COSTCO New Years Cook Off......

To help ring in the New Year we each took a recipe from the 2010 COSTCO cookbook and prepared it for a dinner feast tonight in our new matching aprons.  Among the dishes were an orange crumb cake,  blueberry upside down cake, spagetti with a bacon and onion sauce, sausage stuffed mushrooms, surprise punch (one of the little ones helped with that), garlic bread with a jalapeno artichoke dip an onion and potato pie and a buffalo chicken spinach salad.

Even the littlest ones had important jobs...like running for measuring cups.

Shredding was a hit....

No major accidents even with many hands in the bowls.  Note: two kiddos with sensory issues using both right and left hands at once and not struggling against each other or themselves..YEAH!

God's Provision In Noah's Life.........

This week Noah died. 

It is eternally relevant that this particular 10 year old boy was loved by people around the world as a treasure worth sacrificing for.  His picture has been on our kitchen wall and we have talked and prayed over his needs and triumphs since 2009 when we first 'met' him through Sarah's blog.  

He needed a home , God gave Sarah and James a vision and Sarah's Covenant Homes were established, he needed love and attention so teams came from all over the place to share life with him, he needed surgeries and therapies and they were provided and in the end he needed a family that would fall on their knees before the Lord and plead that his life was precious and worth healing.  That family is huge...the love and support of Noah stretches far beyond those of us who covered his daily needs or medical procedures - he was a child of the larger world.  An enormous network of people that feel an abandoned, disabled child in India deserves to be loved.  Even as he was laid to rest we shared the privilege of loving him - by helping provide him with a decent burial - he was not unloved or unwanted and we his larger family are trusting that he has been healed forever now....and grieving our loss of this once orphaned child.

The Most Significant Challenge Facing Adoption In America......

December 16th Jedd Medefind posted the following excerpt on the Christian Alliance For Orphans blog.  I personally cannot say or write enough about this issue to give it justice...this is the crisis that we are heading into at high speed as our communities are swelling with the ranks of adopted children from hard places.  If the families I connect with here are any example, there is a tidal wave that is about to hit our social service/education/medical communities and we are not even in the boats yet as far as preparation.  Here is what he wrote...

"Last month, the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute issued “Keeping the Promise,” a highly significant report exploring the state of adoption and adoptive families across America. Although the report was not written from a Christian perspective, in my view it would be hard to overstate the importance of its conclusion for the growing Christian adoption and orphan care movement.


The report affirms a number of highly positive factors. It notes that over the past fifteen years alone, Americans have provided homes for over a quarter million children who’d been relegated to institutions abroad. That same period has also seen nearly three-quarters of a million adoptions from foster care. The report describes, “[W]e have made considerable progress in finding enduring families for girls and boys who have suffered from abuse, neglect, multiple placements, institutionalization and other pre-adoption experiences…”

However, drawing from serious examination of the post-adoption supports available to families that have adopted children from difficult places, the report urges, “[O]ur priority must be not only to achieve permanency, but also to assure that adoptive parents receive the supports they need to raise their children to healthy adulthood.”...........to read the rest click here.  To read the study click here.

(Jedd's that tall guy surrounded by the crew)

Faith, Hope, Peace, Love...Helping Hurt Kids to Understand The Meaning of Words.....

Kari over at Coffee Catharsis wrote a great post today on the meaning of words and the challenge of helping our kids who have been traumatized and damaged to understand them in a 'normal' context.  As adoptive parents we assume we are speaking the same language with the same meanings as our kids but is that a logical expectation?

Over.....

From what I am seeing on Facebook Sarah and Noah arrived at the hospital safely, doctors came running and half an hour later he died.  Praying for Sarah as she will now be taking that long drive home without this child who she has loved so well...one more treasure waiting in heaven.

Urgent Prayer Request For Our Noah in India......

Noah (not his real name) is pre-teen guy in India that we and Patty/Weldon have been sponsoring through Sarah's Covenant homes.  As I type Sarah is the ambulance driving him to the hospital (many hours away) because he is experiencing uncontrolled seizures..to the point that he may die before they arrive.  Please pray that there would be doctors at the hospital who see the value in trying to save his life and that financial barriers would not prevent him from receiving care.  If anyone wants to help meet these immediate needs there is a paypal link on their site and we can let her know that money is waiting there for her.

Life Purpose....

Earlier this year I wrote about Dearest and I wrastling to find a new family focus or life vision here in Colorado.  Shifting from Urban Servant where our messy life was naturaly intertwined with the lives of our neighbors and faith community to Sub-Urban Servant has been a tricky thing and not one that we expected to be this hard. 

