Saying No

Gymnastics. The girls spend more time in leotards than they do other clothing (unless you count the sleeping time of PJs). Hadley conducts gymnastics classes for all children who enter the house, willing or not. They happen in the playroom, on the gymnastics mat my parents bought me and saved for twenty years before passing on. Regularly I hear the in unison counting of my two girls as they do the designated warm ups for the day's tumbling tests.

Sometimes, Hadley will grab a clip board and write out a  list: headstand, handstand, somersault, back bend, splits. Kassy will happily perform for her teacher who then rates the skills, always with words of encouragement and praise.

November will mark the one year aniversary of starting Hads in gymnastics. While I value the strength and determination she has developed (it seems just yesterday she was crying over not being able to do a headstand...well, the tears have stopped and she has learned valuable lessons about practicing), gymnastics has my stomach in knots. True, when she spins around those bars and lets go to land, I hold my breath and can barely watch. That's bad enough, but the real knots come from the future.

Hadley started in the recreational classes and was quickly moved to the pre-team class called Ladybugs. I gawked at the three hours of practice per week that they wanted and only agreed to once a week. They gawked at me, but must have needed the money. Now they want to move Hadley to Junior Trainers, which requires six hours a week in the gym, for three hours at a time. The fee, not including the insurance fee, $150 per month. If a month was really only four weeks long, that would be $6.25 an hour--not unreasonable.

And Hadley is praying fervently to be able to be a Junior Trainer. She'd sell most of her possessions and give up soccer if she could be a trainer. She wants a team leotard and wants to compete. She's good--not exceptional, but good.

But I can't afford $150 a month, not unless I tell Kassy she can't do anything. And the next level is 9 hours a week and more money. And the level after that? 12 hours.I don't want her gone twice a week from 4:15-7:15. She's 7. I want her home for dinner---the too- busy- for- family- dinner thing CAN'T happen yet. And who knows? Gymnastics might not be her life-long sport love and no one can do gymnastics past their early 20s. But for now, Hadley is smitten. We both cried when they moved her up because we both knew she couldn't go up.If I knew a college scholarship or a job teaching gymnastics full time was in her future, I'd go get a job and make this work, but some people don't even think gymnastics is a particularly healthy sport and I don't know the future.

Why are kids sports so intense, so quickly? Can't she just go for two hours a weeks? Yes, she can. But then she can't compete and she gets second rate coaching. You know those moments when you look at your sweet, sleeping child and hope you can give them all that their heart longs for? I've always known I couldn't, that I shouldn't, that heart breaks would come and I would be powerless. But tomorrow I have to call the coach, "Look, we can't do this, now what?"

And then I have to tell Hadley, who is still holding out hope that she is so good, they will let train anyway, I will have to say, "Look honey, even though your friends can be trainers, you can't (with, the undertone of we don't have the money). But you can still take gymnastics(unavoidable translation by my daughter:non-competeing, inferior, gymnastics). Chin up." And we will both cry.

And I will wait for the day when I can grab her thoughts and complete the lesson, see, "We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." But I will still cry.

Rain sale

I know...you are wondering about the termites. And maybe even the diabetes (I just went to the doctor), but let me tell you about today. Drop me a note or a comment and then I'll know what you want to hear about.

I'm sitting in my garage. It's raining. It's 60 degrees outside. I'm drinking hot chocolate and wearing a favorite hoodie that needs to be a bit warmer. (I still think of the end of August in college-in-Iowa terms---the hottest most sweat-dripping days came the first week of school as we moved into the non-air-conditioned dorms). The calendar says August 28th, but it is not August.

If you remember the post about the girls cleaning out their toys and wanting to sell them to raise money for the orphanage, that's why I am in the garage. At the sale. Numerous times I thought, "Why am I going to all this work to have a sale?" But the girls had a noble desire and I wanted to follow through with it. I knew we didn't have enough stuff for a great sale, but I wanted the girls to have a finished lesson. I checked and double checked the weather. But by Wednesday this week, I couldn't postpone the decision any longer. The weather was supposed to be good. I decided to do it.

It's noon (3 hours of sale). There have been 5 customers and lots of rain. We've made $16 dollars. And if one or two moms, or an eager grandma, with little girls between ages two and four would just walk up the driveway, they would find treasures (like a heart-stealing tiny stuffed iguana or a love poem in book form), beautiful shoes and some great dresses. But alas, it's cold in my bones with all this wet, I've moved into the warm house, covered the clothes rack with a tarp and am writing with the computer facing the garage. The neighbor across the street said one of the signs had fallen down. It's raining, hard. Do I bother to fix it? Will the crayola markers the girls used to color the sign be indiscernible? Not sure I have the heart to find out. I hate well-intentioned lessons that don't work.

