Egyptian Cotton

I have to make a confession. Years ago, when Chris and I got married, for some reason his mom told us to by the best bed sheets we could afford. I have no idea why we were talking about this, and now as I type it, it seems like really wierd advice without the context it was in. She suggested Egyptian cotton. That sounded great until I went to the store to purchase them and saw the price tag. Needless to say, I did not go home with Egyptian cotton sheets. I had the fabulous idea to buy sheets on sale. Mostly I did this during the after Christmas sale when the sheets were 75% off. So we have ended up with various holiday looking flannel sheets. A little kitschy but hey, I probably only spent about $5 per set. Flash forward to this past week, where it has been 90 degrees, and I am loathe to turn the air conditioning on for two reasons, one, because it is still May, and two, all that cold air costs a lot of money. But my hubby and I couldn't stand it any longer on those crazy flannel sheets. We were down to our skivies and still hotter than heck! So I went to the store, and low and behold, those legendary Egyptian cotton sheets were on sale. On sale so much that I could acutally afford them! I scooped them up after I spent much too long deciding on what color I wanted and brought them home. The first morning after we slept on them, Chris looked at me and said "these sheets are awesome!" So a shout out to my mother in law, you were right! They are the best!

Other amazing news, I learned that we are "offically" next on the waiting list for our babies! (I previously thought we were #1, but we weren't, but NOW WE ARE!). We are more than excited and I have to somehow keep myself from obsessively stalking my email address waiting for our referrals to come in! We bought our first items for our new beautiful family members, little bibs that say "Little Sister", and "Little Brother". Now that I have that out of my system, I will wait until we get information on how old they actually are before we purchase anything else for them. Unitl then, we are praying much for our children, and we know that God is with them until we can be as well.

double injuries

So in less than 24 hours, we have had two decent injuries at our house. Last night, Chris caught a softball in center field with his mouth. By default of not having enough players, I was playing catcher and saw him catch (or at least it looked like it from my angle) and then drop the ball. When we ran off the field he had blood all over his face. I don't do well when Chris has injuries. I can take care of other adults and kids who are bleeding, but for some reason, I get the heebie jeebies when I see him bleeding. He had this huge chunk of skin still paritally attached hanging from the inside of his mouth. It was disgusting. Poor guy. I can't even imagine how much that had to hurt. He got some ibuprofen in him and slept it off. Today he is doing better, but then heard a story about how something like this happened to another guy, and it got infected and he didn't know about it, and the infection ate away the guys jaw bone, so now he has cement where his jaw bone should be so they can give him fake teeth. Then he started to panic. After calling around and speaking to several dentists, he probably is okay, but will need to check if he has recent x-rays so they can compare later down the line. Then, this morning, my son wanted to help me load the washing machine, so he hauled his cute, little wood chair over. I am not sure how he did it, but he somehow put one of the legs down on the bottom of his big toe. He started to cry a little that it hurt, but he didn't panic too much until he saw the blood. I carried him upstairs thinking that he probably just scraped around his toenail. Nope, he has a huge cut that runs the whole way down his big toe, and up onto his foot. For a moment I thought that he was going to need stitches because I couldn't see how bad the cut was underneath the blood. It wasn't too deep, just very long. Then my daughter had to come home from school because she threw up in the hallway. I am thinking that it's my turn next. I don't know if I should try and leave the house so I don't get sick from my daughter, or stay because who knows what will happen out there! Maybe all of our incidents will happen at one time, and then we will be scott free for the rest of the summer! If only.

long time, no type

I feel like it has been forever since I typed anything! Our garage sale completely wore me out. I was exhausted from having the garage sale, and then exhausted from cleaning up my house after the garage sale. It is a vicious cycle! So today, to escape from it all, and to put off even further cleaning, I decided to take our first trip to the beach. Yep, the beach, in MN, in MAY! Whoever heard of such a thing? A week and a half ago we had 35 degrees, it was 91 today. Bizarre. However, I won't pass on a gorgeous day in the sand. My daughter is still in school, so she missed out, but I called up a couple of friends and we went with a gaggle of little boys. They had a blast. My son has glowing white skin thanks to his red haired, freckle faced father. I did an awesome job of keeping son screen on him. Not one spot of red, signifying too much sun, not enough SPF. I was sooo proud of myself. Until I realized that in my effort to keep him protected, I sort of forgot about myself. And by the time I felt the pain, and put sunscreen on, it was too late. I am maroon. It is a color that I am pretty sure people are not supposed to be. My daughter told me I was the color of one of her Laura Ingall Wilder books. I am in mucho pain. Big pain, ginormous pain. I dread trying to go to sleep tonight, because inevitably, I end up on my back, and I don't think back sleeping and big, giant sunburn go together. Hopefully this will be my painful lesson learned, and summer will go on without a hitch!

