Cup of Cozy

Our family typically does Thanksgiving on the Wednesday evening before the actual holiday. It's been like that for as long as I've been around, and we kinda like it. It makes the actual holiday really chill. We heat up the leftovers and lay around on the couch in food induced comas, and if you're part of the Barron section of the family you run a half marathon "turkey trot", but that's another story. ;)

Now that the actual Thanksgiving holiday has been celebrated around these parts, I'm all about bringing on the Christmas. It's such a cozy time of year...and the perfect time for stuff like hot chocolate. The other night it was cold and rainy and the forecast was calling for "make hot chocolate or else". So I hunted down a paleo version of hot chocolate. (I love paleo recipes...I'm really getting into using natural ingredients and trying to cut processed stuff out of our diet. Beside the point...but hey.)

I really like this recipe...it was just the cozy, warm sumthin' sumthin' that I needed. The kids liked it, too. Billy rarely likes anything paleo except for straight up meat wrapped in bacon, but he did drink some of it. ;) It was also so simple that even I didn't burn/spill/ruin/explode anything. Yahoo.

So now that I can allow myself to listen to Christmas carols and decorate, (I'm a firm believer in NOT mixing my holidays...Thanksgiving needs the proper attention before Christmas gets it's turn so that it doesn't feel left out.) I think a cup or two of this will come in handy. Hope all y'all had a great Thanksgiving!

Life with Boys (and a girl).

Growing up I was always a bit of a tomboy. I still am I think. I would much rather be wearing running shorts and no makeup than get all dressed up and have to wear shoes that hurt my feet, or heaven forbid, make me any taller than I already am.

It's been totally ok with me that this house is not a prissy house. (Prissy is ok, but just not for me.) Tirzah, while she does love to have her hair fixed and wear pretty dresses, can definitely wrestle with the best of them. She is a drama queen, no doubt, but thankfully she can hold her own sandwiched between two wild brothers.

Merrick from the beginning has been something of a barbarian. He was the original "hooligan". He reminds me of Tarzan, honestly. His long hair, climbing skills, and aversion to wearing anything but his underwear kind of fit the part. He loves anything rough and loud and not appropriate for inside the house. If he can get away with such activities inside the house? Well that makes him even happier. Today? It was soccer. Thankfully I don't have a lot of breakable items that he hasn't already broken.

The other day I noticed he had lined up all his super heroes on the coffee table, and they were taking turns fighting each other and yelling insults. (Tirzah's favorite insult is "you're stinky". I am glad that's the extent of her vocab right now. I realize it could be much worse.)

There are obviously going to be different struggles raising boys or girls. Right now they all have the same struggle, which is that they can't seem to hear about 80% of what mom says. I'm sure it will get more complicated as we go...but for now I'm just working on getting Merrick to wear clothes, and Tirzah to make it to breakfast before she has her first emotional breakdown. Jericho is still in the phase where he's what we like to call "the terrorist", (wreaking havoc on all who step in his way) so that's a whole different blog post.

One of Those Cat Videos

People are always watching cat videos online. I don't really get it usually, even though I love cats. I did watch one the other day though that made me laugh till I cried. A cat and an iguana and a serious overreaction on the cat's part. Anyway, thankfully in this video we feature a cat who's being pretty chill. 
This cat is usually a bit of a psycho, honestly. Fighting dogs, climbing trees, and stalking babies, etc. But for some reason he decided it would be a good idea to trust Jericho's driving skills. Or maybe he was just hoping to be part of the potential hit-and-run of a few dogs? ;)

Small Houses and Open Hearts

We've been slowly but surely working our way through foster care training, so here's a little update. We've been through about 4 training sessions, and as you can see from the picture below I recently had my physical done to make sure I don't have any communicable diseases. I'm good. We do still have to have background checks and a personality test/psych eval done, and while we are kinda crazy, we're not THAT kind of crazy, so I think that'll be all good. ;) After we finish all of that we will do our home study and all that.

I have really enjoyed the training so far. So much of it just reminds me of why we wanted to do this in the first place. So many kids in heart-wrenching situations, so many of whose families just need help getting things set right. While we do want to eventually adopt, we are planning to just foster at this point and are not necessarily looking to adopt yet unless the need is presented to us. So much of foster care is aimed at reuniting families, which is ideal if it can be done. So I'm glad we can hopefully be a part of helping heal families who need help.

I have loved the agency we are working with. They are amazing at not only caring for kids, but reminding us that they also want to look out for our family as well. I like how they value our kids, and making sure that they are protected and not lost in the shuffle as well. I think the only thing we are concerned with at this point is how tiny our current space is. I'm not sure we will be able to fit an extra person in our current house. And while our hearts are open, we don't have a lot of actual open space round here. We are currently looking for a larger home to rent, since Billy can't be approved for a home loan for 2 years with the nature of his job. So as we have from the beginning, we are moving forward with the mindset that we will just see what happens. We want to do this wholeheartedly, but also realize that there is a time for everything. (Prayers for a larger space appreciated. Even if we aren't going to be foster parents, we could definitely use some more room.) I think just going through the process of working towards opening our home to help people has been a learning experience for us. Even if the answer right now ends up being "wait", we've been humbled and thankful and can't wait until we see how God uses our family in this to help other families.

A Real Pile

We've loved 'Where the Wild Things Are' ever since Merrick was a baby. He had a Wild Things themed 1st birthday party, and we tried unsuccessfully to find him a Max costume one Halloween. We also bought the kiddos the movie when it came out and are guilty of quoting it repeatedly.

So, all that just to say, we like to call our nightly snuggle time "a real pile". The wild things always slept in a real pile, and we happen to think that's a good way to sleep/snuggle. What could be better than to be in a pile of my favorite people? Especially after they've been away for a few days like they were this weekend. Glad to have them back!