Dad update

Back. I've been back in my hometown since Wednesday... Stayed the night with Dad at the hospital, and kept telling him to hold on 'til midnight when it would be his birthday. (He'd been wanting to hit 80 for the last ten years!) I started at six o'clock saying "Ok, Dad, you've got six more hours. Six! You hear that? You hold on!"

Dad did hang on.

He hung on through the night, and the next morning, they released him to go home. The whole family came home to have a big birthday bash for him. I mean Big. There are seven of us kids you know. ;o) And grandchildren comin' out your ears. :o)

We sang "Happy Birthday" to him, gave him balloons, etc. And we were able to talk to him. While he couldn't speak back to us, we do know he was listening and understanding everything. For example, I was sitting next to his bed and said, "Don't worry Dad, I'll take care of that John for ya." (John my brother, who has been Dad's right-hand-man for the past several years). Dad grunted. :o) And seeing that he was "in there," I added, "Do ya think there'll be coyotes in heaven Dad?" (He's been hoping to get a shot at one for several years now.) He grunted again. :o) After that, I had the chance to really say goodbye to him, tell him I loved him, thank him for being such a great dad to me, etc. What a blessing. I never got that with Mom. I think we all got that opportunity.

Dad made it until shortly after midnight. God let him enjoy every second of his 80th birthday. :o) As he took his final breaths, he kept saying, "I'm free... I'm free.. I'm free... I'm free..." And then he died. What a comfort to us all to know he knew the Lord Jesus as his Savior, and trusted him alone for his salvation... There is no doubt where he is right now.

Sunday the family gathered to start cleaning out Dad's house. Which was also Mom's house, so it was a double-grief of sorts, as we had to say good-bye to her all over again too. That was by far the worst day ever. Seven kids have seven personalities, and well, uh. Yeah. ;o)

Today (Monday) was the funeral. He had military honors, (Dad had been in the Navy as a young man), and the flowers matched the flag. It was gorgeous.

After the meal, John and I drove back into the cemetery for a last goodbye, and I saw that one of my siblings had beat me there... They had written "I love you, Dad" in the dirt on his grave...

Thank you so much, everyone, for the condolences... it means a lot.

Dad

Keeping this short... My dad is dying. He has asked to be able to go home for his last days. His liver has shut down.

Thursday he will be able to get back home. It is also his 80th birthday. We're all praying he holds on 'til then. He has wanted to hit 80 for the past ten years.

I'd appreciate prayers for my family...

Overwhelmed

Beautiful day out there. I hope I get to enjoy some of it. I have boxes you know. Actually, I need to get over to our "old place" and do some cleaning. I thought (I really did) think I had cleaned as I went, but seeing it after they got our stuff out was a wake-up call. The place looks like a tornado hit. Not sure how that could have been, but alas, 'tis true.

Aleksa woke up crying - sore throat, head ache. Groan. A part of me has wondered what on earth we've gotten ourselves into these last few weeks... I am literally spinning there is so much that needs my attention. I really wish John had a week of vacation right now. Between the boxes, the cleaning, the sick kids, the fussy infant, the cooking, the laundry, the weeding-of-the-gardens... well... uh, I'm a bit overwhelmed right now, and wondering how on earth people do this! Think I'll shut myself up in my pantry and scarf down a few of my anzac cookies...

Ok, maybe not. But it would sure be fun! ;o)

Moved In

How 'bout that. We moved in. Well, our address changed. Still have 900,976 boxes to unpack and put away. Wanna know what my friend Connie gave me as a housewarming present? A tin of my favorite cookies (Australian "anzac" cookies), and a little plastic GOAT!!! What a riot!

The stress of the move has been hard on all of us. Liana came down with a flu or something yesterday - fever, chills, headache all day. Abrielle has been fussy and clingy and I have no idea how I've accomplished anything at all, especially with my Chief Babysitter down.

Adam suddenly decided to pull some of his "let's test mama" tricks lately and has been driving me crazy... Like yesterday I asked him to put a framed picture on a pile of several other pictures on my china hutch. He decided he didn't want to be told what to do, and then decided to drive me nuts over it. So, he said he didn't know what a china hutch was. When I told him to figure it out, it made him mad, and then he literally went around the house "looking" for a china hutch. He stopped in the bathroom (!), to the garage, etc. Let me just say, he knows EXACTLY what a china hutch is. This is just his weapon of choice with me. He knows this kind of thing drives me Batty. So. Finally, after he'd PASSED the china hutch THREE times, (and never looked up at, mind you - he was too busy looking at the couch and rocking chair), I told him to turn around (to face the hutch) and tell me what he saw. It took him several minutes for him to decide to tell me what it was and that this was what he was supposed to find.

