An Unexpected Trip

Last Friday morning, my niece's 35 year old husband passed away very suddenly following surgery. Thirty-five. He left behind not only our niece and her 3 daughters, but 5 children from previous marriages. He was a part of a large, blended family and many people are grieving this very sudden loss. Many people's lives will never be the same.
Life is short, people. Love hard.

We left for Wyoming early Tuesday morning, stopping for one night. Wyoming is beautiful. It makes you feel small and I think we all need to feel small once in awhile. It helps keep things in perspective.
We also did some of this... Uncle D and Aunty C's church had a "Big Toys" night for their AWANA kids, so our three youngest had a chance to run off all of the energy they'd stored up traveling that far in 2 days. Here is Lily with her second- cousin E. Monkey ran straight for 2 hours on all of the inflatables, only stopping to eat when we made him!The funeral was held on Thursday. I was so proud of my niece and how she was able to not only remain standing, but support her children and all of her step-children through such a heart-breaking loss. The grief was tough to watch, but her family and his family are circling the wagons, and she will have plenty of help and support in the days ahead. Please pray for them whenever they come to mind.

Friday morning, we spent a couple of hours with family there and then headed back over the Big Horn mountains. It was a beautiful winter wonderland...even for someone who is pretty sick of winter!

We got snowed on for quite some time on our way back over. On our first trip, it had gone from rain to hail to snow to blue, sunny skies in literally five minutes. It was pretty amazing. I think the Big Horns are quickly becoming one of my favorite places in the world.

Minnesota Sealife Visit

Today we spent the morning at Minnesota Sealife(formerly Underwater Adventures). For those of you who have been here before, not a whole lot has changed with the name, except you now go through "backwards" and of course they have you walk through the very expensive gift shop at the end. This picture was taken in one of the tunnels. This is part of the Jellyfish Kingdom. I think Mango and Monkey could've stood there quite happily for a very long time watching the jellyfish swim.

This stingray pond is now at the beginning. It has a couple of underwater viewing windows that the kids enjoyed.

This was at the end of one of the tunnels. We went through twice and this shark was sitting in that same spot both times.

The End of Winter?

It has been a looonnnngggg winter for us in more ways than one. Being I've been such a horrible blogger through it, I decided I'd try to catch you all up. So here we go!

December was a busy month and covered just about every emotion. Our 9 year old great niece lost her very heroic battle with cancer. Random turned 15 and Lily had another surgery.
A very special box from Japan arrived for the kids with the instructions that they had to wait until Christmas to open it! Inside was a gift for each of them from our exchange student Tianyu. Here, the girls model their gifts!

Anyone who lives in Minnesota can tell you that this has been the winter of snow. There was so much of it and it was so heavy that the Metrodome deflated. It looks quite sad whenever we drive by!

January brought a celebration of our great niece's life and a fundraiser for her family. As you can see, the kids had a wonderful time!

February brought Mango's 10th birthday. She is getting so tall, but has retained all of the joy, friendless, and silliness that she came to us with. (Ignore the laundry baskets in the background - they are clean!)

This is Cooper. He doesn't normally sit still. You know that saying about "it would be like herding cats"? Well, this dog does herd cats - especially when they manage to escape outside. The cats do not appreciate it at all, but the humans find in hysterical every single time!

March brought Lily's 13th birthday, so we are now a three teenager household. All prayers are appreciated.

We are hoping March will also bring the end of the snow. We are supposed to have temperatures in the 50's this week. Mango and Monkey spent some time outside this evening building what (we hope) are the last snowmen of the year.

As you know, March also brought news of the horrific earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The morning we woke to the news, we talked with Tianyu on Facebook. She was home alone, riding out the frequent aftershocks, and waiting for her father to return. I wanted so badly to be able to give her a hug and make it better. (Actually what I wanted was to somehow magically just transport her back here.) By the next morning, we had heard from each of our recent students to know that they and their families are okay, but feeling very devastated. Please do not grow weary of praying for these people and their country. It is not just a far-away place, it is a place full of very real and very hurting people.