Hard like waking up in the desert, hard like being invisible, hard like being totally misunderstood ....hard like the life God promises us in his Word.  

Since late October I have finally come to accept and embrace the hardness of this season.  Fully living this experience instead of getting busy and working a little harder has allowed me to feel the depth of the pain.  Not that it's been fun (thanks to all the distant friends who have been praying) but it's been important, and once I fully accepted it, then things started to shift and change.....changes I will share here when the time is right.

A Peek Into Christmas At Our House....

By Christmas morning our tree looks a little tired and droopy - so many busy hands reorganizing ornaments and inspecting presents leads to a mess.  By 10 last night I wasn't in the mood to make it look any better than this, though I did wonder if the obvious scarcity of presents would affect the older kids perspective on the day.  This year there was one book, one small toy and several homemade sibling present for each child plus Granny Sues special gift (she decorated aprons for each of them - perfect for our cooking theme this holiday season) and a few shared family videos from Grandma B and Auntie L an their stockings.  It did my mommy heart good to hear the older ones proclaiming this afternoon that this had been a great Christmas...and not even one grumble about the haul.

 Santa Dad - stockings all filled and ready for bed by 11.....

The crew on Christmas morning ..... most of them slept in which really confused those of us who were drinking our second cups of coffee long before they emerged....

Laughter learned to 'borrow' his sisters chocolate bars when they were not looking.  This was his best find - a whole unwrapped one that someone left too close to the edge of the table....

Humm...for those that knew my father..any familial clothing tendencies going on here?

Then there is this other side of our family....yeah he is naked.

One toy is perfect...when it's a star wars ship and you are a nine year old boy.

Aprons...12 of them decorated by Granny and delivered in time for our big New Years cook off...

Any holiday is hard for the sensory kids...note sunglasses and full fuzzy blanket wrapped tight around this little princess....

And then the girls took their bread and sausage outside to eat for lunch ..... so NOT Minnesota!

Better Check The Weather Report.......

When I took the trash out this morning I was delighted to find that the last 24 hours of fog and freezing rain had created a beautiful layer of hoar frost on everything uncovered.

Even the yucca were frozen stiff and growing crystals....

The utterly strange thing is that by noon the temperature had jumped from 29' to 54', every lick of snow and frost had melted and my kids were out riding bikes again in shirt sleeves.  I'm thinking I  better add 'read the weather forecast' to my morning blog checks so that I will even have a clue of how to plan our day.

Laughter Turns One ........

12 months ago I took this photo.  Tiny and sweet, Laughter had just been born and placed into my arms by his biological mother.  He was born into trauma and drama at our house.  Arriving just before a major snowstorm hit the region, the week before Christmas and entrusted into a household that was preparing to move 1000 miles in January - his life has required adaptability and a jolly nature.  The good news is that he has been blessed with both as well as an A-type, first child bossiness that makes the other 11 kids think hes hysterical. (note the look on his face in the red shirt - he's scolding his 2 year old brother.)

At one, Laughter has been walking for three months - having beat his sisters long standing record of mastering this skill at 10 months.  Not that it matters - I'm just excited when I can actually remember these things.  (Hint here for moms to many...put notations on the wall calender for things like this.  Then if you need to fill in dr's paperwork or baby books in the future it's all there - assuming you keep the calenders!) Being one year old he got to move up to the toddler car seat (fear not - his legs are not broken - his feet are just larger than Carters thinks they should be so I cut the toes off the sleeper to make them fit.) and he thought that the whole adjustment process was a riot.

Happy birthday Laughter...I can't promise you a quieter year in 2011 - but I can promise you buckets of love and hundreds of kisses.

Lukewarm...Please NO!

"So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth." Revelation 3:16 ESV

I don't want to be a lukewarm Christian.  In the 18 years since I chose to follow Christ I have taken the warning of Revelation 3:16 seriously to heart and tested myself regularly with it's words.  Too often I have caught myself slipping in that tepid (and torpid) lukewarm pool and had to fight tooth and nail to refocus myself on where I belong - because I know that to Him I belong.

Messy Strangers..........

One of the hardest things about relocating our family this year has been realizing that our life is messy (well duh! But I somehow forgot how 'unusual' we are)  and that very few people actually want to get intimately involved with 13 messy strangers.  This post isn't a gripe - it's just a reflection on how important being known is to messy families.

Before we moved we assumed that finding doctors, a church, friends, other homeschooling families and community activities would be as easy as it had been for us in Minnesota.  But we forgot a few basic facts....we hadn't started out messy in Minnesota.  In fact we had started out as a newly married, dual professional, upper middle class couple who relocated on sort of a whim.  Our family grew and so did our circle of friends and acquaintances  - we lived through the early years of parenting together and moved into the middle years of grade school and our 40's.

