I’m home from Blissdom. I’ve loved on my people, I can’t shut-up the talking to Andrew, and now I’m all cozy in my bed and suddenly the idea of typing a blog post is overwhelming and too exhausting to think of.  But I love you all and I can’t wait to Tell You Things about the past week.

Hijinks, y’all.  We had us some hijinks.

We love Groundhog’s Day around here and it has nothing to do with the weather.  Here’s a post I ran a few years back when I did the “Met-My-Mate” series that describes in crushing detail our engagement story…

There isn’t really A story. I mean, not the big, whiz-bang romantic fireworks story. But it’s our story, and I’m happy to share, no matter how anti-climactic.

Once we became “us,” we slipped into couple-hood very naturally. We had all the magic of discovering each other’s quirks and swapping stories for the first time, and very little of the tension that comes when two people spend lots of time together. Sure, I had to learn to communicate and Andrew had to squeeze “girlfriend” into his schedule, but, in general, we bypassed a lot of turmoil that many people had. I don’t know why, we just did.

Further, I think due in large part to the prayers of my father, who was wringing his hands back home, God protected us from a great deal of heartache. For someone like me, who is pathologically loyal, a control freak, and likes to know “the plan,” you would expect lots of angst and “define the relationship” moments. But no. It’s like God turned off the “analyze and plan” portion of my brain. Andrew and I just… were. Whenever I pictured my future, he was always in it. But I never bothered to define what that meant. That, my friends, could have only been a God Thing.

This gave Andrew the time he needed to grasp that he wasn’t going to be a bachelor until he was thirty and that maybe he’d like to keep me around for awhile. By the time he brought up marriage, I was happy to agree, but not really surprised. Just pleased.

Marriage was… the next natural step.

Once the M-word was out there, it became a given. We began to realize that we didn’t want to wait until we finished school (seeing how I still had so far to go). We shuffled numbers and schedules and living arrangements in our heads until we had a plan to get ourselves hitched before either of us graduated. We spent so much mental energy prepping for “the talks” with our parents, we never wasted much energy on angst and cold feet.

Once Andrew had survived the interview with my father (he can tell you that story some day), it was just a natural step to put a ring on my finger and start planning the wedding. Since I knew he had the ring stashed in his top drawer, I started pestering him shortly after the door closed behind my father. Because Andrew was just as impatient as I was, he spent a bit of time praying and reading some verses about marriage my dad had given him. Then he called me into his “bear cave,” dropped to one knee, and proposed. I paused not even a little and said yes. Then there was my bright shiny ring and we were done!

Our hands shook, as you would expect, and we were giddy with excitement. Then we called our folks and raced out the door to Bible study with goofy grins.

And that was all. The one thing we had going for us was the date of our engagement: February 2. Groundhog’s Day. Easy enough to remember. Not at all romantic sounding. But it’s our day and it suits us somehow.

Maybe over the years we’ve regretted a little bit not having a dazzling story to tell others, but since it was really my own impatience that created our non-existent story, I can’t really complain. He’s promised to make it up to me some day.

In the meantime, because I love you all so much, here is a picture of Young Us for you to ogle. We will never speak of my short hair again.

Happy Groundhog’s Day, people.  Hope it was eventful.

I am totally thrilled to get to help out 147millionorphans while I’m at Blissdom.  I’m going to be doing a few giveaways via Twitter.  Things like “first one to spot the girl with the big hair wearing her Uganda necklace wins a matching necklace!” Or, “Find our socially awkward volunteer wearing a 147 million shirt and win a pair of cow bone earrings!”

It’s like hide and seek for geeks!

In addition, if you’re hunting for a Valentine’s Day gift, a little birdie told me their Feed 1 shirt is coming out in RED.  So, um, I wear a medium.  File that away.

Aaaaaaaand,  if you’re really sweet, maybe I’ll do a giveaway when I get back for all of you who didn’t get to go.  Mkay?

It’s generally considered very bad form to just quit writing on your blog the week before you attend a big blogging conference, but that’s what I did last week.  Which is why I’m just now getting around to mentioning that  “Hey, Y’all, I’m going to Blissdom this year.”

Or, at least, I’m planning on it.  Ellen spiked a fever today and people all around us are coming down with the bubonic plague, so I’m recognizing my own mortality and spreading the Echinacea with a frenzy.

