Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Angels at the grocery store

I had an amazing conversation with someone today and I had to share it.

First of all, yesterday I was surfing the internet for some adoption related topics, which is something I know I shouldn't do because I always end up irritated. There are a lot of people out there with really strong opinions about international adoption. Lots of people are completely against adopting foreign children. I've heard it a million times. We're only doing it because celebrities do it, we're neglecting American children, foreign children should stay in their own country, blah blah blah. Usually they're the opinions of people who know nothing about international adoption and might have a different opinion if they educated themselves, but it still irritates me.

I didn't adopt a foreign child because it's "cool". That's actually offensive to me. She's a child, not a handbag. I'm far from cool and I'm A-OK with that. :) I don't have any desire to be Angelina Jolie. Trust me, there are way easier ways to be cool than by adopting a child. If I wanted to be cool I'd go buy myself an SUV or something. Lots less paperwork and no waiting list, lol. I'm going to kick the next person who says that people only adopt foreign children because it's the "in" thing to do. Gag.

People seem to think that there are thousands of potential homes for these children in their own country and that we're just swooping in and taking them. I WISH there were thousands of potential homes for Korean children in their own country, but that's not the case. They tried to find a Korean family for Clarissa and were unsuccessful. Clarissa's choice was an international adoption or an orphanage. Being adopted into an American family might not be the ideal solution, but in Clarissa's case I believe that it was the best solution given the circumstances.

And as far as adopting foreign children somehow taking away a potential family for an American child...well, let's just say that I know people who have been waiting to adopt an American baby longer than we waited to adopt Clarissa and I'll just leave it at that.

My reasons for adopting Clarissa were actually very simple. We felt that God called us to adopt and we felt that we were meant to find her in Korea. Some people don't understand that, and that's OK, but that's the truth. It's really no more complicated than that.

Anyway, that's a tangent you don't want to get me started on. I tend to avoid adoption discussions on the internet unless it's a international adoption forum that is just full of adoptive parents because hearing people's opinion about what is best for children like Clarissa when they don't have any idea what they're talking about makes me want to throw things at my computer screen.

But yesterday in my search for something unrelated I stumbled into another discussion about why international adoption is evil and even though I KNOW I should just turn the computer off and walk away when I come across things like that, I kept reading. Several months ago I tried to get into one of those discussions and give the perspective of an adoptive parent, thinking that maybe it might help people understand why people adopt foreign children, and it didn't end well. That was the first and last time I tried to argue that topic and I won't do it again. So I didn't join the discussion, I just read page after page of people who don't know anything about international adoption spout off about why people who adopt foreign children are horrible human beings. Awesome.

Anyway, that put me in a mood and I've been bugged about it ever since. It was on my mind all last night and it's been on my mind today.  In my heart I know that we made the right decision when we adopted Clarissa. I can't imagine our family without her in it. My biggest fear is that someday she's going to grow up and be angry about being taken from Korea. That's something I've worried about since we started the adoption process. More than anything in the world I want Clarissa to be happy. I want her to grow up knowing that the decisions that were made for her were done out of love. Our decision to adopt was made after so much thought and prayer. It's was never something I took lightly.  My thoughts have been kind of heavy today.

Then this afternoon I went grocery shopping with Clarissa. The grocery store is right next door to the taekwondo studio, so it's super handy to drop the boys off and then take Clarissa grocery shopping. I was going down an isle when a woman probably around my moms age stopped me and asked if Clarissa was adopted. I'm super open about the adoption and I don't mind questions at all, but after everything I had read the day before I was a little wary of it today. I said yes and then woman said "I have an adult daughter who I adopted from Korea when she was a baby." YAY! :) I told her that Clarissa was Korean and suddenly that woman was my new best friend, lol.

It's actually very rare for me to run into someone who has adopted from Korea. There are very few Korean adoptions in our state because there isn't an adoption agency in the entire state that handles them. Korea does their international adoptions differently than most other countries and they only work with a limited number of American agencies. None of them are in Idaho, so we actually had to track down an agency out of state that would place a Korean child in Idaho and all of our correspondence with them was handled over the phone and through the mail. Most people don't want to bother with that unless there's a reason that they specifically want to adopt from Korea, so Korean adoptions are pretty rare here.

So running into a Korean adoptive family is super exciting to me! The woman was so awesome, she talked to me in the middle of the grocery store for about 15 minutes. She told me all about her daughter and her adoption and what life was like for her as a Korean adoptee. It was a wonderful experience for their family and for her daughter, who has grown up happy and well adjusted. The lady was super open about it so I felt like it was OK to ask her a few nosey questions and I was really comforted by her answers. She told me about her daughters feelings about looking for her birth mother and her feelings about Korea and about being adopted. She pretty much covered every single thing that has been on my mind in the past 24 hours and completely put my mind at ease. I wanted to hug that woman in the middle of the store. I didn't, but I kind of wish I would have. I'm sure that she has no idea what she did for me today.

I can't help but think that God put that woman in my path today. I needed her "been there, done that" wisdom today. I needed someone who has been through it to remind me that it is possible to raise a happy, well adjusted internationally adopted child, despite what people on internet message boards seem to think. It's rare for me to meet someone locally who has adopted from Korea and not only did I meet one today she seemed to have all the answers to the questions in my head. It was a blessing to me and I'm grateful for it.

After the fantastic conversation we had she said that she had to go, we said goodbye and she was gone. Stupidly I didn't get her name or give her mine. I have no idea who that woman was, but to me she was an angel. She went on with her day and I'm sure she has no idea what a wonderful gift she gave me.

So I learned a few things today. First of all I learned that when you come across something on the internet that you know is going to upset you, turn it off and walk away or you're really going to regret it later. Second I learned not to let other peoples opinions sway me from something I feel strongly about. Third, I learned how important it is to share your life experiences with others because you never know when something you say might be exactly the thing that someone else needs to hear.

So thank you to my grocery store angel, whoever you are. You were an answered prayer today.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Two more!

Here are a two more photos of the trip that my friend e-mailed me today! I love the one of Shawn and Clarissa! The second photo is of the whole group. Fun weekend!

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Photos from our trip!

We're back from the cabin! We had an awesome time, I'm already counting the days until we can do it again next year. :) Here are some pictures I took while we were there!

Saturday, June 26, 2010

At the cabin

I'm writing to you from a cabin in the woods! We're up here spending a fun weekend with friends.

I think I've mentioned before that there are two families that we're really close friends with. The women are my closest friends, the men get along really well and all of our kids get along great.

