sponge.

We did our usual song and dance: buckle up, ask the kids what they learned, pretend we're going home, end up at Chipotle.  I sit in the front and shuffle through the papers the girls have worked on, trying to glean some prompts for Lucy, while the boys do boy things, loudly, in the backseat.  She brought home this, colored and name attempted across the top.  The story of Achan, who stole from God and then paid dearly for it, as we always do when we steal from God.  That yellow thing on the bottom left side is a gold bar.  I asked her what Achan stole.  A robe, some coins and a sponge.  This then, is how rumors start.

And it's got me thinking of other things that are lost in translation.  Like this morning when she introduced herself as Allison and asked me to play Bible study with her.  The work I do here is Kingdom work I think.  This opening up of doors and welcoming in and praying together and stretching.  Kingdom work.  But how to get our families to understand that Church is not what happens inside a building but outside of it?  How to help them grasp that studying the Bible is a modern concept, that it has replaced following a Rabbi around the city while he ministers and teaches, that perhaps the best way to study the Bible is to put it down and go out and serve?  How to grasp that myself?

This struck me yesterday when Tess was home sick and I was held hostage in American Girl land for most of the morning.  Struck me when Kit and Gracie decided to move to another city (do you have any idea how long it takes an 18 inch doll to walk from one end of the house to the other?) and found there a lavish party with ice cream sundaes and little plastic potato chips.  What would it look like if the work of the Kingdom was so intwined with the play of our lives that the dollies set up a food pantry instead of a tea party?  If the forts the kids built in the woods were actually soup kitchens and if their knee-jerk reaction to the panhandlers at Target was, pull over-our brother needs us?  This, then, is the challenge I'm setting for myself and asking you along for: to live the Bible, the Mission, the Kingdom in such a way that it can't be separated from our daily lives.  To live so that Kingdom work is not just scheduled for Monday morning or Wednesday nights or just before major holidays, but at all times and in all ways.  To raise children who walk around with their hands open to receive and to give, to bless.  To learn that myself.  And when I stand outside the Small's play and hear Kit and Kanani adopting an orphan and having a luncheon with a widow well, then I guess I'll know we're getting closer.  Because we've gotten away from the mission of Church.  Far far away, I think.  And Father is calling us back.  Calling me back (remember the porch?) and I'm going.  Because faith lived out with children will, I have to believe this, give birth to faith lived out later on.  So, if we commit to teaching our Smalls, yours and mine, the real purpose of the Church: to love, heal, bless, care, then the Church of the future looks a whole lot closer to the Church of the past and that makes my heart smile.  Yours?

This is me being real.  Too busy being outside soaking up vitamin D to blog.  To wrapped up in smelling the sweet perfume of sunscreen on Small skin to do much else than get dirty and sweaty and happy.  Too tired from raising four Smalls and 26 Cutie Pies and a Keloid scar named Steve to do anything other than fall into bed at night.  What's keeping you these days?

flood.

There will still be a recap of spring break, or maybe not, but the big news around here is the flood we're in the midst of.  The kids asked this morning, eyes wide, if it was possible for a flood to be big enough to cover our house, our city, our world.  We remembered together Father's promise to never destroy the earth with a flood.  And, if He was planning on coming close, surely he'd have given us enough advance notice to outfit a boat with necessities like bottled water and Liz Lovelies and some absorbent towels. Surely. So, we're assuming it's just a minor flood, but you know what they say about assuming...
I have a sweet farmer from Hudsonville holding 26 new chickens for me.  The coop is in several inches of standing water.  Our little creek has become a lake, rubbish and branches swirling around the muddy water, bridge totally covered, newly sprung swamp cabbage swamped.  And so what is a girl with four children, 26 chicks on hold and a keloid scar named Steve to do but throw everyone in their bathing suits and let them explore the safer parts?

You know how sometimes you're watching your kids running through flood waters and splashing and having fun and then you realize that the water is filtering through two years worth of chicken crap that has built up in the coop and is heading downstream to swirl around your children's ankles and you think to yourself that perhaps letting them play in the swollen waters is sort of like taking them swimming at the waste water treatment plant?  You've been there right?
And then you start thinking how floods are strange things.  How the flood in the Bible was both the curse and the blessing at one time.  That the very thing that destroyed the earth also cleansed it and signaled a new start.  And how sin is so often like that, funny enough.  So often the thing that drowns us and saves us because when we are in over our heads in it, just totally mired down and sinking in it, Father stands on the water and beckons us to come.  Shows us that the chaos of fallenness is under His feet and that we need only walk.  To hold on and walk to put it under our feet too. That trust is the life ring that saves us in a drowning world and delivers us safely to Father.  And then we watch the muddy swirls of our sin recede into the floodwaters of His grace. And we are saved.  And when the waters have receded, there will be teeny shoots of new life and birds who have returned to build nests and plants that are reaching deep to put down roots.   There are always teeny shoots of new life and other growing things in the wake of floods.  That's how it works.  Floods are funny things.
This is me being real.  Thankful that Father has seen fit to create new life from the floods of my own sin. Thankful that we can cancel our reservations to Great Wolf Lodge and just take the kids to a little lake in Chernobyl for a summer vacay.
How are you weathering the storms?

spring break up.

