Those Crazy vans!!

We never let an opportunity to dress up pass us by. Especially when it involves amusing accessories. So when our niece announced that she would be having a luau themed graduation party we were psyched. The invitation clearly stated to get grass skirts and coconut bikinis ready... and we did. Before leaving the house we decided to snap a few pics. They turned out somewhat amusing. First I had to take a pic of our darling ham all decked out in the too small Hawaiian outfit we bought for him three years ago on our trip to the Big Island. CJ tried to take some pics of me and the boy but, well, my husband likes the candid shots. So we gave the camera to Paul, resulting in us looking a bit like giants. "Isn't there a self-timer on this thing?"
"Yeah, it's right here." Once we figured out how to use the timer we just needed to line up the shot and coordinate our pose. Ahhh... perfect!

Everyone but us...

My darling husband is threatening to take the computer away if I don't stop stalking blogs and adoption forums in some vain effort to make myself feel better. (Which is obviously not working - I am a miserable mess!) I watch as family after family hears news of EP approvals and travel calls while we hear.... nothing.... The silence is KILLING ME!! I swear I must check my phone 18 million times a day. It was vibrating today after lunch and my heart stopped... until I saw it was the dentist's office reminding me of my upcoming cleaning. Sigh. It doesn't help that we are in week two of exams at school and I have finished my checklists, cleaned out my desk and just sit sit sit sit sit all day long with nothing to think about but my son, halfway around the world, waiting to come home. It also doesn't help that every five minutes someone asks me about if we've heard anything. Believe me, the WORLD will know when we get that call.

The Floor: Before and After

Recently CJ replaced the ugly yellow carpet in our living room/dining room with beautiful hardwood floors. It was a pretty big project and thankfully he had the help of my uncle's nail gun and a noisy new compressor to help. Paul did his share of supervising from a safe distance equipped with his safety goggles and ear protection. Sadly because my pics were destroyed in the virus, the only before picture I have is one I posted a while back on the blog. But it gives you the general idea. The carpet was in better shape than the stuff we had upstairs (which was immediately removed!) but it was still old, stained and smelly. So it had to go. CJ had wanted to replace it as one of the first house projects, but other things took priority. Needless to say he was overjoyed with the results.

World's Worst Blogger

Okay, so maybe that is an exaggeration, but I certainly haven’t been keeping up with my blog and for that I apologize. Here are my excuses: About a month ago we contracted a nasty virus that wiped out our hard drive and left me without a computer for nearly two weeks. When it was returned, stripped down to nothing, I was so depressed over the loss of my pictures and documents that I sulked about it. For a long time. In the meantime, school has been coming to a screeching halt and with it the stress of my impending unemployment. I have enjoyed a wonderful year as a long term substitute, but sadly the teacher whose place I temporarily filled decided to come back to work. And currently there are no prospects for September. So there was some more sulking. A lot. But I have resolved to keep plugging away in my attempt to become a permanent teacher once again and came to the conclusion that this bump in the road is a sign that I need to spend time with my boys. BoyS. Yes, there is still only one mini Van in the house and we have no idea when the second will arrive. Our social worker is being very tight lipped, claiming that the agency in Korea is not giving her any information. The reason I find that hard to believe is because I regularly stalk the adoption message board and several blogs of families on the same timeline (adopting through the same Korean agency) and they all seem to know WAY more than we do. In a nutshell – two batches of EPs (emigration permission: what the kiddos need to travel to the US) were submitted in May. The first batch was made up of referrals from November, the second contained referrals from December. We received our referral in late November, so I figure if the other boy did not make it into the first batch; he would surely be in the second. I learned last night that all of the families in batch one received their travel calls. So we wait with baited breath. I asked point blank if he was in batch two and was told that the Korean agency does not release that information to families. No, apparently they just don’t release it to us. Otherwise how the (bleep) does every other waiting family seem to know the status of their child’s EP?!?! Honestly. It’s okay really because we haven’t done a thing to get his room ready other than buy the can of paint. Hubby says he refuses to move the furniture and paint until we get the call, which he does not believe will be anytime soon. Meanwhile my mother is willing it to happen more than I have ever seen her will anything. And the woman has power. Give her a handful of rosaries and she will guarantee sunshine. No lie. My suggestion to the Korean government is that they should probably get that kid on a plane ASAP.

