It’s easy to complain. It’s too easy too complain. In fact, it’s downright effortless. Even surrounded by countless blessings, one can find themselves huddled in a corner counting off their inconveniences and missing objects. I was reminded of this tonight.

It started with going to the movie with my daughter. She’s reaching the age where she really wants to do more grown up activities, or at least what she perceives as more grown up. She can’t identify why she wants to go to the mall, just that she wants to go. So today we settled on a movie together. Knowing the boys have clear lines drawn about the types of movies they want to see, and asking her to continually sacrifice her own wants when the topic comes up, I offered to take her to a movie today that she would enjoy. So we went to see The Blind Side.

When I got home I found a few more chores waiting for my attention; dinner, laundry and making a bed to name a few. I found myself putting clothes away and thinking to myself how I’d just gotten done doing something for someone else and how nice it would have been if I could have not had to come home and do more. I dreamed of how nice it would be to just do the things I want to do instead of all the things that need done. And just like that, I was complaining. Complaining, while all around me were signs of success: clothes to launder and put away, money for a movie, the convenience of picking up dinner when it’s too late to make something, having a wonderful family of my own to be responsible for. I wouldn’t change it for anything.

I suppose I was feeling a little backlash from the abrupt timing of leaving for the movie. Cid had been such a trooper helping without being asked around the house. She’d wanted to go out this morning and I told her I had too many chores to do, so she jumped in helping with a few in the hopes that it might speed things along and leave enough time to do something she wanted. I couldn’t turn her down, she’d earned it. I mean, how many 12 year old girls do you know will clean their 7 year old brother’s disastrous room on their own and be happy about it? I was planning on doing a family movie up until about 5 minutes before plans changed and we had to rush out the door to catch the chick flick. I left my projects in midstream which left me somewhat befuddled, but I’m not sorry; it was quality time with a sweet girl who means the world to me. The movie, based on a true story, brought so much back into focus. A 17 year old boy with nowhere to live, from a broken home, a broken life, a broken family. When a private school’s coach sees his potential athletic ability he pushes to get him admitted to the school despite his low scores and lack of files or other meaningful information. One family acts on seeing him alone in the rain one night and they take him in. What starts out as a short term arrangement ends up as a permanent arrangement and addition to the family with every blessing and wonderful thing that comes with it, including scholarships to college and an eventual position in the NFL - literally a life saved. The story really brought to the forefront the realities of stark comparisons for a life with and a life without, as well as the amazing power of love and kindness. A reminder that we all have so much to give, and there are scores of others waiting for us to recognize that, waiting for a needed lift.

So, I stopped for a moment while putting away clothes and making the bed to think on how much I have. To recognize that I was complaining about having to do the basic things that indicate I have my basic needs met. How silly. I took a moment to realize how blessed I am and how good we have it. I only hope it’s the first of many such reflections in the coming year.

I’m still not sure how it happens. It’s like a thief in the night who sneaks in and announces another year has passed. I read once that growing older is like a roll of toilet paper, the older you get the faster it goes. I’m seeing the truth in that silly observation! I’m pretty sure we just did this and yet birthday time found it’s way to me again. I’m just celebrating that while 40 grows ever closer it’s still not here yet!

Yesterday was a great day. Blake took the day off and pampered me with great food, a new mouse for my computer and some wheat to try out my new Wonder Mill grinder. Maybe I’ll even find the energy to try it out this afternoon. Other highlights include my kids letting me sleep in, new earrings from my in-laws, picking my first successful squash from my garden, finding flowers at my door, many fantastic birthday wishes from friends and visits with family on the phone. We also started the day by visiting our newest family addition, Dexter. He’s a tiny little pup that will be ready to come home at the end of January.

The tree is up:

Night treats and time together:

And a special treat of mini golf and a Cardinal’s game with Grandma & Grandpa:

It’s that time again! This year the kids decided to do a Santa’s Village for our annual gingerbread creation. My daughter requested that we do it when her grandma and grandpa were in town so they could do it with us. Here’s how it turned out:

The recipe and other years of gingerbread creations can be found here.

Here’s how it went down this year:

Wednesday afternoon I sat down to work out a pattern for the village. I’d decided to try a Santa’s Workshop, candy shoppe, sled and big Christmas tree for the village. I started with a blank piece of paper and some basic image ideas I scratched out.

Then I moved into creating a pattern and taping it together for testing.

I made the dough on Wednesday night but couldn’t get to it to roll and bake until Thursday. The good news is that it required very little flour for the rolling process. The bad news is that it was really stiff and I had to work it a bit before I cold successfully roll it. Therefore, my *note to self* is to not leave it refrigerated in the future for more than the suggested hour.

Thursday was rolling, cutting and baking:

If working with straight edges is important, you’ll want to take a moment to trim the baked pattern pieces when they’re fresh out of the oven while they’re warm and pliable. I personally like the rounded edges and know they’re all going to be covered with frosting anyway so do all my cutting before baking.

