My reunion with my kids was even better than I imagined. It felt so good in my innermost being to hold them again! Truth be told we haven’t let each other go for very long since. The weekend at the lake was excellent. Quite relaxing as it brought just my family and my aunt and uncle, probably the lowest showing we’ve had in awhile! Still got some good fun in the sun and family bonding time though!

So today marks exactly one week until we are living in an entirely different house. It shouldn’t be as weird to me as it is considering we’ve lived 3 different places in 4 years, but it is quite odd, really. Truth be told I LOVE the house we’re in now. It is a house I had mentally imagined us in for at least 10 years when we originally bought it (would have been 2 years in September). So perhaps that is why I’m stumbling a bit in picturing me living at camp.

Well that, and the fact that I’m more the kind of person who hates bugs, tics and all things nature-esque unless I’m hiking/driving through them. Hard to imagine I’ll be living amongst them and they will be my people. And only half of the house is done presently so 4 of us will live in 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom and a kitchen; not unpossible but certainly not ideal for me! 🙂

Don’t read this as complaining, there are more positives to living at camp than I can name in one blog, I’m just coming to terms with my reality in a week. Give me 3 more weeks and I’ll be singing koomba-freakin-ya and sleeping on a bed of money due to the lack of mortgage…or just saving that for the adoption.

Speaking of, 3 days and we’re in MN learning about adoption. Woohoo! Can’t wait to fill you all in. Until then, look tomorrow for a ridiculous amount of pictures from my kids week and John and my’s successful domination of our yard.

Well it hit me…not that I haven’t been missing them all week, but I’ve been keeping busy, doing things that are accomplished a lot easier without kids around. Today I get to see them in just 6ish hours. I can’t wait! I miss their voices, their kisses, their smells! Oh I just miss hugging them, and talking to them, waking up with them and giving them baths. Two wonderful kids, I tell you, and they are all mine (oh, and my husband’s). Can’t wait to see them, even if they don’t miss me as much as I miss them. 🙂

Last night I got a bit more packing done. Then my good friend, John Dengler came out to help me mow and do overall outside maintenence to the house. We worked from 7-10. Yes, you read that right, it was ridiculous. I think my neighbors were forming a coup against me, there was going to be an uprising to kick us out before the new people moved in. It had been THAT long since we mowed our grass. Not only that, but someone (cough, Zach, cough) had left what started out to be a freshly cut, fluffy pile of grass on our lawn with hopes of taking it to camp. 4 weeks later it was a heaping, heavy, smelly bag of compost that left a crater in our yard and a poo-smelling stench permeating the place. It was awful. The smell and soy sauce look alike stuff was getting on John and my hands and was creeping in our nostrils. It was gross. I have pictures of the ridiculous amounts of grass (since our regular mower was broke we had to use an OLD one that didn’t have a mulcher, which meant raking too, FREAK!) and the aforementioned crater/heaping bag of poo. You’ll have to wait until next week to see those, but you will want to because it’s amazing.

Until then, hope you have a great weekend. I most assuredly will as it will include reuniting with me kiddies and fun at the lake!

Day 3 has come and gone and I’m still only slightly hysterical without the kids. Dan and Becky came back from Italy a few weeks ago and brought pasta and other yumminess with them. They made that for us last night and then went to Harry Potter with us. I got a bit of packing done beforehand and even took a load of clothes to camp. Dailah’s now ready to be clothed should winter hit tomorrow at camp. 🙂

So Harry Potter was AMAZING. Being the book lover I am, I’m not going to mention the fact that the book was better (though it was). I am also a cinema major, so I can appreciate how hard it would be to cram a 1,000 page book into a 2hr30min movie. With that said, the movie both standing alone and compared to the book, was outstanding.

The cinemotography is getting better and better with each one, as is the acting from the various “young” actors. Overall, I was quite pleased with the whole thing. I would argue that even those who don’t typically get a lot from the Potter series would really enjoy the film.

With that said, the movie reminded me of one of the reasons I love the books so much. It’s just the themes of love, friendship and good versus evil. This movie really played into the fact that not much seperates Harry from Voldemort (the dark lord). As Dumbledore says in the final scene, it’s not the similarities, it’s the differences. I think that speaks to life as well. What both terrifies and excites me about the human race is that we are all so similar. While it excites me that there’s not THAT big of a difference between myself and say, Mother Theresa; it also terrifies me that there’s not THAT big of a difference between myself and say, Bin Laden. We are human, we at one point were probably held and kissed by our parents, we put our pants on the same, we all eat, we breathe, etc. The difference is our reaction to our situation in life.