What to do now? Do I pack up everything and save it until the neighborhood garage sale next June? Or do I pack it up and send it to some charity's thrift store? I hate it when effort seems in vain, but at least all this stuff has been sort out and won't go back in the drawers.

Toy Sale for Honduras

I know. I've been so quiet. Summer days start slowly and then snow ball into craziness from playing and working all day. Sometimes I am ready for school to start. I have much to post but for now, here is the most immediate.

Toy Sale tomorrow (friday the 28th, 9 am -3 pm). Just to get rid of things we are also selling the girls' clothes. If you know anyone with a 3 or 4-year-girl send them our way. Stop by or call if you don't know how to get here. I promise prices are cheap and the girls would be encouraged to see you. All money raised goes to our dear friends in Honduras. See you tomorrow?

Holes every six inches

I've almost written this post three times. But those earlier posts would be have angrier. Why do I get so worked up about unchangeable things? We have termites. It costs a lot of money to deal with them. The exterminators ( I like to call them terminators) are making messes. But there is nothing I can do about this so. It's happened. It must be dealt with. Handle this gracefully, Laura. And sometimes I did--but only after a short freak out where I often call Amanda and cried or yelled (thanks friend).

So the termites have lived here longer than we have. And I've seen them many times. Turns out those little white ants that are under the wood stepping stones in my garden, those aren't the larva stage of some unknown bugs, those are worker termites. I tried to take a picture for you, because they are still there, eating away in my garden, but my camera won't focus on such a close up. Lucky you.

Tom was gone all week again--at a math conference in Muskegon. The girls and I were going to go with him, but we needed the money to fight the termites. So Tom was home for about 24 hours between trips, and I got to greet the terminator technician Tuesday morning. Note that they didn't send me the real licensed terminator yet, just the technician. His first task? (I didn't realize when this started, even though they tried to explain it, that there were four steps in this process). Task one was to cut a hole in the foundation to access the inaccessible part of the foundation. This was the hold my breath and drink 7up to keep my stomach calm moment for Tom and me because it would reveal more clearly how much damage there was.



So here's the hole. It's in the storage closet in the back of the basement so it's presence won't be noticed much. But look at the floor. Here's a close-up. That's termite food the terminator technician pulled out the crawl space. AKA a rotting cedar porch that some previous owner didn't remove. Apparently, before the addition was built, there was a large cedar porch outside. Then someone wanted a cement porch instead and placed concrete blocks around the cedar porch and poured the concrete slab there. They never removed the wood. And it's been rotting, for years. Then, some other brilliant owner, wanted an addition instead of a concrete slab, To save money, the addition was built on top of the block supported concrete slab. At some point, vents were added to this inaccessible crawl space, but they haven't been opened for years. Between the rain and snow here in Michigan that small space would get wet, and without ventilation the wood would start to rot, and rot , and rot and before long a colony of termites noticed.

So the terminator technician, he removed all that rot for us. But before he left for the day, he showed me the sill plate. If you are ignorant like me in all things construction, the sill plate is the horizontal board which all vertical boards are attached in the framing of your house. And guess what? It crumbled to the touch. Crumbled. Then he told me that the pile of leftover wood from the charming treehouse was infested with termites too. Oh gosh. I had to tell Tom, because he would ask. And he wouldn't be able to sleep with such info in his head.

He didn't sleep. He drove home. He had to investigate for himself. Now Tom and Hadley are the worriers in the family. With Tom not here to analyze every possible disastrous scenario and to find solutions for them all, I took over the job of worrying(especially since Hadley did not yet know there was something to worry about). What about the treehouse? How far up the house had the termites eaten? What now? And money--well I didn't let myself go there. With Tom back in the house---using flashlights, calling people for advice, drilling through wood to check for rot--I could calm down again. And woo, am I glad the task of worrying is usually his ( at least in all things house related). Tom devised a plan for fixing the sill plate. Then drove back to Muskegon and everyone slept well. Oh, in case you were worried, the treehouse is built on treated wood and termites don't eat treated wood, but the garage...well you could worry about our garage.

Day two with the terminator technician, he finishes cleaning out the rot.
Day three started step two : hole drilling. Now I knew they had to drill holes in the foundation. I didn't realize how frequent they would be. And I didn't realize he drilled from the inside. Terminator technician would emerge from the basement periodically saying he needed to escape the dust. Too trusting, I didn't put the puzzle pieces together. When he left for the day, I went downstairs. First I noticed the holes:
I hope you can see them, click on the picture to make it larger if you need to. Little quarter inch holes every three inches or so...all around every wall of the foundation. Is this what we signed up for? A quick call to Tom (thank goodness he wasn't in the unreachable wilderness this week) assured me the holes were part of the system. But dear I complained, why didn't he warn me. There was thick, coating concrete dust on everything. He didn't cover the carpet, the couches or even the TV. And he didn't clean up.

