10th Birthday Surprise

Hello again!  I haven't posted since September and for that I apologize.  This thing called life got in the way.  Something happened this evening, however, that I had to get down into words.

Tomorrow is the twins' 10th birthday.  We decided to let them open a couple of gfits tonight (from the grandmas) since they were things they would want to wear to school tomorrow.  (Also, because they got new shoes and Celia has to use a shoe box to make a Valentine's box that's due tomorrow, so we needed the box, LOL)  So, after the FaceTime calls to grandmas so they could see the girls opening their gifts, they both went upstairs to their room.  They came down to the basement to find me riffling through my scrapbook stuff (with cobwebs all over it) to try to find some heartsy things for Celia to use to decorate her box.

"Here", they said as they handed me a pencil zipper pouch.  "What's this?" I asked.  "We've been saving up our money since Christmas, and with the birthday money we just got, we now have $100 to go toward our trip to Ethiopia."  Insert shocked face here.  They've shocked us in the past with their generosity (you can read about that here), but this was a whole other level.

As I've stated in a previous post we have been working with an investigator for nearly a year who found the twins' birthmother.  Our plan is to go visit her and the twins' sisters in Ethiopia for their 12th birthday.  We have had an ongoing relationship with their family through our investigator and our Ethiopian friends here in the states who can call their birthmother's phone and translate for us.  The girls know they are now our extended family and our families and friends united in the fall to send the funds over to pay for tuition for their sisters at the school of their mother's choice.  You can read about that more here.  It's been incredibly healing for all of us.

But, they are kids and that is some pretty heavy stuff to process.  I've given them time and space to process it and tried not to nag about how they feel about it all.  They tell me in small ways.  They all three sleep with photo albums of their birth families in their beds, and on a recent trip to Ohio for the holidays, they even packed them in their suitcase with no prodding by me.  I still wasn't sure how they felt about our plans to go to Ethiopia in two years.  Now I know.

One of our favorite people in the world is Amsale, my Ethiopian mama in Akron.  I spoke with her and asked if she would call the twins' mother soon to check in and see how they're doing.  She had the idea of calling her on the twins' birthday!  After the twins handed me the money, and I picked my jaw up off of the floor, I told them that Amsale was calling her tomorrow and I wanted Amsale to tell their mother about this.  Their smiles lit up the room.  I saw their love for this woman in their eyes.  A woman they feel so guilty for not remembering now.  A woman who stirs up some very complicated feeling for them.  But I saw the healing tonight in their eyes.  God is healing them through this incredible story he's using us in.

So this week we will go to the bank and open a new account.  Mike and I also got a good chunk of change as a Christmas gift from my parents to get this account started.  I recently started working full time so that we would have the extra money to sock away.  I also am starting on a journey of selling this nutritional drink that is helping my own health, with all of the income I make from that going straight into this savings account for our trip.  Our girls are aware of this goal we are working towards and they've decided to join us.

 The timing of this was critical for me.  They're kids, and as such they can be pretty big a-holes a lot of the time.  The twins are also getting close to that snotty, snarky age, which I have no patience for.  Every day I am shutting it down.  It's exhausting, and most days I wonder if they're going to turn out to be jerks.  It's rare that I have the energy, patience and grace to deal with the attitudes in a loving and teaching way.  I just shut it down and send them to their room until they're ready to be nice.  But, tonight I feel good.  Tonight I know that they are learning selflessness.  Tonight they are healing and value us working as a family towards a common goal.  Tonight I not only love them, but I like them and I am cherishing them.

Family Zumba...Good Lord!

There are not many times that I have the thought "I wish someone was filming our life right now.  This is incredibly entertaining", but tonight was one of those times.  I swear that our family can not do anything in a normal or inconspicuous way.  We recently joined the YMCA and tonight the girls and I went to a family Zumba class.

First of all let me just say that when I read the name of the class I assumed that the class would be a bit less difficult.  Kind of like how I want to go to a senior yoga class (for real folks, I think I might just sneak in and pretend one of those ladies is my grandma!!).  I am easing back into physical activity since my surgery and knew I was not ready for a full on Zumba class.  Talk about false advertising, good Lord!  This teacher led us down a full on, hard core, exhausting hour of Zumba!  The girls did a good job at attempting to keep up.  Each girl had a different experience.

Caroline LOVED it.  She was grinning from ear to ear the entire time.  Every time the teacher did a new or difficult move Caroline would twist her sassy and expressive little face into the most hilarious looks and kept cracking the teacher up.  She never even took a break to get water. Apparently they did Zumba in her 2nd grade class sometimes as energizers, because Mrs. Speckman is da bomb.

Charlotte was very intense.  She hardly smiled because she was so focused on trying to figure out the moves, and unfortunately the girl has no rhythm and very little coordination.  She was not a fan because she could feel that it was working her stomach muscles.

Celia, oh Celia my dear love.  I was hesitant to even take her since she's five (although her emotional age is more like a 3 year old) plus she finds any excuse to complain about everything...EVERYTHING.  She does love to dance though so I let her come to check it out.  In the beginning she seemed to have fun.  She was making the older ladies in the class laugh a lot when she would shake her cute little booty.  About 30 minutes in she started to cry because she wanted to leave the class and go running around the track.  At this point, for the sake of making it through the last half hour, I told her she could just do her own moves, dance however she wanted.  That helped.  With 10 minutes left she asked me who she was supposed to be watching.  That might explain her look of confusion for the previous 50 minutes.  She's my blonde.

As I said before I went into this expecting it to be lower impact than typical Zumba and am still very out of shape.  I am also recovering from my third intestinal resectioning surgery from Crohn's Disease.  So it came as no surprise to me that about 40 minutes into the class I feel something below the belt that made me panic.  Was it booty sweat or was it something more???!!  Oh good Lord, did I just poop my pants at family Zumba class??  I went to the bathroom and much to my relief it was simply sweat.  I, in fact, was dripping with sweat and, when I looked in the mirror, my face was as red as my red t-shirt I was wearing.  Like, for real, only a shade away from fire engine red.  As I went back into the class I noticed that all of the other women in the class were older than me, like significantly.  All of them were as pale as me, and NONE of them had red faces!  LOL!  Once again, the older chicks were in better shape than me and kicking my butt at Zumba.  This felt very familiar since I had the same experience in a Jazzercise class last year which I blogged about then as well.

Here's another observation I made.  If you've ever taken a Zumba or Jazzercise class, you may have had that moment where you are in the groove, you are keeping up!  You must look pretty good doing this!  You think to yourself "After this class the instructor is probably going to come ask me if I've done this before.  She will probably tell me that I should become a teacher myself!  I am rocking this!"  Then you make the mistake of looking at yourself in the mirror.  OH NO!  Who is that freak looking back at you?!  Turns out that you don't look nearly as cute and coordinated doing it in real life as you do in your head!  I danced competitively for my entire childhood and even was on the dance team of a professional sports team in college, and even I look like a silly fool during these classes!

So in conclusion, thank you Zumba instructor for throwing me into the deep end of getting back into shape.  I may not be able to walk for three days, or shower, or brush my hair, but I know I will be stronger in the end.  It was pretty fun and entertaining to take an exercise class with my kiddos though.  I think Caroline and I will go back again...once I recover!