Friday morning I glued the houses together with royal frosting and later that afternoon we went to decorating:

Here’s a few more pictures of the finished results:

It’s always a fun thing to do, but I’m glad it only comes around once a year. I’m ‘gingerbreaded’ out!

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.

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!

The Halloween craze continues to run rampant in our neck of the woods. On our nightly walks we see nearly as many outdoor lights and displays as we do at Christmas. It’s truly a ’spooktacular’ phenomenon. My son tells me all the time that we don’t have enough stuff on our house. But we have more than I ever thought we would. Kids have a way of helping make sure that happens. I thought we were doing pretty well, I mean we have our ghost in the tree:

Some tombstones, a couple pumpkins, a skeleton, a witch’s broom and one of those annoying noise maker coffin boxes:

All are accompanied by a red/orange glow from the colored bulbs in the light fixtures, and I was especially proud that my plug in jack-o-lantern worked with my plug extension twisted into the light socket directly above it. Last year he sat hidden by the door, this year he’s front and center without an extension chord. However, Taylor wasn’t so easily impressed with my engineering feat. Lucky for me, he tends to lighten up when it gets close enough to Halloween to carve and light our pumpkins. *wink*

Halloween got an early start for us this year, the first weekend of the month to be specific. Cidnie decided she wanted to find and color some Halloween coloring pages. So she went to the computer and started printing out pages to color.

Taylor joined in the fun and then we cut them out and hung them on the mirror.

Last week we had fun making some Halloween decorations that Grandma and Grandpa gave the kids for their birthdays. We watched some of the movie The Labyrinth while making the skeleton. I still love that movie.

The month was already filling with Halloween things and then the cookie phantom and boo ghost landed on our door. So last night we made treats with the kids; two kinds of cookies and some chocolate dipped pretzel sticks. I was so happy with the way the cookie cutter cookies turned out that I wanted to share the recipe.

Basic Cookie Cutter Cookies

3/4 C Sugar
1/2 (1 stick) butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 C Flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons pear butter (I put in the pear butter because the mix was too crumbly. You could easily substitute apple sauce for the pear butter. )

My only complaint with this fun activity in past years is the need to make copies of stuff to give with the treats. In the past, I’ve ended up making my own version to print out (I promise to get all those in their many varieties up on my file section soon) and then I give extra copies to the families we share with so they don’t have the headache. But this year, the boo ghost smartened up and came with a website address to go get the information and picture from.

I have two weeks left to figure out costumes. Cidnie wants to be the confessor from the TV show “Legend of the Seeker” and Taylor wants to be Darth Maul.

So far I have Cidnie’s knives:

Looks like the sewing machine will be used for more than humanitarian quilt tops! Hopefully, I’ll find enough success to want to blog it when it’s done.

So that wraps up our Halloween 2009 Part I. In a few weeks I’ll have one full of the pumpkin carving, trunk-or-treats and Halloween night parties. *wipes brow* Is it Thanksgiving yet?

Sweetheart, today you turn twelve. It doesn’t seem possible, and yet I know I’ll feel the same way when you hit sixteen and that will be here before I know it. As a parent you long for your child to reach new milestones all the while wishing against hope that you could keep your precious ones small. You’re growing up before my eyes, but you’ll never outgrow my heart. You see, you are the champion of my heart.

That heart skipped beats before and until your arrival. Oh it tried desperately to achieve regularity and stability, but all was in vain without you. Something inside simply knew it wasn’t complete. I prayed and prayed for that completeness to come. I cried, worried, mourned and despaired over the emptiness only you could fill. For many years I wondered at the future of my heart. For the first time in my life I began to doubt.

They say the brightest rainbows come after the darkest storms. Well dear, your rainbow surpasses description. You are the champion of my heart. You won it over the moment I laid eyes on you, when you were still in your mother’s belly. I felt a tingle in that empty place. The ache in my arms was replaced with such warmth and love the first time I held you, my baby sweet. You were everything I’d hoped; everything I’d dreamed; everything I’d wanted. You still are.

So you see, you can never outgrow my heart for you grew in it. You played a critical role in completing it. You are the champion of my heart.

I can’t resist sharing this photo of Tay a few days ago before his haircut. It seems to fit perfectly with the title of today’s post too!

We had the pleasure of enjoying Grandma and Grandpa’s company last night so we threw in a little early birthday celebration fun. I wish I could put into words how excited my sweet boy gets about things. He was so delighted to see his cake (which was so rushed by mom!!) was in the form of one of his newest video game favorites…PacMan! But when he turned it around and saw the candles that spelled his name and how old he was turning he moved from excited thank yous and jumping to squeals of delight and “You’re the best mom ever!” chants. I love this kid!

Then we let both kids open their birthday presents from Grandma and Grandpa. They scored big time with both, but Tay’s Bakugan was definitely the first prize winner! I should point out to check out his sister’s reaction in the background of the photo, she of course is explaining how much he LOVES these silly toys. *giggle*

This morning he woke up before 7:00 a.m. asking if he could open the rest of his presents. I’m not sure who was more excited, him or his sister. *wink*