It's the final countdown! (dumdadumdum...dadadumdadum!)

I have been absolutely terrible about taking photos these days, so here a few from times gone by.

It makes me want to break out in song.



Like, 'Sunrise, Sunset...'





Or 'Cats in the Cradle...'





But I might get teary.

What happened? Where did it go? Could it be that the elderly gentleman in the grocery store was actually right when he said I would blink and it would be gone?

I LOVE this one.

Anna and her Billy Ray inspired mullet.

This is the last blog written from Idaho, land of late May snow showers, before we head out to Michigan, land of extreme humidity and mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds. I don't even know which box to look in to find the shorts and tanks and other summer clothing, but I suppose it hardly matters since last summer I was considerably smaller than I am this year. Drat stress. Drat too much eating out. Drat Cheezits. Who knew the three combined would be a recipe for pudge? See that photo up there of a brand spankin new, we're talking hours old, Gianni? He has pudge. And it's delectable. Mine? Not so much. I even took up jogging for a few weeks. I swear to heaven it made me fatter.

In other news (because there is other things on my mind beside my weight - occasionally) I have also been forbidden from the camera by The Middler. My poor sprout. My punkin head. She is our hmmm, shall I say, coordination challenged youngster? I have never seen a child or adult or small animal or large animal, for that matter, bounce off walls and furniture as much as she. I think it could be a matter of not being able to do two things at once: talk and walk. And Lordy knows she certainly isn't going to give up talking. Anyway, we went hiking this past week in the mountains. I rephrase - we started to go hiking this past week in the mountains, but we didn't get too far before we returned a bloody mess. I know, I know, I am the Queen of Under supervision when it comes to letting my kids be kids and take their lumps and learn and get dirty and climb trees, etc, but to be honest I would never have endorsed what Cora and Anna were attempting to do when calamity occurred. And yes, I should have noticed, but until you've pushed a Moose in a jogging stroller up an incredibly steep mountainside, don't judge. It takes focus. Dedication. Bulging forearms and calves that moo. The first inkling I got that something had gone terribly wrong behind me was the screaming from Cora. Mike goes running back down the trail while I sprint with the stroller which was in danger of becoming Nellie's wheelchair in my favorite episode of Little House. It's Cora who's screaming and it's not your typical everyday holler for help either, it's a terrified out of her mind scream. They had decided to cross a tree bridge (a dead tree connecting one side of a 8 foot high cavern) which apparently didn't even seem a trifle bit unattainable for someone who can barely walk a straight line without tripping. So, yes, she fell and when her daddy managed to shove her back up to the trail, she was a bloody, bruised pulp of a girl. So, long story short, she's fine (and extremely lucky) but her face looks quite questionable when out in public. A huge goose-egg in the middle of her head, two black eyes, lots of bruises, and lots of red scrapes. All that to explain that she won't let me near a camera for fear I will document The Episode Of Which We Do Not Speak.

It will take us several days to get to Michigan, several days of Uhaulin it with three rambunctious and bored trolls and one severely paranoid canine. I am so excited to get there. My family and friends are so excited for us to get there. We decided to delay this whole job change thing as lonnnnnng as possible basically for their sakes: it took us 6 months of couch hopping to finally leave and as a result it's going to take at least that long for anyone to miss us. You are welcome. They've been planning the goodbyes for weeks. Sometimes they practice. But we just come back. We're like bad pennies. Or cats. Or your drunk uncle who shows up for Christmas. Just sigh and let us in.

I don't know how much I'll be able to blog about the new gig as house parents, or the new kiddos (due to laws and privacy, etc) but I will be back when I can, whenever I need to vent or tell a story or write love sonnets to my paper towels. So don't abandon me, even if I do emotionally pull guilt trips on ya when ya don't comment often enough.

That was a hint.

photos to go with

update

It's official and the bags are packed! Check out our new employment/digs here:

http://www.baptistchildrenshome.org/

After you're done checking that out, come back and show me some love and support. I am feeling needy. Here's how you leave a comment and tell me you still love me:

scroll down to the end of a post...

...see where it says "comments?"

...lately it says "0 comments?"

...see how insecure and unloved that makes me?

...click on it...

...write me something, anything...

...poetry would be swell...

...tell me you're still reading so I don't feel like a dork writing in my diary...

...obey the word verification thingy...

...you can do it...

...sign in...

...creating a google account is easy - it's just your email and password...no one else will see that part...or you can use the 'open url...'which I do believe is simply your email which everyone can see...but who cares, cuz like, 4 people read this anyway...

...now, publish...

...and imagine my happy smile.

