I haven't gotten around to posting Christmas pictures or pictures from the Boy Scout trip to Minn. yet but here is one from yesterday. I went to bed humming White Christmas Wed. night as snow fell and it looks like the guys brought a little of that arctic weather back with them. We had a great time out in the slush yesterday. Everyone was in on the mega snowball fight, no one got too bent out of shape. Alina got stuck in snowball mode. Perserveration, that big word from the FAS vocabulary that just means getting stuck on something, happened to be snowballs yesterday, 5 or 6 Walmart bags full, several bags in each of the three freezers. She just kept making them and couldn't stop..such determination! Her hands were bright red. She went through pair after pair of gloves and there were never enough snow balls. She was so disappointed when it was mostly gone this morning. I showed her the stash in the freezers, which was some comfort. Notice the Alaskan bushman with no coat. He had on sandals before the picture was taken but I protested. This is just spring or fall weather to him. We are on an i-fast this week, a variation on the first of the year fasting that some of the local churches have been doing for the last 4 or 5 years. It is a week long fast from any type of technological entertainment- video games, myspace, ipods, tv. We had a family mutiny session last Sunday after church when the kids realized that I was serious about doing it. I knew that it was a dangerous undertaking, no joke, with the behaviour issues that we have been having. I have depended on the various electronic devices to keep kids separated and out of each others space. It had to be a God thing because the week has gone smoothly, (well, relatively speaking) with the kids playing table games and cards together, reading all the Tin Tin books over again, pouring over all the last two years worth of National Geographic, and Sergey and Alina making potholders on one of those loom things for hours. We went to the YMCA two times, did schoolwork, they all worked on the firewood one afternoon and nobody died from withdrawal symptoms like they thought they would from not having their electronic entertainment.
I looked through one of those farm magazines this week and was saddened by the thought of how much we have lost in America, how our culture is now so fragmented by our lifestyle. Families live far from each other, there is not much community. It is not the tribe/family/community that forms an identity for children anymore but the media. The media won't be there when they are out of a job or lose a spouse, when they are in trouble or sad and lonely at Christmas. In our home, especially, we need to reinforce that family/tribe/community. We are a family made up of people that have lost a lot, more than most, and are carrying a lot of scars. These kids have been thrown together, some dragged half way around the world, and have to be given a new tribe/community/family to fit in, to be part of and have memories with, to be loved and forgiven and taught by. They are in this family and are part of the bigger family/tribe/community- the body of Christ, the Jesus family. It helps me to remember that when I get overwhelmed by the problems in this house...we were all dragged here together for a reason and the plan is a lot bigger than me.