Benjamin's 12th Birthday!

12 year old birthdays around these parts are a BIG deal! They come with "the talk" and a trip for the birthday kiddo of the kiddo's choosing. For Benjamin this means a Chicago Bears game in the Fall.

After Jacob's White Ninja party I was challenged to come up with new fresh ideas for a BLUE Ninja party. I've had similar dilemmas in previous years ... the result of having 2 boys 11 1/2 months apart. Dear Ben and Jacob are twins for about 6 days each year! We hung falling blue Ninjas from the ceiling and big Chinese lanterns in various sizes as well. I think Ben was pleased but being the happy-go-lucky guy he is who knows!

Mary drew him a picture of Jay Cutler, his favorite player!
Eli loves a good party!
Ben's cake!
This year we were blessed to have Grandpa here for the celebration. He came to "babysit" while Mike and I flew to Colorado to find a new house ... there's a teaser for you!

First Place Team trophy winners ...

Team Stephens! Benjamin, Jacob and Timothy competed at the University of Texas Dallas tournament yesterday and, despite Tim being placed in the wrong higher class, won the team trophy! Go Stephens!

Jacob's 11th Birthday!

Our wonderful Jacob turned 11 on January 18th! The flaming mass in front of him is really a plate of white ninjas ...
We surprised him with a White Ninja theme (which will matter when you see Ben's theme on Tuesday!)
White streamers, red dragon and lanterns, Ninja napkin rings and gold throwing stars ...
We started the day with bacon, eggs and french toast stix ... all Jacob's favorites. For lunch the older kids and Joshua Belonga took the 3 little boys to see Real Steel at the $1 theater while the girls, Elijah and I walked the mall. A fun time was had by all! In the afternoon the boys played football, ate pizza and shared the ninja cupcakes with the neighbor kids. Jacob went to be a happy, exhausted boy.

We have Anna, the Pink Ninja; Jacob, the White Ninja; and Timothy, the Red Ninja!

I have a new laptop. Her name is Daisy. She has all of her keys and none of them stick or crunch. Her screen is shiny, bright and has no fingerprints (yet). I genuinely want to work on her because she's so darn fancy! Maybe this will motivate me to post more often. A clean slate if you will ...

Ant Hills

We've been back in North Texas for 10 months now. We had been away for six years. A lot changed in six years. People changed, we changed and North Texas definitely changed. Our town, McKinney, quadrupled in size in 6 years. People have been swarming into North Texas, just like in other growing economies, from California, Florida, New York, New Jersey ... all looking for more opportunities, cheap housing and a fresh start. Good for them. Good for Texas for being open to people escaping high taxes and joblessness.

I liked living here back in the day. I never liked the summers but I liked the people which made the summers more bearable. I'm a pretty easy going gal and have never had a problem finding my niche and relative contentment anywhere we've moved from Kansas to Texas to Minnesota to Colorado . But, since we've been back I've struggled mightily to find contentment. I've laid awake at night thinking, "What is wrong with me? Why don't I like it here? Honestly, why do I HATE it here?" I've told myself all the cliches like "home is where your heart is" or "our home is in Heaven so we're just guests here on earth". But still I've had this nagging misery. When I leave the house to go shopping I want to hyperventilate or have a panic attack or both. After 10 months of pondering and feeling sorry for my silly self here's what I've concluded.
McKinney is like a GIANT ant hill by a picnic table outside a huge amusement park called "Dallas/Ft. Worth". 140,000 ants swarm in and out of the McKinney hill. The McKinney ant hill has all an ant could need ... AntWalmart, AntTarget, AntWholeFoods. But, in the event you can't find what you want here in McKinney, there are more GIANT ant hills just a hop, skip and a highway away. There are FOUR AntMalls within ten miles, 7 AntTargets, 6 AntWalmarts and Ant-mega-super-stores off every exit. So many choices, too many choices, so many ants, too many ants! And, because the ants have so many options, they are put-out and rude when they can't get exactly what they want when they want it. There is no contentment in the beautiful ant hill where these ants live. There is no thankfulness for the great picnic scraps dropped for their ant enjoyment. Also, because the ant hills are cheap and there is no state ant hill tax it also has NOT attracted the most up and coming ants. Our ant hill parks are covered in AntGang graffiti and we have warnings to lock up the ant hills and ant cars because of the rising crime rate.
Compare this to Ft. Collins (where we lived before moving back to Texas). Ft. Collins would be like an ant hill by a picnic table outside of a National Park. 140,000 ants live in this ant hill, too. Many of those are college students attending AntCSU, many work for the university, many are retired because Ft. Collins is a lovely setting to retire and many are just families. The Ft. Collins ant hill also has everything an ant could need ... same AntShopping opportunities. But, there is ant shopping in other ant hills nearby ... it's just a bit of a drive. If the local stores don't have what you need you might just order it online (the ant internet is quite impressive) or just wait until you have reason to be near other ant hills and get what you need at that time. There is contentment in fewer choices. No scurrying to the next AntTarget when the local one is out of stock. No scurrying on huge ant-highways to go from restaurant to shop to gym to mall to theater. You have a choice or two and it's enough. It's not like the Ft. Collins ant hill is perfect. Because it's near a National Park ant vacationers come to and from. Because it's a healthy place to live lots of tree-hugging, dirt-eater ants are attracted to the location. Because everything is nearby there are lots of ant cyclists who think they own the road. But, in general, it is not hectic, frantic and overrun by every nearby ant hill within a 10 mile radius.
So, all that to say I miss my old ant hill. When we first arrived I thought I'd like having so many choices but it makes me feel panicked and stressed and over-whelmed. I really believe that for many people here it's like the frog in the kettle scenario. North Texas has grown up around them and they don't realize the chaos they are living with. It seems normal when it's all you know. And, if this is where my husband's job was, I would make due and get over it. But, Mike's job being what it is, allows us choices. We have talked for hours about these choices knowing that no ant hill is perfect. But, what we come back to is we don't want to raise our little tribe of ants in materialistic chaos. We also want to be near our family. We miss them horribly. What's a birthday without uncles, aunts, grandparents and cousins?! So we have set into motion a plan and with God's sovereign grace and mercy we are hoping to get back to our old ant hill very soon.

