If we ever move, I'm taking my kitchen sink. Seriously, it's so incredibly beautiful. Eric bought it for me two summers ago. His friend just finished enameling it and Eric put it in last week. It took three days and countless trips to town and finally some modified pipes to get it plumbed in. I've been obssessive about keeping dishes done so that the sink always looks perfect. The other day I said I loved my sink and Lili said 'how can you love a sink Mom?'. Easy, your Dad lugged it home and dealt with it in a campsite and then researched and shopped and talked to anyone he could about refinishing it. He re-did our kitchen to accomodate my sink and finally took it to a friend to paint because he wasn't convinced he could do it justice. Then when it was finally ready, he took a friend out to get it, wrapped it in blankets and took three days to install it. I see it as an act of love from Eric to me. He won't buy me flowers or cards and there aren't any pretty words coming any time soon but he'll make himself crazy trying to get things done to make me happy.
There are tons of Mommy blogs out there now. They are fast becoming one of the most popular blogs on the internet. I love following families I've gotten to know through the adoption world and I know there are lots of families following our site. The blog I go to the most is Rumor Queen, it can be controvertial and I tend to lurk more than join in. One of the topics that keeps coming up is that family blogs are hard for some families to read because they make families look too good. I agree that is the case here most of the time. I never lie and I don't embelish here. I do try to just post the more positive stuff overall. For the most part I'm documenting the kids lives and writing for my Mom and posting pictures for friends and family. You can have your blog printed into books now and I'm planning to do that by the years. It's a fabulous way to keep things documented at least a little bit. I can say that we aren't perfect, we're not all about parties and holidays, we have days at home where we're just trying to find the surfaces and wash the floors too. We have kids fighting and melting down. We are often just trying to keep up with the every day demands. Lili is moody, Fei lets her autism loose at home and Jia is a going toddler, we are chaos in motion most of the time. So, I don't know how much more real we'll become on this blog :) Just clearing up that I'm not trying to portray us as perfect, I just don't want this to be a place of healing and dealing, it really is more about celebrating our family and perserving the nice memories.
Here is a real bit for you to laugh about though, after we bought the kids their quad we were going to go for dinner but it was a bit early and kids had just eaten snacks so we went to Value Village to kill some time. Eric found some riding pants for Lili, Lili found a book, I found two pairs of size 4 jeans for Jia and Fei found a surprise for Lili for her Birthday. Eric took Jia and Lili out of the store and Fei stayed with me at the till to make sure Lili didn't see the surprise. The lady at the till said "will you be using your senior discount today?'. There was a really long silence while I worked really, really hard at processing that and finally meekly said 'no'. I looked at Fei who had a look of fear on her face and then she took off in a run right out of the store to Eric. I didn't feel chatty with the girl and was pretty happy to get out of there myself. Fei had told Eric and when I got out there she said 'were you embarrassed Mom?'. Uh no, shocked maybe. It is funny to watch Fei figure these things out, she knew it was an insult but had no idea why. I often have people assume I'm the girls Grandma, but I have 19 more years before I'm a senior and although I do have the gray hair there are no wrinkles quite yet! Oh the joys. Still not planning to go back to dying my hair, I'm loving not having to worry about roots and touch ups and toxic chemicals. Oh and the girl at the till was mid 20's and her hair was dyed several different colors with huge roots showing and it was frizzy from all the coloring.