One of the families owns a cabin and last year they invited the other two families to come spend the weekend and we had such a fantastic time that we decided to make it an annual event. So this weekend we're here for the second annual friends cabin trip. We've got six adults and eight kids here and we're all having a ball.

I love to come up here and spend time with friends. It's nice to be away from everything and just relax and have fun. The cabin is in the mountains about an hour from home and it's gorgeous up here! It's quiet and peaceful and the perfect place for a little getaway. We've played games, roasted marshmallows, rode four wheelers, we took a hike and today the women went into the little town and we had a great time walking through the little shops they have here.

When we came up here last year we had just gotten our referral the week before and it was a big topic of conversation that weekend. I remember saying that when we came back to the cabin we'd be coming back with Clarissa and now here we are! Awesome. :) This year one of the other families is on the waiting list for a domestic adoption and I hope and pray that when we come up here next year that they'll be bringing a new addition to their family!

I'm so grateful for our friends. Those two women are like sisters to me. I'm so grateful to have them in my life and to have these amazing opportunities to spend time together.

We just finally got all the kids to bed and now it's time for the adults to break out the junk food and the games. It's time for Shawn and I to defend our title as champions of Speed Scrabble. Wish us luck! :)

Friday, June 25, 2010

Flashback Friday

I had a conversation with an old friend yesterday (hey look, you made the blog today!), and it prompted me to drag out my memory box this morning and dig through it.

I have a big trunk in a storage closet in my basement that has all my keepsakes and memories from my childhood. Photos, journals, letters...all sorts of momentos from my life. Every now and then I have a bout of nostalgia and I go down to the basement, drag out the trunk and spread everything out on the floor and go through it. There are lots of things in there that make me smile and a few things that make me a little sad, but I love to go through it and look at each memory one by one.

No matter how long it's been since I've seen each item, the second I pick it up the memory of it is so strong that it's like going back in time. I have a sticker book from when I was 10 that was my pride and joy at the time. I collected, counted and rearranged those stickers very carefully for months. Two of the stickers in the book came out of a box of Cocoa Puffs and even though they weren't scratch and sniff stickers they smelled like Cocoa Puffs from being in the box. The second I opened that sticker book and saw those stickers today I immediately checked to see if they see smelled like Cocoa Puffs, lol. They don't. Funny that all these years later I remember exactly what those stickers used to smell like and exactly where they came from.

It's also strange to me that I now have a child that is the same age that I was when I collected all those stickers! Where has the time gone? Josh had a great time looking at the book this morning.

My original Cabbage Patch doll is also in that box. I was around 9 the year that Cabbage Patch dolls came out and it was one of those items that sold out really quickly and caused moms to beat each other up at the store for the last one. That's all I wanted for Christmas that year, and somehow my mom managed to get one for me. I've never asked her if it was difficult to find it. I wonder. I remember specifically waking up on Christmas morning and finding that doll waiting for me in the living room. For years I've been saving that doll because I hoped that someday I would have a daughter to give it to. As soon as Clarissa saw it this morning she picked it up, grinned at it and gave it a big kiss. It's now sleeping next to her in her bed as she takes a nap. It made me a little teary to see it. I now have a new wonderful memory of that doll.

I have lots of pictures of me and my friends in Junior High. Oh, the hair, the braces and the gigantic glasses....I have some hillarious photos from that time in my life. I had a best friend named Lisa who I went everywhere with, I was in love with New Kids On The Block, and I was slightly on the nerdy side with my nose constantly in a book. Wow, I loved to read. I read every single thing I could get my hands on. I have a serious nostalgia for books I read as a kid. My mom got rid of most of my books and I've spent years hunting down copies at library book sales and garage sales. Finding a worn out copy of Ramona and Beezus at a garage sale is like finding a serious treasure to me!

I have a scrapbook of memories from my high school boyfriend in my memory box. Dance pictures, ticket stubs, funny little notes and all sorts of things that are really fun to look at now. I fell in love pretty hard when I was 17. Like a typical dramatic teenage girl, that guy was my whole world for a while. Going through those momentos brought back a lot of really fun memories of that time in my life. Flipping through that book made me feel like I was 17 again for a few minutes.

When I got married I debated with myself whether or not it was still appropriate to keep those momentos, but I decided that something that was that important to me at one point in my life deserved a special spot in my memory box. I learned a lot about life from that relationship. I learned some good things and I learned some dissapointing things, but they were all things that made me grow as a person. I sometimes wish I could go back in time and have a talk with my 17 year old self about that relationship, knowing what I know now. But I guess when it comes down to it, I'm glad I didn't know how it was going to end. I really enjoyed the ride.

I have my dads obituary and funeral program in the box. I have another box of memories of him in it that truthfully I don't really like to open. I have his watch, a little change dish shaped like a potato that I gave him for Fathers Day when I was a kid, a few of his shirts and other things that are still hard for me to look at. Every now and then I think I'm going to go through that box, but I still can't, it still makes me too sad. That box stays closed in the storage closet. When the kids are older I think I'll get it out and give them a few things from it and share those wonderful memories of the grandpa that they never got to met. Someday. But not yet.

I found several letters in that box that Shawn wrote me at the beginning of our relationship. I put that poor guy through a lot back then. I'm glad he stuck with me. Those letters sit in the box next to our wedding announcement and our wedding album. Have I ever mentioned that Shawn lost his wedding ring three days into our honeymoon? He's going to laugh when he reads that. :)

It's fun to go through that box and look at all the things that made me who I am today. All those momentos are a patchwork of who I am. The kid who loved stickers, the girl who saved a special doll for her future daughter, the akward preteen with frizzy hair and braces and her nose in a book, the teenager who fell in love and then found out that not everything lasts forever, the woman who fell in love again and found out that some things do last forever...every moment in my life has taught me something and I'm grateful for those experiences.

After a while it was time to put the memories back in the box and go back to the present. I've got a busy day ahead of me. We're going out of town for the weekend and I still need to pack. No matter how much my mind is in the past today, the future keeps on charging forward. I'd better try to keep up.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Seriously?!

Remember the saga about the crown that I have to go have fixed in a few weeks? Today I was eating a taco for lunch and the tooth in front of that one (also a crown) broke in half! I was eating a taco, it's not like I was chewing on rocks or anything!

*sigh*

So I just got back from spending my afternoon in the dentists chair. They had to replace that crown, so now it has a temporary on it and they'll put the real one on when I go back in a few weeks to have the other tooth fixed, which is going to cost a fortune because my insurance won't cover replacement of crowns that are less than 5 years old.

