Kelli's Kaleidoscope: February 2008

**Disclaimer…this blog ended up being kind of long, so if you don’t have much time, just skip down to Saturday. There’s a big prayer request at the end of that day (house fire) that I’d like you to pray for.

Lydia (age 7) and Corban (age 5) are our niece/nephew that have just moved to Texas. Their dad, Philip, is Paul's brother. This past weekend, their parents were moving all of their belongings into an apartment (temporary until they finalize selling their house in NC and buying a house here in TX). So Paul and I offered to bring Lydia and Corban to our house while their parents did all the moving...this is when the adventure began...

THURSDAY
4:00pm – meet Lydia, Corban, and Felicia at their motel…Felicia and I sit and talk while they continue to play for a bit
5:00pm – head over to Chick Fil A – the kids play in the play room before and after dinner…Felicia and I talk some more
6:00pm – head back to the motel – the kids get a bath, then they get ready to get in the van so we can go to camp.

Corban asks if there is a shorter way to camp – I tell him that it’s going to be an hour drive – no shortcuts. Felicia says, “Tell her what you’re worried about”…Corban replies, “Throwing up” (he gets carsick pretty easily).

6:45pm – We head out to the van (it’s the camp van b/c I had a pallet of 3000 magazines in the back that I had picked up earlier that afternoon)…Lydia begins to cry and is soon bawling that she doesn’t want to leave her mom. Corban is fine and excited to be in the new van with the exception of his earlier concern. This is where I start to wonder if I can handle kids. Up until now, both kids have LOVED spending time with Uncle Paul and Aunt Kelli, so I never envisioned them crying today. Felicia puts both kids in the van despite the crying and upchuck concern and I start to head out of the motel parking lot. Thankfully, after 8 min, Lydia stops crying…now we just have to control the carsickness. So the whole way home Corban’s holding a plastic shopping bag in case he needs to throw up (which thankfully doesn’t happen). I repeatedly put in 3 different books on tape that the kids had checked out from their library (each about 6 min long, so we heard each book many times – I can almost recite them to you)…and Corban fell asleep so that was good.

7:30pm – In Bastrop (between their motel and the camp) we stopped for groceries and I received the dirtiest looks from everyone in the store because I was the only one there with kids that should have been in bed. I now understand why grocery shopping with kids is more time consuming. I’d like to know how other mothers return shopping baskets to the collection areas after they load up groceries and kids. I locked the kids in the van, sprinted with the cart over to the collection area, shoved the cart in, and then sprinted back to the van (because there wasn’t a close return area. I now understand why they are left on curbs near the lonely trees in the parking lots instead of in the correct return area).

8:45pm – arrive at Camp Tejas and greet Uncle Paul, Chessie, and Flurry. The kids are definitely more excited about the dogs. I don’t really recall what we did the rest of that evening because all we NEEDED to do was brush teeth, put pj’s on, and get in bed. But somehow that took a while b/c the kids didn’t get in bed until 9:50pm. I’m the worst mother ever, and I don’t even have kids of my own yet!

11:00pm – Paul and I crawl into bed. I already feel like a cold is coming on and I’m worried about passing it to the kids. As I set my alarm, I ask Paul, “What time do you think the kids will get up since they went to bed late? Can I set my alarm for 8:30am?” He laughs and says “I think they’ll be up before then”.

FRIDAY
7:45am – the kids are up!...and they’re HUNGRY!!! I give Corban his treatment (for asthma) and put on Sleeping Beauty – it’s the only kid movie I have in the house and I was told that they watch a movie while he does his treatment. I then ask them what kind of eggs they like – Fried or Scrambled? Corban says “Lacy” (through his nebulizer mask). I think that I must be mistaken in hearing him. He takes the mask off to say “Lacy eggs”. I’m completely lost. Luckily, Lydia tells me that Lacy eggs means Fried eggs…Whew…thank goodness for older sisters!

I fried the eggs for them, then mixed up the Cinnamon chocolate chip pancake mix. I give them wooden trays to put under their plates and let them eat breakfast on the couch as they continue to watch Sleeping Beauty. I think the whole breakfast process took almost an hour. After we finish eating, they continue watching the movie and I go take a shower. After I’m done, they get dressed and we take the dogs for a short walk.

10:00am – We start a short tour of the camp. We visit the main office where they quickly observe that Uncle Paul has a “tidy desk” and Aunt Kelli has a “messy desk”. Then we went to the kitchen and met Janice and Carolyn and Ava as they were preparing for the weekend’s meals. After promising to return for lunch at 12, we head out to the climbing wall, the lakes, the bunk houses (which we peak into), the chapel, Marmax (largest conference room)…and then we head back to the house.

