The boys were asking if we could puh-leeeease go to the beach, since this is a long weekend. I replied, “It’s a holiday weekend; do you have any idea how many people are going to be at the beach?!” One of the guys answered: “Probably like a thousand.” I said, “More like a million.” He shrugged, “Well, I was close.”

Do you ever have that feeling that you want to share some fantastic news, but you’re afraid that if you write it down, something is going to go horribly wrong, and it’ll all fall through? hmm … I s’pose that makes me a pessimist.

At any rate, we found out that our bid for the house we want to buy has been accepted! 🙂 We still need to sign the final contract (hopefully today) and get 1,000 other details worked out. Once all the ducks are in a row, it looks like we’ll be moving in as few as three weeks!!

I’m reminded of the song “Beauty for Ashes” by Crystal Lewis:

“He gives beauty for ashes
Strength for fear
Gladness for mourning
Peace for despair”

Blessing has sprouted from tragedy. Praise God for gladness, peace, beauty and strength!

I talked with the boys about moving to a new house and what all is involved in that process. (Only two of them were around when we moved here, and they were too little to remember.) We talked about packing, getting rid of stuff, prioritizing what to keep vs. what to give (or throw!) away, etc. I was prepared for some backlash about giving away &/or discarding toys and all the cleaning that they’ll have to help do, but what I didn’t expect was how badly they wanted to keep our garden!

The proposed solutions were hysterical. One suggested that we simply wait to move until our crops come in, so that we can take our veggies and fruits with us when we move. Another recommended selling the house to a friend so that we could come pick vegetables whenever we wanted to, because they would [naturally!] let us. A unanimous idea was to sell the house to Nana & Granddad (they don’t really need a new house, right? Ha!) so we can still access the garden. Even stealing the ripened crops under cover of night (*gasp!) was proposed, as was digging up and transplanting everything to our new backyard.

As a general rule, I try to avoid making outright promises to the kids, because I want to be sure that I can follow through, but I did tell them that we absolutely, positively would plant a new garden at our new house … I promise!

That pledge seemed to assuage the complaints … until we were at the grocery store last night. We walked through the produce section, and my oldest sighed and pointed at the large crate of watermelons: “That’s what we would have had in our garden. Now someone else will eat them.”

I have not written a thorough update in a while and figured it was time to post some recent family developments. First of all, the boys are doing pretty well. We’ve enjoyed a couple of fast-paced and sometimes stressful but all-together-awesome weekends of having the five kiddos together. My nephews seem to be as excited about moving here this summer as the other three are about having them in our home!

Without going into a very long story, suffice it to say that overnight visits have been removed from the custody papers. This is tremendous, but it has delayed getting the final revisions signed and filed with the Court. We anticipate that they will be in the clerk’s hands by the end of the week. I cannot register the boys for daycare or school until we have the papers, so please pray for expedited processing.

Also, my mom and her hubby are planning to move here! They’ve talked for years about moving to this part of the state after retirement, but he has just been offered a great job, and they’ve even found a house that they love. Not only that, but we’re looking at some houses in the same neighborhood (same school district as we’re in now) to move, also. What a blessing it would be to live just a few blocks away from Nana & Granddad … bike-riding distance! Please pray for all the dominoes to fall into place … houses to sell, houses to buy and the whole process of relocating.

“Check this out,” my oldest said, jutting out his chin and pointing to his jaw line, “I virtually have a beard already going on.” Sure enough, if you look realllllly close and turn your head just-so and the light hits it perfectly, you can see a tiny bit of peach fuzz.

This, coming from the boy who just the other day confided in me that he has a crush on a girl! Oh. My. Gosh. This shouldn’t surprise me, yet it doesn’t help to prepare me. After all, I had a crush on a boy when I was his age … and just a year later, I was climbing the spindly tree in our backyard (not really a climbing tree, per se, but it worked ok as long as I sat verrrry still and the wind wasn’t blowing too hard) and composed poetry with doodled heart borders about the cute boy from my class who lived across the street. (I had a fairly unobstructed view of his tree house from where I sat perched in my writing branch.)

Why does this scare me, then?

Partly, it’s because I don’t want them to get hurt. I remember the sting of unrequited crushes (reference aforementioned cute boy). Girls can be so catty and mean, and as tough-skinned as my monkey boys may seem sometime, I see the sweet and tender side of them, too, and it pains me to think of some sassy brat mistreating their kindhearted spirits.

