I just don’t want to participate in the whole New Year’s Resolutions, nor eat black-eyed peas and collard greens tomorrow.

In many ways I simply don’t have time for such frivolities.

There’s just too much to do here each day. I simply addressed the family as a whole, the 22-25 kids, depending on our circumstances, who still live at home with me…here’s the plan for ’07.

We will continue to strive to maintain a positive family environment.

I cannot tolerate negativity, it drains me, please don’t point out what you think is wrong, get busy and make it right.

I understand my children’s deep rooted sense of failure, how when one loses multiple caretakers, the overall sense of loss and impending doom can be overwhelming. I get it.

But now, facing 2007, even my last sib group has been here nearly two years and I’ve proven to everyone, over and over again, through all our many trials and tribulations, that we will remain together as family, we’ll get through this as well.

They dearly desire to believe me. Everyone, even teenagers jaded and branded by the system, emotionally destroyed by many rejections, still want to believe that this mom, me, she’s the real deal. She’s gonna stay.

We lost a birth grandmother last night in Honduras. I adopted this sibling group nearly 20 years ago; they were then 7, 9 and 11. Last night they were scared young girls again, wounded by the bad news, needing me for comfort and understanding, an acknowledgement of their loss. They’ve been back to Honduras once, visited all their birth relatives, but three others have died since then, their birth mom and two siblings.

We could sit and cry bucket loads of bitter tears, indeed Marcela did so last night, but her two older sisters are now married with children and need to look forward, not backward.

While allowing my three daughters time to grieve, I also need to turn their faces forward, to remind them that this life in the United States, the college educations, this is what their birth family wanted for them. There are a ton of other birth relatives back there that need money, help and other support.

All my other children were looking to me to see how we would deal with this calamity. I have to set the tone, I choose to remain positive and optimistic, but, more importantly, I need to constantly encourage all my children to adopt this hopeful viewpoint as well.

Their former negative existence, orphans of the living while in foster care, many of my kids homeless, neglected and abused, suspicious still of all good things…and with good reason.

Adopting older children means accepting them as they are while still trying to help them become all that they can be, changing the negatives into positives and this remains our main goal for the years to come.