Lighting of the Square

I only took 3 pics that didn’t have a twin in them, so these are what I’m posting. 

We knew the twins couldn’t handle the crowds of Toyland, so we passed on that tradition this year. For the lighting of the square, Aaron felt irrationally optimistic that they would love it. We went slightly after the official lights on, so the crowds were dispersing, abd we parked over at Lawrence Plaza abd watched the ice skating exhibition and walked over to see the square lights after half the people had gone home. We were only there a total of 30 minutes, probably, and it was just enough before the little ones were super done. They loved all the “Christmas trees” and the music, though.  It was successful enough that  we are (strategically) planning an evening at Stewart family lights. 

Such a cute town. And hooray hooray for another warm evening. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! 

Quincy Sings

I snapped this pic of Quincy when I dropped her off for choir practice, this morning. Quincy has been singing in the ward choir for a few years and really enjoys it. She used to ride home from church with our (late)friend Teresa after rehearsal and I think they bonded together through sharing love of music and desserts. 

I like that Quincy has this little outlet that brings her joy each Sunday.  She is connected to friends and contributes to our ward family through singing in the choir.  Bonus: since she is there an hour early, she serves our family by dutifully saving us a pew in the chapel each week, too.  

Willy Thanksgiving 2018

We are so stuffed we ache! 

These beauties came at a comical cost. I doubled the batch, but forgot to split the dough into more containers! The jar exploded when I opened it and launched out of my hands, blasting dough all over the place.

A few hours later, I got the other one out, and this time Aaron was ready! I thought I was, too, but it still scared me so much I dropped to the floor when it gave way with a bang!  It was not easy to open, and I expected it to be forceful, but not loud like a shot gun!  

We started the day with a trip out for donuts. Then my parents came down and played Play Nine with the kids. I baked 3 desserts, this year: a Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cake, an Apple Blackberry pie, and a banana cream pie with a pretzel and caramel topping. 

Banana Cream Pie

1 Graham cracker crust

2-3 fresh bananas

1 large vanilla instant pudding mix

2c milk

1/2 c egg nog

1 c pretzels

Caramel sauce 

Heavy cream

Vanilla 

1/4 c sugar 

Line pie crust with banana slices

Drizzle with caramel

Mix pudding package with 2 c milk and 1/2 c egg nog 

Pour over bananas

Top with crushed pretzels, more bananas, and caramel sauce. 

Chill pie a few hours. 

Whip heavy cream with vanilla and sugar until peaks form. Top pie with whipped cream when you serve it. 

The twins LOVED thanksgiving and kept saying “it’s Christmas!”  They have a LOT of food issues, so a holiday that revolves around baking and eating all day totally IS Christmas for them! Haha! They were the cutest at their tiny table with Sloane tonight. 

Soren insisted that Thanksgiving is on Nov 23, not the 22 and that the real holiday is tomorrow.  
Little Sloane has figured out how to undo the pin that fastens her crib tent. She basically hadn’t slept in days and is totally feral. It’s 8:45 pm and she’s been awake since 3am. She’s beyond hyper with delirium. We’ve put her to bed multiple times tonight but she just gets out.  What goes up must come down, eventually, right?  We’re waiting for her to crash, but I think she’s going to outlast us!  It’s like a repeat of Memorial Day weekend.  She didn’t eat or sleep and was just crazy for 3 days until the crib tent arrived in the mail. When we set up the tent she slept for 16 hours straight and things were great for 6 months. She loved the crib tent and called it her temple bed.  But now she figured out she can just get out of the tent, and why go to bed when there are toys to play with. She won’t stay in a big girl bed, and won’t sleep anywhere. What are we going to do?  I think we’ve got one more day of this before somebody cracks.  Probably me.  It’s like the universe thought we didn’t have enough to stress about, so it decided to add a child wandering the house all night leaving a trail of destruction while she busily trues to keep herself awake. I’m sure this is in response to the increased fireworks display of traumatic meltdowns the twins have been having lately. It’s rough on us. I can only imagine it’s rough for a 3 year old, too.  She’s totally savage. Here she is, eating hummus under the table instead of taking a nap this afternoon. 

