We’ve been inviting our cat to eat inside, because if we ever get a second cat, we need to have a place to slowly introduce them… like the kitchen where the food bowls would be. Anyway, our healthy, content, excellent-hunter, always-outdoor cat wouldn’t go outside after breakfast. She followed me upstairs and climbed onto my bed. She gave me a reproachful look and settled in to stay.
My sister has five children (number six is due in less than a month!) and of course we have five children. We live just over an hour apart from each other…. going back and forth to birthday parties has neither been practical nor desired as we both seem to prefer the calmness and routine of more everyday kind of days. But we both enjoy a good celebration two or three times a year.
We have three regular gatherings: Christmas, Fourth of July, and a summer “thing.” Other sightings of our dearest each others happens on occasion, but these are our main traditional get-togethers. When our kids were all “babies,” we got together to go “camping” at our house up here. We put up tents for the bravest little ones (and their dads) to sleep in, tempted them to try the big pool and roasted hot dogs over the fire. We mothers slept in the house with the babies. We got so good at stuff that we went actual proper camping for the last two summers at a nearby lake and enjoyed the freedom and freshness and nearness of water (and dirt?) and look forward to trying that again.
This year, however, Melissa is 36 weeks pregnant and Daniel and Jordan don’t like leaving home much. So we took the occasion to plan an “all cousins” summer birthday party. Cupcakes came with Melissa along with a few gifts and Brian and I organized a treasure hunt true to my Uncle Kevin’s legendary style. Well, it wasn’t exact, but it involved little sheets of paper with clues and sticks making an “x” on the spot and… of course… lots of candy and trinkets. Kevin even mailed us some of his leftover treasures to take our treasure boxes up to the next notch!
A note on my boys: Jordan lost his marbles a few times, but always brought it back together and he most definitely enjoyed his time in the pool and the freedom of lots of outside time. The first hour and the last couple hours of the party he self-regulated with his favorite music and his swing in his play room. Daniel also spent the beginning and end of the party in his safe zone (his bedroom in this case), even dropping off to sleep at about 6pm from all the excitement and warm weather. During the outside part of the party, he made buddies with Melissa’s 2-year-old and even wanted to go into the pool for the first time! Huge success!
I’m proud of my sister for how well she’s handling summer schedules and late pregnancy and five children. Melissa, you make me proud. Don’t forget that you were going to take time to stop and rest.
I’m proud of our husbands as they navigate the rigors of parenting and husbanding even through energetic and tired and stressful situations. You both make it look easy and are absolutely essential to this whole thing working. Thanks for being you.
Without further ado…. pictures and video!
Clues for Jackson – age 9
Clues for Hudson, almost 8
Clues for Felicity, 6
Clues for Nora, 4
Clue for Tessa, 2
Clues for Anna, 11
Clues for Maggie, 8
Clues for Carolyn, 5
Daniel’s treasure map, but he pooped out before time. We brought it in for him.
It did my own soul good to see Daniel participating in a family event and having the family interact with him. A real treat.
Starting the fire for hot dogs.
Freckles and hot dog…. time for summer!
The oldest two cousins doing their thing.
The current youngest!
Jordan getting a ride to keep him happy.
Melissa brought Daniel an activity board and he likes it!
Gathered ’round the table.
That there is a bunch of hoodlums!
He brings out extra smiles for a camera!
Beautiful blue sky and best buddy girls.
After some play (Brian saying one to three and then splashing his legs/back in the water), cold little Daniel snuggled up and held on and was sweet and dear with Brian.
Nora found her treasure!
Tessa has hers! Melissa can still get down to the ground and back up too!
Maggie and Hudson on the hunt.
Hmm… Carolyn isn’t impressed with the next clue?
I think they are throwing rocks at bad guys (as instructed) on their way to their treasure.
Grandpa and his friend Dick took the big girls fishing!!!
Snuggles with my Carolyn.
I talked Daniel out of the house.
Going to the lake!
Dress rehearsal.
Photo op with mama for my ballerina.
The little girls have been sleeping in a tent often lately!
A pirate with a homemade hook walked into my bedroom the other morning!
Jordan hanging out in a sunny spot in the morning.
Ballerina’s eating snacks and playing!
Anna’s ballet class hanging out at the park!
Lake day setup!
The lake setup!
My big boys.
Daniel’s first experience at a lake.
I love Brian’s hat.
Busted out my swimsuit.
It was a bit chilly!
Good time.
Shirtless boys. 🙂
Cute!
<3
Love this brave boy.
After a long time of sitting in the shade on a blanket, Daniel gave the water a try!