At any rate, Aubrey won a ticket to Blissdom this weekend and we’re road tripping this thing together.  So you know there will be hijinks.  And more than likely, we’ll dress alike.  Because we always do.  Here’s what we looked like when she came to my house a few weeks back.  Lucky for me, she changed her  mind about her black sweater a few minutes before she left or we would have looked really ridiculous.

She and I have been accidentally dressing alike for 12 years now, no matter how far away apart we’ve lived.  We always turn up wearing the same stuff.  I guess once you share a closet with someone (like when we lived together in college), you never get over it.

So, if you’re going to Blissdom, give me a shout-out in the comments.  And if you’re looking for me, I’ll be the one dressed like the girl standing next to me.

… Aaaand, we’re back.  Sort of.

I spent last week drugged and resting until my arm felt a bit better.  Gran drove down to be Andrew’s sidekick since me sitting in a chair and drooling on myself wasn’t exactly helpful in the caretaking of our young brood.

I am a delicate, dainty, and yes, un-graceful flower.

My triple sprain is feeling better, but my typing skills are still a bit mushy.  So I thought I’d show you a few pictures my photography genius sister has been holding hostage for months.  These were taken at Willa’s birthday in November.  And they still make me swoon.

I tripped over Willa on Thursday night and injured my arm.  No breaks, just a bad sprain. And wounded pride.  Am typing this one-handed while hopped up on ibuprofen and prescription painkillers.  Have spent the day crying and trying to eat enough food so I can take my pills.

I am officially 105 years old.

Willa isn’t the least bit sorry, either.

Apparently all that advice slinging I did last week meant I needed taking down a peg or three.  We had a whale of a parental night Friday night.  I didn’t intend to post about it to the blog, but when I’m overwhelmed, I write.  Which means, if you’re a trusted friend, sometimes you get a “too hot for the blog” story in your inbox.  This one got lots of guffaws, but I couldn’t come up with some redeeming reason to put a slightly edited version on the blog.

But the truth is, Friday night is the Vitafam life, too.  It’s one of those everyday moments I want to record for my kids.  So they’ll want to pay for my diapers and padded rooms when I’m old.

Plus, we’ve been studying the sovereignty of God this week.  And I’ve been reminding myself all weekend that “God is sovereign over the Friday night disasters, too.”  Because He is.  He sees our failures, He’s not surprised by them.  He sees the insanity of our lives, the messes we get ourselves into.  And I find that comforting.  I think…

Now here’s your dose of Vitafam reality:

So around 4, I told the boys to go put away the laundry.  This is something we’ve been working on, putting laundry away without wrestling, playing, or locking each other in the closet.  I kid you not, before the first article of clothing even made it into a box, they were already flinging stuff around and pushing the laundry basket out the front door.   Sam was mostly the culprit, so I sent him up to Andrew for some discipline.

While the boys flitted around with the laundry, I sniffed the air and smelled a ripe Ellen.  Of course, she was in underwear and not training pants, which are always a joy to remove when loaded.  I dumped the underwear in the sink and focused on cleaning The Butt Before Me.  I heard Andrew fussing at the boys from upstairs and rounded the corner just in time to send Ian and Adam up for their own “moment with Dad.”

My phone rang, but I couldn’t find it.  Hunted everywhere.  Called it with the house phone and found it buried in the couch.  Returned the missed call.  More boy tomfoolery in the background.  They seemed to think laundry time was smack-down rodeo time.  Ian was sent back upstairs to visit Andrew.

Eventually I got off the phone, Andrew came downstairs, and we set the boys to cleaning up.  I made smoothies for dinner.  We had a moment of sweetness while everyone sat on a blanket on the floor with a bucket of popcorn between them.  More cleaning up afterward. The kids even went to wash their hands without being told.

Willa decided tonight was the night to show off her newfound skill of stair climbing.  I won’t go into it here, but about five trips up the stairs later and several tears shed by everyone involved, Willa is re-thinking her desire to become a mountain goat.

Willa and I made up a bit then I rounded the corner to get another pair of underwear for Ellen since she’d peed in her current pair.  I noticed a pair of poopy underwear on the bathroom floor and a smear of poop on the tile and all over the hand towel.  Adam had gone to wash his hands and had ever so helpfully removed the poopy underwear I’d left in the sink so he could use it.  I’m not sure how the hand towel got poop all over it, but I don’t think I really care to know.

I cleaned that up and went in search of another pair of underwear for Ellen.  I went to take off her current pair.  It was a GroBaby diaper without an insert, so there wasn’t anything to absorb liquid.  My brain was otherwise engaged and I flung the contents of the diaper all over the stuffed chair in the living room.