Oh wow. I'm tired. I promise to finish the story later...Don't worry, the worst part is yet to come.

Grandparent post

So this post for is really for the grandparents. I guess you can read it if you want even if you aren't a grandparent, but they are the ones who will be really happy to see all these pictures.

When Tom is gone, I tend to schedule a ton of things to do. So there are lots of pictures. Plus, I haven't done just a general update since we returned from Honduras-- so here we go.

Last week, we made only our second trip to the local children's zoo. It was normal, fun and entertaining, special in that we brought Laura (Cody's wife) with us. It was her first trip and the girls loved showing her all their favorite things--carousel included.

Then Friday, we went with Mary Lin and her kids to Crossroads Village in Flint. Mary Lin is the mother of Hadley's best friend, Alexis. Alexis has a younger brother who is six also. They also have a family pass to this old fashioned village, which means we got in free (bonus!). The kids had fun riding the paddle boat (forgot to take picture), exploring the old schoolhouse, the opera house, the stores, and even trying stilts. Both girls were able to take a few steps. They had old, turn-of-the century amusement rides. And that ferris wheel and the carousel flew. It was amazing--perhaps our rigid safety standards have doomed these classic rides to a level just barely above boring. I felt like I was in Mary Poppins, racing my carousel horse. It was great.

Sorry the captions aren't matching up correctly, I goofed and am too tired to fix it. Never pick a left sided layout for pictures if you want to put captions under the photos...it doesn't work.


















































At Adli's lately, strawberries have been $1/pound. I've been buying them and drying them in the food dryer. And after weeks of dangling in a precarious diagonal position, Hadley finally let her dad yank her other front tooth.
She is proud of her giant hole and there no signs yet of the new teeth.






























































Then today, betting against the rain clouds, we drove up to Midland and went to the Dow Gardens. The kids had fun. They even had some good lessons on reading a map as the area is huge. As you can see, creating large bubbles was serious business. The picture on the left here is the middle of the yew maze.








Ok, the swimming pictures are from July. The girls took lessons, like they always do in summer. It was so relaxing to have them both in lessons at the same time. Perhaps because of the economy, the classes were extra small this year, which I loved. Hadley progressed greatly in stroke development and can almost do the butterfly now. She's working on learning to dive. I don't help much because I laugh so hard at her belly flops. Kassy conquered her fear of jumping in and can now jump, without hesitation off the diving board and doggie paddle for a little ways. She was trooper out there, waiting in line for the diving board, with trembling lip, trying not to cry and shaking as she walked the plank. But by the forth lesson she did it. I was so proud.

And then there are pictures of friends. First the Bierbrauers. Jason, the dad, is a friend of Tom's from high school. They were here off and on for five days while they went back and forth to a wedding in Ann Arbor. They have five kids. It was nutty, but exciting here. Beneath that is a picture of the girls with my great aunt Mariel and uncle Phil. They were also in town because of a Michigan wedding. It had been several years since we had seen them so it was a good chance to catch up. And finally, the girls with two, of the four Drost kids. The Drosts are our good friends in Des Moines. We stayed with them for Cody's wedding. Again, nutty, but fun. I love chances to "live" with other families. You get to see how they interact, discipline, structure their life. It always inspires me to keep working hard at being a parent. And I think when you stay together for a few days, you see more reality than a quick 2-4 hour visit. I definitely recommend it.

Demon bugs

I remember how comfortable it felt owning our first house in Des Moines. It was a fixer-upper cosmetically. The major work of roofing, siding, furnace, etc. had been done by the previous owner. Only, that owner, stopped making payments and we were able to get a deal when we purchased the half fixed-up house. Fixing up the house in a quick time frame was stressful, but with a grant from the neighborhood revitalization program, easily affordable. At any point after we moved in we knew we could sell our house for twice what we paid. It was a secure feeling.

We knew when choose to buy a house in this town that it was risky. But we liked the idea of living in a town with big needs and prices were good here. Nice house for less money. We'd grown up in a world where real estate increased in value and figured the worse case scenario was that we would never make any money on our house. We couldn't fathom a world where housing prices could drop lower than they already were in this town.

You already know that our little worldview popped a long time ago. Housing prices did fall, just a few short months after we bought our home. And then they dropped.And dropped and dropped some more. Our house has lost a full 35% of its value. And while the rest of the country cautiously hopes the housing market will begin to climb again, without new employers, most people in this area skip those articles. I'd come to terms with the fact that my house was like a car--a depreciating asset. Never mind that we have replaced the roof, and the flat roof on the addition, the furnace, the water heater, the garage roof, the AC, the washing machine and garbage disposal. Never mind that we know the stove, dishwasher and fridge are on their last legs. We like our house and if, for some unknown reason, God called us out of this place. I guess it would be his job to get us out this house without a financial mess. You know, stand on the Rock. Do not worry about the things the world worries about.