11:00am – We play games in the living room – Sequence and Uno Jenga…many times. All throughout the day, Corban asks, “What we going to do after this?” After I answer, he says “And what we going to do after that?” and the pattern continues. (After 2 days of this, I finally decide that the answer is “I don’t know what we’re doing next – we will decide after we finish this activity”) which doesn’t satisfy, but delays the next repetition of this question.

Lydia would play a note on the piano, and Uncle Paul would try to sing the same note...the high and super low notes were what made Lydia laugh so hard.

12:00pm – We head to the dining hall to eat lunch – Chicken Fried Steak. Thankfully Janice is at the line when we come through and asks if the kids will be sharing. I would have served each of them a full helping of everything, but the seasoned mother/grandmother helps me out. Thanks!!! After getting more cheese and bacon bits on the floor than on the baked potato halve, we bus our trays and grab 2 brooms to sweep under our table.

1:00pm – We head out to the playground and swings and have fun until Uncle Paul comes out to join us. We then head up to the top of the climbing wall (observation deck anyway) and look out as far as we can. When we come down, we play in the rocks at the bottom of the wall – mostly chasing each other.

This picture turned out a little dark, but I love it because it shows Corban's surprised face. He was running around the corner to catch us, and I caught him with the camera. It's always fun to get an unstaged photo (he is so serious when he poses for pictures, but in reality he's such a giggle box!!)

We were making pizzas in the sand - wet sand was the sauce, dry sand the cheese, acorns were pepperoni, leaves were tomatoes, and stickes were pineapple...who needs Fisher Price when you have a sand box?

2:00pm – We head back to the house for some “quiet time”. While the kids draw pictures, I collapse on the bed and wonder how Felicia and Philip have so much energy…and how the kids are still awake after all that we’ve done.

I lose track of time after this point, but I know that we took the dogs on a walk, and then went to the library and had about 30 minutes to pick out books to read at bedtime. Then we head back to the house and have meat spaghetti (as opposed to noodles and spaghetti sauce without meat b/c I just poured it out of the jar), and Corban has macaroni and cheese (he doesn’t like spaghetti). He asks me, “What else are we having with supper tonight?” and I recall back to my childhood that mom usually had me pick out a vegetable each night, but I figure that one night without veggies won’t harm them…and I’m too tired to think of anything else to go with our meal. So after supper we have cookie dough ice cream.

Then it’s bath time, and we decide that it would be fun to let the kids have a bubble bath…they sure did have FUN, and I sure did learn the hard way that giggling in the bathtub translates into water on the floor and bubbles everywhere! In reality there was only a little bit of water on the floor and the bubbles were contained to the wall of the shower, but I just didn’t think about the ramifications of letting a 5 yr old and 7 yr old bathe themselves. I had to wash their hair, so I was quickly reminded that I needed a cup to pour the water over their hair without getting it in their eyes…a very important technique to master!

After bath time, I twisted the towels around their heads and we took pictures for their parents. Then it was a Bill Cosby episode and off to bed with the radio on sleep mode for 20 minutes and lots of nightlights.

I don’t remember doing much after that…maybe Paul and I picked up a little – put some dishes in the dishwasher, ran the kids clothes through the washer…it’s all a blur at this point.

Next up: SATURDAY!
Thankfully the camp was serving all 3 meals, so I only had to worry about snacks in between. I quickly learned that Corban is a bottomless pit and is always hungry. He also doesn’t like bread or most carbs. He likes meat, eggs, cheese, and cheetos…and that’s about it. Lydia surprised me in that she actually eats salad when her parents aren’t around…I think she even took green beans, too!

After Paul brought breakfast back to us at the house, we got dressed and took the kids and dogs down to the Meadows Retreat center (new construction going on). The building is supposed to open this coming weekend, so we had a few volunteer groups working on it on Saturday (along with our paid staff). I learned that kids have different definitions of long distances, and the walk that we took them on was SUPER LONG in their eyes.

They weren’t that excited by the building, but afterward we went out to the meadows and let the dogs off the leash. Then Corban took off running (forgetting that he had just walked for SO LONG), and he tried to keep up with Chessie. That was pretty fun to watch the dogs frolicking and the kids chasing. After this, we headed to the lake and threw a stick in for Chessie to fetch. After that, we went home and bathed the dogs outside in the kiddie pool.

