Just live

I'm a Type A, obssessive compulsive person.  That's not easy to have them together.  One can feed the other.  For a very long time I've had to control everything.  I live for structure and schedule.  I'm trying very hard to change.

Not that all of those traits are bad, but they can be hard to live with.  Afterall, does anyone really have control of their life?  In reality I never have.  I know that.  Everything since we've been married has taught me that there is no real control.  There's only God's control and how we react to his actions and the actions of others' free will.  I have decided that I'm going to try to just live.  When my work schedule changed from fulltime to parttime I was terrified.  I wanted it so badly for over 10 years, but I wasn't sure how we were really going to do it.  But, now that I've been doing it for 3 months, I realize how much I love it.  As much as I'd hoped; since I was scared that I may end up disliking it.  I always have fears with any big changes in life.  That's just me. 

Things aren't easy, but we're making it.  It will be a little tougher next month when my insurance premiums go up and my paycheck goes down $200/month.  But, I'm still very thankful for my time to spend with my babies before they grow up and my time to do grocery shopping and the little things I need to get done without the insanity.  I know it will end, but I'm living in today and what I have now.  Until my parttime job ends and I have to return to fulltime next year I will continue to enjoy every second of it.  I will continue to make cookies, pies and cinnamon rolls with my kids helping.  I will continue to snuggle that many more moments.  I will continue to be the one home when the get off school; to help with homework and start supper.  And the little kids, for a little longer, will have special grandparent time on the days I work. 

Another thing I've realized is that when it comes to having kids you never have to say you're having more or you're done.  You can make your choices as God or life leads you.  I can honestly say I don't know where our family stands.  I'm happy with our 5.  Very busy and happy with our 5.  But, we have 6 years until we age out of Korea; withstanding the Korean government discontinuing adoptions in 2012 as planned.  We never know if we will decide to go into foster care one day either.   Now, before friends and family freak out when they read this, this does not mean we're having more children.  It just means we don't know.  I do know I do not want to parent more babies.  If the right situation came along, maybe, but I sincerely doubt we would.  I still have the dream of adopting an older child one day.  But, again, things change as life goes on and I'm trying very hard not to plan my life away.  I'm trying very hard just to live.  Live and wait for God's signs.  If they never come then maybe we're never meant to expand our family.   And, honestly, I'm happy either way.

It feels so good to make a decision like this.  I've been grappling with it for a bit now.  My love for my kids is SO immense.  That love spreads to other children with no families to call their own, but I now know after much thought that that doesn't mean we are their family.  It just means I need to pray for them to find families and maybe find other avenues to help. 

Christmas Cookies and Family Anniversary

We don't really have a designated day for our family anniversary.  We can basically pick any day between 11/28 and 12/22 to celebrate.  How's that for an anniversary? 

A lot of families with adoptees celebrate their child's Gotcha Day, Airplane Day, Family Day, etc., but with biological children as well, we decided not to.  We always have on their first and we still acknowledge it, but we do not have any big celebration.  We don't do gifts either.  But, on our family anniversary we do celebrate.  Not with gifts either, but just by being a family, being together and doing something special.  We've gone out for dinner in the past, but this year I ordered some airplane cookie cutters and decided we'd make Christmas sugar cookies and then make some of these too.

Chase, Kaelin, Chelsi and I worked on these most of the day.  You may not be able to tell though.  Some are pretty oddly painted with icing, but the kids worked hard at them.  I also colored the dough, so that the trees would be green, the gingerbread men would be brown and the airplanes would be about the same color as the Korean Air planes.  I thought the color came out well, but it's hard to paint them with icing.  Nonetheless, the kids had a great time and they were YUMMY!  We also painted a gingerbread man to look like each of us.  Kaelin painted me, Brian and Cole.  Chase painted himself and the girls asked me to put them in a hanbok, so I painted them and Jaemin. 

After loads of laundry, cleaning the house from top to bottom, making beds and making cookies ALL DAY LONG, this girl is beat! 