Too Funny to Not Share

Tonight was crazy hair night at AWANA. The kids all put several different colored gels in their hair, meaning they had to have showers once we got home. Monkey had a very quick bath and came out announcing that he was wearing his long underwear.

With as straight of a face as I could manage, I answered "You sure are, Monkey. You sure are."

Cooper's been "tutored"

Cooper went to the vet today to have his "little boy dog" surgery. All went well and he is happy to be home, but is feeling rather sorry for himself.

He has been given his "cone of shame" to prevent licking and doesn't really like it much at all. Thankfully, Mango has a great deal of empathy for him and decided to join him. I'm sure it helps him feel better. (He looks at her rather funny anyways!)


Another funny story from the day...the vet gave Cooper a certificate of bravery. I handed it to Monkey when we got home and told him the vet said we should put it on the refridgerator. When DH got home about an hour or so later, we told him he had to see the certificate, but when he went to look, it was no where to be found. We finally asked Monkey where he put it, and he walks over to the fridge, opens it and pulls the certificate off one of the shelves! Never a dull moment here!

Happy Day After Thanksgiving!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving full of good food and family. We spent the day at my parents' home where the football games were on, there was a round of Playstation golf, and the younger cousins played for hours.

Today, we are meeting friends for lunch, and are for the most part avoiding the Black Friday rush at the stores (though we have managed to get some GREAT deals through on-line shopping!).

Seely is working hard to wrap up his first semester at college. He'll be done in 2 1/2 weeks and between now and then needs to polish and turn in his 8-10 page research paper, complete an oral presentation on it, put together a portfolio of all of the completed work for that class, and give a 10-20 minute presentation in his health class.

Random is looking forward to his upcoming 14th birthday (which is the day after his dad turns 40, but who's telling?!?!).

Lily has been enjoying the program for 5th and 6th graders at our church on Sunday mornings. She's also going to be in the Christmas dance again this year.

Mango is doing GREAT with her braces. She really enjoyed our trip up to Lake Superior a couple of weeks ago, and loved being down at the shores of the lake tossing in rocks and watching waves as big as she was roll in.

Monkey is very into reading. He gets so excited with each new book and feels so pleased when he is able to read it. He gave us a good scare about 2 1/2 weeks ago when he had a bad asthma attack in the middle of the night, but after several nebs, some steroids, a trip to the ER, and a few days worth of time, he was back to his usual self.

That's about it for our family! We do ask that you continue to pray for our great-niece Malia. She will be having surgery December 1st to have her tumor and kidney removed. This will be followed by some very intense chemotherapy and radiation. They are hoping she will be able to go home for Christmas.

Mango's Journey to Braces - Part???

Yesterday morning, we brought Mango to the orthodontist to have her braces put on. She chose gold brackets, and purple and yellow bands...and surprisingly, they are not as noticable or flashy as it sounds. Her mouth has been a little bit sore, but she is still smiling quite a bit, and was very surprised to get up this morning and realize that her teeth were already noticably straightening.

Our Week

Our new fall schedule is now upon us. We're starting our seventh week of school and all of our activities have now started up. I love fall and have to admit that I am looking forward to "sweatshirt" weather. The only problem is that fall never last very long around here and the icky, white stuff will be flying before we know it! Here's a brief look at our fall so far:

Sunday mornings we attend church together. Last week all of the kids moved up to their new classes. This morning was particularly exciting because about half way through our Sunday School class the fire alarm went off and everyone had to evacuate the building. I do have to say that the church's evacuation plan worked very well, and everyone (even the kids) got out in a quick and orderly fashion. Our pastor stood on a bench outside and delivered his sermon while the fire department checked the building. After about half an hour, we were allowed back inside. I was on nursery "duty" during the second service and got to hang out with some of my favorite little people. Later this evening, we will be back at church for the girls' dance practice and to pick up the boys from a youth event.

