Happy Halloween

I asked the girls if we should have a scary or happy pumpkin so happy it is! I shouldn't be surprised since Libby was astonished at the lack of rainbows in the sky the other day. We're pretty sure her world is full of nothing but rainbows, princesses, princes and flowers. Life has been a bit on the chaotic side as we finally hired a contractor to finish our abysmal backyard. Goodbye barren wasteland!

Amid the power outages and water being intermittently off and construction happening everywhere and children spilling gallons of milk on the front porch during the time the water is off we got to welcome home a little 3 year old girl! She is 3 days older than Libby and they will now be referred to as "the twins." But now as we enter life with social workers again, continue schooling at home and raising 5 children, ages: 2, 3, 3, 4 and 6 we sit on our lovely back porch and praise God, for He is good! We are abundantly blessed in that

"He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved. In Him we have we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight..." ~Eph 1:5-8

Pajamarama

Dear Grandparents,
I give up. I can no longer make fun cakes and have extravagent parties for each childs' birthday. I'm a failure, I know. It's all Jacob and Maggie's fault, really, since they decided to have birthdays 7 days apart. Since they decided to share October, in my book they also decided to share a party. And for that matter, what if we just rolled out of bed and declared that a party in itself and never took off our pajamas? What if your "cake" was a pan"cake"...

Thank you for not judging me. Thanks to my neighbors for not mocking my pink leopard granny jammies I wore in our front yard until 3:00. Thanks to the real estate agent who didn't tell us people we know and work with would live across the street from us and see me outside at noon in undignified pajamas.

Love,

Missy

Today I Made it Out of Purgatory

Really the only reason I'm writing this entry is for that title. I'm in a book club with some other book geeks. We started about a year and a half ago on the Breakpoint Great Books List (a list of great books with a Christian worldview).

Everyone is forced to read good books in high school, precisely when you have zero appreciation for them. We thought it would be nice to hold each other accountable to read good books now and enjoy them instead of read them and squelch all the joy out of the process by slaving on a 20 page dissertation about "the role of verticality in the novel" or "the influence of religion in 19th-century Russian literature." I had to write one of those essays in college and believe me, joy squelcher.

One of our most recent books was Dante's The Divine Comedy. The crazy people who made the list assumed you would read all three parts in one month. Might as well have picked the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. I'm just Type A enough that it's been nagging me that I never finished it so I've continued through Inferno, Purgatory and here comes Paradise!

MRLRAPCFRCCYSD

I'm thinking of sponsoring a 5K. Really. I was walking a 0.0005K to the mailbox the other day and was attacked by an extremely vicious dog. The breed is not relevant. I learned many things:

1. I hate dogs.
2. I am a good parent. The dog went for Maggie, I picked her up and took a bitin' for her.
3. Erik loves me but delights in my pain. I have endured many rabies jokes.

Thus, my 5K. The Missy Reynolds Lancaster Rabies Awareness ProAm Celebrity Fun Run for the Cure and Controlling Your Stupid Dogs. Because rabies doesn't discriminate.