Thankfulness #13

Like I said in my post, just before this.  We had to have an electrician come out because the night before Thanksgiving our electric fireplace smelled when Brian turned it on and he realized it had melted the plug and surge protector.  For safety's sake, I wanted it checked out.  I'm so thankful he didn't think it was anything major.  He said there was really no damage and rewired a new outlet.  He said it could have been lightning from the storms that night or it could have just been a bad plug end cap that came with the fireplace.  He told us to replace it and it should be fine.  We got off cheaper than I thought too.  I had no idea how much an electrician goes for nowadays.  But, happy it didn't break the bank.

Sick and Tired

I'm SO tired.  Jaemin had a terrible night last night.  He has a terrible cold and for him it causes reactive airway (basically asthma). So he barked all night, in my bed, on top of me and then puked snot several times.  TMI, I know.  I had a rag by my bedside so I could catch him every little bit.  About 4 in the morning I decided I was just going to take the kids to school and come back and sleep...yeah with 2 little kids.  Don't think so.  Not to mention the electrician was coming to look at an outlet where a plug blew last week and another guy was coming to cut down our dying oak. 

Instead of sleeping, I washed and folded 4 loads of laundry, nebulized and administered meds to one little boy, wrote out Christmas cards with the help of a 5 year old, finished wrapping presents that arrived today, cleaned the girls' room out and dusted.  Tonight, I'm just stopped up and tired.....again.  On a good night that poor boy doesn't sleep well, therefore, I don't sleep well.  On a bad night, well, it's just BAD!

Here's to a night of rest?  Hopefully?   Maybe?  One day?

Thankfulness Reminder #12

I'm sitting here watching the Hallmark movie 'November Christmas'.  While I don't think it's a true story, it could really be anyone's life.  I'm so thankful I don't have a child gravely ill and having to watch them go.  I always pray my children outlive me and Brian.  I pray they are held safe by God.  So when people ask why I wasn't scared when Cole had his first surgery or if I'm scared about the next, I'm really not right now.  I try very hard to remind myself that there are people in harder positions than we are in.  We're lucky to live where he can have treatment, we're lucky it's nothing worse.  We're lucky he's done better than they ever expected and the expectations of the previous surgical procedure.  As long as we're all together, I will be thankful for our health. and pray He keeps us together even longer.

Thankfulness Reminder #11

I'm a little late on this, but it's been busy.  We had a yummy Thanksgiving.  I enjoy the food more and more each year.  It's amazing that as you get older you start liking all of the stuff you thought was so gross when you were younger.  We had everything you could imagine at my aunts.  Everyone brings something to go with the turkey and ham and it's so good every time.

We did something different this year.  My uncle had everyone go around and say what they were thankful for.  I thought it was great to hear my kids say things.  I mean if I made them do that at home they wouldn't take it seriously, but there they did it because everyone else did.  They were thankful for family and life and that was so great to hear.  We're lucky.  Not a lot of families still celebrate holidays together anymore.  So many get separated by distance or feuds.  We still get together with my aunts, uncles, cousins and grandma; along with my sister, mom and stepdad.  The kids have this familiar placed tradition every year to run around with cousins, play with new babies, play games and cards, talk and eat together.

There is NO better tradition than this.  Family trumps everything in my mind and being together is important.

I'm SO done!

My Christmas shopping is complete.  I just started, literally, 2 weeks ago.  Didn't have a thing until then.  Now, I'm just waiting for everything to arrive.  What a relief to be done.  We way splurged this year.  The older kids each asked for slightly more expensive items, so we decided to get this this year; within reason and watching our dollars of course.  Every once in awhile it's okay and this is definitely something we NEVER do.  And though our budget is $100 or less per child we went a little over on the big ones.  The little ones help us average out and all the years past that we went under budget, so it's justified in my mind this year.  One thing I won't do is go into debt for Christmas.  Glad we save for it.  The kids even decorated the tree last night, so it's up too.  Here's the main picture we're using for our Christmas card this year.  This is our traditional pj/Christmas tree picture.