I really don’t need any signs to tell me my kids are growing, but as I reviewed some pictures this morning I couldn’t help but see the obvious signs staring back at me.

Barbie dolls used to be a favorite thing.

Now it’s all about making quilts.

Plastic tool toys used to hold his interest for hours.

Now we’ve graduated to Legos and Erector sets.

It’s amazing to watch. Cidnie has always had such of love for all things family oriented and always has. She’s always loved to play pretend house and other life skills role play games, and she still does. Her life is continually focused on what’s yet to come. She’s already talking about getting married and being a mom after she moves to Idaho for college (she’s not sure if she dares have roommates who may play tricks on her but her back up plan is to live with Grandma.) I write it that way because it’s exactly the way she thinks of it: describing the step of marriage and family first, yet adding at the end that it will be after college. It’s so Cid. I have to pinch myself that my little forward thinking girl is twelve when she talks so matter of fact like about her future. She wants to grow up so fast. I can’t see anything but a blur from her arrival to now and can’t imagine why she thinks it needs to go any faster! But she is the very embodiment of social butterfly and time is very different in her world. Social elements are her life, her focus, her love. It’s why her memory for these details are unparalleled. She never ceases to amaze me.

Then there’s my little Taylor. This kid has an engineer’s mind. His fascination with how things work and putting things together at this young age astound me. I love seeing him move freely between following instructions for building to designing his own creations. He can entertain himself for hours on end all while rotating through his toys thoroughly and without any help or direction from me. I’ve never seen the likes of it. He always shows such earnest for learning, like it’s water in the desert. He struggles with his desire for perfection and control, and yet I know it’s because he can see so clearly in his mind what he wants something to look like or how something is supposed to be. His little tongue works 24×7 when he’s in concentration mode, which is almost constantly! I used to think he’d wear his lower mouth out but it seems to have adjusted to the constant movement of that tongue. At seven he still comes up out of the blue to give me a hug and tell me how much he loves me.

Today is the last day of November. Life has changed so much over the years, but just for today I’m pausing to remember the blessings of my kids. November is a month of gratitude for me. Thanksgiving of course gives reason to ponder on our many blessings, and the National Adoption Awareness Month that accompanies November gives me even more reason. How grateful I am for my children, for their amazing birth parent families, for the privilege of being called “Mom.” I know how fast the time goes. I’m painfully aware of how much time has already slipped through my fingers with them, but nothing can take away my memories or the love we share. Time may pass, but love only grows.

Yummy Pork Salad

I love when things come together, especially after a day of the opposite happening. So I was tickled pink when last night I could pull of a truly successful dinner that was literally last minute. I’m not kidding about last and minute. It was 6:40, I’d just finished a project on the computer and no dinner started. I pulled out paper plates and threw the following together:

Baby spring salad mix
Baby spinach salad
Grated chedder cheese
Sliced mushrooms
Cooked, shredded pork
Cranberries
Fat free sun dried tomato dressing

It was splendid! It’s also very easy to customize with your favorite toppings or dressings. The key was already having the ingredients, especially the meat. Which brings me to the real purpose for this post.

Busy moms don’t have time to dilly dally in the kitchen or slave over Martha Stewart style dinners. This busy mom is always multitasking and thus needs all the help and tricks she can find to keep things moving smoothly. As a result, I’m a vigil simplifier. If there’s a way something can be simplified, I’ll find it. One of my favorite cooking and “mom chef” simplifications is using my slow cooker. Now before you go thinking I’ve put an entire recipe of multiple ingredients together for a scrumptious dinner, remember I’m a vigil simplifier and multitasker. We’re talking throw in a frozen roast before checking morning e-mail here. One of my favorites is pork loin roast with a small can of green chilies. After several hours it will start to break apart. This is the point when you can easily start shredding and pulling it apart with two forks. The meat can easily stretch through multiple meals all week long for my family of four. It seems that there’s always leftovers for quick lunches too. Here’s a few of my family’s favorite ways to make meals with the cooked meat:

Pork Tacos with corn salsa
BBQ pulled pork sandwiches
Cheesy tomato sauce with egg noodles and pork
Pork salad
Pork enchiladas
Pork and avocado sandwiches

All this comes from one pork roast thrown in a slow cooker with a small can of green chilies. There’s no prep time, no babysitting or slaving over a stove. Yet the results yield several “instant” meals later just by mixing and matching ingredients. A little BBQ sauce and you have a whole new venue, same with spaghetti sauce, and of course you can always leave it totally plain like in the tacos or on a salad.

Other things I’ve tried with success is throwing in a seasoning packet with a roast, like Lipton’s onion soup mix, etc. For a Sunday roast I’ll take the time to cut some veggies to cook with the roast, but during the week it’s a simple soup mix or more often a can of chilies, etc. The point is that once the meat is cooked you can stretch it so many ways with success and less stress.

About this time of year interest is renewed in lessons and information on Jesus Christ for Christmas events, lessons, etc. It’s about this time that I start getting more requests for my slide show I did several years ago on the Savior, and I always run into snags with music copyrights. It’s hard for people who download the slide show to understand why I can’t just send them the music files I used. So I decided this year I’d find a way to fix that.

Thanks to an amazing new iMac and its accompanying software, I’m happy to share a new slide show and a revised copy of the original that includes music that can be shared legally. Both shows run around 20 minutes and combine artwork, scripture and music in a powerful presentation on Christ. I have a new Slide Show Page with all the details and various download formats for anyone interested.

I’m excited to have found some solutions and hope it can help others enjoy the Spirit of the season.

So my hubby spent a great deal of time talking to me last night about things he sees me doing. I wish I could borrow his glasses! *snort*

It reminded me of the way he was talking to me 4 years ago about blogging and how much I would enjoy it and how sure he was I’d be good at it. I was really resistant, not sure why just couldn’t quite wrap my brain around it I guess. In my defense, this was just before the big blogging boom. To his credit, he was absolutely right.

The cool thing is that some of what he said struck a chord with me. I’m a talent nomad. I do so many things, dabble in so many, enjoy so many that it’s impossible for me to focus on just one thing and I love to share. In the past I’ve not been sure that’s such a good thing, but since I began blogging I’m seeing it a new light and I’m loving it. So the more I think on it I think he might be on to something, and he is a smart guy who has proven he’s been right about things like this before.

In short, he says he sees me making money with my sharing things online from my personality to my knowledge and talents. As it’s already stuff I’m doing anyway and he’s there to help support and direct me I think I’ll take the plunge. I’ve got nothing to lose and a lot to gain according to him so I guess we’ll see what comes of it.

I’m wondering why it’s so easy to pigeon hole yourself into an “I can’t do that” box? Why we so easily discredit ourselves before trying something because clearly we don’t have enough credentials or whatever the magic requirement is to do something? My entire focus of my blog has been the motto of making my life a masterpiece and sharing what I learn along the way. It might be time to take it up a notch.

This morning I sat down at my computer a little later than normal. Sometimes I dread Monday mornings because I know I have an entire weekend of computer catch-up; not that it’s all a bad thing I actually enjoy the reminder that the weekend was family time, free time away from the contraption. But I digress. The point is that this morning I found myself a little reflective on the whole process. I updated my Facebook status with a line about how it could already be Monday again which summed up pretty simply how I was feeling.

I caught up on a few news headlines, friends and family updates and my inbox just in time for lunch. Now I’m sitting back here contemplating the same feeling about the way time slips through fingers like sand, how you can’t contain it. I found myself trying to pinpoint thoughts to record today and ended up wondering what I’d written in the past. I went to the first November when I began blogging and this entry struck me like a gong; it described exactly what I needed to hear today. THIS is the reason and wisdom to me in recording your thoughts, you never know what you can learn from yourself if you take the time to record those thoughts and experiences. Today I am the beneficiary of my own advice three years ago:

Staying on top of it all: This is a game I play with myself. I know better, but I still catch myself thinking this way.