I've been meaning to catch you up on our spring break.  The one that left Lucy stranded with me on an iceberg, stuttering into the wind about how it didn't feel much like spring, curly lips turning blue and eyes watering in the arctic wind. The one that saw us celebrating two birthdays: Grant's 11th and Jenn's, well, 11th ish.  The one I will write about so I have a record of it so that if I ever forget what we did and how we laughed and how very much fun we had together. But that's a post for another day. Because today we, just husband and I, flew the coop and landed in the Big Easy.  The place where every restaurant serves gumbo and the word voodoo is sprinkled liberally around all the shops and bars.  A town that smells from the Mississippi River to the upper Garden District of hangovers and horse piss.  It's an interesting place.  And we're exploring it, tentatively surely, but we are exploring.

Meanwhile the Smalls are home with our favorite sitter and her nearly one year old baby, who they are all doting over.  Grant was fitted for instruments today and fell in love with the Baritone, heaven help us. Could we not start out with a piccolo or a flute?  Peter whispers into the phone how cute Baby Molly is so no one hears that he has already fallen totally in love with her.  Tess lisps to me that Baby Molly has puller her headband out. Twice. Can you stand it? And Lu has been caring for the baby all day, helping to change her diapers and bossing Molly's mama around, I'm sure.  They are happy and we are happy and this whole thing is a gift we don't accept lightly.

More to come from New Orleans and spring break (even though winter is refusing to let go it's grip).

This is me being real.  Have you ever been to New Orleans?  If so, what must we see before we head home on Saturday?

break.

We were in the pick up line a full 20 minutes before school let out.  Couldn't wait a second longer at home. Had a cooler bag full of beef sticks and string cheese and a head full of ideas.  Because their teachers may have owned them yesterday, but for the next eleven days they are mine, all mine.  Because daily life with a three year old is a sweet thing, but having them all with me is the best.  It's a sad state when my need for adult conversation can be satiated by having the olders around.
So I grabbed them and sped away before school could decide that we are too far behind China to afford us a vacation.  Who cares about China anyway?  Sped to our first Mystery Trip of Spring Break 2013: SkyZone.  A place I'd told them we'd probably never visit since I've heard of at least two kids breaking legs there and one concussion in an eyeball.  A place I figured they'd never guess because of that.  A place I'd hoped would be nearly empty at four o'clock on the Wednesday before spring break.  I was right.  And it rocked.  Y'all, listen up.  If you want to have a rocking fun time with your Smalls, throw on some yoga pants and an adult diaper and head over there.  Wall to wall trampolines and foam pits.  We're going back for sure.  But only after we save up for a bit because it's really pricy.  But so fun.  But pricy.  But so fun.  I've already determined that there is one in Canton located very near the Ikea, so if our Mystery Trip on Friday involves Ann Arbor and Trader Joes and other places they might not be thrilled about, it'll totally involve SkyZone too and it'll make the drive worth it to all.
But that's tomorrow.  For today there's a trip on a funicular, which has to be fun because it's right in the name.  And a stroll through the Herpitarium just to make my skin crawl.  There'll be a playdate with Auntie Me and her Smalls that will, I'm sure, involve more children carrying loaded weapons than an Rwandan army while we make snacks and soak up real adult convos.
What will your first day of spring break 2013 look like?
This is me being real.  Loving the fact that it's 7:20 and two boys who were at Cabela's until waaay too late are still sleeping upstairs.  Loving that.

nit.

Few times in my life have I felt like a social pariah.  There was the time I was visiting the apple orchard with the kids just after having Tess and discovered I had hemorrhaged and had blood running down my legs.  And the morning that Grant got a sucker at the pediatricians office and then ran with it, falling and causing a def con three alarm throughout the office.  But I think this takes the cake.  This taking my kids to the salon for haircuts and discovering head lice. I thought it was peanut butter from lunch.  Have to think that still in order to keep my skin from crawling. This is the grossest thing we've ever encountered.  Finding it on a Small was bad enough, hours spent treating and combing them all ("I don't care if you aren't itchy, we are a family and we'll do this together") but then the obsessive thoughts got the better of me late late and I made Dan check my head.

