it interesting (for me!) and we debunked several idols from these youngsters’ minds.  “Like what?”  you ask.  Well, it seems of few of them were drawn to the hippies…. the Jesus people… the Kennedy’s… the Beatles… all for glamorous reasons.  Then we studied some of their lifestyles, choices, outcomes and habits.  Not too glamorous after all.  Perfect!  That is why we homeschool!  To look at REAL history.

Another homeschool mom (who might just be crazier than me!) and I sat together today and did some planning for next school year… which we decided will start two weeks after all the public schools here in Arizona.  Because we can!  Yet another reason to homeschool!  We were at an Abeka display/sale in a nearby hotel.  If you don’t know anything about Abeka, it is a Christian based curriculum that is EXTREMELY thorough… so thorough that it actually contains TOO much school work for the average kid to endure.  It is great, in my humble opinion, as a “pick one topic each year” curriculum.  So we used it for American History and I loved it.  Next year we are using it for spelling and vocabulary.

Anyway, back to the two of us rockin’ cool moms sitting at the table amongst sold-out Abeka moms. We had another curriculum opened that teaches Godly character… and we were talking through a list of national parks that we hope to visit this coming school year.  We were discussing weather and what time of year would be best for us to go to each one.  She was explaining, and I was listening, all the science teaching that can be coordinated with the findings at each park.  We were planning our weeks of study at home… and our week at each park.  Eventually we noticed that the workbook moms sitting around us were all staring lustfully at our plans.  One finally blurted out, “I want to school with you two!”  hahahaha…. why do you think we do this?  We don’t want to be bored!  We don’t want to use ONLY books!  We don’t want to wear out the kitchen table!  We want to live learning!  I wanted to scream “Abeka is boring!  Look out the window at what God made for you to enjoy!”  But I didn’t.  The salesman was quite an impressive figure and I wasn’t sure I could take him, if need be.  The looks in their eyes solidified WHY we do what we do!  My friend whispered to me, “I think they just do school at home,” implying that they aren’t truly “homeschooling.”

We want our kids to love learning, to see creation as an organized and amazingly ordered system that WORKS, to appreciate great men and women who have endured and suffered and succeeded and lost and lived out their beliefs. But most importantly, we want them to know God.  To love God.  To serve others.  To use their individual talents for the kingdom.  THAT is why we do what we do!

Nora-isms: Skills of Language Acquisition

Until our Colombian princess learns how words are spelled, she will continue to pronounce them the way she hears them, which is not always clearly nor correctly.  It may be contributed also to our lazy speech or the rapid-fire delivery we occasionally use.  It makes me laugh.  Have a glimpse into our kitchen this afternoon:

Nora: Mom, will you paint with me tomorrow?

Me: Sure, I will paint with you.

Nora: What is taint?

Me: I don’t know what taint is.

Nora: You just said taint.

Me: No, I said paint.

Nora: Oh, ok.  What does taint mean?

Me: (thinking that I don’t want to explain a tainted woman) Nothing really.

Nora: Isn’t that where you put the gas in the van?

Me: No, that is TANK.

Nora: Oh, I thought it was taint.

And so our lives go on as she learns to carefully pronounce words in English.  I distinctly remember the Colombians laughing at my Spanish.  I’m sure I had some doozies as well.  Later today she asked if I wanted to watch a movie with her. Sure. 

Nora:  How about Robin Hoove?

Me: What?

Nora: Robin Hoove…. you know with the wolf and the chicken.

Me: Oh!  You mean Robin Hood, and he’s a fox.

Nora: Hey, just like my book I read Sox the Fox!

Me: Yep! 

Nora: Can we start Robin Hoove now?

Her words make me laugh over and over again.  And the word Congratulations has lots of syllables.  Too many to remember sometimes. 

Later I asked her to pause the movie so we could eat dinner.  She replied, “Yes, man.” 

Me: What?

Nora: Yes, man.  I learned that on a Focus on a Famly story.  The boy kept saying “Yes, man” to his mom.  She said it was good matters. (manners……)

Me: It is actually, “Yes, Ma’am.”

Nora: What is?

Me: Yes, Man is supposed to be Yes Ma’am.

Nora: Oh.  I wondered why he was calling him mom a man.

And later again, we were in my bedroom looking for matches to sterilize a needle….

Nora: Did you look under the covers?

Me: No, why would I keep matches under the covers?

Nora: I seen them there before.

Me: YOU DID?  (Reflecting back 15 years ago when Larisa tried burning the house down by lighting matches in our bed!) Who’s bed were they in?

Nora: What do you mean bed?

Me: You know what a bed is.

Nora: Why would you keep matches in a bed?

Me: That’s what I want to know.   (She stares at me like I’m stupid.)

Nora: (Exasperated) Look under the covers in your bathroom…. I seen the matches there.

AHA!  Cupboards = covers.  Good grief!

The English language is a beast.

Yesterday, 25 Years Ago….

