Starfish Dreams

Is winter done yet?

We are all healthy – hooray!  That's the good news. We've had sickness going around, but we're all doing better. We are tired of the cold, cold weather. Even 35 degrees would be nice, but we have been seeing temps of 2-10 degrees at night and 20+ degrees for highs. Brr!

We have had some GREAT snow though – wow! The kids have had a great time snowboarding down a little hill close to us and 3 of the kids have actually done “real” skiing/snowboarding up in the mountains with their school classes. And – we finally met the normal average for snowpack – yeah! Only five more years of good snowpack until the drought is over (ha!)

The baby is getting less fussy - hooray!  Her sleep is not a lot improved, but she is no longer crying every waking moment.   In fact, she is smiling more - enough that we can sometimes even capture a smile or two on camera.  She laughed for the first time just a couple of weeks ago.  At 7 months, she is delayed, but not as delayed as our daughter, E - she was 11 months old when she laughed for the first time!  (For those of you who may not know or remember, she has hydranencephaly, meaning she is missing most of her brain.)

Some sewing fun

I have done some sewing for the girls – I found a cute “twirly skirt” pattern on another blog and used her simple guidelines to make a couple of darling Valentine's Day skirts for the younger girls.

On Thursday, K decided not to go skiing or snowboarding, and class was canceled for her, so she stayed home and sewed with me. Her little friend, A, came over and the two of them worked on making skirts for themselves. I should have been a little more selective in which materials I let them pick, because they chose fabric that frayed easily and then the second layer was just too gauzy for them to easily work with. Oops. Well, we all learned. ;)  And honestly, they are DELIGHTED with them - Mom just notices a little more.

A birthday!

R is now 7! She had her birthday on January 19. She is such a dolly – we just LOVE having her in our family. She chose waffles with raspberries and whipped cream for her birthday breakfast. Then, she had dinosaur chicken nuggets for lunch and homemade pizza, root beer floats and cupcakes for dinner. For gifts, she got several new puzzles (she LOVES doing them and is really quite good at it), some new clothes, chips, gum (a HUGE pack from Costco) and a case of Sprite. She has the cutest grin ever, with her missing teeth. It's a race to see if she'll have new front teeth before the side ones fall out! They are loose, but the first little nubbies of her big teeth are starting to come through. I just adore that girl. She is doing well in school, overall. Math is a BREEZE for her. Reading is harder but coming right along. She is always well-behaved and never (and I do mean never) a behavioral problem there. (Or at home, really, although we still see an occasional tantrum and some great pouting.) She has a new haircut, too, that she is very fond of. She's a real sweetheart and blessing to our family.

Here's that puzzle, all done!

Blowing out the candle on the cupcake

Quickie

Not just moving, but

$1,000 later . . .

Christmas and no melt-downs

Christmas morning

Our Christmas Eve menu

Our Christmas letter

A is for Africa, adoption, and attorneys (many of them this year)

B is for being blamed for B's bad behavior (as if his choices were our fault!), baba's (as in no more for the 3 yo), Bella (the kitten born in June), blogs (the good, the bad and the ugly – here's the good one - no names on this one, the bad is the paid one I quit and the ugly is shut down 'cause I  was stupid and used real names, which was then used to hurt us), bus (what dh takes to work now), baptism

C is for Charity, camping, canning, chickens, covenants (what keeps us moving forward when heck is raging around us) and Christ (who strengthens us far beyond our natural abilities)

D is for debt (which we are almost completely out of), dating up a storm (which ds-18 has been doing), and drought (again!)

E is for eternity (how long it feels like we've been fighting for the girls in Africa, how long we're willing to fight – and how long we'll be a family), England (where A is still on his LDS mission), and Ebony (the bunny)

F is for Faith, forgiveness (a lot harder for “big things” than I thought), food storage (LOTS of it!), fussiness (lots of that too, in the new baby) and friends (thank goodness we have so many!)

