Follow Me Over to the Bright Side…..

For various reasons, I am giving up on this blog.  It is a searchable blog unlike my other one, so it has made me very nervous to have identifying information about the kids on it when it began to become more popular, so I posted less to make it less popular, which is kind of funny!  Anyway, I miss blogging regularly and have decided to give the public blog thing another go with pseudonyms for my kids.

I’d love if you followed me over at my new site as I’ve had a lot of fun setting it up (and some sleepless nights as I tried to learn programming code!).  Please try not to mention the kids’ actual names in your comments though as I will not be able to publish those comments that do.  Thank you for your understanding!

http://thechaosandtheclutter.com

Gross, Yuck, No Fun

Gracelyn’s lungs are not doing well (they are at 50% lung function at the moment).  The appointment where I got that news was the day before Elijah started throwing up.  I thought “you’ve got to be kidding me!”  But wait!  It doesn’t end there!  Jonah’s birthday party was today and his friend from Wetaskiwin was already on his way to our house by the time Elijah threw up so it was too late to cancel, so today, I had the flu (not throwing up, just horrible headache that I can’t get rid of, stomach ache, achy body, feeling gross), Eliana, Elijah, and Sedaya were all not feeling well, and it was Jonah’s birthday party.  I got through thanks to Mark helping with the party and taking Grace for the day to do something fun with her.  I rented movies for the kids and literally let the TV babysit them while I lay on the couch for part of the day.  Now, Mark has a headache and is starting to feel sick, but Jonah’s friend from Wetaskiwin just got picked up and I am going to finally go put my pyjamas on and go to sleep!

Family Fun

When you have a variety of ages in your house, it is hard to find activities that suit everyone.  Usually, the activities tend to be more for the younger ones and then the older kids are bored.  Activities that are too difficult for the younger ones or that have age or height restrictions mean us having to get someone else to watch the younger ones so we are always on the lookout for things that we can do as a family all together.  We have a restriction that most families don’t, in that the activities have to be indoors because one of our daughters can’t be outside in the Spring, Summer, and Fall.

At Christmas, Auntie Leah and Uncle Jarred had given us a gift certificate for a local indoor amusement centre so on Saturday, we set off to put it to use.  I had gone to the website and knew that the only things to do there were 10-pin bowling, arcade games, and laser tag.  Before we left home, we settled on the bowling.  When we got there, the bowling wasn’t available and so by default, laser tag won out.  We really didn’t think it would fly with Sedaya as the vests are five pounds and initially, she found it too heavy and was complaining.  Once we got in there though, she forgot all about the weight of the vest and she has a blast!  All the kids did!  This was one activity that was perfect for the variety of ages and interests in our family.  All the kids agree on one thing: Laser Tag was awesome!

It’s Been Quiet Around Here…

no, not around my house (!), around this blog.  Sorry for the silence.  I have much to write about, but am in the throws (that isn’t the spelling of the type of “throws” I mean, but I’m too lazy to look it up right now) of things around here, so there is little time to write.  I am sure that I will forget much of what I wanted to say by the time I have time to say it.

I have started attachment therapy with Sedaya.  I know that she has been home for over a year and a half, but I couldn’t do it at the same time as Elijah’s, which only finished around Christmas and then I didn’t want to start it when I knew it would be interrupted by things I couldn’t control or change, so I waited.  I also didn’t realize that she needed it until earlier this year.

So, we are in the thick of it now and it is working.  For those of you who have done attachment therapy before, you know that when I say it is working, I mean that I am living in H-E-L-L right now!!!   I kind of knew going in that giving Sedaya’s personality, chances were that this would be fast and furious, and the furious part is accurate…we’ll have to see about the fast.  I’d love to be done in a month or two, but we’ll have to wait and see.

In the meantime, I am getting through by repeating cliches and scriptures to myself:

“It has to get worse before it gets better.”

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

“One day at a time.”

“This too shall pass.”

“The sun will come out tomorrow.”

“She loves me, she loves me not!”

“No pain, no gain!”

“No guts, no glory.”

“Fear not, for I am with you.”

“Nothing worth doing is ever easy.”

“Tomorrow’s a new day.”

“God does not call the qualified.  He qualifies the called.”

“I will survive!”

Wordless Wednesday

Thoughts About the Death of an “Enemy”

The other night while we were watching “The Apprentice”, the program was interrupted with breaking news.  Immediately, I tensed up, expecting the news to be a major natural disaster such as the Earthquake in Haiti, the tsunami in Asia, or Hurricane Katrina and when I heard the news that Osama Bin Laden had been killed, I felt relief at first because it was good news.  Quickly though, that turned to a feeling of being unsettled.  How was it that I was categorizing a death, the death of a relatively young man, as good news?