I'm mad at my teeth. I need a nap.

Labels!

I know that there are people who come to this blog to read our adoption journey, and with over 500 hundred posts on this blog  it can be hard to wade through it all to get to the adoption posts.

So this morning I did some organizing and labeled all the adoption posts. I tried to go through and label only the ones that contributed to our adoption story. So if you want to read our story you can now click on the "adoption" label on the right hand side of the screen and it will show only adoption related posts.

My plan is to also make a photography label, a Korea label and maybe a few others, but that's going to have to wait for now. Clarissa just woke up and it's time to go kiss her sweet face! :)

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Summer Vacation

The time has come! At 1:00 this afternoon when the kids get home from school, summer vacation officially begins. I can't believe that the school year is over already. I have the only two kids in the world who are dissapointed when summer vacation starts. Both of my kids really love school and are sad that the school year is over.

Summer vacation is so much different than it was when I was a kid. When I was a kid it was three solid months long. I would get up in the morning, hop on my bike with my friends and no come home until dinner time. There was a public swimming pool about a half mile from my house and I spent a good portion of my summers swimming and eating snowcones from the snowcone stand next to the pool. The taste of a tigers blood snowcone still takes me back to hanging out at the pool as a kid. They taste like summer to me. A few years ago I bought a snowcone maker and ordered a bottle of Tigers blood snowcone syrup. Yum. It was like being a kid again all summer long. Maybe I'll order some more of that this year.

My kids summer vacation only lasts six weeks and we're busy for quite a bit of it. We have a few short vacations planned, they have taekwondo camp for a week, cousins camp at grandmas house for a few days...we have to cram a lot into the six weeks they have off. I feel bad that they don't have three months to just wander free like I did as a kid. We don't live in a rural area like I did as a kid. My boys can't just hop on their bikes and ride for miles like I did. They don't really know the difference and we make summer vacation fun for them, but I know what they're missing and it makes me a little sad for them every summer.

In other news, I did something scary today! I left Clarissa with a friend for a half hour while I had a church meeting. Seriously, Clarissa has been home for 8 months and this is the first time she's ever been away from me or Shawn! When she first came home I wouldn't leave her with anyone because we were working on her attachment and I didn't want her to think that we were leaving her and not coming back. She's pretty clingy to us and doesn't really let most people hold her, so I've just continued to arrange things so that she's always with either me or Shawn. We haven't had a single babysitter or anything in 8 months.

But it's getting to the point that I think she needs to learn to be away from me a little bit. In a few months she's going to be old enough to go into the church nursery on Sundays and at some point Shawn and I are going to want to go on a date again!

I have a wonderful, awesome, amazing friend (Hi Karen!! :)) who realized that it was time for us to start venturing out without Clarissa occasionally so yesterday when she heard that I had a meeting today she insisted on watching Clarissa. I almost didn't do it. I have serious seperation anxiety when it comes to Clarissa! My boys were so social and independent when they were little (they still are, actually) and I never worried about leaving them with friends at all. It's not that I have an issue with leaving my kids with people, especially my wonderful friend Karen, who is awesome with my kids. I just have seperation anxiety when it comes to Clarissa!

I have this whole thing about her feeling abandonded. The last time the people she thought were her parents handed her to strangers, the strangers took her out of the country and she never saw those first parents again. I had to watch her grieve over that and it was awful. So even though I know that I'm going to come back if I leave her somewhere, I have this fear that she's going to think we left her. It's totally irrational, but I can't help it. It doesn't help that she's really clingy to me and doesn't go to other people easily.

Anyway, Karen was right. It's time to start teaching Clarissa that if we leave we really are coming back. The longer we put it off the worse it's going to be. Today was a good day to try it out because my meeting was short. So I decided to be brave, I took Clarissa over there, got her settled with Karen and hurried and left before I changed my mind.

I was pretty antsy during my meeting, but I survived! A half hour later I went over to Karens and Clarissa survived too. Karen said that she cried after I left but she finally decided that it wasn't so bad and let Karen carry her around. She was pretty happy to see me when I got there though!

It was a small step, but we did it! I'm grateful for a good friend who knows what I need and won't let me chicken out. :) Slowly we'll start leaving Clarissa a little more and maybe someday we can actually get a babysitter and go on a date!

For now I'm going to go enjoy the few hours of peace and quiet I have left before the kids get home and summer vacation officially begins! 

Monday, June 21, 2010

Happy Anniversary to us!

Today is our 13th wedding anniversary! Wow, how the time has flown. So much has changed in the past 13 years! It's kind of fun to look back and think about how our life together started and think about how far we've come.

I met Shawn when I was 20 and he was 23. When I met him I was going through a hard time in my life.
When I left high school I thought I had life all figured out. Didn't we all at that age? :) I was dating a guy who I was sure I was going to marry, I had plans for college, I knew exactly what I wanted to do and where I wanted my life to go.

Then I went to college for a year and realized that what I thought I wanted to do wasn't what I really wanted to do, the guy I thought I was going to marry decided that he had met the person HE wanted to marry and it was no longer me, I moved across the country for a year to sort all that out and while I was gone my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Pretty much all my plans and everything in my life had suddenly flipped upside down and I was pretty miserable.

So I moved back home and got a job working at the corporate offices of multi-level marketing company while I tried to figure out how to untangle the mess my life had become.  Shawn was one of the very first people I met on my first day of work.

I would love to say that when I met Shawn it was love at first sight, I knew right away that he was the person I was going to marry and that we walked off into the sunset, but that was not the case! Shawn seemed like a nice guy and we actually did become friends really quickly, but dating him was the farthest thing from my mind. I was pretty preoccupied with all the chaos in my life at the time and after just having my heart broken I wasn't in a big hurry to open myself up to that again.

Shawn, on the other hand, says that he did decide pretty quickly that I was the person he wanted to marry. The poor guy just had to wait for me to sort my life out first!

After being friends and co-workers for a while Shawn asked me on a date. Honestly, I really didn't want to go. I finally said yes because Shawn is so ridiculously NICE that I couldn't possibly say no, lol.

Shawn grew up in a little town about 30 miles from the town I grew up in and on our first date he took me on a tour of the top 10 sites of his town. Apparently he and his friends had come up with a wacky list of silly things you had to see in their town. It was a date like no other date I had ever been on and to my surprise it was actually one of the funnest dates I've ever been on. When Shawn and I are together there is always lots of laughing and lots of fun. My life was really heavy and difficult at the time and from our very first date I realized that he was the one person who could take my mind off all of that. I could relax around him and he didn't care that I was a mess from all the crap going on in my life.

