Wishes

Um, I wish I thought to post more often.

We took the kids to Ginter Botanical Gardens in Richmond last night, to see their GardenFest of Lights. It has become a tradition to make this little trip on or around Annamarie's Gotcha Day. It simultaneously seems to me like just yesterday and a million years ago that we met this tiny, severely delayed baby girl in Bulgaria. So many of my wishes for her have already come true...that she would talk, that she would learn to read, that she would be happy and healthy. And I am so grateful for her and the joy she has brought to our family over the past eight years.

This "wall of wishes" at the botanical gardens is funny and sad and touching. Of course many of the wishes are for material things (LOTS of wishes for XBox 360s and wiis), but there were also many wishes for peace, for an end to the war, and for healing for loved ones. The ones that touched me the most were the notes hoping for someone to love, especially the one that read in childish handwriting, "For my mom to find love."

The lights were beautiful, and Thomas and I were able to make some s'mores by the bonfire. Mmm. Unfortunately, my lens somehow got switched to manual focus and neither Ron nor I realized it, so we came home with 120 blurry photos. He did get a good one of the huge peacock in the courtyard.

We're expecting a wintry mix tonight. Sounds like a good night to light a fire and watch Christmas movies.

Trunk or treat

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This was the first year that the kids were really both old enough to wander around the church's Harvest Party by themselves, so I decorated the van for Trunk or Treating and sat out in the cold with Sandy. I didn't get a great photo of the van, but I was really happy with the way it came together. The little kids were so cute, but most of them had chattering teeth to go along with their costumes. Thomas, now that he is is a "youth" (in two more years I will have two yoots) got to run a station inside. It was right up his alley--he is great with small children.

I made my shirt, too. And here are Cleopatra and the Rogue Pirate.




The picture of Thomas was actually taken last night before the party at his school. When Ron picked him up after the party, Thomas was obviously out of sorts but refused to talk about what was bothering him. This morning we cajoled him into admitting that a girl had asked him to dance and he said no out of fear, even though he wanted to dance with the girl. Poor kid. But he's only 11! He wants to write her a card explaining that he only said no because he was afraid, and I am really proud that he thought of that on his own.

This is the life

Stretched out in Mom and Dad's king-sized bed with her loyal companion, her iPod, a Granny Smith apple, and her favorite dog book.

What more could a girl want?

Drama on the soccer field

Soccer injury, originally uploaded by C_Michener.

Yesterday during Thomas' soccer game, one of his teammates (I'll call him J) went down. When the boy began screaming, the ref called the coach onto the field, and then his parents. I was near the other end of the field, but heard his mom's gasp and both parents shouting, "Call 911!"

Word came through the crowd that he had broken his ankle, and then that it was his leg. Apparently J and a bigger boy (the injured kid and my son are the smallest players) had been kicking at the ball at the same time, and J's lower leg had taken the full force of the kick. His dad later said that his leg was "hanging" at a right angle.

Unfortunately the game was being played at a school in a location that can only be classified as boondocks, and it took nearly half an hour for the ambulance to arrive. J was a trooper, and I was really impressed with how maturely his teammates behaved as well. They sat on the field a respectful distance away and spoke in hushed tones, and they cheered J as he was loaded into the ambulance. Thomas later said that they dedicated their play to J when the game resumed.

Yes, surprisingly (to me at least) they finished the game. For me, it was a strangely stressful experience, and it totally freaked my poor Thomas out. On the way home he wailed about how he kept seeing "flashbacks" in his head (although he was as far away from the incident as I was and didn't actually see anything), and about his certainty that he was going to have nightmares.

It didn't help matters any that I got lost on the way home. We were deep in two-lane-road Children of the Corn country, and after it got dark I missed a turn somewhere. I pulled off at a tiny store and tried to use my iPhone's fancy map feature, but couldn't get a signal. A slightly scary man was shoveling hay by the store, and I asked him if he knew how to get to the road I should have turned on.

"Naw, 'n 'em in the store ain't gone know neither." OK, mister, just back away with the pitchfork. The two customers I'd seen come out of the store had been shirtless (I guess in Cuckoo, Virginia [I SWEAR I did not make that up] they are above the no shirt/shoes/service law.) and I was a little scared of how they'd treat us city folk so I left, trusting my sense of direction.

I managed to get us back on track, and we get to make the two-hour round trip again next week for the tournament. Minus poor J, who is a pretty good player.

Just as an aside, there was a woman sitting near me who kept commenting to her grandsons on how "teeny-tiny" Thomas and J were, not realizing that I was mom to one of them. "Ain't they afraid they'll get hurt by them bigger boys?" Both boys are small for their age, but both are fierce players, and I had to wonder afterwards if she felt like she jinxed J. I am also fairly certain it was her grandson who accidentally kicked him. I feel really bad for him too.

How to drive a dog crazy

This cheeky squirrel has been driving poor Ruby insane for the last several days, gobbling up our uncarved pumpkin inches away from her. Maybe I should say "previously uncarved" because it now has a softball-sized hole in the middle of it. Wonder if I can turn that into some kind of a design?