He's Eight!

Today is Jackson's eighth birthday. He was so excited to be able to celebrate it while on vacation. I call he and Jeanna, "Twinkies" because they are the same age for 8 months of the year.

Happy Birthday, Kid!!

Great Radio Station

One of our favorite things to do on vacation is listen to music together. My brother has satellite radio that we very much enjoy, but if he is not with us, we try to find a good station that plays great oldies. A great station in this area also has a listen on-line site. The River is a nice family friendly station. We are also enjoying watching the Bald Eagles.

Friday Field Trip

Not free in any since of the word, but priceless just the same. We are at The [Certain} House on a beautiful lake that is full of wildlife and slow moving pontoon boats. We had a very relaxing drive and are just sitting around watching the birds and listening to our favorites old songs. Sometimes 7yr old Jeanna will say, "That's my jam!" and we all bust out laughing. She is such a different child on the days that she is home vs. school days, and just a blossoming flower on vacations. Ever since that first year when we went to Nassau and she had to go to respite care, she makes sure to let it be know that she is expecting to go on family vacation.

Late Blooming

We are finally taking our very late spring break. We wanted to go on vacation for our spring break, but the lake house that we wanted to rent was not available until the last week of April. So today is our last day of school for 1 week as we prepare to go relax in the big ole house. The kids love it because there is so much room and they get to spread out a bit. The house sleeps 18 people and as I mentioned before has 4 bathrooms!

We are planning a "Chopp*d" competition for this weekend where family members will prepare dishes with the ingredients provided. There is already lots of "smack" talk going on. Can't wait! We will also celebrate an early Mother's day as my brother is coming into town and won't be able to come back again in 2 weeks.

I finally found a great set of flash cards for addition, subtraction and multiplication. I plan to take those and an art project with us. Once again, James will probably be the only person that has to do a little school. He just does better with the consistency of plowing through his curriculum without too many breaks in his routine.

This Last Week...

was a doozey. Preschool's speech got changed to Monday which really threw us off and I had to go to the bank (which I avoid usually) so we did not have our normal Monday morning start.

Tuesday I got another check in the mail (Ha!) and had to go back to the bank. I also had to get another TB test because my last reading did not get done. We had to shop for Entertaining Angels which was fun because when the kids got to the store, the staff there had free bags waiting for them and was so happy to be a part of the ministry.

Wednesday was a blast! We had 3 new families to sign up for personal needs and they were all referrals from other families so people are telling others. We ran out of most things within the first 15 minutes of being open. We probably could be "bigger" but the space we are working in is pretty small, so it would be hard to service more people right now. Afterward, I took the 3 big kids out for dine in lunch and ended up seeing one of the boys case worker that helped with their adoption.

Thursday I got a chance to escape on my own for almost 2 hours. I went to have my TB test read, got drive-thru breakfast, parked and read for almost an hour, KID FREE!!! I actually don't feel like I don't get "away" from my kids as much as others think I need to "get away". We had another home visit Thursday to finish up our Home study. This one is the longest, most emotional, and somewhat traumatic adoption of them all. Worker visits are triggering all kinds of fear in 2 of my kids every time she comes and that does not include the 2 that are being adopted. One of my older kids admitted that worker visits make them feel like they might get "taken" from our family. Sniff!

Friday night I have 2 extra kids in the house, 1 of which we found out at drop off does not sleep through the night. LOL! Jordan is babysitting him so I gave her a grin and mouthed, "ha ha" wink!

Peace to you all!

Fire and Snow

On Monday I let James build a small fire in the fire pit right after lunch just because. It was a chilly day and as the kids were standing around the fire pit, it began to snow lightly and then it started sleeting. Good thing we had a fire.

Story Teller Jackson

This weeks story:

Happy Easter!

Nana's World

You know the statement about grandparents not being the same people that raised you.... well that is my parents to the "T"! I don't know who these people are!!

Jordan has been over my mom's house since Friday to help mom out and as a birthday gift, Nana took her to the mall for new earrings. (I was okay with not going ~Smile~) This morning my mom and I had an appointment so I picked them up. I had 6 kids and they did such a great job that I thought about doing drive through for lunch. Jordan started mentioning all the places she wanted to go for drive through saying, "I am so tired of eating candy and pie and cookies and pop! I need some real food!" I burst out laughing 'cause in Nana's world they can watch  t.v. till their eyes fall out and eat candy, pie and ice cream until their tummies pop and drink all the soda their kidneys can handle and apparently after 4 days of that, my little sugar fiend was craving a salad and as she said, "I need some protein!" ROFL!!!

Bulletin Board & Seedlings

Photography by Jackson

Good day today for most. PS is on spring break so Jeanna is home this week and schooling as we don't have our spring break until later in the month. We also had an extra PS kid as I am sitting for a friend's kid because of spring break. I was gonna let him have a free day and just play while we worked, but I noticed right away that he came dressed in our school uniform and his dad said that he would be attending school today and that he would be working on mixed subtraction and addition problems as well as analog time telling. Ha Ha. Dad had spoken! I pulled out an extra desk and chair. LOL! He did very well today with out much redirection at all and I gave dad a good report for today. I was only going to be keeping him for 2 days this week, but his mom called this evening and asked if he could come the other days as well. He is a funny and smart little boy that has a hard time at school.... he just needs his expectations laid out for him and then he does very well.

I started some of my seedlings today. I started some peppers (the carnival mix) and my Roma tomatoes. The peppers were so good last time. They were sweet and pretty. I have not been out to get the garden boxes outside cleaned yet. My backyard holds lots of water and it is so muddy back there I have been avoiding it, except we had a nice fire in the fire pit last week. It was so wet I was not worried about flying embers.

Too Fast

It seems like I was just telling you all about my girl turning 13 and now here I am... in what feels like mere moments later, telling you that today she turns 14!

14!!

Happy Birthday, Jordan!