Gotta make sure Jordan doesn’t throw rocks at anybody.
Can’t believe we were successful!
Lake day!
Praise!
Anna’s fans.
Well done, Anna!
Warm enough to play in the pool a little and warm up in the sun a lot! Daniel does not want to get into the pool, but we dragged him outside anyway.
We have rough times sometimes. This time I was glad that Jordan’s head missed the switch when he was raging and hitting his head on things. Poor boy, he does still experience pain when he hits his head on purpose. 🙁
Our blueberries are getting rip!
Time for the Molalla parade with family!
Look who LEFT THE BLANKET because he wanted to play in the dirt!
Every time we moved him (because he was VERY SCARED of the big trucks, honking and sirens) he would cry to go back to the “gray floor!” Needless to say, he had a bath later.
Jordan needed help to stay happy and wasn’t interested in watching for and picking up candy, but we all had a nice time!
My girls and my sister’s kids were in the parade!
My dad taking a picture of us taking a picture of him!
BBQ at Melissa’s house!!!
Daniel was SO RELIEVED to be gone from the parade and just grinned and snuggled into his blanket with his music. (speaker on left)
Sparklers at 10pm! (Camera makes it look lighter than it was)
The girls stayed up past 10 for fireworks!
Crackling!
Bright fountain!
Some medical documentation for both the chromosome microduplication we learned Daniel has (does not cause arthrogryposis) and some other related chromosome stuff:
rarechromo.org/media/information/Chromosome%20%203/3p26%20deletions%20FTNW.pdf
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182094/pdf/AJHGv74p1286.pdf
Notable associations of this gene being disrupted are: small stature, developmental delay, autism
I’m still digesting.
Maggie is clipping her fingernails in my bathroom, half dressed for the day and still with the night’s tangles in her light brown hair. She’s supposed to be doing chores, but I suppose clipping nails is always timely.
Jordan is sitting in a sunny spot on my bedroom floor a few feet from me. He’s sitting cross-legged and playing with a long piece of cotton rope that I bought for him on his birthday. Occasionally he absentmindedly leans forward and pops a hip out. He doesn’t notice that the pop sound makes me cringe. Now he’s getting up and looking for things to tip over or throw, so I tell him to sit down again and thankfully he is content to do that.
Anna was just in here, already completely finished with chores, and I told her about her special activity that is this afternoon. (Grandma is going to pick her and Maggie up and take them home for the night and then tomorrow, Grandpa is going to take them fishing!) She is still riding high on the news that she is moving up in ballet classes next year.
Carolyn was downstairs on the couch underneath a pile of blankets feelign sad last I saw her. She was declaring the unfairness of the world since she is not getting to go with her sisters this afternoon. Her face is already suntanned and her young light brown hair is sunned to blond already, despite summer not actually arriving for another 3 weeks.
I just finished my coffee, but I’m not willing to get up and disturb the current calmness in Jordan so I’ll stay here for now.
Daniel is in his bedroom listening to some rock radio station on his little brown radio that I got from a garage sale for it’s replaceability. He’s another child whose stability I don’t want to rock. If I go in there (or a sister does), he will ask for something that is somewhere else in the house and we’ll either have to go find it or tell him no, which will result in his heart being torn apart and a scream from the depths of his past hurts will erupt. Not even kidding. If we do go get the thing, he’ll ask for another. And another. Endlessly. The cycle of unmet needs in his life tells him he needs to see concrete patterns of our love over and over. Even if what he asks for is impossible.
So I’m hiding from him for a few moments of coffee and Jordan in a sunny spot of rug. It’s a warm, content moment.
Oh good, Carolyn is up and singing now!
Goal for this morning (1 of 237) is to clean the clutter out of my bathroom. Wish me luck. (edit to add: It didn’t happen)
Video is from last night – Maggie watching Odd Squad. Daniel rocking to some music by Wintergatan. Me looking up some books while being distracted by the same music performance:
We’re just a typical, atypical family in the Pacific Northwest. We homeschool, love Jesus and are learning as we go.
We have three beautiful daughters, born in 2007, 2009 and 2012 and two handsome sons, born in 2009 and 2013. (My sons are Bulgarian – arriving home in 2011 and 2017. If you’re curious about Bulgarian adoptions, I blogged about our experience.).
After learning about the need for adoptive families of children with disabilities, (and here and here) we began the process to adopt our son Jordan (who has Down Syndrome). He arrived home on December 3rd, 2011!. We were in process for Daniel (who has arthrogryposis) January-October 2017. You can see photos from our trips to Bulgaria by looking at June and Nov/Dec 2011 archives and May and October 2017.