On Mondays, Seely has two college classes that take up most of his day. Last Monday evening was the first BSF (Bible Study Fellowship) of the year for Lily, Mango, and I. This year we are studying the book of John.

Tuesday evenings we take Lily to therapy. Many children who suffered through traumatic and neglectful beginnings need help dealing with those issues and the underlying anxiety they leave in their wake. It is becoming more clear to us and her therapist that Lily will likely continue to face some processing and developmental issues into her teen years, and possibly even adulthood. Early neglect and trauma are very damaging to the brain in ways no one expects or understands until you live with someone who has been through it.

Wednesday's, we have a standing lunch "date" with friends we've known for about 11 years. In the evenings, the boys head off to church. Seely leads a group of AWANA Cubbies (3&4 year olds). Random has his 8th grade boys small group. They both attend a youth "hang out" time after those activities are over. Monkey is in his first year of AWANA Sparks. Last Wednesday evening, on his way home from church, he asked Jesus to be his Saviour in the drive-thru of a local coffee shop!

On Thursday evenings, Seely has his youth group small group, and for the next 6 weeks, I am taking a class at church that concentrates on teaching Christians how to effectively help others through difficult times and crisis' in their lives. We're studying human personality, crisis and grief, trauma, and a variety of other topics all from a Christian perspective. It is different than what I thought it would be, but I am still enjoying it.

Fridays are co-op day. Rather than doing our regular school work at home (like we do Monday - Thursday), we join up with several other families at our church for classes. The younger half are doing some lapbooking and learning about great Christian heroes throughout history. I have the older half and we are traipsing our way through the Friendly Chemistry course. After class, we serve the church (who lets us use the building for free) by restocking the little holders on the backs of the chairs in the sanctuary - making sure they have envelopes, attendence and prayer request forms, and that the pencils are there and sharp. When all is in order, anyone available has lunch together. It is a great way to end the school week.

Our Saturdays are like most people's, I suppose - catch up on sleep and housework, run errands, visits to see DH's mom who is in an assisted living facility, youth activities, an occassional dance practice, etc. etc. etc.

It all makes for a busy week, but we do enjoy what we get to do!

Pond Plants

Today, we shopped for plants. Water lettuce, some "parrot feathers" and a water hyacinth now call our little pond "home". We also hooked up the pump and tried out a few different head shapes.

And after quite a bit of splashing around, decided on this one. It makes just the right amount of water noise and still has a fun "play factor" when they stick their fingers in.

This is our view from the deck.

Aren't Digital Cameras Great??? Or Mango's Journey to Braces, Part 1

Over the past few months, when Lily has had issues with her ear post area, we've started taking a digital photograph of it, so that she can easily see exactly what we are talking about. It's important that she learn what the area looks like when it is healthy and when it's not healthy, as someday she will be out on her own and need to make a decision for herself on when to see the doctor.
Today, Mango had some orthodontic spacers put in around a couple of molars, so that they will have room to place some metal bands there in a couple of weeks for her "sutural expander". She was curious about what these blue bands looked like in her mouth, so I offered to take a picture. In typical Mango fashion, she thought it was hysterically funny to do this, and happily gave me permission to post the picture of her mouth on my blog!
You can see a couple of her permanent teeth are coming in well behind her baby teeth. This has happened with every single permanent tooth she has gotten to this point. Her mouth, quite simply, is much too small for her permanent teeth (and those of you who know just how much she can talk can quit laughing about her having a small mouth now!) They will place the expander in about two weeks, and I will have to use a small tool to "expand" her palate every morning for about 6-8 weeks. (This supposedly doesn't hurt. But it doesn't exactly sound very pain free, does it?) Once her mouth has expanded to a more proper size, she will have braces put on the top teeth for a few months to try to pull everything into a better alignment, and to hopefully allow the other permanent teeth to come in in their proper places.
She is a trooper though and did great at the orthodontist today (and they did great with her, which is even more important!).
Maybe we'll have to make this process a blog series!!!!

