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“If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.” ~Maya Angelou

Our Easter gathering is a serious tradition for my dad’s side of the family (click here). But what it all really comes down to is this:

Traditional Easter Saturday Gathering of the Mr. Leslie Johnson Family

And this:

Cousins Before Church on Easter Sunday Morning

We all drive from all over to come together. And come together we do. And all the planning and prepping and packing and pondering-if-this-is-really-still-all-worth-it fades away quickly when the gathering gets going. Oh yes, it is worth it. It is very, very worth it. It is worth it to make the effort to see our extended family of “Easter Cousins” once a year. It is worth it to give our kids the gift of this tradition. It is worth it to remind ourselves of the rituals and routines and religious-life that kept generations before us doing exactly the same thing that we’re doing now: getting together. Making the effort to make it happen. Showing our kids what it is all about. Yes, it is worth it. So worth it.

Secondarily, there is this too:

baskets filled and waiting on Easter Eve

Easter Bunny Magic. Magic, I tell you. Magical! 6:21 am, and the gift that is received by this Mama is much more great and grand than anything that was given. The looks on their faces~~ marvelously magical! A gift unto itself. Yes, so worth it.

“wacky wally” octopuses crawling the walls, umbrella’s opened, sunrise, and hot coffee – this is the stuff that memories are made of

The Easter Finery. A tradition passed down, and passed down, and passed down. Did I have to go all-out with the Easter Sunday church outfits? No, of course not. But was it worth it? Oh yes. Just to see them feeling like a million bucks a piece…. yes, it is worth every cent, every hassle, every late-night-online-purchase-to-make-sure-it-was-all-just-perfect. The ironing, the clothes hanging in the back of the car for the five hour drive, the 30-minutes-I-spent-with-their-clothes-and-a-Stain-Stick-in-our-laundry-room-after-we-returned-home-after-Easter… yes, all worth it.

And somewhere in there were other things well-worth-it too. Things not captured with photos. Things like meals shared and great glasses of wine and connecting conversations; baseball games played on muddy wet fields; Easter “Shows” performed by eager kids for adoring adults; books read aloud; stories told; hugs and kisses; and fishing. Yes, Kyle fished in the cold and pouring rain on Saturday morning for over an hour with his incredibly generous and patient Uncle Mark and never caught a thing. But he loved every minute of it and won’t forget it for a long time (maybe never?). And on Sunday afternoon the kids fished again (this time in the warm and sun). Only one little sunfish was caught, and thrown back (and it wasn’t even caught by the dedicated fisherman Kyle, it was caught by Sadie by happenstance), but still… it was so worth it. Worth it just for the fun of it. Just for the heck of it. Just for the love of it. Worth it just because it is worth it.

Yes, it was all worth it. And it always will be.

When I first started doing this I honestly thought I was the only person who did it (and the first person to think to do it). Oh boy, was I ever wrong about that. Turns out lots of people do it (for one of many examples, click here). I’ll be honest: knowing I’m not the only one doing this has taken some of the thrill out of it (it used to feel so original; so creative; so unique). However, knowing I’m just one of many still doesn’t stop me from doing it, and it definitely doesn’t stop the bambinos from loving it. This is especially fun to do when we have kids over to play because it virtually guarantees that there’s something for everyone (plus there’s the great “wow!” factor when we place the spread onto the table and all the kids go crazy for it). We did this a couple of weeks ago for a playdate with two 2-year olds, one 5-year-old, and the three bambinos. All six kids loved it (and Meera was so excited to share it with her friends – photo above taken on that day right before Meera called out “Snack Time!” and all the kids came running).

Every year it is an event (click here for years past). This year did not disappoint. There was egg blowing and egg breaking; there was the making of creative masterpieces; there was egg dye everywhere; and there were hands semi-permanently stained— a good reminder that we managed to fulfill, yet again, to the max, in never-a-dull-moment-fashion, one of our favorite annual traditions: The Great Easter Egg Decorating Event of 2011.