He quickly became my best friend, my shoulder to cry on and my constant companion. For almost two years we spent pretty much every minute together. We were together all day at work and we hung out after work. During that time I actually rented the apartment right next door to him, so we even became neighbors. We had breakfast together in the mornings, dinner together at night and did our grocery shopping together. We were practically joined at the hip!

I still wasn't ready to call it a relationship, but he was definitely my best friend. I honestly don't know how I would have gotten through that time of my life without him. He was there the night my dad died, he was there when the ex-boyfriend came back into my life long enough to break my heart again....no matter what crappy thing came into my life at the time, he was there making me laugh my way through it.

Lookin back I feel really bad for what I put Shawn through during that time. He was definitely in love with me, and I knew it, I just wasn't ready to return the feeling. I spent a lot of time crying to him about my ex-boyfriend. It didn't matter to him. He was willing to wait until I sorted things out.

I eventually DID sort things out. It may have taken me two years but at some point I finally had an epiphony and realized that I was in love with my best friend! I had been looking for someone who was loving and kind and patient and fun to be with and someone I wanted to spend every minute with and that person had been right in front of me the whole time. Shawn makes me happy. He's the person I want to go to for comfort on my bad days and the person I want to celebrate the good days with. He's the person I gossip to, the person I laugh with, the person I tell my secrets to and the person who accepts me for who I am. He's gentle and loving and funny and patient and he makes me smile.

So I finally came to my senses and we got married. We started our marriage 13 years ago in a little apartment full of hand me down furniture with $100 between the two of us. We were young and naive and happy. Shawn was in pharmacy school for the first four years of our marriage. We had Josh a month before our third anniversary and then moved 300 miles away so that Shawn could do his internships for school. We intended to only be here for a year while he did his internships, but once that year was up we never left and 13 years later we're still here!

As soon as Shawn finished pharmacy school and got his first real job we built a house and two years later Matthew joined our family. A few years later Shawn got a better job, we moved to a bigger house and a year or so later started working on Clarissa's adoption.

Now here we are, 13 years and three kids later. We're older, wiser, we had ups and downs but we're happy. Shawn is still the person who makes me laugh, the person I want to spend every minute with and the person who makes me smile. He's a great friend, a wonderful husband and an awesome father. There's nothing better than being married to your best friend. :)

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Happy Fathers Day!

We're having a good Father's Day at our house. We went to church this morning and then we came back and gave Shawn some presents (the kids made him cute things at school, I bought him a book he really wanted and yesterday the boys and I spent the afternoon cleaning detailing his car), I made him cinnamon rolls, we watched a movie and later we're having steak. It's been nice quiet family day.

So in honor of Father's Day, let me just say what a wonderful dad Shawn is. Our kids don't realize how lucky they are to have such a fantastic dad. I'm grateful everyday to have married someone who is so loving and so devoted to his kids.

When I was pregnant with Josh Shawn was terrified of being a dad. He's the youngest child in his family, so he never had younger siblings in his house and he never had younger cousins around or anything. I don't think he'd ever actually held a baby before Josh was born. The whole time I was pregnant he kept saying that he had no idea what to do with a baby.

So I think we were both surprised when Josh was born and from day one Shawn handled Josh like he'd been taking care of babies his whole life! He's awesome with kids, it's a talent that neither of us realized he had before our kids were born. We both worked in the nursery at church a few years ago and all the kids absolutely loved Shawn. Most men don't want to go near the nursery at church, but Shawn really hated to leave it when his volunteer duty was over.

Shawn's a total hands on dad. He changes diapers, he gets up in the middle of the night with them, he goes to doctors appointments, parent teacher conferences, every school program...he's fantastic. I really couldn't ask for a better father for my children. I'm grateful for him every single day.

Here are a few of my favorite photos of Shawn with the kids!

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(These next few are photos we took in Korea!)






Happy Fathers Day, Shawn! I love you! :)

Saturday, June 19, 2010

One Year Ago

Today it has officially been one year since we saw Clarissa's sweet photo and learned who she was for the first time. Wow, that was one seriously fast year, wasn't it?!

Thinking about that day makes me smile. Partly because seeing your child for the first time is pretty much the most amazing experience ever, and partly because I remember how completely FREAKED OUT I was after we got the news, lol!

I didn't really post it on the blog at the time because I didn't want to seem like I wasn't happy with the referral. I was EXTREMELY happy. But that evening, after the initial excitement wore off a little, I totally had a momentary freak out. We were sitting in a little tiny hotel room (man, I hated that hotel!), the kids were asleep and Shawn and I were of course staring at Clarissa's photo and going over the information we had received with a fine tooth comb.

Suddenly I just had a moment of "CRAP! We're flying to Korea and bringing home a BABY"! and then my anxiety kicked in and I totally freaked out, lol. Looking back on it now it's totally hillarious to me because it's so typical of the way I function. I second guess everything in my life and I over analyze EVERYTHING. I can't just be happy about anything without turning it over and examining it from every angle.

Suddenly I started worrying that maybe she had a medical problem we didn't know about (there was a possibility that she had hip dysplasia, and I didn't know anything hip dysplasia at the time so it freaked me out. She didn't have it and I have since learned that in most cases hip dysplasia isn't that big of a deal anyway.), I worried that her birth mother would change her mind before we went to Korea, I worried that Clarissa would hate us someday for taking her away from Korea (honestly, sometimes I still worry about that), I worried that I couldn't handle three kids, I worried that the boys wouldn't adjust well, I worried that South Korea would go to war with North Korea before we got there, I worried about how much this whole thing was costing us...suddenly this theoretical child was a real person and it totally freaked me out!

So I sat in the bathroom of the hotel in the middle of the night and had a panic attack and Shawn had to come calm me down. Thank goodness for Shawn, who is always the voice of reason in my life.

(Incidentally, I had the same freakout right before I gave birth to both boys. When I was pregnant with Josh I told Shawn that I had changed my mind about the whole childbirth thing and he had to remind me that it was kind of too late for that, lol.)

It's funny to me now, because all that worry, like most of the worrying I do, was pointless. None of the scary things I worried about came to pass, and even if something unexpected had happened along the way, I still knew in my heart that we were doing the right thing. We would have happily taken Clarissa with medical problems, in the middle of a war, if we had to take out a loan to pay for it...I would have swam to Korea to get her if I had to!