I married the man of my dreams!  It hardly seems possible that we have made it to our silver anniversary.  That is for old people.  And after 25 long, memorable years, are you wondering how we celebrated?  Not only is Rick sick (with a fever and chills and cold) but he is also in Texas at SimCom, renewing his pilot training.  I’m at home with our four lovely children.  Big celebration, right?  Wrong.

However, we did throw a shindig last Saturday, that beat the band!  I’ve been dreaming of decorating for a party for a few years now…. all shabby chic, bird cages, vintage books, roses, old picture frames and lace.  Pinterest has held my interest in this avenue for quite some time now.  All my decorating dreams came true for our 25th celebration.  Here is my photo tribute to Rickey, my knight in shining armor, who tore up the dance floor and didn’t mind all the fru-fru in the house.

The Love Birds name tag table on the front porch.  I love birdies.

Here was our guest book table and my wedding dress…. 25 years later.

These were the thank you gift bags that my friend Ginny made.  They were darling.  We put nuts in the bags and the tags said “Still nuts about each other after 25 years!”  See, corny! But it made us laugh!

Another friend of mine, Darla, helped me assemble the largest collection of pink, white and brown edible delicacies this side of the Mississippi.  It was a sugar-loving haven.

We displayed the dress my mother wore to the wedding as well as my banana-yellow going-away suit.  :o)

The party was such fun!  Yes, I’m saving all the decorations for the next family wedding, or baby shower, or birthday, or retirement party, etc.

Senior Year Comes to a Close…. Almost

Here is our first original baby girl…. all growed up and glowing.  She is graduating from homeschool highschool.  It doesn’t get much better than that (except for her mother, who is DONE teaching this one…. one down, three to go! I can smell freedom in 2022!) 

Our church, CCV, put on a grad appreciation night that was a tear-jerker.  Good grief!  What a great bunch of kids who have a solid foundation to build on as they go their separate ways next fall.  One thing I loved was the youth pastor’s encouragement to them to find a church where ever they are at college and SERVE!  Love it!  Don’t just go and coast.  Don’t be a pew warmer.  Reach out and be Jesus to others.  Awesome.

Here is Larisa trying to face the 18 year old fact that she has cheesy parents.  You’d think she would have caught on by now!

Healing through Art

Tsi wiri lif. Tsi im kne her frrito. A lirogro got otobter fm toloba.

No, I didn’t start speaking and writing in Swahili again.  This is my little girl’s journaling page from this week.  She is what us edjamakated people call an emergent writer.  She has been speaking English for 13 months… and is reading at a beginner level.  Spelling and “sounding out” are a bit hard when English is your second language….. and you are EIGHT years old.

It reads: “This is where I live.  This is where I’m going here forever. A little girl got adopted from Colombia.”

First person.  Third person.  It doesn’t matter….. there are no mistakes in your daily journal.  Nothing gets corrected.  It’s where you share your heart and practice your art. 

It warms my heart that she is so open about her life and her understanding of her circumstances.  AND she’s really talented at drawing maps with coastlines.  This also warms my mama-heart because my eldest daughter has also seen the value in using art to reach kids where they are…. who might not have a voice about their circumstances without the avenue of crayons and felt pens and colored pencils.  Art Therapy.  I didn’t even know it existed a year or two ago.  This Fall I’m sending my daughter off to study to be an art therapist.  Amazing to me how God puts the pieces of the puzzle together for each kid right when they need it.

English 101

Since the addition of the Colombian princess to our happy family, the English language has been under much scrutiny in my mind.  Our little girl, who only spoke Spanish when we met her, is now only speaking English.  I remember the adoption agency telling us that at four months she would be speaking English.  I hoped and dreamed that would be true for each of the 120 days leading up to the four-month mark. 

My eldest daughter and I had some grasp of mangled Spanish when we headed to Colombia, and with the addition of Google Translate (that speaks aloud for you!) we did communicate fairly effectively, I thought.  A year after the fact, I now believe that there was a lot of smiling and nodding going on without much comprehension.  But we survived those early days!  Whew!  What made me sad was that Nora’s daddy couldn’t talk to her at all.  My sweet husband simply spoke louder…. as if that would help the translation somehow.  My mother also was a bit uncomfortable being left with the care of a little girl and a big language barrier.  The sooner the four-month switch occurred, the better!

At three months, three weeks and three days, I was getting exasperated with the translation between our little Colombiana and the rest of the family.  It didn’t seem to me like she was understanding English.  She wasn’t using that many words in her new language.  What I didn’t realize was that her little brain was storing English words.  In little filing cabinets… that could be referred to later.  After four months.

Then four months ended.  And POOF!  She spoke English.  Spanish was gone.  English had arrived… the switch in her brain took place ON CUE at four months and she has not looked back.  I don’t think she even realized what happened.  It was as if the Spanish filing cabinets were closed and locked.  The English filing cabinets were opened and readily available for use.  Unbelievable how God made young brains to absorb language.  Unbelievable!