We spent yesterday – Palm Sunday – in Baltimore with my dad/MorFar. It was such a great day. We left the house bright and early to head to Baltimore to meet MorFar there. We talked in the car about Palm Sunday: the story, the significance, what it all means, what we think about it. Kyle and Owen are able to grasp more and more these days; they are starting to get it; and they love hearing these traditional stories that have been passed down for generation upon generation. They know I was told these stories by my parents— and that MorMor and MorFar were told these stories by their parents— and so on and so on and so on. By the time we arrived at All Saints Lutheran Church in Baltimore, they were primed and ready for Palm Sunday. And what a glorious Palm Sunday it was. Honestly, probably one of the best church services I’ve ever experienced (and that says a lot since I’ve experienced a lot of them – and a wide range of them – in my lifetime). It was a virtually all-black church, with an awesome gospel choir, a passionate pastor, and a truly embracing community. MorFar preached the sermon (a really good one too!), there was great music, and a two-hour service flew by (which really says something). It was the best possible Palm Sunday service I could ever imagine.

We then headed to the Inner Harbor for lunch with MorFar at Phillips. Oysters and clams on the half shell, crab cakes, bloody marys… what could be better?

Next up was a benefit concert for Lutheran Campus Ministries by the Morgan State University Gospel Choir. Holy cow. There is nothing like seeing something like that. Just nothing.

We ended our day with a leisurely walk back to the Inner Harbor for cheesecake outside on the patio of the Cheesecake Factory—Kyle and Owen’s favorite dessert, and their only request of the day. A beautiful night with a full moon and lots of street action to entertain us all. The boys would have never left Baltimore if we hadn’t literally pulled them away. We said goodbye to MorFar close to 9pm (very late for the bambinos!!!), and after a couple of stops arrived home at midnight with three happy snoozing children.

A really, really great Palm Sunday in Baltimore with MorFar.

Thoughts from the Week Before Easter, in 13 Haikus

I’m developing

A love hate relationship

With that “spring bunny”

That’s right: that bunny

You know, the Easter Bunny

And Santa Claus too

Love: collecting gifts

For my precious bambinos

Excuse to spoil them

Hate: He gets credit

Is this a conspiracy?

Starting to wonder.

Love: making magic

All the giddy excitement

For them and for me

Hate: He steals the show

Really— a conspiracy?

Beginning to think.

Women everywhere

Creating the memories

While He reaps benefit

And for professors

The two worst times of the year

December April

End of semesters

Work intense beyond reason

Fused with holiday

So we do it all 

And he sweeps in last minute

To steal our glory

Isn’t it crazy?

Because actually we’re him

And yet we are not

But still it’s worth it

Because although now they don’t

Someday they will know

Plus, I do love them

Much more than my politics

So, I go with it.

Friday, April 15, 8:04 am – Meera is caught red-handed (pun intended).

“caught red-handed” : [phrase; (rdhndd) (postpositive)]  To be caught in the act of committing a misdemeanor, with the evidence there for all to see.

2 of many mid-week meals that would never have happened without The Swap

It has been one whole year since Shalinee and I started our Swap. Last week we treated ourselves to a decadently leisurely lunch of sushi and plum wine to celebrate our year-long-accomplishment! We have religiously swapped dinner meals every Tuesday for the entire past year. And while we’ve missed a few, it has always been for a good reason, and mostly we’re just shocked at the fact that we’ve managed to keep up with The Swap for a whole entire year. It has been a lot of work (Monday nights are killer!), but it has been so worth it! I know this sounds crazy, but seriously, The Swap has revolutionized my life. Don’t get me wrong, getting dinner on the table is still a major challenge, but The Swap makes it a lot easier. Some of my favorite parts of The Swap:

• My family is consistently eating great, healthy, home-cooked, nutritious, delicious, food prepared with love.
• Although I’m still frenzied with the burden and daily grind of providing food for my family of five, it is much easier than it was before. Coming home from work knowing that dinner just needs to be heated up is a major relief. We almost always sit down to a good wholesome family dinner every single night of the week. The Swap hasn’t taken the pressure off completely, but it has taken the pressure off tremendously.
• My kids are developing an amazing food palate that is at least twice as broad as it would be without The Swap.
• My kids are seeing first-hand what a super-strong-reciprocal-friendship is all about; they see the work that goes into a friendship like that, and they see the joy that comes out of a friendship like that; they see their mom having a best friend.
• Thanks to Shalinee the J-Ms get to eat Indian food a lot! We love Indian food and always have… so this is a huge treat for us!
• Somehow, somewhere along the way in the past year, The Swap has changed my feelings about leftovers. Previously I avoided leftovers like the plague. But over the past year I’ve found that we’re eating leftovers regularly, I’m re-constituting food regularly, and we’re feeling totally differently about leftovers. All this lovingly-prepared-good-food is just too good to waste, and we are motivated to make our Swap meals stretch to cover the weekdays. It is such an interesting and unexpected twist to The Swap, and it is all good.
• The Swap inspires me to think creatively about food and I find myself investing in cooking as a creative outlet again – not just for the Swap meals, but all week long.
• We are eating pasta a lot less often (the kids aren’t thrilled about this, but I sure am!).
• I don’t feel bad anymore on the occasions when I serve my bambinos mac-n-cheese and pizza and chicken nuggets… because it happens so infrequently— thanks to The Swap.

There are lots of other reasons I love The Swap, but there’s my short list.

In the past couple of months Shalinee and I have been really bad about posting our Swaps. We’re just two really busy working moms who are struggling to find time to blog. There is no question that we’re going to keep on swapping indefinitely, but right now we’re trying to figure out how/if to approach the blogging of it. We’re toying around with a whole range of ideas from creating a whole separate Swap Blog to quitting blogging about it altogether. If you have any thoughts on this, we’d love to hear them… so what do you think? Should we keep blogging our Swap? Should we re-define our Swap blogging? Should we quit blogging it altogether? What are your thoughts?

Thanks for reading and Happy Swapiversary!  ~H

This morning I took Meera to the Ear, Nose, and Throat Specialist. Who examined her ears and then immediately scheduled for her to get ear tubes. The surgery will be next month. While it will be a relief to get that done (and hopefully eliminate her recurring ear infections), and the operation is really simple, and we’ve been through it before with Kyle, still… nobody wants to find out that their baby will soon have surgery. That was a low. But then we came home to this:

That was a high. The forsythia is blooming and there is yellow bursting at the seams everywhere. After her nap, Meera spent the rest of the day barefoot running around our yard, and we opened up all the windows in our house for the first time this year. It was in the mid-80s and felt like summer-is-on-the-way.

Then the boys got home from school. They were high-strung and agitated and unraveled. Within five minutes of them walking in the door I had to send Owen to his room for sticking his tongue out at Meera. While Owen was confined to his room, Kyle then confessed that Owen had gotten in trouble at school. I soon found out straight from Owen that he had been in trouble with his teacher at least three different (semi-minor, but disrespectful and disobedient nonetheless) times. He was in big trouble with Mama and was ordered to write an apology letter to his teacher and draw her a picture to go with it. Major low. But while Owen was working on that project, there was this in the front yard:

Major high.

And then it was, as usual, a mad frenzied rush to get dinner on the table. There just seems to never be enough time in the day. And the dinner-rush is definitely the hardest part. I think for working moms this might just be the toughest part of the whole ball of wax (at least it is for me). Frantically running a million miles an hour to get dinner on the table for my party of five when I would much rather have been playing outside with the other four members of my family. A low. But, once again, miraculously it often seems, I pulled it off, and dinner did, somehow, make it onto the table (I’m not even entirely sure how). And it wasn’t just any old dinner either. It was our first dinner-on-the-deck of the season. And there was strawberry shortcake for dessert too.

All is well that ends well. High.