The next morning after I had calmed down and managed to sleep a little, the panic was over and it was replaced by excitement again. I must have looked at Clarissa's picture a million times that day. We went to the Portland Zoo that day and I kept making Shawn and the boys stop and look at her, lol. I had to stop myself from going up to total strangers and showing them her photo!

It's weird for me to look at those photos now that I know her. I memorized every single inch of those pictures. I stared at them forever, looking at her fingers and toes and all that hair and her big eyes and wondering what she would be like when we met her. She wasn't smiling in the photos we received and I remember how badly I wanted to see her smile. I wondered if she was happy. It was so hard to tell. I wondered what her life was like and where she lived and what her foster parents were like.

I know all the answers to those questions now. She was living in an apartment with the most loving foster parents we could possibly have hoped for. She was happy and well cared for and loved every minute that she was in Korea. I'll be forever grateful to her wonderful foster parents for that.

A year ago today we were jumping head first into the unknown and it was scary. Bringing a child into your life is always scary, whether you adopt them, give birth to them or whatever. It's a life changing experience.

Josh and Matthew and Clarissa have all changed my life for the better. I'm so grateful to be a mom and that I've had these amazing experiences in my life. Looking back on that day a year ago, I had no idea then what at amazing journey we were about to take. Maybe it's a good thing because if I had known how wonderful it was going to be I never could have made it through the rest of the wait.

I couldn't share the photos on my blog at the time, but I can now! Here are the photos we looked at as we gathered aound my cellphone on the side of the road on that rainy afternoon in Oregon. I knew at that moment that we had found our missing piece.





Thursday, June 17, 2010

Thursday

I haven't blogged all week because there hasn't really been anything interesting to blog about. It's been pretty boring around here lately! The kids are still in school until next Tuesday and then after that I think it's going to get a lot busier around here.

We just got home from taekwondo. They have a taekwondo master visiting from Korea for two months. Master Han; he just got here two days ago. He's just finishing up at the taekwondo university that Master Lee went to in Seoul and working with Master Lee is kind of an internship for him, I think. It's the first time he's been in the US and he doesn't speak a lot of English.

Is it weird that I've just been ridiculously excited for him to get here?! I just wanted to follow him around today and listen to him speak Korean, lol. I DIDN'T. But I wanted to. :) I love meeting people from Korea and I LOVE hearing the Korean language. I like the way it sounds. Sometimes when I'm on the webcam with Jinha she gets a phone call and I get really excited because it means that I get to sit and listen to her speak Korean for a few minutes. Sometimes I go to the Korean market when I don't need anything just so I can walk around and listen to people speak. I'm such a nerd. Anyway, I didn't follow Master Han around like a weirdo, even though I wanted to. Yay me. :)

Oh, something totally funny happened at taekwondo today. I think Master Lee was planning to talk to the kids about breaking a board with their feet, one of the testing requirements to get their next belt which they haven't learned how to do yet, and he got out a one inch thick board, which is an adult board. I think he was planning to have one of the kids try it, knowing they couldn't do it, and when they couldn't do it he was going to have Master Han demonstrate how to break it. It's pretty thick for kids to break. They're not expected to break a board that thick at this point in their training and they haven't been trained to break a board with their feet yet anyway. They've only ever broken skinny boards with their hand.

So he called on Matthew to come to the front and try to kick the board. Matthew is one of the youngest kids in the class and I think he purposely chose him because he thought he couldn't break it. Matthew kicked it twice and couldn't do it, so he told him to try once more-and he totally did a perfect side kick and broke the board in half!! I'm not sure who was more surprised, Matthew or Master Lee! It was really funny, Matthew hasn't stopped talking about it since he got home.

My third taekwondo topic for the night (and then I'm done, I swear!) is that we just signed the boys up for taekwondo camp, which Master Lee is doing for a week at the end of July. I'm really excited about it. They're going to do all sorts of Korean culture activities, like learn to write their name in Korean, make a Korean craft, eat Korean food, etc. Then they're doing lots of fun taekwondo activities, they're having taekwondo olympics, they're going to watch a martial arts movie...it sounds like a blast! I wish I could go to taekwondo camp!

So in NON-taekwondo news, they finally fixed our air conditioner today. Well, at least they think they did. It was low on freon, which can indicate a leak somewhere, but the guy couldn't find one so he just refilled it with freon and we'll see what happens. I'm just happy that we're not going to melt into a puddle in our house anymore. The boys are bummed that the basement campout is over. :)

In Clarissa news, she is officially obsessed with books. It's really funny to me that she has the exact same book obsession that our boys both had. She wants to be read to All. Day. Long. I've officially memoried every single childrens book in this house. Sometimes when we're in the car and she gets cranky I recite books to her from memory while I drive. We need to get some new books. Her favorites are Go Dogs Go, Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You (also Josh's favorite book at that age) and The Foot Book. We read them over and over and over all day long. AAAALLL DAY LONG. The life of a stay at home mom. It's so glamorous. :)

And speaking of books, I finished reading "Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea". I've read several books about North Korea and that one was the best one so far. It's extremely interesting, although difficult to read at times given the subject. I felt like I gained a better understanding of what life is like in North Korea and how their government functions. (It functions VERY POORLY!) My heart hurts for the people of North Korea.

Ok, so that's all the randomness I have to share with you today. It's getting close to bedtime and I'm sleepy!

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Heatwave!

Our air-conditioning has suddenly decided to go on strike and it's a million degrees in our house right now. Ok, so a million might be a slight exaggeration. But it's at least eight hundred thousand degrees in here. :)

So right now I'm hiding out in the basement. We're all going to sleep down here tonight and hopefully we can figure out what's up with the air conditioning tomorrow so we don't melt.

Josh and Matthew are in the playroom next to me right now getting ready for bed. As I was typing just now I heard Josh tell Matthew that he has reached maximum hotitude, lol. Me too. It's HOT in here!!

This weekend was pretty fun, my mom and stepdad were here for a couple of days. Yesterday we all went to a local community festival and everyone hung out there while I volunteered for a few hours at the booth that our taekwondo school set up at at the festival. I helped pass out fliers and told everyone how much we love taekwondo! I had a good time volunteering, I love hanging out with the our taekwondo friends.

My mom and stepdad went home this morning and we've had a pretty quiet day around here. This afternoon we decided to watch a movie and decided on Back To The Future. The boys have never seen it before and the Back To The Future trilogy are three of Shawn and my favorite childhood movies, so we've been waiting for them to be old enough to watch it.

