Hair Fun

My friend Kim came over today and we had a great time having some girly fun. I got to cut and color her hair and she has agreed to let me post her before and after.

Before: Kim and her youngest son Judah

After: One foxy lady;)

Now, I really have an urge to chop off some serious length and do this cut. (LOVE the versatility of it) My hair is at mid back as of late and I can't stand it any longer. I tend to grow it out and hack it off every year and a half. Problem is Hubby LOVES my long hair (UGH!!) He has given his blessing if I really want to cut my hair off but how can I do so when I KNOW that on the inside he'll be crying. hmmmm I will really have to weigh this stuff out.

Rather Aimless

So there hasn't been much meat to my posts lately. I've kept them light and mostly aimless. Mostly because that's the water I've been treading in lately. Really if you knew me better you'd know that when I am not in a funk aimless isn't really something I do. But, honestly, I've been in a real funk for over a month now. No real excuse. Just where I am at the moment.

I had a good talk with a precious friend who, God bless her, can always be counted on to tell me like it is. Thank you for that (you know who you are!)

I am feeling better today. Like a ship appearing out of the fog I can sense myself coming back. My thought life and prayer life returning to center after taking a detour somewhere down a road that doesn't need to be travelled.

I have grown weary of doing good. The Lord warned me against it a while ago. I didn't quite understand what He was telling me. Alas, I have landed myself at the bottom of my own "doing good" barrel. I find myself empty and tired. You know that "will worship" I was grappling with while reading that book Celebration of Discipline a while back. Well, I think I'm smack dab in the middle of an object lesson.

Gappy

It's offical. My girl Rienne has finally lost her two front teeth. She looks so cute!

She lost this one first about a week ago:
She let my yank this one tonight as it was dangling by a thread and hanging to one side the whole week driving us all nuts. every time she spoke all we could do was stare at it.

She told me it felt weird to touch her tongue to her gums. Eeew it gives me the chills just thinking about it.

Birthday Girl

Allyse is 4 today! I love her so much! Here she is. My precious child.

Music Binge

I'm up later than I should be. I'm binging on music. I am just sitting with my lap top listening to ALL kinds of stuff. You name it. Running the gammut from Blue Grass to Electronica and back again.

I'm belting it out too. Kids and hubby, thankfully, are fast asleep. Actually I am singing quite loud. I know, how rude of me. But again, praise God, they don't seem to hear me. I started out letting just a few lyrics slip out and gradually worked my up. Now it's on! I've got the sweet cover of How's The World Treating You by Alison Krauss and James Taylor going. After that is anyone's guess. Aretha maybe. Or Sinatra.

It's so strange, my relationship to music. My dad is a businessman by day, overgrown high school rock star guitarist by night (with even better musical skills and personal hygiene) I have grown up drenched in his music. I have always loved music. All kinds. There are seasons of my life when all I did was music. I knew that I could never marry my high school boyfriend because he simply didn't love music the way I did. He wouldn't even let me play my favorite songs on repeat if necessary. He just didn't love it the way I did. Dustin isn't musically inclined per se BUT he enjoys me enjoying it. He gets down with me. He enters whatever crazy place I go willingly. He lets me hit repeat 5 times. He car dances with me and screams all the lyrics with me and the girls. What a man!!! I love that guy!! He sings a mean This Little Light Of Mine complete with Elvis like girations (oh goodness, he just may make me delete that!)

There is a huge emotional connection between music and me. I can't explain it. I hear a song and immediately I am transported back in time to the place when I first discovered it. I can feel the emotions all over again. Some good, some bad, all of them real. Some things, no matter how painful, I don't want to forget. Thay are lessons I've learned. Time has a way of making my memory blurry and taking the edge off some of my past but as soon as I hear an old song. BAM. I remember.

Want some examples? Okay,well you are getting some anyway ;)

The Who: Pinball Wizard- I think I was nursing at my mother's breast when I first heard this song. Certainly my father played it EVERY night. I grew up knowing that I would have to wait until dad finished the entire song before I was to approach him to ask him for ANYTHING. Food... anything. (side note: some friends of ours have the most adorable daughter. She's adopted from Ethiopia and has a small vocabulary. She was walking around saying something they couldn't quite figure out until they saw the commercial for Alltel and realized she was saying "WIZARD!" hehe isn't that the funniest!? I saw the word and it made me think of her. .....snapping back from my detour now...)

The Police: Don't Stand So Close To Me; Okay I might have been around 8 or so. Sting looked alot like my dad so that made him an instant favorite. I would sneak into the TV room at my grandma's house to watch VH1 and see my man dancing around in his graduation gown.