Apparently God thought we could use a bit more faith stretching. We haven't been perfected enough (painfully true) so God sent a new trial--and as it true of most trials, I would prefer not to go through it. Or maybe this is spiritual warfare and little demons (literally they are little demons) are trying to destroy our faith. Either way, it's time once again to try and defeat the panic that is slowly raising in me.




Do you know what these are? Not flying ants. Think mud tunnels; think wood eaters; think "must disclose on a seller's statement." Think termites. Several pest control people I called, like the realtor that showed us the house, told us there weren't termites in the area. The ones in the know, said they had never heard of termites in this part of the city. Never. One of the guys who came to give me an estimate said I should play the lottery, because the odds of winning were as good as my odds of getting termites. Ha ha.

I was handling the news ok, until Tom left town and I got to usher four different companies through my house as they placed bids for treatments. And then today, one man actually crawled through the terrifying crawl space and said there were giant mud tunnels, about 6 inches wide over on the southeast wall. Ok, so truthfully, I've just been going on the assumption that we found the termites early and that there was no damage because the tunnels has been so small. Giant mud tunnel destroyed my assumption. And like I said, Tom is gone. Totally gone to the remote, unreachable wilderness of the Boundary Waters, hundreds of uninhabited lakes between Minnesota and Canada. When something goes wrong in the house, he frets and analyzes all possible scenarios so much that I don't have to.

So, it's time now to pull out a stronger faith, one that thrives without the security of a house that is a good investment and that doesn't depend on circumstances. That's the kind I like to think I have. I guess it's time to find out.
In the midst of this scenario, do you know what is going through my head?..a silly, version of a classic hymn that makes me laugh.

"On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is crumbling wood."

Fruit

I was frustrated with my girls when we returned from Honduras. Especially with my Hadley, who has always loved all material objects including papers with unfinished scribbles, way too much. I've told her we should love God and people more than we love things, but the old writing rule of show, don't tell is true in life sometimes too. I had hoped Honduras, with its joyful, toyless hours, would teach her these deeper truths (they had toys, but mostly toddler toys). But she is seven, perhaps I was expecting too much.

Upon our return to the States, Great Grandma gave each girl a crisp $10 and, then, inexplicably, her neighbor that we've never met did too. Suddenly the girls had $20. I give the girls an allowance and teach them principles like save some and give some, but with gift money I usually let them decide what to do. I watch, breathless, hoping the carefully taught principles with be voluntarily applied. Kassy is always eager to please and would happily give away or save all her money. Or she wants to do what Hadley does. Hadley is greedy, anxious to acquire some new treasure, which will be forgotten in a few short days. And so, upon return to Michigan, Hadley began her daily beg for a trip to Toys'R Us.

I couldn't help myself, neither could Tom. We lectured and reminded about Honduras, imploring her to see the bigger picture. But she didn't care. She spent all $20 on a pack'n play for her baby doll. I even suggested we could find such a treasure at a garage sale for $5 or less. Still, she insisted, and though my heart sank, I had given my word she could spend the money as she wished and I let her buy the toy. Two weeks later, it creates spots of pink light on the carpet on the sun shines through it.

My expectations of what Honduras could change in my 7-year-old were too high though I might never know what the effects really were. Then yesterday, Tom announced to the girls that it was time for a toy clean-out. We usually do these twice a year--once at Christmas and once at birthdays. We declare that each child must get rid of 5-10 toys before new treasures arrive. If Hadley is home, it is a miserable event. Kassy will pick her ten things and then Hadley will start crying that Kassy is getting rid of some toy she personally loves. Usually the toys end up being plastic junk prizes from a school fair or well-meaning community events.

The girls heard daddy's announcement and ran upstairs--avoiding the declaration? Fifteen minutes later they came down, arms full of twenty-three stuffed animals!(Embarrassingly there are still over 50 stuffed animals in this house, have you ever counted yours? I think stuffed animals breed, like rabbits). Inexplicably they tackled the playroom next, getting rid of toys and puzzles they don't use, talking to each other kindly and logically. I held my tongue as they chose to get rid of some my favorite toys, but I would not interrupt this phenomenon with my sentimentality.

So, maybe they did learn a few things. We've decided to have a little toy sale. We will donate the profits, which will be small, to our friends in Honduras. I'll sell their old clothes too. And I was wondering, if any of your kids would like to get rid of toys too, and help us raise money for the orphanage?