Speaking of the Chicken Dance… …following a recent Newsboys concert, the first song played as exit music was, in fact, the Chicken Dance. As the crowd herded out of the arena, I very subtly flapped my wings and twisted my shoulders along with the music. The girls watched in horror. I wondered if they were even familiar with the Chicken Dance; Americans seem genetically predisposed to perform the Chicken Dance whenever the music hits their eardrums.  Like the YMCA…you just gotta do it. Is this one of the things that we take for granted until the terrible day we learn that […]

Read More

As anyone mesmerized by The Evolution of Dance knows, dance has changed over the years. Different moods characterize different eras such as social change in the sixties, technology revolution in the eighties; the dance of the time clearly reflects those moods. (Wow, can you tell i’ve been helping with way too many high school English papers??) So now there’s this thing called Dougie. Apparently, it’s so popular and engrained in teen culture that it morphed from nothing to a verb practically overnight. I asked my daughter recently what characterized Dougie. Was it a specific move, like the Moonwalk? or a […]

Read More

Today, Masha turns seventeen. That’s with a one and a seven. Yeah, 17. Now before all of you leave a million comments saying “How can that be? Mark and Christine look barely thirty themselves,” or “Has it been that long?” or “Hmm, I think we’re out of coffee….,” let me say this: it really was just yesterday when we met Masha. At least it was just yesterday in “God Years.” Masha first stepped into our lives in the middle of a a hot August night, five years ago. Since that time, we’ve watched her grow from a tiny, scared, hurt […]

Read More

No, unfortunately, we were not able to bring her for the adoption trip. We will be gone for at least three weeks, and she can’t miss school. Also, more importantly, this trip is not a vacation. The business and the logistics of the trip make it very difficult to accommodate extra people. Most of the cars are barely large enough to carry Mark and I, our driver, our facilitator, and Lena. Bringing even one extra person (and that person’s luggage) would push us to need two cars and also would require special lodgings as well…most of the apartments are not […]

Read More

Winter is heaving-to. It has clearly decided that it’s not going anywhere, and in the meantime, it’s going to have a bit of fun with us. In typical Midwest fashion, we’ve experienced the battle between Canada and the Gulf of Mexico, throwing their separate weather patterns at us and laughing as they wreak havoc on our lives and plans. After a couple of 55-degree days a couple weeks ago, accompanied by flooding worthy of a live remote on Good Morning America, we are again looking at a blanket of fresh snow and sub-zero wind-chills. God has thumbed his nose at […]

Read More