Oh Sloane. You helped made Thanksgiving 2018 one to remember! 


We are thankful. While we have our trials, we know the life we live is comfortable and we will try harder not to take it for granted.  This holiday we are trying to just enjoy being together. 

Reese’s Orchestra Concert

I hear her practice, and she sounds great, but adding those low strings in really makes the experience rich.  Orchestra concerts are quickly becoming one of my favorite “mom thing” exhibitions to attend.  The music is good, and it’s such a delight to watch these young musicians grow in their talents. Beautiful job tonight, Reese. Keep playing! 

Quincy’s First Orchestra Concert

Oh Quincy! We loved your first orchestra “demonstration” concert! 

You sounded great on your school cello, “peachy” as you call her.  Keep playing and filling our home with music!  Right now it is the marathon of “twinkle variations”, but it won’t be long before your cello becomes a place to create, a place to relieve stress, to worship, a place to work hard, a place to be uplifted, a place to escape, a place to grow, a place to connect, a place of refuge, a place to practice diligence and obedience, and a place of joy for you as well as our whole family, who are blessed to hear you play. Keep going, you’re doing great! 

Corbin’s Piano Recital

I love Karen Sasine. Corbin is the luckiest beginner-again piano student in the universe.  She sends him home with anything that interests him and keeps him motivated to practice. 

Corbin performed Ode to Joy in his recital. It was a duet with his teacher and it was beautiful. 

Good work, Corbin!

Happy Birthday, Wren

Q was pretty unhappy when I told her my plan to buy a stocking for Esme and recycle Wren’s stocking for Adrian. She made it very clear that his stocking is the only tangible thing we have left of the baby brother that turned our Christmas 2016 and most of 2017 upside down and stretched our hearts bigger than we knew was possible. I stood in Target in the Christmas aisle holing my crying daughter.  To Quincy,  Wren needs a stocking to visually show he holds a place in our hearts and a place in our family. 

So I bought two new stockings for the twins and that was that. There are 9 stockings on our staircase. 

Quincy did the honor of hanging Wren’s stocking on his birthday, last week.  Hard to imagine that the 4lb premie I carried around tucked into my shirt is now a two year old, the age Sloane was when we brought him home from NICU.  He is no doubt undecorating his family’s Christmas tree and delighting everyone with an adorable toddler voice the same way Sloane did 2 years ago. 

That night, I joined Kasey, Lacey S, and Naomi W. to see the movie Instant Fanily.  I laughed and cried and was triggered by raw and oh so relatable scenarios.  Great movie. Absolutely horrible language though. And my other critique is that the same two characters/DHS workers do everything in the movie. They play the roles of about 60 people from the recruiters to training classes, resource workers, visit supervisors, transporters, matching event coordinators, licensing,  family service workers, and running the support group. Ha. Ha. Ha. but it’s a nice thought, and super convenient for a movie script. Just highly inaccurate. 

Other parts were spot on. The roller coaster of back and forth reunification status. Foster parents being last to know critical case changing information. The awkwardness of matching events. Hearing your child call you mommy the first time. Honeymoon phase.  Working with birth family and feeling like you’re just the babysitter at visitation. Food issues. Trauma. Trauma play. Family members not acknowledging birthdays or holidays because they’re “not permanent”. Public meltdowns where people look at you like you’ve created a monster and tell you what they think your kid needs instead of offering you a hand.  The rude comments about being a white lady raising Hispanic children. 

So much accuracy and I could relate and laugh or cry with so much of it.  The audience had many  Project Zero supporters and fanilies from The Call. They all cheered and applauded when a character in the movie replied to a judgmental criticism with something like  “And how many children have YOU adopted from the foster care system? Zero? Hold your comments. You don’t know this life, or their lives.” 