The Guess Who: American Woman (No to any creepy teen who thinks Lenny Kravits is the originator of that one!!) Hmm I have to think. It's possible I was nearing Jr. High here. Dad gave me a cassette and told me to listen to them and I did. An entire weekend with headphones over my ears with my dad's approval was cool with me.

( I am skipping huge chunks of my personal music timeline for your sake people. I could GO on and on and on!)

MXPX: Chick Magnet- This is high school youth group written all over it. Oh the fun of driving in the church van on the way to a house boat retreat singing this over and over again thus ensuring this recollection.

Alison Krauss: Oh Atlanta - I fell in love with this song on the road trip to ATL for the Olympics with my dad and Jan. Oh ,now that was a trip. I'll have to blog about that one day.

Okay I think that's all I have for tonight........ OOOoooo. I just thought of something. I have a song I just heard the other day. It's from the movie Beetlejuice (well, that's where I first heard it anyway) You know the words, sing with me: "come mister tally man, tally me bananas! Daylight come and me wan go home." I just heard that.... like, two days ago flipping through the stations. I had fogotten all about that song. It's so fun!! I caught the tail end of it and and squealed for joy thinking it would be a blast to sing with the kids (they need this kind of musical exposure, hehe) but as it was soon over and I was so sad. I just got it from iTunes!! Tomorrow the girls shall dance with me to it. I may have to make video of that for you.

Delight me by sharing some of your life's musicography with me. PLEASE!! It'll be fun ;) Post a comment here or write a full post at your blog and then comment here to direct us over.

Tingles

There are many exciting things happening around me these days. My friend Tara is traveling to ET to go get her girls as I type. Julie got her dossier certified today and is finished with her paper chase. Kim has filed for a court date for custody of her daughter. I am soooooooooo happy for these families! I have the jittery, excitement caused tingles happening deep in my gut. Oh the blissful vicarious living I plan to do in the coming months.

I do have some juicy little tid bits of info to whisper into your ear. Ya ready? Well, it seems that our agency is hoping to give out TEN referrals per month. Yup, can you believe that!? That's almost double what they have been currently able to do. It has been my constant prayer that our referral would come in June (Okay, I just divulged the deepest longing of my heart in telling you that) I have been pleading and praying for God's favor to be bestowed upon us and for a quick referral. Our paper chase took SOOOO long. NINE agonizing months to be exact. I am praying to be blessed with a referral on the short end of the 5-7 month time frame we've been given. If AWAA can hold true to it's goal June could be very likely for us since they tend to give more boy referrals than girls and last I checked we were somewhere near the 20th in line for a boy. So it's not necessarily likely but it doesn't feel so far fetched anymore. Let's just say that it's no longer impossible.

We are ever so aware of the fact that court closures loom on the horizon of our referral timeline. It would be agonizing for us to have to wait through October for a court date. Of course, I continually remind myself God's timing is perfect and that no one WANTS to be caught in the closures but alas every year someone's gotta do it, and that we are no special case. Yet, all that comes with a DEEP hope/prayer that it's not going to be us this year.

The whole AWAA YG is a buzz with guesses as to when the next batch of referral is going to be handed down. We were told it was going to be a big one. ((( SMILE))) When the news hits I'll be sure to keep you informed.

SOOO FUNNY!!

Oh my goodness I am laughing SO hard over here!! I read this post over at Stuff Christian Like (Thanks Julie for turning me on to this blog!) and it brought back DEEPLY repressed memories from Jr. High and our summer camp trip. Memories I wish I could have forgotten, but since I can't I suppose I will share them with you all. If my cousin Christine happens to be reading maybe she can help fill in the gaps where my memory has become fuzzy (after all I have worked long and hard to try to forget this trip!)

Ok dates and location are a little fuzzy because after all when you are in Jr. High, like, not much matters except, like, what boys you have a crush on at camp! I had originally thought I was in 8th grade but upon deeper reflection it must be 6th or 7th. We were heading out to camp in Michigan or Wisconsin possibly Missouri not really sure. Upon arriving at this camp we were situated in bunkhouses that were rough. Some better than others. Ours was middle of the road. We didn't have to use the outhouses (PTL) but there were bugs a plenty. Our activities included horseback riding, leather working and, you guessed it folks- what every Jr. High student NEEDS for a genuine spiritual awakening experience- Unsupervised White Water Rafting!

What did Jen opt for? You know it! I chose the "shoot me down a river and hope I live through it package". My cousin did too. They stuck helmets on us and loaded us into a raft with 4 other girls with ZERO rafting experience, helped us shove off and viola! Summer camp excursions at their best!