Then it was snack time because we couldn’t go get lunch yet (we waited til the guests went through first). Next we ate lunch outside and then Paul and I attempted to stall while we waited for the dock to clear of guests so we could go canoeing. So we checked the mail, swung on the bench swing next to the office, and went to the top of the rodeo arena lookout tower to see the mud from a better angle. Then we took them canoeing where we learned the meaning of “glide” and learned that Uncle Paul and Aunt Kelli can only paddle so fast, despite Corban’s plea for us to go “Faster, faster, faster!”.

Next we went to the playground where we swung as we watched the other guests go off the zip line and up the climbing wall.

When it was our turn to climb the wall, Aunt Kelli climbed next to Lydia. We got about half way up the wall (Lydia climbed the first bit, and got a little help from her belayer with some of the harder sections). But after looking down and seeing how high she was, Lydia quickly decided that she didn’t want to go any further up.

Then it was Corban’s turn. Aunt Kelli did the same thing with him, but since he has shorter legs, I’m pretty sure his belayer just pulled him up the wall…there wasn’t much climbing going on. And I think he was so impressed that he was going up without any effort, that he didn’t look down for quite a while. But once he did, we came down pretty fast. Although he still loved to tell everyone that he “climbed” higher than his older sister.

After the wall we went back for some more quiet time at the house (more for Aunt Kelli’s sake than anyone else’s) and we were all in the house with the windows open when suddenly Paul asked me if I was cooking anything. I said no, and he went out on the back porch to figure out where he smelled the burning smell. He raced back into the house and I immediately knew something was up. It turned out that our neighbor’s house was on fire. I’m not kidding. It was so surreal and crazy and I hope the kids aren’t scarred for life. Paul raced over to knock on the door and started calling Matt and Claire (the owners) to make sure they weren’t inside. He brought their dog, Katy, out of the yard to me, and I held her in the driveway while I called 911. Soon we had more staff out racing for garden hoses to use until the fire department arrived.

I told the kids to stay in the house and Corban said, “Wait, if you see a fire, then stop, drop, and run!” I wanted to take time to laugh but I had to race back out to find car keys for all the cars that were in the way of the fire trucks headed our way. I put Katy in the back of our car, then started moving the interns' cars that were next to the burning house. Paul was working with Matt, Cesar and Alfredo to find more hoses to use while we waited for the fire trucks. Then I passed off Katy (dog) to Seth, and I loaded up Lydia and Corban, and our 2 dogs into our car and went over to Janice’s house to play while everyone else worked on the fire. It was pretty scary, pretty fast, but amazingly the kids were okay. And thankfully no one was hurt.

The house (mobile home) is not salvageable, but a lot of their belongings only have smoke damage. Basically their bedroom and laundry room was burned up (the dryer caught fire), so they don’t have clothes, toiletries, etc, but their photo albums and many other heirlooms (antique plates, etc) were still savable. Paul helped with the initial cleanup after the fire was out that evening, and I stayed with the kids. I was amazed at how they handled it (I wanted to cry, but knew that if I lost it, they definitely would…I now understand how mothers can go on and stay strong after big losses…they don’t have a choice in the matter). They were playing restaurant at Janice’s house, which quickly turned into “the restaurant is on fire, call 911” games that I closely monitored to make sure they were dealing with it okay. As we were walking back to our house, I told them that we didn’t want to talk loudly about the fire when we passed it, and we weren’t going to go into the burned house. I thought we had discussed everything until we left our house again to go get supper and all of a sudden Lydia is crying and Corban is on the verge of tears. So we had a talk about how God knew the fire was going to happen but that He protected everyone and would make it work out for the good even though we couldn’t understand it right now.

So that’s a huge prayer concern right now – please keep Matt and Claire in your prayers as they sort out everything, take inventory of what they will need, and find new housing arrangements. There are so many things that God orchestrated to prevent the house fire from being worse than it was. So we have to remember that God is faithful in our time of need, but I know there will be many moments where we have to trust in God’s wisdom because it sure doesn’t make sense to us right now!

Well, Paul has already chided me for writing a novel. If you’ve made it this far, thank you for sticking it out. Sunday (yesterday) we took the kids back to their new apartment in Austin and we shared highlights of our 2.5 days with them. I’m sure they will hear more from Lydia and Corban throughout this week. I know for certain that I have taken away more lessons about raising kids than I thought was possible to cram in my head in such a short amount of time. I look forward to having kids of my own…but one at a time…and let’s start out with infants that don’t ask so many questions before I work my way up to the kids that can talk and ask “Why?”