Such a mic drop moment. Most of the audience clapped. 

I’m honored to be in this foster parent gig. I’m thankful for my exhausted brokenness and my weary heart and body that wept all day today for the hurt and trauma that surfaces in ugly ways. It hurts that my children have these memories and have to carry such heaviness.

 I feel very much like a medic in the front line trenches, grasping for bandages and whispering hope to wounded soldiers that battles end, but with an ever present knowledge that it might take me as a casualty instead. 

Many people do not understand that simply picking up children and putting them into another family does not erase the hurt they’ve endured.  “They’re too young to remember” is just not true. Period. A healthy, safe home and loving family is 100% the most effective “treatment” for brokeness, and scars fade, but trauma is real and living with a brain that has the belief that you will be hurt again is haunting and constant and appears to be far more painful than the initial wounds.  

I’m thankful to get to be part of a solution. For my arms that get to mother and hold and heal and help all of my brave and selfless children carry their much too heavy burdens.  I’m thankful for new found strength to pick up and do it again tomorrow.  Satan worked hard to break me today and took me by surprise and this attack really got to me. 

Thankful for my sense of humor! I’m thankful to be able to laugh about some of this stuff. Like realizing your kid is frantically shoving the abc gum from under the table at the library into his/her mouth, and you taking it away triggers an epic public meltdown. And bystanders watch wide eyed and gasp when your child recoils and shouts “don’t hurt me!” when you pick him or her up.  You make your library exodus carrying three three year olds who are now ALL kicking and screaming in holy terror, one yanking on your hair, and  one of your older children is mouthing off that you’re the worst and she hates you because we can’t go anywhere without a scene and you just laugh and cry and agree because this is us. It’s our reality and laughter is sometimes the only way to survive.  Foster chaos is prevalent but calm will come, even if it’s not in a way we choose, it will come. The movie was pretty accurate in showing all of this.  Thanks to the creaters and writers of Instant Family for getting conversations started all over the country that ordinary people can become foster parents.  You do not have to be a perfect (who is, anyway?) special saint of a super powered super human to do it.  Anyone can help the cause of  “one less” waiting child in the system. We are all just regular, tired, flawed, average people who love. I’m thankful for the gifts of tenacity, compassion, strength, vulnerability, self awareness, grit, faith, wisdom, and requitted love of precious children that I’ve received through this experience. 

 1+1= 0! 

Happy Birthday, wherever you are, “Wren”! 

We root for you! Our hearts hold you. 

First Snow 2018

It snowed this morning! 

It was lovely. I reluctantly sent the order children off to school, and then wished we’d played hookey the moment big white fluffy flakes began to float down from the sky.  The triplets were enamored.  

I put a big pot of beans on to simmer all day, turned on the Christmas music, then hauled the bins down from the attic and up from under the house. I know it’s early. I tried to hold off until at least Nov 15. But then the weather begged me today and I couldn’t resist any longer. 3 of the trees are up. Two are decorated.  4 beds now have flannel sheets and holiday bedding on them, and the rest of the linens have been laundered and are ready to be made on beds. 

I have so many things I need to be doing. I justified procrastinating with the idea that I will enjoy doing all of them much more in a home filled with Christmas cheer and cranberry bread pudding.  

I love being a homemaker. Being a holiday homemaker is definitely a job perk I thoroughly enjoy. 

Happy First Snow! 

To Van Buren

Last week was awful for many reasons I won’t go into other than a list to recall my own memory to why it was just so wretched (in no particular order or relation to one another) involving bronchitis, a sinus infection, a double ear infection, a staffing meeting for the Twins, a complaint to the POA, a letter from the ACC, a potty mouth, PTSD, a weak bladder, a dog chasing one of the kids, a police report for harassment, a door coming off the hinges, and a DCFS investigation. 

By Thursday, I decided I’d had enough, and a field trip was in order. 

