Wednesday, February 16, 2011

sons - biological and not

Three years ago, I had two biological sons on earth. When our oldest son -McKay went to college,  he would bring home many brothers to our home to stay for weekends. On weekends, we have 10 sons instead of two. We would take two cars to college bring them home on Friday nights and take them back to the dorm on Sunday evenings. after loads of food, music, laughter, singing and more eating. McKay would sit at the piano, surrounded by his new brothers, own brother (Ashton) and sister (Naivasha), singing on top of their lungs. Some can carry a tune, others not so much, but everyone had a great time. We missed those days, when I got to cook loads of food, try new recipes on these kids. The best way to try recipes are to hungry college students.
Then the college boys were scattered all over the world to be missionaries for two years, before returning to college. These boys volunteer two years, pay their own ways, to serve and teach the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our son was assigned to Romania. After being there for six months, he and another missionary died an accident death through carbon monoxide poisoning. We went from two sons to one son.
It had not been an easy year. My desire to cook also wane. Then I pull my head out of myself and decide that I do have a husband, daughter, and teenage son who are alive and still need to eat. I went back to doing a little more cooking not like I did, when I was always baking breads, cakes, cookies, making food from all over the world.


These past Sunday, we received two teenage boys from New Zealand. These boys are the same age as our youngest son. These boys are now brothers and sons to our family for the next few months. All three boys will play rugby for team United (they ranked 2nd in the nation). Yes, they all sit down to pee and follow the bathroom and house rule. To keep their room clean, and learn that it is a home not a dump, and if they want to live in a dump we will be happy to take them there.
When one of the boys arrived at the airport, saw a lady walk by, he said "sweet as" meaning beautiful - the lady turned around and said "excuse me."  I was advised that "sweet as" is a compliment like "awesome," "pretty," "nice," ...... Need to get use to that.

When they arrived they did not bring much, we had gone shopping for personal things like deodorants, clothes - for work (volunteer with a physical therapy place to learn some skill and to spend time instead of staying home being couch potatoes when they are not training for rugby) clothes for training, T shirts, church clothes, shoe, ties for Walter, he is not a member of our faith, Brandon is, but he need T shirts, pants, jeans, personal items, etc. It is a good thing (Dana) dad is not a stingy man. We have to teach our son Ashton that these boys do not need brand names,for their clothes.
It was funny, when Brandon came home, all he could say was "Ridiculous" when he saw our garages. He said his whole house could fit into one of our garage, that he lives in a grass hut (which is not true). Brandon is a funny kid.
He wanted some hard boiled eggs. So I made some. By the time he got around eating it, he said the yoke was cold. He like his hard boil eggs warm. I told him he could microwave it for 10 seconds. He decided to do it for 30 seconds. He took it out of the microwave, when he tried to break into the yoke, the egg combusted and splattered him and the whole kitchen with hard boil egg yoke. He thought it was so funny that he wanted to do it to Ashton when he got home from school. I told him, he will have to clean up again and mop the kitchen, he said "it would be worth it." We are in for an adventure.
Today is the first day of training for the boys. They will take turn working morning and afternoon. The one that is home and not at work, I started them on piano lessons. Walter is learning to play "Love one another, " he practiced for an hour. He did well. Walter is not a member, therefore, we had to get him church clothes, shoes and ties as well. He also needed indoor workout shoes. Walter is very excited to learn to play the piano.

1 comment:

Jacki's travels said...

I am really looking forward to keeping updated with this new adventure - Walter and Brandon are very lucky!