"Come to the edge ..."

"Come to the edge.”
“We can’t. We’re afraid.”
“Come to the edge.”
“We can’t. We will fall!”
“Come to the edge.”
And they came.
And he pushed them.
And they flew.
—Guillaume Apollinaire, 1880-1918

I read this today in a comment on the Momastery Blog and it made me tear up thinking "this is EXACTLY what we did for Josiah". And, honestly, 90% of our Christian, homeschooling, conservative (often controlling and legalistic ;) ) friends told us not to ... they counseled us to do the opposite of exactly what we knew our Josiah needed. And, in the dead of night, we counseled ourselves against it, too. It is scary to let go and let live when our kids become adults. But, we knew we had to let him go ... back to Colorado to finish his senior year without us. Oh, it was painful but on the other hand because it was right, we had peace. We didn't stay awake nights worrying about him like we did when we were trying to keep him in our little nest. He was where he needed to be and, as much as we missed him, we had peace, too.

So, fast forward to Christmas. I had visited him once in October but he hadn't been "home" since August. We were anxious he wouldn't like us any more ... we are a crazy lot of loons in this nest ... but he came home and was happy. He IS happy. He is mature and appreciates even the smallest things we do for him now. He ate everything I cooked. He did everything I asked. He enjoyed his siblings and got to know sweet Elijah like he hadn't known the little guy before. He and Mike were able to practice martial arts moves on each other and debate and joke around. Oh, what a difference 3 1/2 months made!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Yes, these are my children. I'm so proud. We took all the kids to US Toy and had a blast. All sorts of useless, frivolous, goofy stuff and rock bottom prices! My parents were also with us and only seemed moderately embarrassed to be seen with my tribe of clowns.
Sword fighting in the aisles ... MIKE was filming this while customers were shopping ... amazingly enough we were NOT kicked out of the store.

Luke and Mary examining inventory ... Luke looks perfectly normal.

Joe, with a message for his best friend (GIRLfriend, that is ;) ) I love that Mike has altered his voice to talk to the puppet ... that makes me laugh to even type! I love you, Mike, because you are FUN!

As we walked in the store I was informed by the kids that Mike had promised them that they each could buy one small item ... thank you, Mike, that was so helpful! 10 kids times "one small item" = $$ + Stress + "not everything can always be fair if child #1 spends $3 and child #4 spends $2 and child #7 spends $1"

Sooooo, that's a sample of what has kicked off our new year. General levity and fun. Which we needed after a very long year. Thank you, God, for laughter and for grace and for loving us when we are sulky, pouty sinners who struggle to find contentment during hard times, in hard places with hard circumstances!

"Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge." Psalm 68:2