500 Buckets

We have a little project. We are collecting little precious objects and putting them in two clear buckets. Things that we love and things from those we love. Our hope is to give one to our birth mom one day and to put on in the nursery.

I’m making a little journal list of everything that goes in the bucket. Our collection is varied and awesome already. We have rocks from my parent’s front yard. A mini race car from my nephew. Mint tins from a brother. Three pennies representing our birth dates and anniversary. An Indian arrowhead from our dear friend. We also have a root beer barrel candy because Josh loves those things. He becomes giddy when he finds them in a store! The goal is to collect 500 items that all tell a story or relate to a loved on. It’s our bucket of love!

Why 500? Well you might not know but every waiting adoptive couple can check their “stats.” They can see how many hits they’ve had on their profile. When we started the project we’d just hit 500. Through some Internet magic our hits have increased more rapidly than before since then, but I’m like the number 500 so we are sticking with it! 500 is a lot to begin with, it could get out of hand pretty fast. Then it won’t be a bucket, it would be the barrel of love. Not necessarily bad, just heavy!

I’m suddenly reminded of that song “Seasons of Love” from the musical Rent. 525,600 minutes. I’m imagining this gigantic Bucket of Love! Yes we’ll stick with 500.

We’d love to have you contribute! Send me an email and I’ll shoot you our address. Send us two of the same item, one of each bucket.

Guest blogger: Future Grandma Robin

One Determined Santa

I will never forget the year Ellen and Josh came to spend the Christmas holiday with us. I was amazed when one relatively small suitcase produced a wide variety of packages, including a rather large and rather heavy rectangular box. Nevertheless, all were placed dutifully under the tree by Josh. Ellen has long since been banished for touching, rattling or sniffing Christmas packages. Why? It is practically impossible to surprise her!! She has some second sight about what is inside a wrapped package. However, this year was to be the year. Josh, her special Santa, had decided that there was going to be at least one gift that would be a total surprise.

Christmas morning brought with it that general sense of chaos. Among all the ohh's and ahh's, there was an occasional shriek of an unexpected surprise. Ellen enjoyed it all, but pretty much knew what was coming before the ribbons were cut and the paper shredded. Josh watched her with a sly smile on his face. He had retrieved the rather large, rather heavy rectangular box and hid it close to his side. As things began to wind down he pulled it from it's place and set it before Ellen. She startled a little. She certainly hadn't forgotten about the box, but he seemed so sure of his surprise it made her wonder. They decided to play. "What is this, Josh?" she demanded. "I guess you'll have to open it, in order to find out. Don't you know what it is?" he replied. Ellen fell into a little pout. Josh loved it. "Go ahead," he said, "pick it up, squeeze it, shake it, give it the sniff test." Ellen's eyes narrowed as she gave his face the once over. "Oh, you think you are so sneaky, don't you?" Josh gave his familiar chuckle. "Maybe so, but you haven't got a clue what's inside there and you're never going to know until you open it up." Ellen scrunched up her nose and puckered her lips. She thought about it for a minute and then said, "Fine. I'll open it."

The ribbon and bow was detached. The paper ripped to shreds. The box opened and it revealed----a telephone book. Unimpressed, Ellen pushed her eyebrows together. Josh pretended not to notice. "Telephone book----always a helpful item around the house. You can find all kinds of things in the yellow pages." Ellen laughed. She started to flip through the pages--a little in the front, a little in the back. "What?" she demanded. "Keep looking." Ellen began to turn the pages again, this time more carefully. It wasn't until she made a complete, determined search that she found a small cube that had been carved into one section of the yellow pages. And in the cube was a small box and in the box was a velvet box and in the velvet box was a lovely ring.

At last! A shriek of unexpected surprise. He had done it! Santa Josh had totally surprised his Ellen.