We, as well as most of our peers embraced the ideal of a wartime lifestyle and even if they didn't all move to the inner city we spoke a common language and understood the call and responsibility.  Loving messy people was as normal as the water we drank and the actions we took and during those years we became messy ourselves.  Not that I think we were not messy before - we just stepped over a line where we stopped worrying about other peoples opinions and started living all out, all over, and well....truly all for Christ.

And then we moved. And in overnight we had put 1000 miles between ourselves and the people who knew us, the church that accepted us and the community where we had a place.  We were a bunch of messy strangers looking .....well messy.  Over the last 11 months we have been working through a serious crash course in real life.  Understanding the pain of loneliness from the feeling side, realizing that all medical communities are not equally well accepting of our children and the slow dawning that other homeschooling families might not really want to participate in our mess has been a stretching experience.  It's good.  In as much as I would become arrogant and judgemental of other messy families. I can now say i understand a little better what it means to not fit in, to be excluded from much of mainstream life and to fight daily to be salt and light in a place where people turn away from us.  I don't like it - but I also wouldn't wish this journey away.

River Turns Six.....

A little over six years ago I answered that phone call so many adoptive parents dream of taking...."Dorothy....is you sitting down?" (in the deepest Southern drawl that tells me my friend Phoebe is about to burst out laughing because she has something she is dying to share.)  Her news was that our 12 month old daughter Willow was about to have a little sister and she was wondering if we would be willing to adopt her also.  History demonstrates that we said yes and sixyears ago next week that tiny girl joined our family.  But December 16th is her birthday and today we celebrated it according to her perfect plans...we made cupcakes and decorated them, ate egg rolls, pot stickers and rice for dinner and had the fun of two birthday presents  - a special blanket she picked out at COSTCO and a bag of jelly beans that she shared sweetly with her siblings.  An unexpected bonus was a bakers dozen of cinnamon bagels that were dropped off by a blog-friend and a peanut butter cookie that was all for her (but being who she is she shared it with the crowd.) 

Happy birthday River - you are an amazing little girl and wonderful daughter.  I love you very much!

Cheat Treats....

I'm not really in the baking mood this year so I have been watching for easy fun kid projects to meet their need to create.  This is part of today's offering

(A la the Cooking Channel last week.)

Super easy - melt chocolate (or whatever flavor) chips you have in 30 second increments in the microwave.  When they are almost totally melted pour them into puddles on either parchment or baking pan liners.  Poke something into them as handles...I used straws and bamboo skewers today.  Poke treats into them...nuts, raisins, more chips, pretzel pieces...whatever.  Then refrigerate for a few minutes and ta da!  Treats are done with a total of one messy bowl for melting and one sheet liner.

Mid December in Colorado....

The girls have continued drawing the Nativity - over and over and over again.  Who knew that I would need to have an extra ream of paper for this particular activity?

12 stockings are hung by the fire - its great to have a gas fireplace for those early morning cuddles and family meetings.  I'm still short one stocking for Laughter..I just didn't get around to sewing one this year and forgot about it until I went to hang them last week.

Laughter has discovered the fun of throwing everything off the deck and the sharpness of the little pine trees I have out there as decoration.  With afternoons in the mid-60's this week tee shirts are the right attire.

Lily was overdressed in her boots and sweater watering the dry looking Yucca we transplanted. 

The view from our deck...no snow but plenty of sunshine. 

But Would People Adopt If They Knew The Worst?

There are many different theories within the adoption community on the amount of training, education, information and reality checks that adoptive parents should have before adopting.   I was recently asked why I talk about the 'worst case senarios' with couples who call or ask my opinion on various adoption situations (please note - I also talk about the best scenarios but have never been questioned on that...what is it about human nature?)  Last week I was challenged on how I can be an adoption advocate on one hand and share these scary potential realities on the other....to some people it seems highly disconnected to be able to do both.

The simple explanation is that I love adoption and can not bear the thought that people enter into it without truly counting the cost and understanding what may be required of them.  My heart breaks as I watch 'perfect parents' with 'perfect plans' and stars in their eyes rushing headlong into the swirling waters of special needs and traumatized child adoptions.  Adoption often makes a huge mess of our lives and peels us back to our most basic sinful natures - the process of rebuilding our paradigm can be a beautiful thing or it can implode marriages, families and individuals.  I can't be silent because I care about those things as well as about adoption. 

