After 48 years, I have found out at least what I am not good at and one of those things is cooking. In spite of cooking in a restaurant for 10 years my homecooking that is edible is limited to coleslaw and mexican food. Fortunately, this bunch of kids could live on anything if you give them sour cream, hot sauce, jalapenos and tortillas (pictured) to eat with it. Pinto beans are hard to mess up so they get about 8 or 10 lbs. of those a week. I had one crisis this week when I had the big pot of pintos on the wood heater to cook. I had lots of errands to run and assumed that someone would keep the fire going. After running errands all day, I came home to find the tortillas heated and table set but the beans were raw. Picture 4 hungry, angry teenage boys acting like 4 grouchy husbands and you see I wasn't happy. Found 2 cans of beans and heated up twice as many tortillas and we made it through. The ones pictured are licking up the scraps, the rest having been excused. The poor potbellied pig doesn't get people food very often.

I talked to a very dear friend the other night. She has more kids than I do and is an inspiration to me. We have the same heart and, for whatever reason, God has put it in our hearts to be 'Mom to the motherless'. We compared amounts of pinto beans we cook and how our kids are always hungry; for food, for attention, for stimulation, for trouble. It seems that they are bottomless pits and we are not bottomless wells. There is always at least one of them that has our stomach in knots and our times of peaceful existence are usually measured in minutes and not hours. It is so nice to talk to someone else that can understand where you're coming from. I am so thankful for her. I'm also thanful for the other moms and parents who blog about their lives with adopted children, epecially the ones who are doing it for the Kingdom of God. I have had a kind of wakeup call lately that has opened my eyes to a lot of things, things I should be thankful for, frienships that I shouldn't take for granted, time that I can't bring back that I should enjoy while my kids are still with me, hugs that I should enjoy while some of them are still willing to give them. As I wallowed in the sunshine of my two sweet grandsons yesterday and the companionship of my grown daughters, I kept humming that country song called 'Live like you were dying'. It says something like"I went sky diving, I went Rocky Mountain climbing, I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named______, I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter and I gave forgiveness_______, and I hope that someday you will get the chance to live like you were dying". I couldn't remember all the words. The point is, it is easier for me to hide and live like I'm dead than it is to live like I was dying. It's risky to live like today might be your last day but I think that is exactly how The Father wants us to live. So I'm going to try it.