As they've gotten older it's been so fun to watch all of our favorite childhood movies with them. Movies like The Goonies, Karate Kid, Labyrinth...I've loved watching them with my kids. Shawn was especially excited when he decided that they were old enough to watch Star Wars!

Anyway, Josh loved Back To The Future so much that he decided he wanted to watch part two and three, so we ended up watching the whole trilogy this evening!

Did you realize that when they go into the future in the second movie they go to the year 2015?! That made me feel really really old today! I was about Josh's age when that movie came out and I used to love watching the futuristic scenes in that movie when I was a kid. The movie doesn't have the same fascination for kids these days because that "future" is only five years from now! Josh thought the flying cars and futuristic things were really funny. Somehow I don't think we're going to be flying around town in our cars five years from now. :)

Watching movies from my childhood always makes me really nostalgic for the 80's. If I could raise my kids in any decade I think it would be the 80's. Ah, the days of Aquanet and shoulder pads. Good times. :)

Ok, I'm going to bed now and try not to melt before morning. Hopefully whatever is wrong with the air conditioning will be easy to fix and we will be back in our own beds tomorrow!

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Clarissa's purse

I bought Clarissa a purse today. She's so funny, she's always been fascinated by purses and bags. Anything with a handle becomes a purse to her and it makes me laugh. So today I was at Walmart (I can hear my friends gasping in shock right now, because they all know how much I hate Walmart) and I found a little purse for five dollars and I decided that Clarissa needed to have it.

I brought it home and gave it to her and she's been carrying it around all day. She put some toys in it, including her fake cellphone, which cracked me up. She carries the purse in the crook of her elbow like such a girly girl. It's been amusing me all afternoon.

Nature has won over nurture in this case because she definitely didn't get her love of purses from me! I hate purses, I don't even own a purse. Actually, that's a lie, I own at least three of them. Every now and then I buy one and try to talk myself into carrying it but it never lasts. It ends up sitting in a closet next to the other purses I tried to talk myself into carrying.

I have a thing about being unencumbered when I'm out. I don't like to hold on to things. I don't even wear a coat in the winter because I know I'm going to have to hold it when I get into the building and holding onto a coat while I'm shopping or whatever drives me crazy.

But I'm seriously getting a kick out of the fact that Clarissa loves purses. She looks so cute carrying it around the house like she's got really important things in it. She's a funny kid, she makes me laugh every day. In between carrying her purse today she was sitting on the floor playing with one of her favorite toys that plays the ABC song. She loves the ABC song and today I noticed that she was trying to sing along, but she's still too little to sing along and she doesn't know the ABC's, so she pretty much just kept singing "D, D, D, D, D," over and over, which was SO cute. Every time the song ended she would start it over and go back to singing the letter D along with the song. Silly kid. :)

Right now she's taking a much needed nap and I'm enjoying some quiet time before the kids come home from school. I want it to hurry up and be dinner time because I made a new chicken marinade today and I'm dying to grill the chicken tonight so I can try it. Not that I'm hungry, I'm sitting here eating frosted graham crackers. Is there anything better than graham crackers and chocolate frosting? Ok, there probably is, but frosted graham crackers are pretty yummy.

Well, that's pretty much all I have to talk about today so now I will leave you with two pictures of Clarissa and her purse. Enjoy. :)



Monday, June 7, 2010

Stupid Crown!

So today I had to go to the dentist for my six month checkup. I have a dentist phobia. Actually I have a phobia of all doctors. I hate doctors, I hate doctors offices, I hate hospitals, I hate dentists offices, I hate the taste of dentist office toothpaste, I hate the sound of the tooth polisher, I hate it when the hygenist flosses my teeth, I hate all of it. Hate. It.

It's ridiculous because I have a really fantastic dentist. Seriously, I reccomend him to everyone. I hate going to the dentist, but I really do love my dentist and the people that work there. They make it as pleasant as a dentists office visit could possibly be...but still, it's a dentists office.

I'm really good about going to my six month checkups because once I didn't go *coughforsixyearscough* and it wasn't pretty when I went back. So now I go faithfully every six months and I make everyone else in our family go too. The kids love the dentist, it's like a big party when they go there. The dentist even makes balloon animals. Maybe if the dentist made me a balloon animal I would be happier about going...:)

My fear of dentists goes way back to when I was a kid and my dentist had a whole office full of medieval torture devices. Seriously, does anyone else think that going to the dentist used to be WAAAY worse when we were kids or did I just have an exceptionally bad dentist as a kid? The office smelled creepy, the instruments were scary and getting a cavity filled was pure torture. There was no balloon animals, I can tell you that! I had some really bad dental experiences as a kid, which is why I didn't go for a few *coughsixcough* years.

When I finally convinced myself that I needed to be a responsible adult I found myself a dentist and was shocked that it wasn't as bad as I remembered. My dentists office has chairs that massage your back, a flat screen TV over your head, no creepy dentist office smell and the scary instruments are much sleeker and nicer now. Getting my teeth cleaned is never as bad as I make it out in my head to be, but I still dread it like the plague every time I have to go.

So I have this one stupid molar that has been driving me crazy for years. I had a cavity in it as a kid and according to my current dentist the dentist I had as a kid put a ridiculously enormous filling in it. Well then the stupid filling fell out. That happens sometimes after 20 years, I guess. The dentist decided that the filling was so big that it couldn't be fixed so he had to put in a crown. I had a million problems with that crown when they did it. That crown has a long story behind it that I won't bore you with. The short version is that me and that stupid crown have spent many days in the dentist chair. It wasn't really anything that was the dentist's fault, that tooth just insists on being a problem. Finally a year or two ago they fixed it and it's been fine since then.

So today I was at the dentist and it was all going along fine until the dentist poked that tooth with his tiny instrument of torture and I just about jumped out of the chair and hit the ceiling. *sigh*. Apparently there is some decay or something under that crown and the only way they can fix it is to take the crown off and see what's going on under it. STUPID FREAKIN' CROWN!! The rest of my teeth are perfectly fine and every six months I go in and they tell me it all looks good, but that one stupid tooth just won't stop causing problems.

So now I have to go back to the dentist and have that crown taken off so they can poke around and fix whatever is wrong with it and then I have to get a new crown. The thought of that seriously makes me want to cry. It took a really long time to get that crown to cooperate and now we have to take it off and start over and that means two more trips to the dentist. Bleh.

I scheduled the appointment for next month because I'm trying to avoid it for a while. I should just go in and get it over with but I'm a big baby and I don't want to. Instead I'll just let it hang over my head for a month, which makes a lot of sense, I know. Stupid crown!!!