So here’s today’s tip: Such control is an illusion.

There is no such thing as staying on top of it all. First of all, the “all” changes constantly, especially during the holidays. Nothing will ever be done forever. Sure, we may get a few projects finished and we may even have moments when we feel a breath of relief over how quiet the moment is with multiple things caught up…but they are just that, moments. Because the ball is always turning, and we’re not super heroes (darn!), that can stay in one place on the moving sphere all the time, we will find ourselves in various positions of the moving beast. Some days I’m on top, other days I’m being chased in front, still others I find myself being flattened underneath and a few choice days I’m on the backside rolling with the momentum in harmony. Of course, then I realize I’m just getting ready to go through a few more positions again! LOL The beauty of this realization is that balance can be achieved simply by recognizing it.

I’m actually writing this for me because here I sit, kicking myself for being four families behind on business cards for our adoption website, thinking about getting those Christmas cards started, wishing I’d hopped in the shower FIRST thing this morning,….oh and bills, I was suppose to remember bills last week???

So I take a deep breath. I write down the things I know to be true, and a short list of things that, if I don’t get done today, will make me feel squashed under the ball tomorrow. I look around and give myself credit for the things that are done, and I pause for a just a moment longer while looking at that pretty Christmas Tree in the living room. It reminds me to slow down and enjoy the process of creating the beauty. I always get caught up in the finish line and consequently I can put insane expectations on myself and find myself missing the enjoyment of doing something for the goal of having it done.

And this alone makes me slow down and reflect on what’s been done. My breathing slows, my anxiety disappears and I smile remembering the fun holiday time I’ve already spent with family - a beautiful Thanksgiving, night time Christmas light displays, putting up some decorations and going to a movie together. I begin to look forward to some other fun things like decorating Gingerbread houses with my kids and watching old Christmas Cartoons together. December will quickly fill up with extra events, parties, programs, etc. If I find myself feeling like I’m running just to check something off the list, then it’s time for me to reduce the list.

So put on some Christmas tunes while you decorate. Listen to them while you blog (when your TV isn’t set to Tom & Jerry or some other great kid show that is), drink in the beauty of the season. And if you need an extra nudge here’s one: Today is only the 28th of November, it’s not even December yet!! *wink* Ahhhhh, that’s a beautiful thing!

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November is already here. I can’t believe it. Here’s the second installment of Halloween fun at our house.

We carved some pumpkins on Monday night and a few more on Saturday:

I need to point out that this year Taylor was completely independent on drawing on and cutting out his pumpkin faces. He still requested help gutting the pumpkin as that totally grosses this kid out! But he sure had fun doing the rest himself. In fact, the next day I found he’d cut two eyes into another pumpkin all by himself. Not surprising, he’d done nothing more than cut the eyes out! He also made me put a big eye face on the mini pumpkin I put in the big mean pumpkin’s mouth. I wanted to put “x’s” on it but he said that was too mean and this little pumpkin had to show that it was going to escape. He’s got heart, that kid.

Taylor had a class party on Friday. His sister’s class are their reading buddies and they came down to decorate pumpkins with them. He opted to be a pirate for the school day because it was easier to put on and met the guidelines with no masks or makeup. He’s still a wickedly cute little pirate says I.

And here’s how the costumes turned out. This one is Cidnie’s, I created the pattern and used $1.50/yd clearance fabric at Walmart. I was pretty happy with the $6.00 investment for her entire costume!

Tay was most patient getting his face painted. It went better and faster than I’d hoped! Although I sure had a hard time finding him in the dark without seeing that platinum blond hair and pale skin!!

Mother Confessor meets Darth Maul:

We had a fun time Halloween night visiting with friends and neighbors while eating and handing out candy. The kids had a ball playing with friends and collecting bags full of treats. All in all, a most successful Halloween!