Fashion Maven

With independent dressing sometimes comes hilarious mistakes. Occasionally I capture it on film, and my boy never fails to add an appropriate pose. Here are two of my favorites.Um, I think you may have your shirt inside out. His response to this was to turn it around backward (after making the monster face of course). Are you telling me that a too small red helicopter shirt does not match orange striped pants and blue socks? What of it?

A celebration of cake

Friday morning. It's going to be a hot one. I drop Paul off at daycare around 8:30. He's an instant celebrity, greeted with much enthusiasm by his friends. Being four apparently creates quite a bit of magnetism. Or, it could just be the cupcakes he brought in the day before (thanks grandma). Chocolate does that to a person. I manage to sneak in a kiss between his many hugs and head off to the grocery store. The party is in one day and there is much left to do. Faithful readers (and anyone who has spoken to me in the last six months) know that I am completely obsessed with making the drum cake. I collect the last minute ingredients and head home.

By 11:00 the temperature is headed straight for 80. Not the best day to have the oven on for several hours. The design requires two cake mixes in three separate pans and a giant sugar cookie. All of this bake ware does not fit in the oven at the same time. My kitchen reaches new levels of heat. Ugh. Then there is the matter of my impulsive behavior and lack of ability to follow directions. Honestly. I plan for months and when it comes time to execute I muck it up with my impatience. The deep 8" round cake comes out beautifully, but the two 9" cakes do not. Later I asked my mom what I did wrong and she said, "I told you last week to use waxed paper on the bottom!" Oops. She did. I forgot. When I tip the cakes out, the bottoms stay in. I spend a long time trying to "glue" them back together with frosting. It's not pretty, but I refuse to turn the oven back on and cook another cake. The frosting itself is a sad story too. Despite the heat, my butter takes forever to soften, and the frosting requires extraordinary strength to mix (not to mention the mess of confectioners sugar spewed everywhere) and doesn't spread as easily as I had hoped. At 4:00 I call CJ and tell him to pick the boy up from daycare as I am knee deep in blue frosting. He comes in all excited to play outside. Mommy can't. She's working on your drum cake. I stop at 6:00 to go out to dinner with an almost finished cake in the fridge.

Saturday. We are supposed to head over to mom's to dye Easter eggs. I send the boys over first and promise I will meet up with them shortly. I just have to finish touching up the frosting. This time I remember to take the butter out early and the frosting forms without strenuous mixing. I need to touch up the blue and then make yellow for the cymbal. Oops. Instead of splitting the batch of frosting, I dye the whole thing blue. Seeing as there is no way to get from blue to yellow, I have to make ANOTHER batch of frosting. Good thing I bought extra confectioners sugar. It is nearly 11:00 by the time I finish. CJ makes a handful of comments to Paul along the lines of, "You know this is not about you anymore, right son? It's about mommy." So what? So I like the challenge and the positive feedback. It wouldn't have taken nearly as long if I could actually follow directions. Perhaps one day I will learn to stop and think things through. In the meantime, here it is (drum roll please... hahaha), birthday cake 2010:

My thoughts at this point: John will not be home in time for his first birthday in June. Do I make him a cake in honor of the day, or wait until he comes home? Can the van family survive this madness twice a year???

For the love of music???

Earlier this week I took Paul to a high school wind ensemble concert. It was not his first classical music concert - we have been to several performances of the local symphony (they try to incorporate kid-friendly music into their shows) but it left me wondering if I should keep bringing him to shows. Paul LOVES drums and has been known to sit transfixed when a piece is heavy on the rhythm. The problem is that if a piece is dark or slow or really long, he loses interest. And patience. And starts to fidget. A lot. Now I know he is only four (almost) and has a limited attention span, but I have seen other kids his age sit through performances without having to climb all over everything and bang their feet against the seat. Each time we go to a concert I have mixed emotions. I become painfully embarrassed when he acts out and wonder why I bother bringing him. But then there are moments when he is sitting completely still and completely in awe of the music. Take Thursday night's concert for example. He turned to me after one of the songs and said, "THAT WAS FANTASTIC!" So we will keep trying. Tomorrow we are headed to see a high school musical and I hope Paul will enjoy it (and behave). Last year we tried and he spent a good part of the second act in the hallway. Someone suggested exposing him to the music first. We had a wonderful jam session to the songs of Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat yesterday after school and plan to hold one again this afternoon. Hope it helps.