G is for graduating early (M will do that in the spring with his Associate's degree), garden (a big one) and gardeners (dh and I took the Master Gardener class together)

H is for Hope, hydranencephaly (the new baby's diagnosis), hottest summer on record (no air conditioning!), Hyundai (the new little car that Holly gets to drive), Hawaii (where K went with her BFF)

I is for ice cream (homemade!),

J is for junior high, judge, jury and jerks (the folks who don't look at the whole picture and decide to act as judge, jury and executioners without even meeting us)

K is for kisses and kittens (5 of them born in June),

L is for lay-offs (from Novell) and LDS church (where dh is now working in the family history department)

M is for Midnight, our mama kitty who is now missing, milk allergies, midwifing and Mt. Dew (sadly, what I live on due to lack of sleep!)

N is for Novell no more, Never a dull moment and nshima (the staple food of Zambia)

O is for operations – 2 this year (a “release” so ds13  can bend his knees and  a shunt for the newest one) and odometer (the van went past 200,000 and the bus went past 300,000)

P is for politics (that I am still involved in) and Papa Murphy's Pizza (where dd worked from January to September)

Q is for quiet (or the lack thereof)

R is for room mom (third year in a row),

S is for sleep – the definite lack thereof, soccer, shunt, Shadow (our older cat), school (where all the kids are now except for two, ages 3 and  6 months) and sewing (what I do a lot of this time of year)

T is for teeth, (the ones that fell out), totaled (what happened to the little car), thumb (what replaced the babas for the three-year old ), Tweety (The Magpie that joined us for a few weeks and learned to talk), temple (where I try to go every week) and testimonies (stronger than ever),

U is for UVSC (aka UVU), UCAS and unusually difficult (what this year has been, even for us).

V is for vacation – a quick, short one and variety (something our family is never without)

W is for Washington, where we went for a family reunion and wondering “why” all this bad stuff happens to us

X is for xenophobia (fear of aliens – OK, doesn't really apply, but we couldn't think of anything us. If it were going to apply, however, it would be K who had this – she hates anything different.)

Y is for yippee, this year is over! It's also for yahoo (where our email addies are

Z is for Zambia (where we spent 8 weeks and adopted three little girls who are, sadly, still there)

Happy birthday to me

Another 18 year-old!

All I want for Christmas . . . .

Guess how many loaves

Psycho woman

Conversation about moving

Move where?!

We're starting to think about having to live overseas for two years to be able to get visas for our 3 little African daughters. It's a long, ugly story, but basically, the USCIS people here (United States Citizen Immigration Services, a division of the Department of Homeland Security) have decided that we are horrible parents and that they will never approve us. They claim that Moses' actions prove that we are bad parents.  (This would be the son adopted at 12, moved to a residential treatment center at 14, 1 year ago, because of delinquency on his part.)  They absolutely will not budge and will not allow us any appeal, so in addition to talking to another attorney, we are gearing up for a letter-writing campaign and then for the possibility of having to live outside the US for at least two years and maybe longer if they STILL would not issue visas. England is a possibility – but it sure is pricey! Can you imagine what it would cost for our family to live there?!  Guatemala is a possibility, several countries in the far east and much of Africa are possibilities.  Africa would probably win . . . .

It's been one of the most frustrating things we've ever had to deal with. It would be easier to just “cut our losses” and hope that we would see the girls again in the Millenium, but that doesn't feel right. However, one of the problems is that there is just no guarantee that after even MORE time, effort, and money that we would be successful in getting them home. There hasn't been a whole lot of inspiration once things went south back in the spring  but for the first time in months, I feel much more settled and happy.  There is a part of me (OK, a big part) that hopes we'll be able to work it out so we CAN live in Africa!  We'd help with an orphanage and with a birthing clinic.

Black Friday

Black Friday – what a weird name. :) It was only a few years ago that I even heard it called that, but it in any case, I always join the madness. At 3 in the morning, dh and I both wondered why, LOL. (Actually, I was woken up by the baby before 2 am – ugh. No sleep from about 1:30 am on. It's almost 5 pm and I'm feelin' it now.)