A Crazy Week and Crazier Day

It was a busy week.
On Tuesday, we celebrated Mango's 8th birthday. We always go out to eat at a restaurant of the birthday child's choice, and Mango chose Space Aliens - a space themed restaurant. The kids all got a few free game tokens, and Seely was even kind enough to give his to the birthday girl! She was given this "lovely" headband to wear and a free birthday sundae.

On Wednesday morning, I was the guest speaker for the group of Japanese students. I spoke about one of my great passions - adoption. Adoption is extremly uncommon in Japan, so they are always very good listeners; and for the second time in a row, I have made a good number of these young people cry simply by sharing our stories and travel videos. It's truly a privilege to be able to talk with them, and to see their hearts so moved.

On Saturday, we headed off to the Mall of America with Sae for some shopping and sight-seeing. And even though it's expensive, we always love to eat at the RainForest Cafe (which Monkey affectionately calls "The Monkey Restaurant" because of the robotic monkeys singing and swinging in the trees).

Yesterday, the girls had their family birthday party with their cousin. The three girls have birthdays within about 2 1/2 weeks of each other, so we have a party together every year. This year, I actually missed their party, because Monkey is having some pretty major asthma trouble and needed to take a trip to urgent care.

And the biggest excitement of this past week is not neccessarily a good one. Lily took off her prosthetic ear on Saturday night, and her post area was grossly infected and draining all sorts of really not lovely "stuff". We cleaned it up (I'll spare you the details), put on her strong, prescription antibiotic ointment, and sent her off to bed. By Sunday morning, the area was not at all improved, and was so red and swollen that the skin had started to cover over her top ear post. We immediately placed a call to her surgeon, who ordered more antibiotics, and we are to see them Tuesday morning for an evaluation. If the skin that's currently over the post does not recede, she will need surgery to re-expose the top post before she will be able to wear her prosthetic again. The surgeon's best guess is a 50/50 chance of needing further surgery or not. Please pray that this will clear up without it.

As this is on the side of her head, we've started taking pictures of what we are seeing, so Lily can actually get a look at it herself, rather than just listen to us talk about it. This picture was taken just this morning. Much of the redness and swelling is gone, but the posts are still draining quite a bit. The bottom post is what the posts are supposed to look like coming through her skin; you can see the top one is covered about half way with skin.

People ask us if it hurts her, but Lily really does not complain very much about it. I think after having several surgeries in the area, that most of the nerves are gone or damaged and she just really feels very little there. They have also found that children who experienced a lot of early neglect simply do not feel and process pain like the rest of us do...and she has an extremely high pain tolerance....which leads us to the next problem. We had her well-check visit this morning with our pediatrician (God bless him, he never freaks out over her ear post infections which are rare enough that most docs never even see one!), and discover that she has an ear infection in her hearing ear. She had told me there was some "popping" in that ear over the weekend, but said there was no pain/discomfort. I had told her to let me know right away if it hurt at all, and I'd get her in to a doctor, and she never said that it hurt. Whether she really didn't feel pain, or whether it just didn't "connect" in her brain, I don't really know. Anyways, her antibiotic was changed to one that will cover both skin and ear infections, and her ENT surgeon will take a look at that too tomorrow when we are there.

We'd certainly appreciate any and all prayers that she will heal up on her own (with God's help, of course) and without any further surgery. We'll keep you posted.

She's Here!

Our exchange student arrived today from Japan. She will be with us for 3 1/2 weeks, attending college classes during the day, and returning home to us at night. Here are a few pictures of our first day together:

Waiting at the airport, in the exact spot Mango and Monkey first met their grandparents, just over three years ago!

Twenty-nine host families begin to gather to welcome this year's students to Minnesota!

Is she ever going to get through customs???

Finally, the first students from the group arrive to smiles and cheering from their waiting host families.Our first picture together:

Mango's Tooth

Mango is not typically what you would call a "tough girl". She is usually very feminine and quite sensitive. But when it comes to loose teeth the girl is one very brave young lady. For the last couple of days, one of her front baby teeth has been sticking out at a bit of an odd angle, even though it wasn't really all that loose. She bumped it while playing tonight, it bled quite a bit, and she decided she wanted it out. She spent quite a bit of time standing in the bathroom working at it, and came out smiling with her tooth still in her mouth, and completely turned sideways. Not sure if that's an improvement from sticking out or not!