How we choose to live our lives reflects the differences in humanity and THAT is where we can make our mark. Harry constantly chooses the path of love, friendship, goodness. This is because he believes in the goodness of the world even though he has seen so much darkness. What a beautiful testament to his character! This is what I hope to pass on to my kids. We will all experience darkeness, there is no way around that. Though I grieve the day my kids lose their innocence and realize there is bad in the world, I realize it’s inevitable. I hope I am there to show them that there is still good, too. That they can CHOOSE to be that good when everything/one around them is choosing to be the bad. Though they may have darkness in them, because we all do, they can still CHOOSE the goodness. The darkness does not have to define them.

I love these ideas. One of my favorite lines spoken in the movie (can’t remember if it was in the book) was when Sirius Black says something to the effect of, “Fear can make people do crazy things.” Though that discussion is perhaps an entire blog in itself, I couldn’t agree more. Look at the world we live in today, it’s so fear based we have parents afraid of taking their kids on airplanes or to the pool or out in the sun. Arguably our country has perpetuated it in recent years so that it’s slimed it’s way down to everyone else. Fear-driven life is infinitely depressing. It can, in fact, make people and countries and things do crazy things. It can stop you from doing pleasurable, relatively harmless things. It can paralize and cripple. It is not a life I want to teach my kids or a life I want to live. Though fear creeps in dark corners of my world, I try on a daily basis not to let it overtake me and prohibit me from living a life God has given me. The only one I’ll have. I’m trying to live the life as goodness, without fear. Some days are better than others, I think today is going to be a good day.

I’ve made it. Only had one “replase” when I went into both of the kiddos rooms and just looked around. I think I’m doing fairly well actually. Last night I got SOO much packing done. Only one room (kitchen) left on the whole first two floors to go. The basement is pretty much complete so really I’m doing okay.

I even got to go out to eat with my in-laws last night and then go for a drink with my SIL, Leslie. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times, I am so blessed to have such great sisters and brothers! I love that Leslie and I are both vissionaries who want to make tomorrow’s world just a bit better. We spent most of the night coming up with ways to revolutionize this little area of the world we live in. The Quad Cities is notorious for its inferiority complex, which is completely unjustified. It really is a fabulous place to live and has great things to offer, Leslie and I just want it to have even more. We see so much potential in this place! It almost seems like a blank slate for us, ready for two women to paint it red! Now if we could stop with the big ideas and get down to some plausible ideas.

So I made it through a whole day without me kiddies. Who else is proud of me? Was a good day (we won’t count normal workday since I’m usually not with them anyway). When I got home I did some packing, yes, I know, go me….Then we got some Casey’s pizza with our friends Dan and Becky and decided to have a game night. Becky and I were dominating until the boys came from out of nowhere to beat us. Was horribly depressing, I think we need a rematch.

The kids had fun going to the new Science Center in Des Moines and Trysten so far only sounds excited to hear my voice for a brief second. He paused a couple times today so he could hear a funny part on Ice Age, I think they are surviving without me. Even Dailah, ever the mommy’s girl, isn’t screaming my name. Both saddened and happy about that fact.

So this week we are officially kid-less. My parents and sister take the kids one week out of the summer. It gives them some good old fashioned bonding time and gives my hubby and me a little honeymoon every year. Obviously this is the first year with two kids, so I’d be lying if I didn’t say it turns out the emotions are intensified x2! I only cried for about 15 minutes after I left them yesterday, so I think I’m doing well! I am preparing myself to pack up the rest of the house in order to be prepared for the upcoming move on the 23rd. Man that is coming at record breaking speed!

Zach and I got fingerprinted today for new forms CHSFS needs. It was really awesome, actually. The lady asked why we needed them. When we told her we were adopting, she said, “Well God bless you.” We talked about it for awhile and when we were leaving she said, “I’m going to say a prayer for Zach and Tesi Klipsch.” What an awesome “coincidence” to have her fingerprint us! There truly are blessings in every day life, are there not?

