Graphite and Airbrush. Again, the results of too much time with no customers at the zoo this summer. St. Louis Zoo doesn’t even have a panda. Well, a red panda I guess, but not the kind I drew up there. There will be a few more updates like this before The Moose Riders returns on October 11.

A couple weeks ago I mentioned that my twin-sister and I were looking for our birth parents. Last Thursday she called me to say that she had just gotten her original birth certificate in the mail. It’s been kind of a crazy, overwhelming whirlwind since. One minute I know nothing and the next I’m speaking to my birth mother on the phone, looking at photos of siblings I’d never known on Facebook. It’s been big. Tough to wrap my brain around at times. Calling it an existential crisis would be overstating things a bit, but still–I’ve got some stuff to process. Despite how that sounds, though, it’s been a hugely positive experience. We’ve been corresponding with our birth mother over email, chatting with our sisters on FB, feeling welcomed into this family while at the same time getting pieces of this 40-year-old jigsaw puzzle put into place.

It’s important to me to make sure our adoptive parents (or as we call them, Mom and Dad) know that we aren’t replacing our family, just adding to it. They will always be Mom and Dad. They’ve been there through every defeat and every triumph we’ve had growing up. They’ve loved us and cared for us. To say, “They’ve treated us like their own,” feels like a misstatement–we ARE theirs, and they are ours, and this reunion doesn’t change that.