This is Vinnie.  I'm sorry if this grosses you out people, but you should have been tipped off by the name of the blog.  I'm officially disgusted by myself.  Have combed my own head until my scalp is literally bleeding.  Dan tried to do it, but he doesn't have the stomach for that kind of work, setting off a snarky comment from me.  I birthed four of your children and you can't comb the nits out of my hair?  He suggested I just go get my hair cut short.  It'll grow back, he said.  I tried to inform him calmly that the health department prohibits it. At this point my rising hysteria took over and I think I may have blacked out for a bit.  When I came to I was full of questions like, Why this parasite?  Why not worms?  The kind characterized by unexplained weight loss and runny stool.
Texting my sisters and mom was not actually helpful.  Just sent everyone running for their combs, texting me back pics of things they'd found in their hair.  Ummm, I think that's just part of your dinner mom.  No, there are not lice having unprotected sex in your hair.  It's nearly 11, just throw some teeny condoms and cigarettes at them and go to bed.
As of now, we have are lice free.  I have eschewed sleep in favor of feeding the washing machine.  You're right Rachel, I should have just hit the laundromat.  Sigh.  But at least we have this: every soft guy we own is tied up in trashbags in the basement-good riddance.  Every pillow we sleep on is in the trash-good riddance. And every piece of bedding is in piles awaiting their turn with the sanitize cycle.  I have vacuumed all the mattresses and around the beds, washed every hat we own (except the ones I threw away) and put caution tape over the drawer holding our hair pretties.  The kids are all sleeping peacefully without lovies.  Without pillows even.  On bare mattresses like refuges from a boarding school.  We are not messing around.  We are on full alert here.  We are not messing around.

Today will find us combing each other's hair and brainstorming ways to make having lice cool.  So far all we have is this: Lice: it's the new black, which won't probably speak to our target audience of 1-5th graders.  Until we come up with a better campaign slogan, we're taking our cues from the primates.  This is our new family hobby.

This is me being real.  I'll pick them, but I'm not eating them.

loaf.

I hope this snowy snow day finds you in pjs still and heating up hot cocoa for kids out romping.  Since Wednesday is my big grocery day, it finds me wondering what on earth to feed these people, but there is this recipe that went over well last time with a few renovations for the gastronomically less adventuresome amongst us.  And with a fridge full of broccoli and a pantry full of Pirate's Booty and garbanzo beans, we will surely not starve, though Peter will claim it as fact within the hour if I don't get cracking on some kind of protein snack.  And not peanut butter and apples.  Can't slide that past-he spits on anything less than Jiff, which leaves him peanut butter-less these days since I'm not feeling Jiff.
Do your kid's quirks ever make you want to pull out your hair and wear sack cloth and ashes until they comply? Anyone?  And just when I think I'll surely explode if I can't figure out a repertoire of dinners that will satisfy every palate around our table, I spy Peter nibbling on asparagus and Tess trying a no thank you bite of  cabbage and I think, "Eureka!"  And then Lucy calls me Grandmudder for the forty sixth day in a row and I don't even care because Amazon just delivered a beautiful book called Salads for Dinner and I can picture myself standing atop a rock, sword in hand, heavenly lights beaming as I conquer this land of picky eaters.  I will know I've vanquished the Pickies when I can sit down at my new kitchen table (which has been transformed into a ping pong table with duct tape and glasses, but that's a tale for another day) and watch my entire family eat a salad.  And I'll say with tears in my eyes, "Lord, take me now.  I have completed the work you set before me.  My children are born again and eating a salad."
Until then, I'll keep trying new things and sharing them with you, if you don't mind.  Surely you've heard of OhSheGlows?  If not, head over there and check it out.  Here is her recipe for Lentil Loaf.  Yum and Amen.

OhSheGlows Glazed Lentil Walnut Apple Loaf

The only changes I made were to pulse the heck out of everything in my food processor so as to disguise the fact that I was serving them raisins or walnuts (two deal breakers with the Smalls), and subbed out the apple butter for unsweetened organic applesauce, though on hindsight, unless your kids are used to weird foods, you're better off just basting it with plain ketchup.  Enjoy and let me know if they liked it.

This is me being real.  Catching a moment to myself as the girls try out their new swimsuits in the tub.  Summer, please come.  Until then, I vote for snow days every day.

sloppy.

Because it's Tuesday (which is of no consequence at all) and because I told you I would share some of the recipes that are rocking my world lately, here is the first:

Lentil Sloppy Joes on the Food Network

Don't let the name throw you off.  They are delicious.  And full of good stuff.  And, no, your kids might not eat them the first time you serve them, or the second, or the third, but eventually, they'll surrender.  Three out of four Smalls will eat this stuff.  One like she's going to the chair.  If you're gluten free and roll with gf subs, you can get Udi's gf buns and some peccorino cheese and make it a real party.
Tomorrow I'll have the other lentil recipe that's calling my name lately.  Are you seeing the theme here?
For now, it's off to flush ice cubes down the toilet and crawl back inside the most delish book: A Good American.  I lurve it.  Later Tater.

This is me being real.  Adding A Good American to my carousel so you can get it too.  You'll love it.