Fire Trucks and Superheroes - Part 1

Hi! My name is Joy and I'm a colleague of Marci's. While she is taking some well-deserved vacation time, I will be your guest blogger.

A few years back my husband and I adopted 2 boys with special needs from Korea. With lots of love and great medical care, both of their medical conditions were resolved within 9 months of being home. Now they are a lively five- and seven-year old - similiar in age to many of the boys on our Hope's Journey program - so over the next couple of days I thought I would share some of the unexpected joys of raising boys.

From the moment we brought them home, our boys were fascinated by planes, trains and automobiles -- really anything with a motor and at least 2 wheels. Whether it was watching them, reading about them or playing with them, nothing could hold the attention of these wiggly boys like a book on construction vehicles or a ride on the local commuter train. At the Fourth of July parade every year, my kids are the ones cheering for the fancy sports cars, as well as the street sweeper. Even today, I often find them fast asleep in their beds with a Hot Wheels car or a book on monster trucks clutched in their hands. But what really gets their hearts a flutter are fire trucks. When the boys were younger, we lived down the street from a fire station. Oh! the look of joy on their faces whenever the ladder truck would go zooming by with their lights flashing and their sirens blasting. One summer, the fire department stopped by our block party with one of their engines and my boys were over the moon with excitement (and so were several of the adults, I noticed). In fact, our boys have us so trained to point out fire trucks while we are driving around town that the other night my husband and I caught ourselves shouting "fire truck" when there were no children in the car!

My boys have really opened my eyes to the wonders of the heavy equipment that's all around us. As a former girlie-girl, I admit that I never paid attention to the awesome power of a steam engine, or the cool technology contained within an emergency vehicle or the simple rythm of a front loader and dump truck working together at a construction site.