Then I came home and started a new book on North Korea and reminded myself that life could be worse-at least I don't live in North Korea. The book I'm reading is called "Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea". It was written by an American reporter who lives in Seoul. She tracked down several North Koreans who managed to escape and are now living in South Korea and compiled a book of their stories of what life is like in North Korea.

I started into a tyrade about North Korea and how much I hate Kim Jong-Il and what's he's putting those people through, but I decided to refrain. That's a whole other topic and I already made you all sit through a novel about my stupid crown. Perhaps tomorrow I'll come up with a topic that doesn't turn into a tyrade about my hatred of anything.

Someone needs to make me a balloon animal.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Sunday

It's been kind of a crappy couple of days. Sickness has hit our house again! Josh threw up for two days and as soon as he got better Clarissa got a bad cold. Clarissa is NOT a happy kid when she doesn't feel well, so it's been tiring.

It's so hard at that age because they can't tell you what hurts or what doesn't feel good and you can't explain to them why they feel so crappy. She pretty much just wanted to be held for two solid days so I didn't get much accomplished. She seems to be feeling somewhat better today though, thank goodness. We've been sick a lot this year for some reason. It's weird. I hope this is the end of it.

In more exciting news, the house behind us that has been empty for the past two or three years finally sold and we have neighbors now!! YAY! That house was brand new when a family moved into it, lived there for maybe a year at the most and then pretty much dissapeared overnight. The house went into forclosure and since the family had never gotten around to putting in grass and landscaping in their backyard, the yard just became one big mess of waist high weeds every summer. There's nothing seperating our yard from theirs except a wrought iron fence, so you can clearly see their yard from ours I got sick at looking at all the weeds.

The house finally went up for auction last month and someone FINALLY bought it. We met them yesterday, they're super nice and oddly enough Shawn went to high school with the husband!! We live four and a half hours from where Shawn went to high school, so it's quite a coincidence. Anyway, I'm happy for nice neighbors. I think we'll enjoy them.

In other news, I had a lot of time to read while I was laying on the couch with Clarissa for the past couple of days and I finally got around to reading "Somewhere Inside" by Laura and Lisa Ling. What a fascinating look at North Korea. I really enjoyed the book, it was hard to put it down. I'm completely fascinated by North Korea for some reason. In this day and age where information is so easily accessable it's amazing to me how they've managed to keep those people so isolated. My heart hurts for the people of that country. I wish they could understand that the US really doesn't have to be their enemy. There are a lot of people who would love to help them if they could.

I wish there was something that could be done for those people. I worry about what's going to happen in North and South Korea in the coming months or years. These days it feels like a timebomb just wating to go off and I worry about what will happen when it does. I sincerely hope that when it does there will be a quick end to the North Korean government, the border can be opened and those people can be set free. I would love nothing more than to go back to Korea and visit a free North Korea. Wouldn't that be amazing? I hope that's possible in my lifetime.

So anyway, if you're looking for a fascinating book to read, "Somewhere Inside" is a great one, I highly reccomend it.

So there's all the news from our house. Not a lot of excitement these days. The kids still have a few more weeks of school, so the rest of June is going to be fairly uneventful. In July we have a few short family trips planned and I hope to come up with a few more exciting adventures this summer. Stay tuned for that! :)

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Woohoo, two posts in one day! :)

It's almost like when I was waiting for the referral, right?! People had to finally tell me to stop making two posts a day because when the second post of the day popped up they always thought it was because we got the referral, lol.

Ok, so we just got back from taekwondo. Have I mentioned recently how much I love that taekwondo school? I love Master Lee, I love his wife, I love the two assistants and I love the other Korean people we've been lucky enough to meet there. That's a lot of love. :)

I've found that Korean people get REALLY excited when they realized that you're interested in their culture. Master Lee and his wife know how interested (and by interested I mean slightly obsessed!) we are with Korean culture and they've really gone out of their way to encourage our interest. They're so sweet to our family and so great with Clarissa. They've become great friends of our family.

We've also met some other Korean people at the taekwondo school and they've been really nice to us as well. There is a really nice Korean woman there who has grandkids at the school and she always makes a point to talk to us about Korea when we see her. I had told her in the past that we were interested in learning Korean and today she told me that a Korean Baptist church in town offers free Korean language classes for kids during the school year!! They're done for the summer, but in the fall I'm going to check it out. Josh absolutely loves learning Korean and he's really excited about the idea of taking classes. I would also absolutely LOVE for Clarissa to take them when she's old enough!

When we first brought Clarissa was home I was actually a little nervous about meeting Korean people and having them find out that we adopted from Korea. There's a big push in Korea right now to close the international adoption program there because Koreans aren't all that thrilled with their children being sent overseas to be raised by non-Korean families, which I can totally understand. (The problem is that adoption isn't very socially acceptable in Korea, so they have no choice but to send their orphaned children overseas, which is a topic for another day.)

Anyway, I was afraid that Koreans might be unhappy seeing a Korean baby being raised by caucasian parents, but what I've found has been the complete opposite. Every Korean we've met here has bent over backwards to be nice to us when they find out that we have a Korean child. They fawn over Clarissa and are so excited when our kids speak a few words of Korean to them. I have always found Koreans to be very warm and friendly anyway, but they're even moreso when they realize our connection to the country. It makes me happy that we have so many people in our lives who can be role models for Clarissa as she gets older and can teach her things about her birth country that we may not be able to.

When we first applied to adopt we didn't really know any Koreans at all and there is such a small Korean population here that I was afraid that we would never really get to know any. But now it's amazing how many Korean friends we have now, both here and in Korea. When we applied to adopt we knew that our lives were going to be blessed with a baby, but we didn't realize how blessed we were going to be with such wonderful friends.

I came home feeling so warm and fuzzy about our Korean taekwondo friends that I had to blog about it while it was on my mind. I'm grateful that Clarissa's adoption has brought so many wonderful new friends into our life.

June

Today I've been thinking a lot about what I was doing last year at this time. On June 19th it will be one year since we got Clarissa's referral. Can you believe it's been a year?

This morning I went back and read my blog from last June and I had a great time reliving all the excitement. It seems like it happened just yesterday. A year ago right now I was still in waiting mode. We knew that we were going to get a referral soon but we didn't know when, so I barely dared to leave the house for fear that I'd miss the big phone call.

When it did come I was out of the house. We were in the car on our way to Oregon. Rereading those posts this morning was so much fun. What a great day that was!