Garage Sale

Had the genius idea to do a garage sale. Spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday getting ready. Got up at 5:30 this morning to haul everything out. Just finished supper at 7:12. Why didn't someone warn me how hard it was? I can barely type this without falling asleep! Love to type more since I haven't blogged in a while, but am just.too.tired. Gotta do it all over again tomorrow!

The global day of prayer is this May 23rd. Our church is doing 24 hours a day from 12:00 am this morning until the 23rd, in prayer. People sign up to pray for an hour and go to the church. I have to admit that I had a bad attitude about it. About trying to take the time each day to pray. So I made myself sign up at 2:00 in the morning every day. I know that I shouldn't have approached it with that attitude. Last night was the first night, and I admit, waking up at 1:50 to go and pray was not something I was thrilled about. Especially since I didn't go to bed until 10:30and I didn't sleep well thinking I would miss my alarm. When I got there, I thought what am I going to do for an hour? But I was amazed at how fast the hour went. I have to admit that I really needed to spend some serious time in prayer. I have been fairly anxiety ridden (okay, a lot anxiety ridden) with our adoption, thinking of the 8 million things that could go wrong with it. The country could close, the children could die, we could lose thousands and thousands of dollars. If there is anything to worry about in adoption, trust me, I have though about it. And it has become a hold on my life. Last night I was able to spend some quality time praying about my fears, and what the future holds pertaining to our children. I really, really needed that. Last Sunday, our pastor made a very good point. Everyone talks about how the Olympics brings the world together. 80 nations participated in the last Olympics. But the Global day of Prayer has people in all countries of the world participating in prayer. Talk about bringing the world together. I am excited to see what happens in the next 10 days. I am excited to see what changes will come about in my family, and church and community. I would love to pray during this time for you if there is anything you need prayer for. You can leave a note in the comments section, and you don't have to be specific if you don't want to be.

God is our refuge and strength. A very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth should change.
Psalm 46: 1-2

And sometimes she likes to clean.....

I have noticed that as I wait, and wait, and wait for a referral (although, technically we have been waiting 11 days since we were "officially" on the list, it feels like much longer since we have been pursuing adoption for months)my blog frequencies have gone up. Mostly, it is to help me keep my sanity by saying what is going on in our lives and putting it out into the great, wide internet world. When I start doing two a day, then we will all need to panic. Anyway, thought I would share a cute story about my son in church on Sunday. In honor of mother's day, they asked some little kids some questions and read off the responses. It went something like this:

My mom is magnificent at: fishing.
Now the thing about fishing in our family is that it is highly genetic. And because I married into it, I don't actually possess the fishing gene. I do like fishing, when they bite. So I mostly read in the boat. But my husband asks me if I will read and hold a fishing rod, because then we have more chances of catching fish. And almost always without fail when I am so involved in my book that I cease to notice what is going on in the boat, I get a bite.

Next statement, Occasionally my mom likes to: clean.
My son got that right. I want to be an uber organized person. I want to float in the Container Store and find all of the just right storage items I might need. But here again, I lack the cleaning gene. Truthfully, I feel better when I wake up in the morning and the kitchen is clean and I don't have to do dishes right away. (We don't own a dishwasher, so staying on top of the dishes is a big priority in our house.) I will never forget when I visited a friend's house when I was just getting to know her. It was by far dirtier, messier, and more unorganized than mine. I cannot describe the feeling of relief I felt when I walked into her house. She didn't apologize about it at all. My kind of girl. So in honor of those days when you just can't get it all together, I will post following picture of my kitchen as of 4:09 this afternoon. Hopefully, it will make you feel better if your kitchen looks like this. And you will know that you are NOT the only one. If it freaks you out and you can't handle it, I am home most days and would love it if you came by to clean! (And yes, that is a "dead" bouquet of lilacs, but they were beautiful, and the best smelling flowers ever!)