Thank goodness for slip covers.

Ellen probably wandered around completely naked for about twenty minutes because Andrew and I were so distracted with the removal of the pee slip cover from the chair.  I finally put her new underwear on her and then remembered to fold up the blanket the kids had eaten popcorn on.  But someone yelled my name and I didn’t take it out to shake it. Sam took care of that a few minutes later only he didn’t take the blanket out.  He shook it all over the living room floor.

So then the boys had to vacuum.

A few minutes later, the vacuum cleaner made a gosh awful noise and came to a screeching halt.  Andrew asked, “Why do I smell smoke?”

Ian had tried to suck up a sock into the vacuum cleaner.  He broke the plastic cover on the brush that WAS PUT THERE TO KEEP IT FROM SUCKING UP LARGE OBJECTS.  The sock was burned through and black.  Andrew managed to salvage the vacuum cleaner.  The sock was not as lucky.

It was at this point that we decided perhaps we should just put the whole gang to bed and call it a night.  We put on pj’s and headed upstairs.  I fixed the girls’ humidifier and Andrew went in search of sheets for Ellen’s bed (because she had peed in it during nap time).

He came out of the upstairs linen closet totally frustrated.  “The boys didn’t even bother to put the sheets on the EMPTY SHELVES in the linen closet.  They just threw them on the bathroom floor and walked away.”

So I told the boys to come upstairs and Andrew re-explained the proper way to put up sheets.  He had them re-do their job.  A few minutes later he went back to the linen closet for sheets.  He was halfway to Ellen’s bed when he realized the sheet was wet.  He called Ian.  “Did you dunk this sheet in the potty?”

Oh, yes.  He did.

I sent Andrew to the girls’ room before his head exploded.  I had a talk with the boys about not just “doing work” but doing our “best work.”    I think I pulled out some analogy about half-cooked beans or some other nonsense.  I’m sure I was brilliant.  We prayed with them.

And every single one of them was put safely away by 7:15.

I sure hope you people find that funny.  Just goes to show what lengths the house of Vitafam will go to for a laugh.

I’m in a bit of a “helpful” mood lately.  I’m doling out advice left and right, like a cafeteria lady in the pudding line.  I tweeted a picture of the kids’ lunch today and the subsequent requests for recipes got me thinking.  I cook a lot.  I get requests for recipes a lot.  Almost all of “my” recipes are ones I gleaned from My Friend the Internet.  I tweak them some, but I’m a rule follower by nature.  (Nobody that knows me in real life chime in here.)

So I decided to put all of my favorite, tried and true recipes in one place.  Not in a book, no, that would be too prosaic.  I compiled them on the world wide interweb.  And, because I love you all, really and truly, I’m sharing my list with you.

Before you go clicking away, there’s a few things you should know about how we eat.  We don’t eat tons of chicken because we buy our chickens whole and I hate whole chickens, so we don’t eat them much.  We buy our beef by the cow and live off of that for the year.  I stretch things with beans.  Some of these recipes I double just to feed our gang or to ensure left-overs.  See the bottom of the document for all the substitutions I make to render these “Vitafam healthy.”

And, finally, I’m sort of a “one-dish wonder.”  I’m not a sidedish hater, I’m just short on time.  Which is why there are only three side dishes listed.  My family is grateful for their bowl of whatever.  If they want variety, they can learn to cook.  What this means for you, though, is that most of these dinner recipes are filling on their own and don’t require complimentary side dishes.

Click here to see the Recipe Collection.

I hope you enjoy these, the best of someone else’s best.  Hang on to the link and as I add and tweak, you’ll be able to see it.  Have fun, okay?

And since I’m sharing with you, I think it’s only fair that you add to my collection by leaving me your favorite recipe in the comments.

I’m not entirely magnanimous in my giving, I guess.

Today on her blog, The Nester featured some ways she had simplified life for her family.  As I was commenting, I realized it’s been awhile since I’ve shared any tips for “This Is How We Do It - Vitafam style.”  You people know I’m all about simplification.  If it makes life easier, we do it.

For example, each of my kids has their own Camelbak thermos.  There’s a different color for every kid.  They are responsible for their own cup. Before we sit down for a meal, I will remind them, go fill up your cups.  Sometimes I have to help the younger ones unscrew their lids, but even Ellen is capable of filling up her own cup.  (I’m not saying we don’t have our share of spills, but the kids also know how to go to the closet, get a towel, and clean up their own mess.)