1. Saturday morning the five of us were at Bounce U. It has been ages since we’ve been there, but Braydon had bought super cheap tickets for the bambinos via Groupon, and it was just as great as ever. K, O, and M were tight together jumping and sliding like there was no tomorrow. At one point a woman approached me – another mom with her family at Bounce U, white, 39 years old (she told me), outgoing, attractive, and self-confident, with two cute little kids about the same age as mine. She comes right up to me and says, “Are those your kids?,” pointing to K, O, and M. I said, “Yes.” She says, “You have a beautiful family! Oh my God! Your family is just so beautiful! You adopted them?” I gave my standard answer: “Well, we adopted our boys, and our daughter is a biological child.” Her response was over-the-top; “Oh my God! You are amazing for doing that! Wow! I just can’t believe it! I can’t stop looking at your family! I heard your boys calling you ‘Mom’ and I just thought, ‘Oh my God, that is amazing! That is so cool! That is totally incredible’” Etc., Etc., Etc. She went on and on. She was clearly sort of mind-blown about the whole thing and asked a lot of questions about how old the boys were when we adopted them, from where, how they get along with Meera, etc. (Typical stuff that we regularly get). After a couple minutes I made a point to politely step away and move back toward my family. About a half hour later, she came right back up to me again. She walks right up to me and says, “Oh my God, I just can’t stop looking at your family! You have a beautiful family and I just can’t really get my mind around it.” And here is where it gets interesting… she then said something I have never heard from anyone before (sometimes I think I’ve heard it all, and then something unprecedented happens…)…. she looks right at me and says, “I mean, you and your husband are just so Caucasian!”  I’m not sure at all what she meant by it, I just know that that was a new one.

2. Today we were out to lunch at Red Robin, using a gift certificate that I had received for Christmas from K, O, and M. Toward the end of our meal, a server (who was not our server) approached our table. She was gorgeous, bright faced-bright eyed, jet black hair, and creamy light brown skin, with incredible eyes. She looked about 20, was clearly bi-racial (black and white), and appeared to have all the self-esteem in the world. She comes right up, very confidently, and asks, “Are they twins?” We said, “Yes.” And she proceeds to compliment the three bambinos, saying how “cute” they are, and how “awesome they all get along” and how she “just couldn’t help but notice us.” It was sweet and cheery and lovely and light. I look across the table and Owen is looking up at her, just totally 100% mesmerized by this young woman. (Understandably… again… she was drop-dead-gorgeous.) We chatted for just a minute and she was about to leave to continue working when out of the clear blue Owen says, straight to her, “I know what I’m going to be when I grow up.” I have never heard him say anything like this out of the blue like that, so it immediately caught my attention. She says, right to him, their eyes locked, “Oh really?!” And then he says [NO KIDDING, I’M 100% SERIOUS…]—  “I’m going to be with you!” I think my jaw just about dropped to the floor. She flushed red, and giggled, and said something to me like, “Oh my God! That’s, like, seriously, the best pick-up line I’ve ever heard! You’re going to be IN TROUBLE SOMEDAY!” I flushed red too. I could not believe that my 6-year-old son had just said it. I said something to her along the lines of, “No kidding! I think we’re already in trouble!” And she then said to Owen, “Well, I’m 20, and you’re 6, so it is a while to wait, but I can wait for you! I really can! I think you’d be worth the wait!” This kind of went over his head, and we all laughed together, and said goodbye, she went on to serve her tables, and we soon left. I said to Owen, “Owen! Did you think she was beautiful, or what?!” He said, “Yes, she was. But I know I’m not going to actually be with her when I grow up. So maybe I shouldn’t have said it, but I just know I’m going to be with someone like her when I grow up.” And the thing is, I’m sure he is—he’ll be with some gorgeous, self-confident, dark-skinned beauty of a beauty. I just know it. But, right now, at age 6 – seriously?— “I know what I’m going to be when I grow up. I’m going to be with you!” – ??? Holy Toledo! I truly have no idea where he got that, or how he came up with it. All I know is that we’ve got our hands full with this one!