For a short while, I watched as Americans gathered outside the White House to cheer and celebrate, but I wasn’t able to watch it for long.  Again, I found it unsettling.  I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like for a nation to celebrate my death.  I understood the reasoning behind the celebration, the feeling of victory over terrorism, revenge almost a decade after a tragedy that forever changed America, but it still somehow seemed wrong.  I couldn’t put my finger on why I felt so yuck about the jubilation I was seeing until yesterday when I read the following quote on a friend’s Facebook status:

‎”I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Those words spoken so many years ago by a man who understood the devastation that hatred leaves in its wake, by a man who is one of my heros, sum up exactly how I feel about this latest news.  I am saddened by what Osama Bin Laden did in his lifetime, but I do not rejoice in his death.  I mourn for those who lost loved ones on 9/11 or in other terrorist attacks orchestrated by him, but I mourn also for his family.  I cannot put myself in the shoes of his victims.  If I were one of them, there is a strong chance I might feel differently, but I have flashbacks of the images I saw on 9/11…images of people in other countries dancing in the streets, rejoicing at the deaths of Americans, images that at the time were more disturbing to me than when I watched in horror as the Twin towers fell.  When you peel back the layer of excuses (this man was an enemy of democracy, of America, of nations everywhere…this man causes suffering and death…this man “deserved” to die), you are left with images of people in the streets of a nation halfway from his world celebrating a death and it disturbs me and draws parallels to that day almost ten years ago.  I feel unsettled, uneasy.  There is one more quote I read on another friend’s Facebook status yesterday that summed this all up for me:

‎”There is only one death that ever brought peace, and we celebrated that a week ago.”

Easter Highlights

egg decorating

huge outdoor egg hunt…almost 300 hidden eggs!

family

(wordpress is being difficult today as far as uploading pics. so if you have access to our other family blog, head on over there to see some really adorable Easter pics)

All in all, the weather could not have been more perfect, the food was fabulous, the company was great, the kids had an awesome time, and of course the best part of all, the resurrection!

Yarn Braids

The beginning…my friend Denise offered not only to teach me how to do yarn braids on Sedaya, but to do them with me.  Sedaya was so excited and counted down the days until the big day when she and I would head over to Denise’s and do her hair.  Here are the first two braids.

Many, many hours later…we were starting to see progress and had figured out a bit of a system that worked.  Thankfully, Sedaya was fabulous and SAT the whole time (she never sits at home – she normally won’t even sit to watch TV or a movie!) and she didn’t complain which made the day so much easier.  Denise and I got to visit a lot and laugh (especially at the end when delirium had kicked in from exhaustion)!

Sedaya decided she wanted to go to sleep, so we lay her on the couch and kept braiding…at that point, we’d invested so much time and effort, we weren’t about to give up!

A very tired princess!  (it was much easier for us to braid once she was sleeping though!)

FINISHED AT LAST!

*** that is a grand total of 85 yarn braids!

Titanic Party

Josiah is obsessed with Titanic (obsession takes on a whole new meaning when you have a child with Asperger’s!).  I have long learned that it is best to just go with his current obsession of choice rather than fight it.  April 14 is the anniversary of the day the Titanic sank and he wrote it on the calendar and wanted to know how we were going to commemorate that day.  I told him that we would do something, but as it got closer, I realized that that day I had a hair appointment and that night was Mark and my date night, so I sat Josiah down and let him know that we would have to do something on Friday instead.  In a very serious voice, he told me that Friday would work because the 15th is the anniversary of the day that Titanic first touched down on the ocean floor!!!

On the night the Titanic sank, they were serving a 7 course dinner in the first class dining room, so I decided to do the same.  It may have been a bit on the ambitious side as I forgot to calculate that a 7 course plate service meal for 11 people would mean 77 dishes, so we were mixing and matching plastic plates with our fancy ones!

Here is the menu I made and cooked up for the evening:

Mark made a playlist that included string quartet music (including the some the orchestra was playing while the ship sank) and songs from the Titanic movie, which we listened to during dinner and danced to.  I taught the kids which fork to use for which course and they sipped ginger ale out of wine glasses and loved that their napkins were folded into fans!  It was a very fun night!!!

(sorry Mandi about the eyes closed thing, but this is the only dinner picture I have of the “grown-ups table”!)

Wordless Wednesday