Happy Birthday, Violet

Miserable Bliss is one of my favourite blogs. It chronicles the misadventures of a normal couple raising three normal children. No wait, that's Lyn Johnson's For Better or For Worse. Miserable Bliss is even better.

Violet and Coffee, a couple in their early mid 30's, a year and several months ago adopted three brothers, who have now completed Kindergarten, Grade 3 and Grade 6. Adopting older children is not for the faint of heart and adopting three at a time takes the kind of courage or insanity that most of us don't have. Violet has purple hair and Ramona Quimby tattooed on her arm, which should explain something. She is an SAHM and Coffee is a computer programmer.

Violet writes the blog. At least one entry per day and sometimes several. She is a marvellous writer and a marvellous mother. And if even half the stuff she says about her husband is true, she should be the envy of women everywhere. Violet recounts hilarious conversations with the boys: Maymo, Middle One and Oldest One. Her blogs show a great deal of wisdom (and here and here and here), and patience or lack there of in raising the boys. She talks about her own life and how much she misses her dad. She blogs about their house full of pets and if you look in the May Archives there are pictures of baby bunnies born in their back yard in a nest in the lawn.

It was no great shock when Violet announced she was going back to school this fall to earn a Social Work degree. For 45 spaces there were 500 applicants. She will be a natural.

If you are raising kids and especially thinking of adopting older kids, this is the blog for you. And if, like me, you have seen your kids through to adulthood, well it is nice to enjoy (in a sadistic sort of way) the trials and tribulations of other parents and cheer them along.

One of the things I enjoy about her blog is the daily Grace in Small Things. Five things she is thankful for each day. And in most of them, Coffee figures in at least one item, sometimes two.

Today is Violet's 34th birthday, she says and I wish her a very happy one indeed.