Last question: my mom makes great: fish
What can I say. Like father, like son!

snow, cows, and bonfires

So, it did snow here this weekend. Friday night, 12 girlfriends and I got together for a friend's birthday at Applebees. We're all crammed around tables, laughing and having a good time, when someone said "look, it's snowing out". And it was a pretty decent, blowing snow. The kind where I might have gone off in to a corner and sulked. But, when you're surrounded by friends, having a great time, that doesn't happen often enough due to: work, kids, husband, busyness, etc., snow seemed like a pretty small thing. And it melted all away by the next day. Perfect. Saturday, I woke up to breakfast in bed. My family decided I was going to have Mother's Day weekend. They made pancakes and bacon, but due to a shortage of batter, we all had one pancake a piece, and a smidgen of bacon. They were so proud that I was suprised. Then we all had to get ready and rush around to get my daughter to two different birthday parties on the same day. Now, I tried my best to remember when I was a kid, but I never had two birthday parties on the same day. She was ecstatic, and really, what kid wouldn't be? She got to eat pizza and candy and cake all day, and run around wild with kids her age. Sounds like the perfect day for ME. My brother called later that day and said, oh, by the way, I have 30 chickens that are halfway ready to be butchered. Want to come and help? My experience with butchering chickens hasn't always been great. The above said brother used to come into the house with a butchered chicken on each hand, and sometimes, just to be gross, would put one on his head. Yuck. Last year, we bit the bullet and grew organic chickens at a friend's house and then helped with the butchering. I don't know if you have thought much about where your meat comes from, but I can tell you that I have to have some time between when I butcher a chicken and then eat it. My kids thought it was the coolest thing ever. Even my son, who was 2 last year, loved it. So I guess we are gearing up for round two. The other highlight of my weeknd came from above brother's little 2 1/2 year old son who called me on the telephone and told me that he just named his new cow Jessica, after me. How sweet. Sunday was great. Good church service, cheesecake and flowers afterward, and a bonfire that night. My husband's idea of a good bonfire is to save the Christmas tree and then stick the whole thing on to the fire and see how high the flames can go. It has actually been pretty wet here, given the snow, but the flames managed to shoot up into the tree, and essentially kill a bunch of leaves. Both of my kids asked if they could do their marshmallows as we now had a huge tower of fire. Um, not exactly safe, but the tree was so dry it literally burned up in about 3 minutes. So we did marshmallows then, after most of the threat of the flaming Chistmas tree was over. All in all, an eventful, definitely not boring weekend. Hope your's was good!

From the mouth of babes....

It's cold, raining, and all around crappy here. We have a good chance of gettting SNOW in the next couple of days. We had the warmest March in MN in recorded history, 79 degrees in April, and now, possibly snow. I have been drained of all interesting/remarkable/not stupid things to write about. But while pouting, I for some reason started to think of funny things my two kids have said in their short lives, and decided to share those. Hope they make you laugh.

Daughter:
1. when asked at the doctors office what games I play with her, she responded "none. all she does is read." (she was 3)
2. for some reason, squirrels were called Goda. -cause that's close to squirrel
3. picking ear wax out of her ear, "mom! I have peanut butter in my ear!"
4. after my hubby helped clean up my puke when I was sick I told her I had married the best man in the world. she said "Or the best one you could find" (4 years old)
5. Probably my all time favorite (although number 4 is pretty good) "It sure is taking me a long time do die"

Son:
1. t-shirts are "sleeve short shirts" he has one for all of these sports that he doesn't play, and even one that he calls his "Troy" shirt because he pretends to be Troy from high school musical
2. after sitting on the toilet and he no longer was peeing, looked up at me, and with a terrified expression asked "is it broke?"
3. after really pressing us for details on how babies are made, we told him that God gave us a special way to make babies, to which he followed up with "you put us in the oven and then in your stomach?"
4. told me I had "the nicest bibbles" (that would be boobs, it has to be innate)
5. and my son's all time favorite: first I have to set the scene, last interview with the social worker for our adoption, in a tiny office about the size of a closet because he forgot we had an appointment and all of the other offices were taken. My son grabs his penis and yells "this is the biggest my penis has ever been! look how big it is! why is it sticking up? I can't push it back down!" right in front of the social worker, who thankfully didn't hear (he was older) or blissfully chose to ignore him.