I must digress a bit and camp there. I have really had it good as far as "adoption issues" with my crew. They only seldom pop up anymore, and are extremely mild "incidents" (as with Adam and the hutch). I have truthfully been in a bit of a "survivor's guilt" as far as my children are concerned. I feel horrible for other families (some of whom I helped convince to adopt via this blog!), who have had serious issues with their adopted kiddos. I have further had survivor's guilt over THEN having Abrielle. On top of having Abrielle, I am scared to death for my three "originals" that my blog-readers will suddenly love the baby more than the rest of my crew and those who know me in real life might start treating them "differently." I love my baby with all my heart. But I love my Three also, and my mama bear tendencies really grieve for my older three. All of the above has made me hesitant to blog much anymore. Survivor's guilt, and trying to protect my kiddos. All of them.

Ok, end of soapbox/confession/digression.

Anyway.

Abri has a new trick that has come in handy for her during her fussy-fits... She has been saying "Mama!" Well, actually, she's been saying, "mamamamamama" and then fussin' til I come get her. Fun to hear her babble, but oh, she's become high maintenance all of a sudden!

My dad went back into the hospital Saturday night. He has been there since, but has been getting better little by little and we are hopeful that he'll be out and ready for his big Birthday Bash on the 28th. I was hoping to head down this week, but now with Liana sick, I better make sure we're bug-free first.

Eleventh Hour

Talk about the "Eleventh Hour..." We're moving tomorrow, right? Well, we were going to close on the house on Tuesday. Then the bank says, "how 'bout tomorrow instead?" And then, "How 'bout Thursday?" Then this morning we finally heard that our docs were done and that we could close today. Horray! This was at 9:30 am, so we thought, "Surely by 1'ish we'll be closing and then we can go bring some stuff to the house, etc.

Well, we got the final call at SEVEN THIRTY PM.

All day long we were praying that we could please, pretty please still move tomorrow... Afterall, I was packing the silverware. And our clothes. And dishes. And... everything! I had visions of living in a hotel room until we changed banks and redid everything because of "our" bank's incompetancy. And it is a nationally-known bank. We thought we'd be ok. Been on the verge of throwing up for the last few days, and definitely haven't been very fun to be around, let me just say!

Thankfully that part is over though, and we can actually move in tomorrow. So excited to be setting down some roots!

Stressful Springtime

This has got to be the most stressful spring we've had in years! We're aiming to move on Saturday, and we were supposed to close on the house on Tuesday, and uh, whoops, our underwriter isn't done with our file, and so we aren't closing probably until Thursday. That's ok, because my house isn't all packed up yet. I'm expecting the Moving Fairy to come and wave her magic wand over my house Friday night I guess.

My dad had this spleen reduction procedure done last week. Another big stressor. The first few days were ok - he was really doing well. The next day he was not doing well at all. He is really weak. The procedure was a success, but my dad has been zapped of strength. And he's being released today. He can't hold a fork to his mouth and it takes two people to get him to the bathroom. He has to go into a nursing home for a few weeks to gain his strength. He'll head on over there today. I'm hoping this gives the docs a heads up that there is no way Dad will have the strength to recover from a heart surgery... I hope they just leave him alone.

And here I sit glued to my phone hoping to hear from the banker dude to see if we can close today or not. Trying to pretend I'm packing up my house in between phone checks. Meanwhile my dad has taken over my thoughts, and my four kids still get hungry and need clean clothes. And attention. I'm trying to ignore the sticky kitchen floor. Hoping the Moving Fairy takes care of that for me as well. She can come earlier than Friday for that though, because sticky floors bother me.

Looking forward to getting in to my house. Did a final walk-through on Monday night. It had been a while since I'd seen it and bathroom walls changed color, and the tile in the tub disappeared, the kitchen got bigger and the wallpaper in it changed colors, the family room shrunk, as did the girls' rooms, which also changed color and Adam's room grew. I guess I remembered wrong. The yard got shadier (worried about my garden getting enough sun!) now that the trees have leafed out, and the perennial gardens got lots weedier. I'll be busy, busy! Met a few neighbors while we were there. They seemed really nice. There seem to be a lot of kids on this block, so I'm praying our kids will have some nice neighbor friends.

Anyway, that's all folks... I'm sorry I've disappeared. Very, very stressed out over here.