If we sit down to eat and one of the children does not have their cup, then they go without.  When I say these things are their responsibility, I mean it.  Now, of course, if I’m up again and walk past their cup I will gladly serve them.  And it’s not to say I won’t help them look for it if it’s lost.  But the children understand (because I’ve repeated it 8000 times) that it is not my job to keep up with their cups.  If they can’t find it or forget to fill it, they can drink when they are excused from the table.

These cups are also handy when we actually, you know, leave the house.  If we go to someone’s house, we’ve got an easy way to keep up with everyone’s drinks and avoid spilling something on someone else’s carpet.  (Camelbaks don’t spill, although they do leak if your kids chew holes in their lid.  Ask me how I know.)

If we go to a restaurant of the nicer variety that doesn’t cater to kids (SNORT.  Why would we ever do that?) we bring their cups along.  No embarrassing spills and Andrew and I don’t have to dole out 50 straws.  (Andrew very sweetly cuts the straws down to size when we do get the kids cups.  Isn’t he the best?)

When I went to take a picture of these cups to show you, I walked over to the kitchen table, where the Camelbaks normally reside.  At any given moment there are usually 4 or 5 on the table.  But I only found one.  I located two more in random areas of the downstairs.  I haven’t got any idea where the others are.  And you  know what?  That’s okay.  That isn’t my job.  They’ll turn up when somebody gets thirsty…

Want more tips? Go to WFMW at Kristen’s blog.

So it’s been a Monday.  I decided to grab the bull by the horns and really complete the potty training task with Ellen.  (We took a break when Adam broke his arm.  Too many butts to wipe.)  We had a light week of school planned so I figured now was as good a time as any.

I figured wrong.

Our “light week of school” turned into an hour-long math session that nearly reduced me to tears.  Then a reading lesson that reduced Sam to tears.  And my head exploded sometime around handwriting, when we called it a day.  Or maybe I screeched, “Just wait til your father comes home.”

Something like that.

Ellen did pretty well getting back into potty training.  We’ve had some success (due in part to a killer Potty Dance that would be the end of me if anyone ever caught it on tape) and some failures.  I’m okay with that.  To top it off, Ellen has been sporting this outfit all day.

I gotta tell you, I feel a bit like her today.  In my head, I can just see my red sparkly shoes telling me, “There’s no place like home.”  And I am so grateful.  My situation is one of immense blessing and I do not take it lightly.  But my hair is askew and I’ve lost the yellow brick road and today I’d like to pretend “home” is on a beach somewhere with someone else to scrub the potties.

I feel like I put my big girl panties on when I got up this morning.  I really did.   I took a deep breath and I said, “Ok, God, big day today.  You’ve gotta get me through.”

But then I metaphorically forgot my pants.

And now I’m clicking my heels together for all I’m worth and looking for the Sunny Side of Life.  Oh, wait.  That’s a different movie, isn’t it?

The point is, there’s only so much I can do.  I can’t control everything.  I can’t always control my blood pressure or the level of frustration in our home, although I can work on it.  Sometimes I will lose it so that God can be God.

I’ve seen that a lot in our lives lately.  We’ve experienced some financial stresses like none we’ve ever had before due to the adoption.  But I think I’ve realized that sometimes we have to just get out of the way with our budgets and our 5 year plans and let God work His miracles.  He can’t get the glory if we keep doing everything ourselves.  (I say that tongue in cheek.  I fully recognize how powerless I am to do ANYTHING myself.)

We’re reading in Genesis how Abraham was always trying to “help” God accomplish what He had promised.  Maybe Abraham put on his Big Boy Underoos every morning and said, “Ok, God, this is the day we accomplish your plan!”

And he got in God’s way.  God still accomplished His purposes, but Abraham made it harder for himself in the long run.

I suspect that me and my Big Girl Attitude got in the way today until I was reduced to a blubbering mess that was powerless to accomplish anything.  And then God brought me comfort, even if the house still wasn’t clean and Ellen pooped in her pants.

And that’s a good thing.  Because now I can give God a big shout-out and polish my sparkly red shoes for tomorrow.

But I’m leaving my metaphorical Big Girl panties in the drawer.  God doesn’t need my help.  But he will mercifully use me if I’ll let him.

And my real underwear will be right where they belong, thankyewverymuch.

For much deeper thoughts than this, go visit Chatting At The Sky.