Last night when we got to Ricardo's soccer game I was composing the most brilliant blog entry ever in my head. Because something occurred to me and I was quite pleased and was going to share it. But the evening didn't end so well, so I had second thoughts. But now this morning, I'm realizing that the evening wasn't really that bad and so I should probably go ahead and blog it. And now I'm realizing that this entire paragraph was completely and utterly unnecessary. Sorry for wasting your three seconds. And the additional second that it took to read the apology. And the remaining moments it's taken to read the apology for taking time to apologize.

Smile.

Anyway, we got to the soccer game around 7:20 last night and up until about 8:30 we had had a nearly perfect night. And I stopped to think that maybe even folks who have birthkids couldn't claim the following:

*Every kid in my van thanked me for supper.

*Nobody said a cross word to each other the whole trip up.

*They cleaned up their fast food trash without being told.

*People were being accommodating and cooperative in who got to sit where (this hardly ever happens with us. Where someone sits in the vehicles has always been a huge issue).

*Everyone was polite, respectful and calm.

I had six teenagers with me, ranging in age from 13-17. Five of them were mine, one was a friend. And one was Dominyk and one was Salinda.

Whether it's the fact that they are growing up or just that the planets were aligned, I'm not complaining. I'm realizing that maybe our years of persistence are paying off and that possibly a night like that could earn us a victory in a parenting competition. I was very proud of the kids.

Then after reading Cindy's blog entry today about how hard she has to work, I was again grateful for my kids. Of our 12, 9 of them have been able to do chores, and about 7 of them have not argued much about them. I have to remind them sometimes, and ocassionally threaten, but for the most part they can get them done. This is because I am intensely opposed to me doing much housework and thus I have forced them to do it. And over the years it has become part of the routine (nothing electronic after lunch in the summer until chores are done. Period). And so while deep cleaning doesn't happen as often as it should, the house is not very cluttered and I don't have to do it myself.

Another fun piece of last night was getting to know another adoptive parent. Recently she had become a friend on facebook, and she knew a few of my mutual friends, but we had never had a long conversation. I had mentioned on my facebook that I would be heading to the metro wondering if one of my old college friends might want to hook up. Instead, this fellow adoptive parent who may want to remain anonymous, agreed to come over and watch the game. She is telling beginning to tell her story online and it's fascinating.

We had a good conversation until Dominyk started getting restless and well, let's just say that Utopia turned into reality. But even so, the rest of the night wasn't that bad.

But everyonceandawhile I see progress. And that is encouraging.