As she continues to experiment with the English language, I have had to think through a lot of her sentences, words and syntax…. to try to discover WHY we say things like we do.  It is confusing.  Tonight she told me, “You don’t have to fed the dogs.  I did.”  ‘Fed’ is past tense.  ‘I did’ is past tense. I can see how it seems right… sort of. 

One time I asked Nora to close the back door.  She stood still, eyes roving the room as her little brain tried to grasp…. something….  Finally she held onto her shirt and said, “I think this is clothes. How do you clothes a door?”  Made perfect sense to me.

And the -ed ending to words is so confusing.  Go…. goed.   I saw the bird…. I sawed the bird yesterday.  Eat… eated.  Run…. runned.  Sat… satted.  Drive… drived.  “Well, -ed is usually how you add past tense….. but not this time, Honey.”  Witnessing the transition has been a blessing and an awe-inspiring adventure!  Adoption stretches you in ways you never expected.  Ever.  And I love it!

Beachcombers R Us

We spent last week at Monterey, California and God blessed us with unbelievable weather for April on the coast!  Sunny and gorgeous!  My friend, Connie, got our whole family hooked on searching for sea glass…. I’m not quite sure why it is so addicting.  Possibly because it is FREE and the colors of glass are so amazing.  We found this little cove, after much climbing and crawling over large rocks, where the waves were bringing new pieces of glass with each crash and roll.  After my entire tennis shoe went under the water, in pursuit of a huge green treasure, even I joined the freezing barefoot ranks and took the plunge.  Usually I prefer to view the water, not feel the water.

The majority of our discoveries were green and brown….. 7-Up and beer bottles in past lives.  But we did find some rare gems in PINK!, red, yellow, white and royal blue.  My 15-year-old son saw a shining royal blue bottle in a thrift store and asked if we could buy it and throw it in the ocean…. for our next visit in three months!  GREAT idea!

What do we do with the sea litter, you ask?  There are mini jars at the beach house that have sorted-by-color sea glass…. so I added my finds to that happy color display.  For homeschooling we count this as math…. sorting.  :o)  It could also be categorized as history, science and social studies.  Whatever we call it, it was the BEST kind of schooling, in my humble opinion.  The rest of the family brought home their glass pieces …. I’m not sure why.  Possibly because they were FREE and the colors of glass are so amazing!

And no, we didn’t color coordinate our clothes with the ocean… it simply worked out that way.  It was a matchy-matchy sort of day all the way around.

Tuckered Out with a capital T.O.

April is not typically an unusually busy month for me, but THIS April wins.  Yes, I have a few things going on right now…. a few things on the go… a few things happening…. and blogging, sadly, gets pushed to the back burner on the stove of life.  Not that I don’t think of quirky little things that I would love to blog, just for the sake of being little and quirky.  Frankly,  (that always seemed like an unusually funny adverb to me… I mean, really.  Frank?  Me?  BAH!) tidbits of life that I find unusually hilarious are ALWAYS running through my mind… but computer time and brain functioning time have to coincide for blogging productivity.  Tonight is borderline.  It’s only 9:37 pm but I am beyond 9:37 pm tired.  My body is on East Coast time with no logical reason why.  Maybe it’s because I’ve been going non-stop for about 9 days.  Seriously… non-stop.  Was that logical?

We are in Monterey, California at the moment and just finished feeding my son’s cycling team who are all here racing at the Sea Otter Classic.  And as if cued by the music, the sea otters came and played in the water outside the beach house while the young lads ate dinner here.  Truly poetic.  Like another vacation to California a few years back, I neglected to bring the little black cord to upload all the stupendous photos I’m taking.  So no photo-journaling this trip. Sorry.

My sweet, hard-working, cute husband was not able to drive out with us due to his flying schedule.  He is flying in tonight.  (Mothers in the reading audience already understand my tired state.) For those who are not mothers, let me simply say that planning a vacation, taking four kids on a road trip along with my parents, feeding 23 folks not in your own kitchen…. AND finding five minutes of personal time is all a bit overwhelming.  Not so much that I am overwhelmed… just truly tuckered out.  My bed is calling my name this minute.

The race in the morning is at 7 am.  Yes, I usually don’t see 7 am.  That also translates to a departure time of 5:30 am.  I truly haven’t seen 5:30 in months, with the exception of two days ago when I awoke to start this crazy road trip.  Thankfully, we have three drivers in the family (minus the main driver who is flying over).  THAT saved my bacon on the 13-hour tour from AZ to CA.  I was so concerned about my shoulders freezing tight in the zombie driving position that I let my 15-year-old son drive on I-5 in California.  See!?  I was seriously worried about my state of health to let that happen.  I did, however, sleep like a baby both nights since arriving.  Tomorrow I plan to nap.  It will be divine.

A special shout out to my high school friend, Connie.  She knows what it’s for.  And that’s all that matters!  At this very moment I am wearing a sterling bracelet Connie gave me several years ago that reads, “A true friend reaches for your hand and touches your heart.”  It’s so true.  So not only am I tuckered out, I am thankful.  For friendship, family, love and my Jesus.  That is all.  Goodnight.