So to answer the question that was posed about talking through the 'worst' case scenarios with potential adoptive parents....if I love them and truly care about their future then I dare not sugar coat or omit information because I don't want to scare them off.   I am partnering with enough families as they pick up the pieces of their lives post-adoption to even begin to think that hiding truth would be a good idea.

Daily Reading Through Advent.......

For 15 years our family has been blessed to listen to Pastor John share Advent poems with us each Sunday through the month of December.  This year I am continuing the tradition by reading through one portion of a past years advent poem each morning in our family meetings.

This week we are focusing on my personal favorite which tells the story of Job. (this is the link to the audio and text of week one - which is day one of this week for us - tomorrow we will read through week 2.)  I may trying listening to the audio with the kids tomorrow...I'm not sure if  can hear Pastor John read without crying more than is helpful to the kids so I may need to nix that idea. 

Thursday we will be finished with Job and follow up with another favorite....maybe the Prodigal's Sister  or something older that my kids haven't heard in a while like Jonah or perhaps the Innkeeper. Good news is that with the Internet I don't have to decide until Thursday morning!

Attachment: So Much More Than Meets The Eye......

Last week Russ Bone gave a seminar on Attachment in Adoption here in Colorado Springs - it was great and I would recommend this type of education to anyone dealing with kids from hard places.  By hard places I am thinking of any child who endured high stress or exposures to drugs/alcohol/tobacco in utero, those who were neglected or abused in their original homes or those who have moved through the foster care/orphanage systems.   Basically any child who's normal neurological development was impaired in those first few years after conception due to exposures, experiences or lack of experiences - which includes many of the kids we love.

Unfortunately, between the seminar last Thursday and tonight my folder has disappeared from my nightstand and I have a pretty strong hunch that one of my own kids from a hard place has hoarded it away somewhere.   What that means is that I can not use my copious notes to write a nice, tight, fact filled post about the seminar - relying instead on the impact points that have stuck deepest in my brain.

Point One:  Adopted kids who have been with us from infancy can still have serious attachment issues.  Attachment is not just a 'feeling'  or 'trust' issue it is also having the correct neurological/emotional development to process the emotions. "Getting them early' doesn't guarantee that we wont experience attachment issues.

Point Two: There is no guarantee that 'normal' two-way attachment can be expected with a child who has been traumatized prior to entering our family.  As much as we want it to be within our control, it's not our decision (as parents) to determine the quality or quantity of our children's attachment.

Point Three:  People who haven't experienced attachment issues will very rarely understand what we are living with.  I can't be mad at them for judging my parenting or my kids behavior - they are simply ignorant and I don't have time to worry too much about educating the general public (except through blogging!)

Point Four:  There can be a very physical, very real medical aspect to the attachment issues that our children exhibit.  Because of their early  exposures/experiences they may not have enough of the appropriate receptors to receive the hormones that they need to experience and develop the attachment that we crave. (This is where I want my notes!)

Point Five: Attachment is a life long challenge for many people and something that we need to recognize with more weight within the adoption community.  It's real, it can be devastating and it's just a fact we should expect when adopting children from hard places.

My Daughters Danced........

Two of my daughters are African American and they are also Cherokee. 

This weekend there was an open powwow here in Colorado Springs and seven of the oldest kids and I went to learn and hopefully to participate.  We were obviously observers and outsiders, but had the blessing of a late-arriving woman who sat in one of the only empty chairs - the one beside us.  When the time came for open dancing (where everyone was invited to participate) I told her that my daughters were itching to dance and asked if she would dance with them.  In our brief conversation she shared that she was Cherokee also and soon she had both Willow and River out in the dance circle.

Unfortunately, the timing was bad for us to be able to stay too long as naps were necessary to help some of the crew with impulse control but it was good that we went and broke the ice that was separating us from exploring this piece of our daughters heritage.

 Willow dancing........ and then both of them in the larger group with their friend.

Back On The Wagon....

There are a lot of theories out there about nutrition and the types of challenges we deal with in our home.  Over the years we have followed traditional medicine on somethings, natural medicine on others and then there is a whole pile of stuff we just have to live with.  As much as I support progressive medicine, I dislike the inclusive claims that so many practitioners make about their products and programs.  Claims to cure Autism, eliminate ADHD and make FASD all but disappear are fun to think about but don't tempt me too often because I know that my childrens problems are deeper than diet or the preservatives in our daily lives.

There are some medications and supplements which we continue to use in our family - things that we have found help manage symptoms - but we have found no magic potions to cure the underlying conditions which define our reality. FASD, ADHD, Autism and Attachment Disorders are a part of our daily lives and most likely none of them are going to change because of any one thing we do - but we sure can work to manage the symptoms. 