My cousin Christine and I had done a little canoeing before. So we at least had a general idea of how to row. It was up to us, we figured, to lead this raft to safety. (Oh Lord what was Your thought process there?!) Every girl rowed to her own beat and we basically travelled down the river doing circles. If you're going to try to imagine the scene you must do it as I do. I imagine the scene from the safety of the river bank. I imagine staring at my middle school self. I like to include the sound of our screaming voices in nearing then distancing fashion as would happen with the spinning round and round of the raft while it goes swooping over the rocks with water blasting every rafter in the face causing them to cough and spit up all while managing to maintain the screechiest most ear piercing Jr. High-girl-screams ever. You might also imagine me trying to stand up and convince (read that scream at) the girl next to me to stop back paddling because she was the LEAD perpetrator of said spinning. UGH! It was wretched. All I remember about that event was that for the first time in my life I seriously considered murder. What I wouldn't give to toss that ONE girl overboard!

When we finally reached the calm waters we got out to kiss the ground only to discover the waters were filled with leeches. Some of us had visitors!! The kind that like to stick around for a while. I didn't really believe leeches were real. I HAD seen them in the Rambo movie but never in real life before. All I knew about them was what info I gleaned from that fantastically informative movie. I thought that they had to be burned off or something horrific like that. (Wait did Rambo burn them of or cut them off with that HUGE knife? I can't remember now but back in the day the image was still freshly burned into my brain and I was terrified!)

Yes we did make it out alive. I nearly fainted from the emotional, spiritual and physical exhaustion. I am sure there were some really wonderful events that weekend but all I can remember is the rafting. No spiritual progress was made for me after that. All I wanted to do was get home and FAST. For the first time in a long time I yearned to be with my "mommy". I hadn't thought of the significance of the fact that I am able to raft today! I am so proud of myself. To think that I went rafting in Costa Rica and didn't even have a panic attack is monumental. I did, however, mention a little bit of the story to Dustin. When the guide asked if any of us had rafting experience he flashed his usual devilish look at me and nudged me to say yes. I quickly followed that up with my "Shut up or DIE" look. That got him in line right fast ;)

The post over at Stuff Christians Like was such a timely reminder as the kids of Palm Valley Church will be going off for their retreat soon. I am sure it won't be quite the same for them as it was for me. At least I am praying so. If you are a parent of a child and you plan to send your child off this summer I have one question for you: Have you done your homework?

A Few Things

Two families from our agency made it through court today. They are now legally parents of their children! They expect to travel in two weeks. It must be incredibly exciting for the Harbaughs and the Coens! Congrats guys!

The pink wigs are freakin' me out! The girls are wearing them non stop over here. Ally looks like that girl from that CREEPY Disney show the Doodlebops! Yikes;) She even asked me if she could wear it to church this Sunday. I told her yes (through gritted teeth) I am a big believe in self expression for kids no matter how silly they might look (or how embarrassed i might feel). So any of you PV-ers out there will definitely be able to spot my kid this week.

The name Amare is really ranking high in the poll. Dustin and I are SO ABSOLUTELY NOT sports fans (weird seeing as Dustin played hockey all his life and is super athletic but won't watch a sports game on TV unless it's a championship or something.) My friend told me that Amare is the name of a basketball player on the Suns team. She also said, Amare is totally better than (fill in blank with some other player I've never even heard of before)" I said, "oh. that must be why people are voting for the name. It's exotic and I didn't expect it to be so popular."(blowing off the fact that I had no clue who the other player was she was speaking of) Dustin still prefers the name Bridon. Now my mom and sister are on board with that name as well. Still no input from the TEXANS!!! (hint hint guys!)

Super Girly

My in-laws -the fun loving texans that they are- sent the girls some super fun toys for the kids to play with just for the girly joy of it! Here the girls are sporting their new hair do's. Left to right Rienne, Allyse, Aurora.

Thank you Grandma and Grandpa!!

Grand Total!!

I went to bed at 7 p.m. last night. I was TIRED! We finished up the garage sale. Julie posted all the details over at her blog along with the grand total so head over there to learn about it!

A Letter

Read this letter from the Transition Home. It's an interview of a 10 year old girl. It makes me both smile and feel the nervous tingle in my stomach. I am glad she feels well taken care of and love to hear she loves her adoptive family already. The tingle comes from the nerves I felt when I had to get on a plane and fly home to visit my dad all by myself when I was not much older than her. If a little trip had my stomach in knots I am sure this large life transition for her will be monumental. I am praying for her dear little heart and her family as a whole!