Coincidentally, something else made me think about about that day today. We got new cellphones this morning so I've been setting up my voicemail and picking out a ringtone and all that fun stuff. I really don't use my cellphone all that often, so messages and voice mails that I get tend to stay on there for a while. I was listening to my old voice mail today and I realized that I still have the voice mail I got from the agency when we got our referral!

The agency tried to call my house to tell us that we had a daughter and when she couldn't get ahold of us at home (because we were in the car on the way to Oregon) she tried my cellphone. When she called my cellphone it froze up and I couldn't answer it so she left a message. In the meantime I was calling her right back and we got the big news, but I have this great voicemail on my phone from her. I haven't heard that voicemail since last year and I kind of forgot that I still had it. As I was cleaning out voicemails today and it came on I got a big grin on my face and instantly got a little teary eyed!

What a fantastic memory that brought back up! Anyone who was reading my blog last year at this time knows how agonizingly long those last few weeks were for me. I wanted that referral call so bad that I could hardly stand it. Getting that call was one of the most memorable moments of my life. I'll never forget sitting in the car in the rain on the side of the road in Oregon hearing that we had a daughter.

Almost exactly a year later, here we are, the adoption is finalized and Clarissa is amazing. Things couldn't have worked out more perfectly for our family.

I'll be thinking a lot about that referral call this month as the anniversary gets closer. It's one of those moments in my life that I'll never forget. To me it's like the moment I found out that I was pregnant with Josh and Matthew. Knowing that you're going to be a parent again is scary but so exciting! Those memories make me smile.

I think that I'm going to hold on to that voicemail. I'll listen to it again every now and then and remember what a great day that was. :)

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

My sticky afternoon

Last weekend on the way home from our out of town trip we stopped at a convienence store to buy a treat for the drive. There was a display of different flavors of gourmet popcorn and I bought a little bag of marshmallow popcorn. I'm a big fan of popcorn and it sounded good.

It was really REALLY good. Seriously good. Ever since I ate that popcorn I've been craving marshmallow popcorn. I've been talking about it all week. The convienence store I bought it at is a four hour drive from here, so I couldn't just go buy another bag, and I've never seen it anywhere else.

Yesterday I decided that I was going to die if I didn't eat marshmallow popcorn (OK, so it wasn't THAT dramatic) so on our way out of town yesterday morning we stopped at two different gourmet popcorn stores that I tracked down on the internet to see if they had it. Both stores were closed for the holiday. Darn.

So this morning I was still craving it. I must have marshmallow popcorn.

I decided that I didn't need to go buy any. Surely there must be an easy recipe for marshmallow popcorn on the internet and I could just make some.

I looked and there were several versions, most requiring marshmallow creme and I didn't have any. Not wanting to make a trip to the store I dug through the back of my pantry and found a bag of marshmallows that have been there forever and decided that I would just make the popcorn version of rice crispy treats. Simple enough.

The problem was that my bag of marshmallows had been sitting in the back of my pantry for so long that they were kind of hard. No worries, surely if I melt them in a pan with butter they'll soften up and melt, right?

So there I was trying to melt hard marshmallows in a saucepan. I chose a really bad time of the day to do it. Clarissa was fussy and I was going back and forth between trying to entertain her and melt the darn marshmallows. In the middle of it the doorbell rang and it was a salesman trying to sell his bug spray services. No thank you, I'm trying to melt hard marshmallows in a saucepan with butter.

The marshmallows wouldn't melt. I had this ridiculous brick of marshmallows in the saucepan that wouldn't really break up and all I really managed to do was melt butter and make a sticky burned mess of marshmallow goo that was still the shape of a brick.

Let me just say here that I really don't like to cook and bake. I CAN cook, it's just not something I really enjoy. My chocolate chip cookies come ready to bake and I have a cake lady who makes all our birthday cakes. (If anyone needs the number of a good cake lady, I have one. I wonder if she makes marshmallow popcorn...) I'm never going to be crowned Mother Of The Year because I don't wear a cute apron and have fresh homemade cookies for my children when they come home from school. Poor kids.

So after my burned marshmallow brick disaster I decided that it was time to go to the store for marshmallow creme, which is what I should have done in the first place. (actually, what I SHOULD have done is gone back to the gourmet popcorn store, which I'm sure is open today...)

By this time it was Clarissa's nap time but I wasn't about to give up on my quest for marshmallow popcorn so we made a super quick trip to the store. We got home, by some miracle without Clarissa falling asleep in the car, I got Clarissa down for her nap and I went back to my project.

The recipe I found was pretty much just marshmallow creme and popcorn, mixed and baked on a cookie sheet at 325 for 10 minutes. It sounded easy enough.

First of all, you're supposed to warm the marshmallow creme in the microwave. The directions said "microwave for 1 minute, stir and microwave 30 seconds more". I put it in the microwave, hit the minute button, and waited. When the microwaved dinged I opened it...and found a big mess of melted marshmallow creme all over my microwave. *sigh* Really?

What I discovered is that you really can't microwave marshmallow creme for one minute straight. It expands when it gets hot and overflows all over the place. Good thing I bought two jars.

So I cleaned my microwave and went for round two. This time I microwaved it in about 20 second increments, stirring inbetween so it wouldn't overflow. Success.

Then I poured it over the popcorn. The directions said to pour over the popcorn and stir. Seriously? All I managed to do was stick a spoon the middle of the melted goo and sort of move it around. I finally got my hands in there and made a ginourmous sticky mess, but I got the popcorn coated.

By this time my kitchen looked like a marshmallow factory exploded. Even on a good day I'm a messy cook. I admire people who can make a huge meal and leave behind nothing but a few dishes in the sink. When I cook or bake anything, there is flour, sugar, spices or whatever else I'm using from one end of the kitchen to the other by the time I'm finished. Today was no exception. There was popcorn everywhere, sticky marshmallow goo on the countertops, in the sink, on the three bowls it took me to mix the popcorn properly, in the midst of it I knocked over a glass of water I was drinking and had to stop to mop the floor...it was quite a sight.

Finally, by some miracle I managed to get the popcorn spread somewhat evenly in the cookie sheet and into the oven.

I waited 10 minutes, took it out, impatiently waited for it to cool, excitedly took a bite...and it was pretty mediocre. *sigh*

Right now I'm sitting here blogging and eating my mediocre marshmallow popcorn. It might be mediocre, but it took me all afternoon to make, so I'm going to eat every last bite of it!

And then tomorrow I'm going to go to the gourmet popcorn store. :)