FLEECE PROJECT

Flower Mound water tower.  We can see it each day when we go for our walk and he asked me what it was!

Sometimes when Miduk takes a nap he completely covers up his head and disappears!

In this photo he's laying on his bed with his knees bent.

Miduk is obsessed with clementines, those little mandarin oranges that you peel and eat.  I buy a box of these every few days for him!  One day he ate 5

Tying another fleece blanket

We worked on this one together and Miduk decided that this is the blanket

he wanted to keep.  It is solid black on the reverse side-his favorite color, of course! :)

Snuggling with Sugar

This week has been a bit of a challenge.  We have a leak somewhere under our house so the leak detector specialist (I didn't know there was such a thing) has been here all week long trying to find it.  They dug a rather large hole on the side of our house so that he could go underneath and try to find the source of the leak.  No luck.  The next day they dug an even bigger hole.  Again, no luck.  There is practically a tunnel now that a grown man can crawl through, probably 7 or 8 feet deep that is full of water and muddy.  Mr. Leak Detector Specialist crawls around under the house, then comes inside and listens to the ground with headphones as he walks around our house, listening for the leak.  We are now on Day 4 of this circus, and tomorrow promises to be another fun day.  What this means for Miduk and I is NO WATER.  I have jugs and bowls and pitchers of water lining the kitchen and bathroom counters for us to use.  Kasey takes showers at a friend's house when our water is turned off.  Fortunately they are able to turn the water back on for parts of the day, during which time Miduk and I each run to the shower.  What is funny to me is how Miduk has reacted to not having any water.  Yes it's a big inconvenience, but I really didn't think he would freak out the way he did that first day.  Surely he has been without water before?  He said he always has water in his village because it's "mountain water".   Well there you have it.  Maybe that is why he is so curious about the big water tower in our town?   If you are reading this, please pray that the leak can be found and repaired soon!  Today would be great!  Of course Shelby has been out of town since Monday morning and has missed out on our LEAK WEEK.  :)

Kasey and Miduk have this thing about punching each other in the arm when they see a Volkswagen Bug on the road, and shouting the color of the car.  So now when Miduk sees a VW Bug, he shouts "RED!" or whatever color and I'm the lucky recipient of that punch.  Thanks, Kasey.

Also sometimes when I'm driving and Miduk is in the front seat, he pretends that he has a steering wheel on his side and he turns the wheel when I do..

I am learning some Indonesian words and usually on our walk I ask Miduk to teach me something.  Recently it was directions, as in "up, down, left, right".  Atas, bawah, kiri, kanan.  So when he was looking for the crackers in the pantry the other night, I told him "Bawah Kanan" so he could find them on the lower right shelf.  He was so surprised and I was so proud of myself! haha

This week we tried our new "friendly approach" to people walking on the path.  I have told Miduk that it is nice to say hello when you approach someone walking by, even if you don't know them.  A teenage girl was walking home from school and I said hello then she said hello back.  When she was almost past us, Miduk turned around and said "HI!" and she said HI back to him.  Then he looked at me and smiled really big, and said, "I GOT IT, MOM, I GOT IT!"

Last weekend Kasey and I drove to Oklahoma City to meet a potential college roommate.  We left Saturday afternoon around 2:00pm and returned home Sunday at 5:30pm.  Just over 24 hours, right?  I was so looking forward to some one-on-one time with Kasey, as we really haven't had much of that and this being her senior year and all, I had envisioned all this mother-daughter stuff.  When I told Miduk that Kasey and I were going to be gone overnight one night, he wasn't too happy about that.  He just wasn't so sure about being at home with Dad.  Kasey assured him he would have a good time, not to worry, we won't be gone long.  After making sure Shelby would enforce a bedtime and make sure Miduk would not go the whole 24 hours without brushing his teeth, we left.  For me, it was so much like leaving my kids with a babysitter when they were young.  Shelby used to always tease me for leaving long notes for the babysitter, and this time he jokingly asked if I had left him a long list of instructions for Miduk.  OK well hahaha, NO I DID NOT!  As it turned out, they had a fun time together going to Cabela's, a gun show with Uncle Jeff, enjoying the hot tub and cooking shrimp (Udang) together.  Miduk loves udang!  So yes, he survived without me and Kasey being here with him.  :)

Being stuck at home all week with the leak detector meant trying to entertain ourselves.  A person can only watch so many movies and play so much XBOX, so I asked Miduk to help me make some fleece blankets.  Early last fall before he arrived, I had started on a project of making fleece blankets-you know, the kind where you put two pieces of fabric together, cut a fringe all around the edges and tie them together.  I've made these for my kids, my kids friends, university blankets, fraternity blankets, you name it!  So when our interim pastor preached a sermon last fall about "extravagant generosity", I got a little carried away and went fleece crazy.  I bought an enormous amount of fleece in all colors and patterns, and set up the ping pong table in the garage to lay my fabric on and cut it.  I only got about a dozen cut out before I had to put it away when Miduk arrived, and it's been in the back of my mind that I need to work on them and get some finished, especially now that winter is upon us.  I honestly don't know who I am going to give these to, but I figure that's the easy part.  There are plenty of homeless people in Dallas who could use a warm blanket.  So anyway I pulled out all this fleece and set it up on my dining room table and Miduk and I got busy tying knots.  It's easy to do, a no-brainer really, and we took my laptop in there with us and took turns playing songs on YouTube.  I suffered through his songs and he suffered through mine, haha!  When I played "What are Words" by Chris Medina, he stopped and watched the whole video and said "I'm gonna cry Mom".  (Chris Medina was an American Idol finalist last year who sings this song for his fiance who suffered a brain injury just two months before they were to marry).  I think Miduk is very tender-hearted, as we watched a movie last week that was a "lump in the throat" kind of movie and again he said "I'm gonna cry".  Funny that he announces to me that he's going to cry, instead of just doing it!

We had a tragedy in our community this week that also caused some tears.  A classmate of Wesley's died Sunday evening in a one-car accident, not too far from where we live.  The scene of the accident was near the pond we walk past each day.  This week that site was covered in flowers, crosses, notes, and photos.  Each time we walk past there are students and parents there.  An unimaginable loss that is hard to comprehend.  I tried to explain what happened to Miduk, who asked a lot of questions.  It sure opened up a line of conversation for us, and as we walked we talked about death and dying, and going to heaven.  Miduk said "Jesus tell Zack, come home!"