With management as our goal there are some basic nutritional changes we have made for the whole family.  We followed this nutritional plan well for 9 months but then fell out of the habit after our vacation in September - I came back tired but after two months off our modified diet I can see that we need to get back on the nutritional wagon.  That means more water, less sugar, increased C and D, more fresh fruit and veggies (as much as we can afford - at 5lbs a sitting for any fruit it gets a little silly), regular Omega 3 supplements (twice a day seems to work), probiotics once or twice a day,  Floradix  for a few weeks (iron+herbs to deal with low hemoglobin now that we are living at a significant altitude) and trying to eat as many truly whole grains as possible vs their refined cousins.  Whole oats, whole multi grain flour that we grind fresh for baking and the choice of nuts and cheeses over other snack foods.

I have also started taking a low dose of St John's Wort to help sort out the low-level depression I have been fighting over the past few months - it seems to be helping as the cloud is lifting, I'm crying less, and I have more interest in the daily details.  I'm sure that cutting back on the caffeine would help too - - but I'm just not ready to give that up yet - it's my courage in a cup some days.

We have also gone back to ADHD medications with two of our kids who's quality of life was being negatively impacted by their high levels of ADHD.  It took us many years to get to this point and we tried everything else we could think of first - especially caffeine and natural stimulants to see if we were even on the right road.  The normal Adderall/Ritalin rout wasn't a good one for them but Intuniv seems to be taking just enough of the edge off for everyone to be happier.  We are also working our way through the anxiety side of this but that's another story....and a whole other realm of medication.

One crisis at a time. One chart. One day. One diagnosis to tackle.....back on this wagon and headed forward again.

A Boy And His Fish.......

Eight years ago today, at 11:45pm I darted out our back door and didn't care or realize that I was barefoot in the frigid MN weather.  After weeks of torture (did you know you can be dilated to 4 and not go into labor? )  my body had gone into overdrive and it felt like this was going to one quick delivery. The good news was that we were only a few miles from the hospital and that the ER crew believed me when I said "I'm going to have a baby NOW!'  because within a few minutes it was all over and Soar had arrived there in the ER - needing a little oxygen and a lot of umbilical cord to be unwrapped from around his neck but doing fine.  (The same could not be said of the surprised ER Resident who caught him wearing her nice street clothes - she barely had time to grab gloves.)

Aside from me not having any shoes at an inner-city hospital in the middle of winter -the joke was that since he was a precipitous birth (under an hour from the beginning of labor to delivery) both he and I had to be tested for illegal drug use...In case you were wondering, yes I have been tested for illicit use and passed - and so has Soar.  The rest of the joke was that the ER clock had stopped earlier in the night so no one really knows what side of midnight he was born at....poor kid I have to regulalry pull out his birth certificate to see what day he was born.

Fast forward 8 years.  Soar is now a hysterical mirror of his older brother Steam.  Not only do they look alike but they share the same passions (and intensity of them) which means he can drive his older brother batty.   I love it..it's so good for the first born to have a younger one to help keep him in line. 

Stuffed animals with attitudes are Soar's favorite right now.  We have lived with a stuffed squirrel named Brett Farve and a Black Bear named Bye tortureing us for the past year.  Now they are joined by a four foot tall salmon who is yet to be named (thanks mom - he is ecstatic over it!)  Later today he will get the present from the family....several pounds of those building things that start with an L and end with an Ouch! when they hide in the carpet.

It's Not About Me......

Anytime I write that raising kids with hidden disabilities has required me to utilize a different pattern of parenting than those who are more 'normal' (what is normal?  But let's not go there now...) I receive a flurry of emails and comments asking for more clarification and specifics.  It's not an easy thing to put into words but the basic premise is the title of this post 'It's not about me..." 

Ok - so what does that really mean?  For me it means, that regardless of how I 'feel' in order to be fair to my children I need to look at their behaviors in isolation from my own response.  I fail my children when I react strongly because I feel wronged (stolen from, special things ruined, disrespected, embarrassed, never thanked etc...) because those are my feelings or reactions to their behaviors.  Those feelings are my own problem not theirs and they have enough of their own issues to deal with that they don't need mine also. There is a place and time to discuss empathy or the impact of their behaviors but with my challenged kids it isn't useful to flog them with my own emotions when I am trying to help them overcome behaviors.

In real life that means I overlook a lot of things I used to harp on - an older child thumb sucking in public isn't about me anymore (or how it makes my parenting look), the fact that we are years behind our peers in school isn't about my ability to homeschool - it's about a child being able to do THEIR best and deserving not to be compared.  A kid who can't keep shoes on at church (because it stresses them) goes in their socks and  if I really care about something I lock it up and realize that it's my own fault if it gets broken when I don't.  Scared toddlers sleep in piles in my room and older kids with sleep disorders sleep wherever they can.