I’ve itched to take a drive to Van Buren since Val and I went craft-fair-ing and learned a favorite booth has a home goods store that is down there. Valerie was out of town or she would have joined me, I’m sure, but I just couldn’t wait another day to run away from the-worst-week-ever, so Sloane, Lady, and I boarded my getaway bus and took a drive.  And I think my grandma Tenney (Myrtle) joined us in spirit, too. No one loved a drive or appreciated fall colors more than Mima.  And life in the Willy house has been chaotic enough lately, I think it’s about right for her to come spend some time with us, ministering to my family from the other side.  Our pretty drive just channeled her here 😂 

We were at the end of the fall colors and it was a dreary day, but those Boston Mountains still gave us a show. Every turn takes your breath away. 

Wild hair don’t care. 


And downtown Van Buren? Well it’s just charming as can be. 

I was a little out of control in the shops. Every Christmas thing seemed to need to come home with me! But how cute is this Merry sign? I bought Joy, too. And a tiny green cedar wreath that I regretted not purchasing at the craft fair.  And a sign that says, “all is calm.” That made me laugh out loud, because after the week I’d had, “all is calm” sounds more like my panicked, “I’m fine. Everything is fine.” Hahaha 


For lunch? Larry B’s Rhythym Room for chicken and waffles. No exaggeration, it was one of the best meals I have ever eaten.  Waffle perfection. Fried chicken perfection. And a squash dressing that I need to try to recreate ASAP, I’m still dreaming about it. It was like a corn polenta, but with yellow squash and jalapeños and green chilies baked into it. To die for. Every bite was just so good I couldn’t stop saying “this is so good. THIS IS SO. GOOD.” 

People probably would have stared at us, making such a fuss over lunch, but the other diners were doing the same thing! Delicious. The only thing that would have made it perfect would be buttermilk syrup instead of the rum flavored syrup. It was good, but a buttermilk syrup would have taken it to another level and made it a religious experience. 😂 

Side note: your lipstick color is on point, mom. 😍

It was just what I needed, abc I came home and slipped back into my duties here. 

Can’t wait to go back. The shops were setting up holiday window displays! Mmmmm abd that squash dressing? That’s pretty good bait! 

Thanks for the fun day, Mom! 

Veteran’s Day

On Friday, Corbin and the rest of Cooper Fourth Grade    Presented a special Veteran’s Day musical program. They sang patriotic songs, and the songs for each of the branches of the United States Armed Forces. They asked audience members who are active or non active service people to stand, and the kids sang a song to honor and thank them. It was wonderful. I love America and a bunch of kids enthusiastically giving a patriotic concert just gives me all the feel goods. Also, Mr L, the music teacher (Tobias Funke’s doppelgänger btw) is the best. The kids love him. Well done, Corbin bc Cooper 4th Grade! 

On a Saturday morning, we bundled up and went to the Bentonville Cemetary to volunteer placing flags out on graves of veterans.  This was a special experience! We were assigned 88 local heroes buried in the oldest part of cemetery, section 1, and part of section 3.  It was like a scavenger hunt. Many of the headstones had been there since the 1800’s, and were very difficult to read. Every time one of us found the last name we were searching for, all the kids would run over and narrow down which specific headstone it was by date of birth or death and I would tell them about their military service (rank etc) as they placed the flag.  

The ground was frozen and we hadn’t known what to expect, never having done this before. I keep a small screwdriver in my van, so that helped, but we moved much faster once someone let us use their large screwdriver. Next time, we will come prepared with several.  There are also some apps that the American legion guys had on their phones for helping locate a few super tricky 100+ year old headstones. 

It was 24 degrees outside, and in the shady spots, the air just seemed to bite at our faces. Once the triplets had had it, Aaron took them to the van to warm up while the big kids stuck it out. It was a good little metaphorical lesson about sacrifice. 