Anyway, we had a plan of attack – dd17 and dd11 decided to come with me, so I got them up at o'dark-thirty (really, it was about 3:15 am), then off we went to Kohl's. Have you noticed the stores are opening earlier and earlier? Last night, CompUSA had a sale from 9 pm to midnight – that's getting a jump on things! Anyway, Kohl's opened at 4 this morning. I went to look for a leather jacket for dh, but the only one I really liked was $350 and not on sale, so I did not get it. I did pick up a nice dragonfly necklace for me, regularly $175, today, $58, then grabbed a couple of other things while dd17 waited in line – we were outta there by 4:30, then off to JoAnn's, my dang favorite store on the planet. There are two places where I love to shop – JoAnn's and the bookstore. Sigh. Anyway, we were there a little before 5 am, if you could believe it. Outside temp was about 22* and we were woefully underprepared. No hats, no gloves – but at least I had a fleece jacket. Luckily, we also had a new (thinnish) comforter in the car from the Thanksgiving Day sale at K-mart, so dd11 and I wrapped ourselves in it while her older sister slept in the car.

We visited with some of the people in line. One lady was down from down from Washington – she said she got 60 bolts of flannel last year and wanted 100 this year. She is in charge of humanitarian projects for her ward and said she went through the 60 bolts relatively quickly. When I was in JoAnn's about 3 weeks ago, I was commenting to the lady that I always talk to there about the Phoenix store calling and asking for them to ship them just a couple of yards of a specific flannel – I thought that was funny. She said that they had the most flannel of any store in the US – something like 1500 bolts. The store manager had been ordering his maximum allottment for weeks.  It was gone within minutes this morning.

Anyway, back to my story. So, we stand there in line – I was like shopper #12 or something (but probably the 30^th one actually in the store – rude people) and we can hear near rioting over in the line at Toys R Us – seriously. Apparently people thought someone was trying to cut in line – at least twice while we were there. I can't imagine there being something I want THAT MUCH, know what I mean?! Anyway, we get to 5:53 and the line is now 100+ people long. They opened the doors early and women started rushing around all of us who had been standing in line for an hour! I never did find out if that lady got her 100 bolts – but I got plenty of really cute stuff. Sewing, here I come! I am excited – Christmas is coming from the sewing machine this year. After I loaded up on flannel, we got in line, while Alina got jewelry-making supplies. She is actually quite good at making very cute things. We were in line probably a good half-hour or so, but were out of the store by 7 am – wow!  It's gotta be a record.

We then went and got breakfast and then went over to Mervyn's. I got dh some new clothes for his new job (not quite as casual as his old job!) They were all in the neighborhood of 60% off – worth getting up for. At a different store in the mall, I picked up Easter dresses at 80% off – nothing like planning ahead. After a stop at Claire's for earring and head bands, we stopped at Wal-Mart on the way home and finally dragged in a little before noon. I was tired after putting in a full day's work, LOL, but dd17said she could have kept going another 5 or 6 hours. Of course, she ended up coming home and sleeping for four hours straight.  Oh to be a teenager. . . .

So – there are our adventures for Black Friday!  We're having snacks tonight and hopefully an early night (and fingers crossed for a full night's sleep from the baby!)

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! Today we celebrate all good gifts that come from God, while we mourn the children we have loved and lost. It's a time of reflection, pondering, praying – and honestly – overindulging at the dinner table. Praise God we have been blessed with the ability to feed our family, that we have enough and to spare.

Here is our Thanksgiving menu:

2 turkeys – one to eat today, one for leftovers!

Stuffing (StoveTop with cranberries – we're not big stuffing fans)

Veggie Tray

Black Olives

Cran/raspberry Jell-O with cream cheese/whipped cream topping

Green bean casserole

Sweet potato souffle

Mashed potatoes (20 pounds worth!)

Homemade rolls

Gravy

Cranberry sauce

Cran/raspberry/pineapple/Sprite punch

Crock-pot chocolate cake

Razzleberry Satin pie

Pumpin pie and whipped cream

Homemade ice cream

Aah – I won't need to eat again for a day or two.

Aah, employment