As a mom many people feel it is wrong that I have given up my 'right' to privacy, my right to 'own' and my right to rest.  Understanding that is my reality doesn't mean I give up - it just means that I need to be able to train them without it becoming a battle about them violating me.  Because.... 'It's not about me...'

For me it is a beautiful thing to really, truly, deeply and from the bottom of my heart say 'I have zero interest in what 'they' say about me or my children'   Not in an arrogant way, but in a way that says that God created each of us as individuals and no one, no one, has the right to judge what he has made but Him.   So how does this type of parenting look? One step detached to some and amazingly freeing to others - it's being able to really love the child exactly where they are and to find exactly the right answer to the moments behavior.  Because the trick to parenting my special kids really is....... "all about them."

(NOTE: this doesn't mean that we are above reproach - a word in season or a Biblical correction is very necessary to our family - but I don't spend any time allowing the fear of what other people will think control the way I parent.)

Free: Attachment Seminar Here in Colorado Springs.....

Interested in attachment issues in adoption?  There is a seminar this Thursday at Woodmen Valley Chapel - open to anyone who wants to learn more.....

Time Thursday, December 9 · 6:30pm - 8:30pm
Location Rockrimmon Campus, Stone Chapel Upper Level
Sponsored By Woodmen Valley Chapel - Grafted Vines (Orphan Care)

More Info The process of attachment and the consequences of difficulty with attachment are issues closely intertwined with adoption and foster care. An understanding of this process can be valuable across the spectrum of involvement with orphans. Join us as we unpack various elements of this critical issue under the guidance of a professional psychotherapist in the field (Led by my friend Russ Bone- He is great!)

Advent........

Somehow the first seven days of Advent have flown past.  We are headed toward our second December birthday (Soar will turn 8 on Friday) and the house is starting to buzz with the kids private projects and conspiracies.  (So far it looks like origami animals are at the top of our giving list.)

This photo above is precious to me because Speed is helping Storm put the manger on the Advent calender and Storm is letting him. Though it looks like a super sweet brother moment (which it is) it is also about two boys with challenges helping each other out - and no one getting hurt in the process.  Before helping Storm put the manger up, Speed read (haltingly and slowly)  the days passage about God's choice of Bethlehem - but he read it!  I have learned through fours years of homeschooling him that reading is a precious skill and not something that is available to everyone. Even this lowest level of ability opens up doors to him that were closed before - which is certianly enough of a present for me.

Willow Turns Seven......

Happy Birthday Willow!  I'm short on words today but here are a few pictures of your birthday dinner and one of your amazing muscles.

Love you Bunches -

Mom

Just When I Think I'm Ahead Of The Game......

Yesterdays marathon with the IRS and Turbotax inspired me to plunge in and work through the necessary 1040x/8839 corrections.  It was grinding work as Daddy was gone till late last night and it consumed most of this mornings free time.

In the end I had nice tidy piles of corrected paperwork ready to send in lined up with the appropriate documentation.

Having just pillaged the tax files I gave into the compulsive organizing side of my brain and reorganized the taxes 1995-2009.  In matching files with all the contents stapled together and sorted....oh the joy of it.

The joy was short lived.  As I sorted the last pile of papers I discovered a faded note from the IRS about a previous 8839 correction I had filed the last time I was pregnant (That was a blurry 10 months).  Reading it reminded me that I had done it .....but had I ever made the corrections to the earlier cary-forwards in our Turbotax files to account for it? Yes, No, Maybe....the baby had been born in December and I'm pretty sure that wasn't a stellar year for catching details.  Which is a total joke because I had just worked back to that year assuming that the numbers I had on that 8839 were correct.  All I could do was laugh.  The envelope is in the mail to the IRS - if I am right or wrong it's sort of irrelevant at this point.  They will either accept the changes I made or send me one of those notes that asks for clarification. Either way I am closer than I was before today...but maybe not exactly right.

Do you think the IRS  will buy the story that  'I'm the mom of 11 kids who was pregnant the last time I did this so it didn't really happen in my brain and I really didn't mean to make it more confusing?"  At this point I am simply refusing to go run the numbers again to check again what I have corrected (or corrected but not quite right) I'm just going to wait and see what happens next knowing that I did my best....

Here was the perfect ending to me mailing off potentially still wrong IRS forms.  My brother and sister-in-law in Guam sent us a coconut postcard.  It arrived just like this in the post today...our address written in Sharpie on the back and a crab on the front.  The kids think it is hysterical and so do I.