Years ago when we first started blogging we would sometimes post a “slice of life” post – just a fragment of a moment somehow captured by our camera or our memory that we wanted to preserve for whatever reason. We haven’t posted a “slice of life” post for a long while, but here is one for the scrapbook:

{Preface: Let me just say up front that this post is not going to win me any parenting awards, that’s for sure. I can already see it coming— the slew of comments and emails I’ll receive telling me what a horribly neglectful and irresponsible mother I am for letting my kids climb trees without helmets on, letting my six year olds carry my barefoot toddler up into a tree, letting them play outside without my constant and direct hovering helicoptering ever-present monitoring of every single thing that they are doing, etc., etc., etc. —but ah heck! what the heck!!?!—I’m going to go ahead and throw all caution to the wind because more important than how much I’ll probably be lambasted for this post is the fact that I never want to forget these crazy crazy days of life with my three crazy bambinos. Seriously people, these are some crazy little kids I’ve got on my hands here!}

The other day I was in the kitchen folding laundry and the kids were playing outside. When Kyle came running into the house yelling, “Mom! Mom! You’ve GOT to come SEE THIS!” my heart skipped a beat (I have learned from experience to be nervous – very nervous – about what I’m going to find in such situations). He grabbed my hand and yanked at my arm pulling me to the dining room window. And right there, right outside the window, were Owen and Meera sitting in a tree. Kyle promptly left me there and sprinted back outside where he dramatically demonstrated how he had helped them get up there. I ran and grabbed my camera and snapped one single photo through the window glass before telling them to get the heck down from there before somebody gets hurt. Meera then proceeded to scream to me, at the top of her lungs, “Don’t worry Mama! I allllright! I safe ‘wid my big ‘bodthers and I like ‘dis tree!” And then—no kidding—she planted a huge kiss right on Owen’s lips. Which he gladly accepted with a huge grin. I giggled to myself through the rest of my laundry folding in the kitchen because all I could think of was “Owen and Meera sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.” The three of them don’t even know that old ditty, but the whole scene gave me quite a chuckle. A little slice of life from the here and now in Never-A-Dull-Moment-Land.

Sometimes, for no reason whatsoever, we just need to bake a cake. These times are rare (I can count on one hand the total times we have ever baked a cake at our house—ever—including birthdays). But these times, while rare, do exist. Desperate times call for desperate measures. And this time we captured some of it in photos – living proof that it happened. A totally random cake event.

Kyle and Owen made the cake, and frosted it, with only a little assistance from me. There is not much they love more than my good old trusty Kitchenaid Mixer. It was vanilla cake with butter-cream frosting (their choice). We put the beautiful finished cake on the kitchen counter and saved it for dessert. I thought we’d just slice it and eat it with fresh berries. But no, K & O had other plans. It turned into a major event. They insisted on candles for the cake. In case it isn’t obvious: there is no birthday, anniversary, or holiday of any kind going on here. Just cake. Which, I guess, when you have it as rarely as we do, is a major holiday in and of itself. Deserving of candles. Multi-color candles, each color chosen specifically for each member of the family (I have a whole stash of random birthday cake candles; leftovers from birthdays past; and they just loved going through them and picking out the random candles for each of us). They chose pink for Meera, of course. Meera decided she needed to sport her shades for this event. The glare of the candles’ fire and all. ?! Anyway, it was randomness all around—Braydon and I could barely contain our total amusement at the sheer randomness of it all. But the bambinos – all three of them – took it totally seriously. Sometimes, for no reason whatsoever, we just need to bake a cake.

p.s. A totally random fact about the totally random cake event~~  The cake was a huge hit that night. And then the next day the bambinos each had some more. After that it sat on the counter untouched until we finally threw it out… that’s the funniest part of all: they don’t even really like cake! But it sure is fun!

Kyle and Owen now have a full appreciation for that most wonderful genre of literature – The ‘Page Turner.’ Braydon has just finished reading them Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. This was probably my favorite book growing up and I’ve saved my own copy of it for all these years just waiting to pass it down to my own children. What sweetness to listen in night after night as Braydon read it to them. Amazingly, Braydon had never read it – so it was a first time read of this great book for all three of my boys. Kyle and Owen were on the edge of their seats throughout the entire thing. At very exciting times they’d literally jump up and down in exclamation; they cheered when things went well for Charlie; got upset when Charlie was down on his luck; and at suspenseful times they would hold their breath in sheer anticipation. It was truly a page turner for them, chapter upon chapter upon chapter. And now, for the first time, they really know what a page turner is.