Gotta love what kids say!

brussel sprouts

I blogged once before about how it would be in my best interest to lose a couple of pounds. Truthfully, I haven't done such a great job about trying to alter my eating behaviors, and so, I have lost 0 pounds. But I have however, not once been hungry! (Sick that I have to reason with myself, huh?) Anyway, last night the Nelson's had pizza, and in an effort to be healthier, I opted for one slice and brussel sprouts. I happen to be the only person in my world that loves brussel sprouts. Cut them up into fourths, saute with some olive oil, garlic salt and pepper, and toss in a cut up onion- Yum! Seriously, you have to try it. I even put them on my pizza and ate it that way, and I am definitely doing that again. Unfortunately, I ended up eating a total of about 1/2 to 3/4 POUNDS of brussel sprouts (not all on one slice of pizza). Now the upshot is there probably isn't a lot of calories in half a pound of brussel sprouts, so it isn't like I ate 1/2 pound Big Mac, but on the flip side, do you know what half a pound of brussel sprouts does to your system? Oh my word. I really am not trying to be vulgar and gross, but I had to fart so bad and my poor husband just asked me if there was anything he could do. I was close to considering having him jump on my stomach to force some of the air out. Instead, I tossed and turned with stomach cramps all night long. It is now afternoon the next day, and I swear I am still gassy. What if I was on one of those crazy diets where I only ate vegetables? I would probably look super svelte, but no one would be able to come within a 10 foot circumferance of me!

So, for the last 3/4 of a year or so, I have been getting highlights, and slowly turning more blonde as the year passes by. After I left my job to stay home with my kids again, we no longer have the expendable income for me to go to a salon to do this. So I enlisted the help of a friend, who graciously came over with her 3 kids to help me highlight my hair. We had a super fun time, and our kids loved it, my son thinks her children are his "cousins"! Anyway, the hair turned out a little brassier than I was hoping and one side had quite a bit of blonde streaks in it compared to the rest of my head. No problem, there is a whole row of hair dye at our local Target! I got a decent looking light brown which I thought would cover up the blonde quite nicely. Got it home, tossed it on my head and.... bright red! All over! Oh. my. goodness. In an effort not to totally fry my hair, I kept the red overnight, figuring a small break before dyeing again, was better than no break at all. Morning came around, and we headed back to the ginormous row of hair dye. I figured that I had limited options to try and correct the "new me", so I grabbed a color called very imaginatively, Dark Brown. My three year old assured me that he thought it was a good color, and that was good enough for me, so I brought it home. Well, Dark Brown ended up being "Almost Black", plus I had the stains across my forehead, and I had to go the dentist later that night. My husband's jaw literally fell when I walked into his office to hand him the kids so I didn't have to bring them to the dentist with me. I am just going to call it my almost-middle-life-crisis-goth stage! Three rounds of hair dye in less than 24 hours can't be a good thing! Plus, I didn't actually ended up saving any money. With all of the different hair dyes I bought, I could have actually just gone and had it done for almost the same price. So the moral for me in saving money by not professionally highlighting is to stick with one color.

Reflecting

My wonderful hubby took the kids fishing tonight! And I was excited to have some me time. I put on Bridget Jones- The Edge of Reason, and was really enjoying a classic chic movie. Then I got to the part where she is in the jail and all of the women are talking about how they were abused and forced to do drugs. And I had one of those moments of reflection when I least expected it. I actually had tears in my eyes. Now, I know that it is just a movie, but I also know that those things happen to women every day in this world, every day here where I live. And it broke my heart. It made me think, how much do I try and help others and truly make a difference in someone's life? Or do I just go through life, only worried about me, because I can't see anything outside of my own private world? It is so easy to push aside and ignore the things in this world that are horrible. Things that we would rather not ever think about, things that we don't ever want to deal with. I experienced this when I was in Uganda this past year. The poverty there, and what these families went through. We know that it is bad, because we are told that by various factions of our media and government, but I never really realized it until I went there. Someone said to me, you aren't going to make a difference. There is just too much poverty, too much hate, too many people. But yet, everytime we are willing to risk our own comfort and reach out to someone, it makes a difference in that life. What if we reached out more? What would happen if people in this world cared more for others than just themselves? We met an amazing woman who was an orphan. She felt that her life was worthless and fashioned ropes and other items to kill herself. I don't know the reason but she stopped and talked with a Pastor. Their conversation changed her life. She gave him all of her suicide items, and she entered his orphanage. That woman is now grown up, married with 3 beautiful children, and a Pastor herself. What if that Pastor hadn't taken the time to talk to her? What if he had a meeting somewhere else, or his kids had been trying to get his attention and he just felt too overwhelmed at that moment to talk to her? He had no idea what she was going to tell him when she asked to speak to him. And yet, because of his willingness, her life was forever changed. Am I too unwilling to slow down and help when I can? Am I too caught up in my life always running from thing to thing? What missed opportunities has there been in my life because I can't see beyond my front step? I may not be able to change the world, a country, or even my town. But I do want to be a woman who is willing to give of herself to others, even when I feel that it might inconvenience me. I believe that this world is changed by individual people willing to help. They might just be one, but many ones create a movement.