The Problem With Understanding.....The IRS and I.

(NOTE:  The particular error I made on my tax forms is really most relevant to adoptive families who's expenses fell above the annual adoption tax credit amount  if you ignore gifts/adoption grants but fall below it when they are properly deducted - therefore impacting the amount of credit/refund.)


It's over - four hours and whole pot of coffee later I have 'identified' the root of the tax problem I was wrestling  with both the IRS and Turbotax and have set us on the path (1040X) to correcting it. Darn this tax-loving brain...it's set me up for 10 years of corrected returns and a significant negative tax impact this year.

Here are the details in case any of the rest of you have made the same mistake and want to correct it also. (I say 'want' because the IRS has really no way of auditing you on this one except during an actual audit when they ask you to produce receipts or explain thing so it may not be a bees nest you are interested in stirring.)  I woke up this morning chewing on the IRS form 8839 (Adoption expenses) for probably the 100th time.  It's a super simple form that causes a large amount of chaos in the adoption community with it's simple yet complex questioning.

The form itself isn't a problem - it's the IRS Instructions that caused me to have a heart-stopping moment this morning when I realized that under Not Qualified Adoption Expenses there was the expected statement "Any costs paid or reimbursed by your employer"  followed by "or any other individual or organization." 

It was that second part that sent me into a full tizzy because the credit hasn't really been an issue for us in the past (we have only used $1,000 or so of each child's credit before they rolled off at 5 years - we just don't owe enough taxes) and I haven't worried too much about understanding that piece.   This year, with that back adoption tax credit becoming refundable (like they write us a check) I wanted to be sure that we were absolutely clean and above reproach on what we had claimed on that form between 2005-2009.

After my morning with the tax professionals we concluded that I had been blindly following Turbotax since 2000 and that the program was not prompting us to deduct any grants or gifts given toward our adoption and was only asking about employer benefits and the costs of the adoption.

It wasn't that I didn't wonder about deducting them from our claimed adoption expenses (it goes through and asks how much was spent for legal, placement, travel etc..) but it never gave me the option and until now I didn't go back and read the actual IRS publication on filling out the form to see if the program was doing it correctly.

So what does it mean?  More work for me.  This week I will be going back and trying to reconstruct the expenses from our last 5 adoptions.  Then I will be filing an amended 8839 for each year that uses the total adoption expenses less the gifts and grants so that we can have an accurate (and honest) carryover for the 2010 taxes. 

How did it happen - I mean it's right there for anyone so see on the instruction form. 

In my own head I was putting adoption related Grants/gifts under the mental category of any other gift and as long as it was for less than $10,000 it just didn't hit my radar as something I needed to figure into our adoption 8839.  To have done it right I would have had to deduct any gifts or grants from the itemized adoption costs without a worksheet, question, or any hints from Turbotax - sort of knowing intuitively that it should be done and deducting it on scratch paper before answering the other questions Turbotax asks.

Well....good news is that I like doing taxes and that I caught our mistake before the IRS did.  Bad news?  It will be a bit of work to get my mess cleaned up.

Prayer and Taxes.....

Prayer would be helpful at this moment.  I'm starting hour three on the phone between myself/turbotax/IRS - I woke up this am and realized that the Turbotax program has been computing our (and potentially every other person who uses the 8839 adoption form) taxes wrong since about  1999.  Still hoping I'm wrong....but the evidence appears to be to the opposite....more later.  Hoping my phone doesn't die......

When Adoption Isn't Fun.........

Many adoptive moms carry a terrible secret around in their hearts. 

It's the overwhelming weight that they can't even whisper to their husbands late at night. 
It's the guilty relief they feel whenever their kids leave for school and the excruciating despair they face when three o'clock rolls around again...

At it's barest essence it boils down to the the heart breaking reality that they don't love or even like their newly (or not so newly) adopted kids.

And they are grieving...
Deeply and painfully understanding for the first time
The ease of life 'before'
The corruption of their dreams,
The loss of self,
That can come when it isn't easy.

They look around and see so many families
doing adoption so 'well,'
and feel like failures.

They see children who are not angry,
Who are not damaged,
Who are not exhausting,
and silently cry out in their heads -
WHY ME?

But never speak it.
Because it looks like failure
and they are so fragile
they can't risk exploding at the
false sympathy
and careless words,
of others.

They don't want to hear
'It will get better..'
because they know it might not.

They don't want to feel judged
by people outside their homes
who have no idea.

They long for someone to jump
into the pool with them
to feel the weight
to cry
and pray
and understand
that this journey isn't always fun.

