Mario Etiquette

I have mentioned my sons love for Wii before. Their new favorite game is Super Mario Brothers. Today I found myself trying to explain to them some Mario etiquette. They were playing the third world which is full of snow and penguins which they found extremely exciting. They let out the items that make you transform and got a mushroom and a penguin. Nate took both of the items which as you can imagine did not make Mulatu happy. This happened a couple more times to which Mulatu said everytime, "Nate took both of them, I got nothing."

This got me thinking of how these lessons in how to play the game of Mario can translate into how some people approach life. You can play Mario for yourself. You can run through the stage leaving the other people behind and taking all the good 'items' for yourself or you can choose to work together, occasionally carrying others on your back and helping the others get to the end which in some cases requires sacrificing items that you might have wanted for yourself. I have to admit that I've realized as I've played Mario with my kids that I can be a very selfish Mario player. Likewise my kids have helped shine a light on the ways I live selfishly in real life and I am trying everyday to make myself a better person and a better mom.

Tomorrow my boys will have been home 6 months. It has been an incredible journey of some really high moments and some not so high moments. I have learned a lot about myself and a lot about my kids. It is amazing to look back and see how far they have come. This past week we had another immunization at the doctor and they both popped in there, took care of business and left. No tears, no bad attitudes. I was so proud of them both. Sometimes they make me want to pull my hair out, sometimes I want to sleep a little longer than they will allow, sometimes I don't know how to get through to them, but most days they just make me laugh and I can't stop smiling about the fact that I get to be their mom.

Thankfulness

I am reminded daily of how truly thankful I am for the two beautiful blessings God has entrusted to me. Mulatu is on a kick where he is pretty vocal about what he is thankful for. Most of the time it is pretty simple things that no one would think to stop and say thank you for. I mean really when was the last time you were thankful for your socks. But my son is and he tells me about it. Today after church as I was taking off his name tag he says, "Thank You Mama for church going." I just love that. There are so many lessons that my kids can teach me and this is certainly one of them. Sometimes (especially now that I have kids) I find that I struggle to get motivated to get to church on Sunday mornings but today Mulatu reminded me just how important it is and how thankful I should be that I have somewhere to worship and I can do so in freedom.

Kids change everything. You can predict some changes and some have taken me by surprise. Instead of watching adult movies I find myself watching Disney movies over and over. I even found myself watching Barney today...what? There was once a time in life when I could have told you everything about UK's schedule. I was lucky to know they were playing today but had no clue who or at what time. I love storms and get pretty excited about weather in general. Tornado warnings in the past have sounded and I've rolled over and gone back to sleep. If it was during the day I would have been found looking out the window to see what I could see. However, this past Friday I was instead in the basement of my aunt's house waiting with my sons for the storm to blow over.

A week from now my sons will have been home for 6 months! That seems crazy to me. We had our 6 month home study and it went wonderfully. The boys played a game of candy land with our social worker and her intern and we had very easy and natural conversations. We followed that with our first trip to Monkey Joe's were they had a blast jumping and sliding to their hearts content. Our trip to Perfect North was lots of fun. They loved the snow. We went down the tubing lanes together the first time but their second time down they wanted to go solo. They did fine with that minus the moment when they abandoned their tube at the end of the lane and started running. :) They actually lasted two and a half hours which was a lot longer than I expected. We got in the car and Mulatu says, "Tomorrow, we can go skiing?"

This is not to say everything is all fun and games. Nate does not like shots at all so the last time we went to get one, mom had practiced with him about how he was going to hold super still so it wouldn't hurt. They had also decided that he could get it in his leg. Unfortunately, the shot was a tb test which has to be in the forearm. He completely lost in and it took mom and I both to hold him down. They have another shot coming up this week. These are the moments I hate but I am grateful that they can get medical care when they need it.

I am so thankful.