If you want to make me postively giddy with excitement, go to the right of the blog and click on to be a kool-aid drinker, er, I mean, follower. If you don't, I pretty much have terrible photos of all of you just about, so I can make my own with your names on them. Just sayin'.

correction

Missouri is abbreviated MO.
Michigan is MI.

Phooey.

Thanks, Pamela.

Michigan

Several years of daydreaming and whining have finally come to fruition with the Williams' girls: they got to ride an airplane. The countdown started when the tickets were bought approximately 5 weeks ago. Gianni however got stuck on the phrase, 'I'm going on a big airplane in two weeks!' so that was his answer (and will continue to be) for the past, present, and future of air travel. As anyone knows, getting there is half the fun. Unless you're the parents and then getting there is a headache of logistics, luggage, directions, time, tickets, hunger, expense, pockets stuffed with items bribery, and the occasional wet underpants. The take-off was everything their fevered imaginations had concocted and we did well until we all remembered Anna has a tendency to get car sick. 'Nuff said. Moving on.


We were very pleasantly surprised to learn that Michigan (which I may or may not had to learn both to spell correctly and to find on a map) is quite loverly. Everyone I told our destination to only had this to say about it,

'It's flat.'

People there however have this to say about Idaho,

'Isn't that the potato place? Are there any cities there?'

So, I guess I learned we all need to get out more.

I also may or may not have offended the locals when I snapped a photo of not one, but two, tractors getting gas at the Quicki-Mart. Sorry about that, locals, I couldn't help but find it funny.

Gianni discovered a fierce loathing of vans. Odd, since we in fact own a said minivan. But you never heard so much howling in your life as every time we switched vehicles. 'I don't like the green van! I wanna get out!' Since his future involves a lot of vans packed full of a lot of kids, we are hoping to get past this mental block of rectangular shaped automobiles without full-on head-shrinking help. I'm thinking tapes played at night on a continuous loop encouraging him to love the vans, embrace the vans, find joy in the vans...

The humidity and the mosquitoes are something for an Western-er to reckon with. Suddenly my husband looked like Harrison Ford in The Mosquito Coast and I couldn't help but worry that he was going to go bonkers and our tale would take a tragic turn for the worst. Then I remembered Harrison Ford is a looker and so it couldn't be all bad. Which made me think of River Phoenix. Which in turn made me think of Corey Haim, whose death I am still not completely over. Please wait here while I go grab some Cheezits for comforting.

Our entire week was a bit of an audition and we felt like we were in a fish bowl. A parenting fish bowl. One where the guppies were alternating between various degrees of naughtiness. There was a lot of saying the right things while simultaneously shooting laser beams out of our eyeballs and whispering threats to shorten their life spans considerably. In spite of that, we enjoyed our trip immensely and look forward to moving forward in this adventure that is life.

We got to spend time with all the group home kids. At first I was terrified to think of being Mom to teenage boys whose feet are bigger than my legs, but after meeting them, most fears diminished. Teenagers kinda crack me up actually. Mostly they wanted to know if I can cook. That seems to be the only prerequisite for mothering in their book.

Our move there will consist of driving exactly 1952 miles which I had cheerfully been complaining about until the person I was speaking with casually mentioned his missionary son who lives on the Amazon with his wife and four tiny adopted children and recently traveled 1000 miles in a wooden canoe, killing deadly snakes along the way and fearing for their lives, and loving every minute of it. And probably not complaining. So I gather from that no one will feel sorry for me in my air-conditioned minivan complete with snacks and dvd players. I will still complain and beg for sympathy. Naturally. And you will give it to me, my loyal readers. All four of you. 'Cause that's how you roll.

As far as the certainties and for-sures and the whens and the whys, the directors are not in a rush to hire people in a business where turn-over is high. So, we wait. Waiting on the Lord. Much like the waiting room in Beetlejuice...hmmm, first The Mosquito Coast and now Beetlejuice. I need slightly less off the wall movies to parallel my life. So for the next few days we are once again at the mercy of friends and family for floor space, table space, and showers. It's amazing and amusing what you learn when you live with people and I considered writing a whole blog post on just that, but then I was afraid that my muses would rebel and write their own blogs on having me as a house guest. And no one needs to read about my weirdness. They might learn about my ninja skills when you put a dirty dish in the sink I just cleaned (sorry, Ike, I feel I may have wounded you for life and also given you a tic when you approach your own sink), or my frightening bed-head in the morning, or my knack for canceling your dvr recordings behind your back (sorry, Sadie). I also may or may not, snore. I do wonder if our respective hosts and hostesses are secretly starting a support group behind my back...

'Hello. My name is (insert your name here). And I'm a recovering Williams' family host.'

There probably should be a 12 step program.