Not to mention, I’m not ready to have “the talk.” My parents gave me a new book every few years (I think it was “7-9 Year Olds” and “10-12 Year Olds,” etc.) with crude ink drawings and vague explanations about development. My brother got the boys’ version of the same book. Of course, they always said that they were available to answer questions, and I think my folks did a fine job of informing us of what we needed to know.

However, times have changed! There’s so much information (and misinformation) out there with a simple click of the mouse, and kids have way more access to reference materials than we had back in the day. Honestly, I’m leaning toward buying a nursing school anatomy book from Amazon.com and having a sit-down conversation over the chapter on STDs, complete with color photos. That outta scare the crap out of them, at the very least!

And, what about the Guy Code? Isn’t there some inherent rule about not dating your brother’s ex-girlfriend or not pursuing a girl who your brother likes? Man, Lane has his work cut out for him, b/c there are some conversations that I’m definitely delegating!!

Ok, now that I’ve had my panic attack, I will take a deep breath and think sweet thoughts about my boys who still like to sleep with special toys and blankets, still get excited about freebie do-dads from the grocery store kiddie machine, still occasionally eat boogers (despite my firm admonition!), still argue over who gets to sleep in my room when Daddy is out of town … and not dwell too much on the young men they have yet to become, peach fuzz or not.

The blog site has been down for a while for upgrades, so this is the first chance I’ve had to write in several days.

Sometimes I struggle with giving myself the liberty to really speak my mind here, because I wanted this blog to be uplifting and a source of hope for whoever might be reading it. Back when it was just my diary and no one (ok, maybe 2-3 people) knew it even existed, I vented pretty openly about things in my life that frustrated me. Now that it’s more than just a diary, I’ve filed away some of those posts and tried to focus on writing things that might be meaningful to someone else.

The fact of the matter is, right now, I’m angry. I can’t sugar-coat it, can’t shake it off, can’t pretend like it isn’t there. I’m livid. Maybe it’s high time I admit it and show that I’m human, just like everyone else.

I’m sick and tired of feeling like I have to walk on eggshells around HER. She does not deserve to have this kind of power over me. She is a self-serving, manipulative, professional victim with no one’s interests but her own in mind. The air she breathes is toxic, and she exhales lies. She is the Charlie-horse in my calf … the fleck of mascara in my eye … the thorn in my side.

Hearing her voice on my inbox sends an unpleasant quiver down my spine. I told Lane that if I had an alter ego, her voice would be the trigger to cause me to morph into a super villain. To think that I have to maintain contact with her for the next 14 years … to talk to her, to see her, to have to pray fervently against her caustic influence on the boys’ lives … Argh!!

I’m supposed to love my enemies; pray for them! I do try to pray for her, but it’s so hard to be sincere when she continues to live a life of lies. The “flesh” side of me wants to see her earn her just desserts for the hell she’s put my family through all these years … wants to see her screw up big time and land her butt in the slammer for good. (Even King David asked God to smite his enemies on occasion, did he not?) The “spirit” side of me wants to believe that even she can change … that if she really turns her life over to the God she says she follows, then she’ll quit being stupid.

I understand enough about addictive personalities to know that their behavior is irrational. I also know (when I simmer down long enough to let it sink in) that I have much to learn from this trial, as well. Not that I have any clout whatsoever to compare myself to the apostle Paul, but this is one thorn that doesn’t appear to be dislodging itself from my side anytime in the next decade-plus, so I might as well figure out how to deal with it. *sigh

So, if you’re reading this and I’ve disappointed you by my bald honesty, I’m sorry. I had to get it off my chest, and since punching her in the nose is not a valid option, I had to vent here. Please pray for us – for me – for wisdom, clarity, a gentle spirit and endurance.

Having a best friend – the kind who loves you despite yourself, who will be there for you through thick and thicker, who adds a measure to your sanity (however questionable at times! Ha!) just by being present – I can think of few greater gifts.

The past three days were spent enjoying a girls’ weekend with my best friend. We require very little for our get-aways: books, a movie or two, daiquiris and a cheap but safe hotel are the makings of a perfectly content weekend!

This weekend, we watched the last Lord of the Rings movie, Return of the King. I had never seen it, and one thing that really struck me was the deep friendship b/w Sam and Frodo. They (literally!) went through heights, depths and fire together. They faced strains, encountered challenges at every turn, but friendship prevailed.

When Sam carried Frodo up the side of the volcano, propelled by the urgency of the task and not his own strength, it reminded me of the way I’ve been carried the past several weeks. I have had moments of mental and physical exhaustion, and I’ve not had to walk alone. I am so grateful.