Team Kollar

Monday, February 11, 2013

Lulu's Par-tea!

This precious little girl whose name is "Blessings" is four...

To celebrate I wanted to have a party that represented something she really loves at this age. So we were batting around ideas like a Doc McStuffins party and a gymnastics party. But in the end, we decided on a tea party. Lulu LOVES playing tea party and pretending like she is one of my friends. I am always Missy Kollar with four kids. Her name changes, but she is always married to Bill. "A different Bill" she says. A Bill whose last name is the same as ours and who has the same job. I'm thinkin' it sounds pretty fishy. And adorable. She usually refers to him as "my Bill". The things that she says during these tea parties are truly hilarious. For example, she told me her family recently moved. When I asked her why, she said "Well, our house was too messy so we just had to move to a new one." I am wondering if that's what she thinks our family did!

So that was our inspiration for a tea party. I made her invitations on picfont.com with one of my own photos...

Easy and cheap. Just the way i like it! Then glued it to a paper doilie, so this was the finished product...

I tried to keep it simple, since I am still hobbling a bit on my recovering ankle. The treat bags were easy...

Buying cupcakes and putting flowers on top: also easy...

Easy means using items I already had around the house for decorations...

Also using items I already had for dress ups...

It also made it easier that my friend and her daughters took over food prep since I was running late (is anyone surprised by this?). A big shout out to Christina, Belle and Brie for making this happen...

The little girls were just precious...

Though it really was a pretty easy party to pull off, my ankle was very sore and swollen due to the effort needed to pull it off. But this smile, made it all worth it...

The party ended up at the park while the girls played and moms chatted. This is a first for us. Having a February in Nebraska would not include an outdoor celebration. Unless the theme of the party was "Frostbite".

Taking advantage of the weather and the park across the street continued with a family picnic for dinner...

And presents...

We ended the night with a cake I thought was a little schlockly, but she thought was a little fabulous...

You know what? I think she was right. Lulu knows fabulous. Fabulous cake. Fabulous four year old. We love you, Luci...

The blessings you have brought into our lives continue to multiply!

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

knitting our hearts together

our cross-country move has pulled and tugged at the fibers that hold our family together. there has been fraying at points. and unraveling at others. but i am starting to believe, like deep down believe, that the overall result is a strengthening. i am finding out that we are more tightly woven than i once thought.

christmas was helpful in this regard. we spent a significant amount of energy grieving the loss of not celebrating with our "big family", and rightly so. but that almost caused me to forget this one simple thing: we like each other. we have fun together. we, ourselves, are a big family. sure, it's more fun with my sisters, and the cousins, and mafia and signs games, and the men doing all the dishes. but this here six pack, is a pretty sweet combo...

add a little grandma to the mix and it makes it even sweeter...

so our christmas was different, but still sweet. family. neighbors. friends. the time was filled with rich memories and new traditions. but christmas isn't really about what you do or who you are with. it's about what God did and who He sent. still, i liked what we did and who i was with...

now it's back to school, which i never like. but i like these signs of the strength of our interwovenness in every day life...

i'm not much of a crafts kind of girl. but i really like seeing this kind of knitting come to life.

Monday, January 7, 2013

melkam genna

happy ethiopian christmas!

i don't seem to have the inspiration to blog about christmas or new year's right now.

but ethiopia always is a source of inspiration to me.

we joined other adoptive families for a celebration of the ethiopian christmas.

the food was delicious, the conversation was delightful and the scenery was breathtaking...

merry christmas, indeed.

Thursday, December 20, 2012

down, but not out

oh blog, what has become of you? i haven't posted in so long, the only comments i get are anonymous spammy ones. oh well, who needs an identity anyway?

but i am attempting a comeback. despite the fact that i am not in comeback ready physical shape...

that's my broken ankle making a cameo appearance on tree decorating night. the ankle i broke "dismounting" an inflatable slide at lulu's gymnastics class. people tell me to make up a good story when they see my boot and crutches. but i don't need to. the real one is bizarre enough. they now have banished parents from going on the slides, thanks to me.

the inability to put weight on my left foot has cramped my holiday style. shopping is severely limited. i can get in and out of walgreens, but even that is challenging. i can shop at my grocery store in the snazzy scooters. and thankfully old people love them some kohl's, so they keep wheelchairs in the front. other than that, i stay home. but thanks to my buddy the internet, that doesn't mean that i have had to stop shopping. this fact strikes fear into the heart of my financially responsible husband. he is good for me in so many ways. this may be my least favorite, though most needed, one.

so what i do a lot of is sitting with my foot up. there's a lot of "farm boy, fetch me that..." going on around here as the crutches make it impossible for me to carry much of anything from one spot to another. i did however score an early christmas gift to help me carry things around in style...

strange as it may sound, i know all of this is my real gift this christmas. a gift that has been the theme of our 6 months...REST. i can't tell you how much i have had to keep coming back to "cease striving and know that i am god" from psalm 46 since our move. i have been flailing. desperately trying to settle in. to make everything "okay" for my kids. trying to figure life out. trying to get to know people and determine who my friends will be. TRYING. TRYING. TRYING. when i need to remember that faith IS rest. i can't make it all okay. i can't figure it all out. and definitely not in just 6 months. i need to rest in god. rest in our current circumstances. and now, with my foot up and my mobility limited, that is exactly what i am having to do. and maybe with this external example, i will be learning the lesson internally...rest for my soul.

this experience is not what i wanted for our first christmas without my family. i had envisioned lots of hustle and bustle to keep us busy and distracted from our sadness. but distraction is a curse, not a blessing. the blessing is to be wholly present. alive and engaged. and maybe i am better able to do that this christmas than i ever have been before. all thanks to an inflatable slide...and my own clumsiness.

this may almost be sacrilege, but i have always found the old carol "silent night" to be kind of boring. beautiful, yes but not real interesting or exciting. but i am learning that life can be like that. just because my life is not particularly exciting or interesting from an activity stand point right now, does not mean it's not beautiful. and if rest is boring, then maybe boring isn't so bad as i have always thought it was. because right now my heart is longing to experience the peace and rest that was birthed that silent, holy night long ago.