Here’s to a week of blessings to you all!

I realized I haven’t posted this week much and it’s really been quite a big week! To start, on Tuesday I got to leave the office early because Ms. Hillary Clinton and her husband (I like to call them Billary) were in town. She was speaking right outside my office so the Secret Service came through our offices with bomb sniffing dogs and whatnot. I was fine with it all until I looked at her “stage” and saw they had put some well placed hay bales on it. Now, I got upset because I work in downtown Davenport where we haven’t seen hay bales in many, many years. Don’t read me wrong, I am extremely proud of where I come from and no one grows corn and other yumminess like Iowa, but seriously…she is surrounded by commerce and high rises, who are we fooling.

Anywhoo, that night we got word that my brother-in-law was offered and accepted a job here in Davenport which means….my BIL, SIL and nephews are moving back. Yippee! I have literally been praying for this for three years so this feels like a long time coming. So that is exciting! We also hit up a fun activity in our park here so Tman, mommy and Uncle Frank got our face painted, etc. We then watched fireworks with some friends. It was a late night but oh so worth it!

On the 4th, we went to breakfast with some friends down by the Mississippi. Zach and Trysten took off for camp and mom and Dailah took off for naps. 🙂 After that, we went with some friends to go swimming at the camp pool. We were in the water for about 4 hours and it was loads of fun. Then we BBQd with an OLD grill that ended up turning our meat into carcinogen-filled yukiness. Though I must thank the men for trying. After that we played a few games and were off! Needless to say we were a bit tired this week!

In fact, Trysten fell asleep on the way home last night at about 6, didn’t wake up until 5 this morning. He was pale and shaky and STARVING! After 2 pieces of PB toast, 2 bowls of cereal, 2 glasses of milk, 1 glass of hot chocolate and a leftover piece of pizza he felt much better. Oh what a life I lead!

This weekend will be great fun! My sister gets into town tonight so we’ll pick her up and head to the lakehouse. Next week I am childless as my sister/mom/dad will be watching the kids for the whole week. Miraculously I have pretty much all my nights planned with some fun kidless activities and interestingly enough none of them include packing! 18 days until we move, perhaps I should rethink my priorities….eh, not so much.

We also got our first “hurts the crotch” bill (as my husband would say) from our adoption agency. Though it was a few hundred bucks cheaper than I thought, it was still a month’s mortgage so it hurts. Owell, one step closer to bringing me kiddies home, right? Speaking of priorities….

One of the best things in the world about Trysten is how empathetic he is (mentioned previously, I think he gets it from me). I can’t get away with feeling anything (happy, sad, angry, etc) without him picking up on it. He is forever trying to comfort the sad, reassure the distressed and love the unloved. It is a truly unique characteristic in a 4-year-old and I’m so proud of him. It is one thing I hope he NEVER tries to hide or stop doing. He is so naturally gifted at it.

With that said, last night we decided to watch “Bridge to Taribithia”. DO NOT SEE IT. First off, it’s not very good and there are only a few scenes with any sort of imagination. Secondly, it is horribly sad and depressing. I won’t give it away but something truly awful happens. So I was crying (see post about 50 things about me) and then Zach got my attention so I could see Trysten crying. Zach asked what’s wrong and he said, “I didn’t want that to happen”. I was so mad at the movie for claiming it was a kids movie and then doing that. Arg! So for the rest of the night we had to reassure Trysten it was just a movie and it didn’t happen in real life. But my kid was crying! Oy it was so precious and sad at the same time.

The last week I’ve tried to explain cemetaries (yeah, that sucks), death, life, bodies, spirits, Jesus, and all things depressing to him. I am in no way cut out to do those motherly things.

On a lighter note, I also got to explain breasts to him after he tried telling me mine were two kids trying to come out. If he’s anything like his dad, it was just an excuse to touch breasts.

So for those of you who are now mad at me (mom) for not including pictures of my eldest, here you go. The picture of him in his skates was the ONLY time he was not holding on to me with a death grip while skating. Good thing he’s cute and a good kid…oh and look at the joy in the last one. The kids really do love each other. Trysten’s quote of yesterday after he was fighting a nap for the better part of two hours. “Mommy, why did God not make me take a nap today?” Way to go TZ, blame it on the big guy.