Our Week

This past week has been a really long one at our house. Just about everyone in the house, except for me, has gotten sick. Bad winter colds and a houseful of asthmatics just don't mix well.
Monkey's asthma flared up last weekend, which means giving nebs every 4-6 hours around the clock, day after day after day. He later started running a fever and was started on antibiotics. He's feeling better now, but spent much of the week doing this:
On Tuesday, both Random and Seely also started not feeling great. I had to go pick up Seely early from a co-op class he takes, but other than that one day, they have both, so far, seemed to be okay.
Lily started coughing around Wednesday, but managed to stop long enough to help me roll out some cinnamon rolls (that didn't get done until about midnight because I forgot they had to raise 2 hours before baking!)

Wednesday night, DH started getting sick, with the same cough and fever that Monkey had. He's been off of work since then, and even though he's on medicine, he is making a very slow recovery.

Mango has only a slight cough and no fever, so she and I went out for lunch on Saturday, and spent her last Christmas gift card. She purchased some Pixo's, and has been having fun making horse designs. The TV's been on so much this week, with people not feeling well, that even the cat has taken up watching it. (He's watching a MacGyver rerun in the photo.) Ignore the laundry in the background - it's clean, just waiting to be folded!)

And since we've been spending so much time at home, Lily and I are loom knitting a hat, scarf, mitten set for our exchange student who arrives in two weeks. Lily's working on the scarf.

Please say a prayer that everyone will get and stay healthy!

Ah, the joys...

I was in the mood for chocolate this evening, and wondered outloud about having a bowl of Phish Food (Ben and Jerry's chocolate/marshmallow/fudge mix). Lily, Mango, and Monkey immediately started making faces and "oh yuck" noises, thinking I was going to be happily eating a pile of fish flakes. So I made them a deal, that if I ate a big spoonful of "fish food", that they would have to sing Mary Had A Little Lamb while walking in a circle. They waited with much anticipation while I went out to the freezer to get the container, and then groaned when they realized what I was actually going to eat was a big spoonful of yummy chocolate ice cream, and not icky, smelly flakes. Above is a picture of them fulfilling their end of the bet!

Good-bye Salt and Pepper

No, this isn't about bidding farewell to the common spices sitting on your kitchen table. It's about Random's pet gerbils.
Every mom is familiar with how their kids call them...and all kids have a way of saying "Mom", that means "Come right now, I need you." Just after lunch, I heard that type of call from Random. Salt, one of his beloved gerbils, was obviously very, very ill and huddled in the bottom of her cage. We talked for a few moments about what he thought would be the best and kindest thing to do, and he choose to have both of the gerbils put to sleep today. Salt was obviously not going to live much longer, and none of us had the heart to watch her suffer or to put her out of her misery ourselves. Gerbils do not like to live alone and do not accept new cagemates, so we decided that it was kindest for the elderly Pepper to be put to sleep today as well. So it is a bit of a sad day here for Random.

Monkey's Picture

Monkey has worked so hard on this picture this afternoon. This is what he says about it, "Random is on the top of it (on the top bunk), me and Ooh-ooh (the monkey he is holding), and there's you and Dad right there. And a star and moon." Very cute. He is so proud!

Of All the Stupid Things

Last Wednesday night, I managed to tear a ligament at the base of my left thumb. The "how" is so incredibly stupid and unbelievable that I asked the people at the clinic if they wouldn't prefer to hear some exciting story like how I saved all five of my children single-handed, rather than the boring truth - that I was simply pulling up the many blankets on our bed when I felt the "pop" and knew that it probably wasn't good. So I will be splinted for the next four weeks while it heals, and it is already annoying. My kids are now calling me "Hitchhiker".