Quincy was particularly intrigued when we placed a flag for a Shirley. “What? Wait, there’s a mistake on this one. Shirley. That’s a girl.” She has no idea that women have been serving our country in the armed forces! I pointed out a few women she knows who are veterans and the fact that she was blown away by this made me realize my Mother-Teaching lesson about Veteran appreciation had some educational gaps in it.  You know, like...who veterans actually ARE.  Oops! #momfail  

 We will definitely volunteer to do flags again.  I love cemeteries and wanted to know everything about everyone buried there.  I’m thankful to each of the veterans we hunted down in sections 1-3 today.  

Thank you, Veterans! We honor you! 

Mushroom Hike

Kasey and Jimmie invited us to join them on a story guided hike sponsored by the Bella Vista Back 40 trails. Heck yes! These trails are a) amazing,  b) we had perfect hiking weather, and c) this particular hike was to educate us and help us identify the edible and non edible mushrooms growing on this beautiful trail system in our backyard. 

Bonus, my kids were so cute, the news interviewed them for an article promoting the trails.  Apparently, there are some whiny mc whinersons about the trails. I think the only problem with them is that Bella Vista is not capitalizing on this incredible attraction to our town. Perhaps if we actually had some yummy places to eat or cute shops, or a central hang out gathering place where our dilapidated and deserted movie theatre once was, consumers would stop and spend money IN Bella vista, and boost our commerce. Mountain bikers, hikers, runners, and families drive into Bentonville or Rogers to eat, because there’s nothing cozy or welcoming about our 3 intersections. No cute storefronts to shop while waiting for a table, no cozy distinctly “home”-like coffee shops right when you roll out of the blowing springs parking lot, that shout, “stay awhile! Finish your conversation here! Hang out awhile!” like the adorable, charming, wonderful, artsy and historic Bentonville square. We have the outdoor beauty and attractions, but once that part is done, people skip town to do the remainder of their social gatherings.  Seems like it’s not the trails that are the problem at all. It’s our inability to monetize their usefulness. Lots of potential profit is lost for our city because we rely on Bentonville for our “downtown” culture fix.  Bella Vista has a culture of its own, it’s just not financially forward thinking. Powers that be see golf courses and club houses as our only asset. We want these trails. We love them! And we would profit from a small town feel gathering place instead of a vacant theater and a sonic. Town center is a ghost town.  

But look at this scenery! This is on the trail right behind our church parking lot. Beautiful. Take note, Bella vista, if you build cute bike or nature theme pizza places, people will eat there.  Try out family friendly. It will make you money! 

Corbin threw in a plug on the news for his teacher, Mr Stinespring, who is running for city council. Corbin had NO idea about this, but mentioned in his interview that his favorite thing about living in Bella Vista is that his teacher, Mr Stinespring takes his class on hikes and they get to learn in the outdoor classroom. Way to go Brent for getting kids outside and on the trails! I hope he wins for this alone. It’s a fabulous resource that I’ve only just recently started to take advantage of. 

Lion’s beard. Edible! Soak in salt water overnight, slice, and sauté in butter. The girl who found this was given a prize by the tour guide. 

NOT EDIBLE. This blue cap was what the author of the horse whisperer allegedly poisoned his family with 🤣

Hen of the Woods: edible! This was the big prize winner and all the granola people were drooling over the find. 


The guide cut into some puff balls to show us what a “ripe” one looks like. White inside. 

I totally need this book! 

When I got home, I blew leaves for two hours. Upon clearing leaves off an abandoned woodpile behind our house, I discovered our own patch of puff balls. 

Did we eat them? Heck no! But hey, it’s nice to know it’s there, for survival purposes, right? Now I know it wouldn’t kill us! 

Also in the yard: spiny puff balls. They look like a hostess snowball. When I discovered these a couple weeks ago, they looked SO much like the coconut cupcake, I actually pointed them out to the kids with a cautionary “do not touch these fungi. They could poison you!” 

Well, wouldn’t you know it, but the most terrifying things growing in my yard are edible? 😂


Thanks Kasey and Jimmie and Bella Vista for an awesome day!