To get into their mess and
help clean it up.
Because some days it is
too much.

Some days the loneliness is echoing
and the future is terrifying
and there are no good answers
and they find themselves prostrate again
Before the Lord.

Because there is no one.
No one to call,
or email
or text
and through Him they are refilled enough
to do one more day -
but are still longing for a sister-heart to
share with.


(I wrote this tonight for the moms I have spoken to and emailed with this week.  Moms all over the US who are living in a dark tunnel of despair because they are experiencing the suffering side of adoption and have no safe place to fall apart.  My prayer is that the Lord will bring you a new vision.  A new understanding of life and enough strength to walk one day at a time.)

Participating in a Planned Power Outage...

We almost missed it - the small red note hung on our virtually unused front door that stated in too small a font "Next Monday from 9-3 the power to this property will be shut off for system infrastructure repairs.'  Ummmmm.. whoa!  What exactly does that mean to a homeschooling family where 12 of us are home and doing life during that six hours without power?  In a crisis it's no problem - we went days in MN without power but darn it, this time they gave us warning which puts it into the 'better think this through' category vs simple emergency mode.

Heat will be fine.  If I light the gas fireplace in the living room early in the day we can heat the house at least past the outside temperature and keep warm enough.  No computers (so no science, reading or math for some of ours), no tv (so no Native American documentaries) ,  no cooking at all (everything is electric), and no lights except what comes through the windows.  And it's going to be a killer trying to keep my impulse challenged kids from opening the refrigerator every few minutes to see if the light is working - which means I better just empty it ahead of time and maybe even wipe it down.

I don't know why this particular situation is making me laugh - might be the reality that it's just 'the next thing' and so much of my life is lived on that plane right now.  One step, another, and then three more backwards.  It's just where we are at.

A Year Ago Today........

I went to post a little note about the first day of Advent today and accidental hit 12/1/2009 instead of 20010 on my photo program.  Scrolling through those photos was fun and more than a little sad.  Exactly a year ago we had the first showing on our house in MN, were waiting anxiously for any word about baby #11 and had no idea what moving a family of 13 might entail.  Fast forward a year to today and #11 is not just a 'maybe' but a full fledged member of the gang - running, biting and fitting right in with the rest of the crew and we are settled 1000 miles from home trying to figure out where to hang the twinkle lights

 Here are a few of those photos from 12/1/2009....

Guess who is too big to do this anymore? :)

Steam is still has his sense of humor - though he is a good five inches taller now...

And there is nothing hard-wood or Victorian about the house I decorated with Christmas lights today.  I believe that the view through these Minneapolis doors now frames a pool table and a household full of college males...ok I am cringing!

Busy Boxes.........

One of the most valuable pieces in my mommy 'bag of tricks' has always been a shelf of  well stocked and compulsively managed Busy Boxes.  For the past 10 years I have maintained a good  inventory of snap lid shoe boxes - each with a basic theme and focused toward an individual or at most two person activity. 

Busy Boxes are my answer to the constant need to direct and redirect some of our children's excess energy and emotions.  I use them at school time for the toddler age, at play time for those who's social skills aren't meshing and at nap time for those who just cant get comfortable.  They have been filled with everything from rubber cars to Lego's.  Lacing toys to stretchy animals.  The only rules have been that no one touches them without permission and that they are used in a particular place at a particular time.   A great system until we hit chaos this year and started using them as every day and all the time toys.

Once they hit that general use category the system fell apart (lets just say that keeping toys together isn't my priority once they have left my immediate proximity)  and I find myself with empty bins and the need to answer the 'what should I do?'  or 'what should I do with you?' questions far too many times a day. 

Which means that it's time to restock the Busy Boxes and put them back on top of the fridge so that they are ready when I need an instant answer to a particular situation.   If I was so inclined (and if the Lord had so permitted) I would simply go on line to Lakeshore and order up a couple hundred dollars of brand new,  beautifully matching, instant bin fillers. (Girls are allowed a few fantasies aren't they? :)  But that isn't where we are at or the way we are being led to invest our money at this point  - The larger needs around us are so much more than our own - when I compare cholera relief in Hati to rubber counting bears, blankets for the freezing to a new set of Spirograph and a life changing surgery to pink Lego's there just isn't much of a decision.   Instead of pulling out my visa I am asking here if any of our Colorado friends have Busy Box fillers that they are no longer using and would like to pass on to our crew. 

They don't have to be complete or even clean - just different and unneeded.....and I really need swim goggles...anyone have old ones that Storm could wear?  He has destroyed all of his (they really are not intended to be worn 6 hours a day) and I missed the end of summer sales to buy him more.