New Link Added

I added a new link on the information bar on the right that will take you right to all the videos our family has uploaded to YouTube. Now you can see all the "Mini Homeschoolers" videos directly from this blog. Danya and Gloria are wanting to make some more videos. They're currently looking for good questions about homeschooling to answer. Any and all suggestions are welcome! Kevin is thinking about making an appearance soon, too, since he'll be officially starting Pre-K soon.

Not so Lucky

Happy St. Patrick's Day! On Tuesday, the same night that Miss Lady received her award, the kids had fun dressing up for St. Patrick's Day. We agreed ahead of time that anyone not wearing green in our house would only get pretend pinches and possibly tickles. The kids made some giant green shamrocks to hang up in the living room. We've been enjoying using those little hooks that Daniel put up for the Christmas stockings in the window space between the living room and the kitchen. So far they've held Valentine heart people and now shamrocks. Who knows what we'll put up there for Easter?

We bought Katie a cute little onesie for St. Pat's Day a while back. I was happily saving it for her first time celebrating her Irish heritage. On the actual day I didn't let her wear it until around dinner time because I was planning to bring her with us to Miss Lady's award ceremony. We ended up getting Sarah to babysit the three youngest since Katie and Kevin still weren't feeling well. (They've both officially got the flu.) Then, an hour after we put her sweet little green outfit on that says "Mommy's Lucky Charm", she ended up having an explosive diaper and ruining it. She also threw up on my green blouse. Not so lucky I guess. At least we took a picture while it was still clean. To see the other girls' green outfits, look at the previous post.

Honored

Miss Lady entered an essay contest at school sponsored by the Elk's Club entitled "What Freedom Means to Me". She wrote about freedom from the perspective of being a first generation American born of Cambodian parents and also the change in her understanding of what freedom means since entering foster care. It was really good. The judges at the Elk's Club thought so, too. She won first place among all 7th and 8th graders in her school district!

Tuesday night they held a special award ceremony to honor the top three winners in her age group and the 5th and 6th grade group. We took Miss Lady out this weekend to get a nice outfit for the event and that night I curled her hair for her. She looked so beautiful. It was hard seeing my 13 year old look so grown up. I kept choking up over the thought that all my girls would someday be teenagers on the verge of adulthood. It probably won't be long even before Miss Lady won't be asking me to help with her hair or wanting my opinion when choosing a dress.

Miss Lady's parents and her cousin also came to see her receive the award. She was really hoping that her teachers would be able to come, but they couldn't. So instead we printed out photos of her from that night and she's handing them out at school today. One teacher asked for a copy of her essay to display at the school! When it was time for the winners to read their essays they asked for a volunteer to go first and Miss Lady spoke right up to say she would. I was so proud of her all night long that I feared my face would split from grinning. She is such an incredible young lady! At the Elk's Club she received an award plaque and $100 gift card.

Disappointment and Blessing Combined

The kids were all incredibly disappointed on Sunday night when the Chuck E. Cheese in Broomfield wouldn't let us in. They had reached capacity and since we weren't part of a prescheduled birthday party, they said we'd have to wait and check back every 30 minutes to see if enough people had left for our group of 14 to enter. Since we figured that wasn't likely to happen and it was already getting late, we decided to postpone the fun. The good side of that situation was that the next day Tanti Glenda and her family arrived, so we were able to enjoy "the rat place" as Christina's family calls it along with Glenda's kids. It was definitely more fun on Monday night than it would have been with already exhausted kids on Sunday night.

I enjoyed hopping around on my crutches taking pictures of all the kids. My favorites were the ones of Qorban, Thumbelina, and Danya in mid air. Qorban was showing off his skills at the basketball game, while the girls were trying out virtual jump rope. It was a bit too loud for Grandma, so she and Miss Lady spent time together at Target picking out the perfect pair of shoes to go with the dress she'd chosen for her upcoming awards ceremony. Meanwhile, I got a little bit of time to talk with my friends and admire baby Christopher some more. It was so cute when he kept trying to take my crutches. He definitely knows what he wants and goes for it.

Caution: Tank Crossing

Tanti Glenda came to see us on Monday. We got to see how big her newest son, Christopher has gotten. My goodness that boy is a tank! He is such a solid little guy! And for only being around 7 months old he is able to do a lot. He can sit up well, crawl, and even attempted to eat my crutches. In this photo he's playing with a new toy that Grandma brought for Katie. It will be a while before she's able to enjoy it, so she loaned it to him while he was here. It lights up and plays music. The best feature? It has an off switch.

So we had two babies to admire and play with while Glenda's family were visiting. I have to say that Christopher definitely stole the show. He's just much more interactive at this point then Katie is. I especially love his smile.

Sweet Love

While we were at the foot and ankle clinic, Grandma Nancy and the kids finished up their project. They were making candy from molds that Grandma brought all the way from Oklahoma. The kids were all so proud... and covered in chocolate and butterscotch. Grandma Nancy always has the best projects and crafts planned for when she visits.

Foot Loose

I went in for a post operative check up on my leg last Monday. Grandma Nancy watched some of the kids and helped some get on the bus while we were gone. The doctor said my leg looks good. Looking at this picture I'm curious to know what bad would have looked like. If you click on the photo, you can see up close the big puckered line that will eventually become the biggest scar I've ever had on my body.

It's hard to imagine that there is a metal plate and screws under there. It was not exactly encouraging when the doctor said that he accidentally used a screw that was too long, but that it "shouldn't bother me" he thinks. We got to see the X-ray and you can actually see the screws sticking through my bones. Daniel thought it was cool. I thought I might throw up.

Next week the doctor will remove the stitches and put a cast on it. Daniel says that the white fuzz still stuck to my foot after they removed the bandaging made it look like I had old man feet. I wonder if he's considered whether getting kicked with a foot with a metal plate in it hurts more.

WoW Museum!

On Sunday afternoon we went with Aunt Christina, her kids, and Grandma Nancy to the WOW Museum in Lafayette. It was so much fun! One nice thing is that you only pay for the kids to get in, adults are free. We're also going to call the director to find out about getting a discount yearly pass for foster families. According to the person who works there, we may be able to get our whole family in for a year for $10! They have various traveling exhibits in the main room along with a pirate ship. There is an art room, a music and light experiment room, a wind experiment room, and a second main area that contains a huge stage with dress up costumes, a mini play bank with working ATM, a mini grocery store, a castle with sand inside, and a giant bubble maker among other things.

The kids had so much fun that they were actually exhausted by the time we left a couple of hours later. We had planned to take them to Chuck E. Cheese later for dinner, but that place had already reached it's capacity for the day, so we took them to McDonald's instead. With all that on top of the picnic we had at a playground for lunch, it was a very full day and the kids literally fell into bed that night.

Her Godmother

Katie got to meet her godmother, Aunt Christina, this past weekend. Having a godmother is more of a Catholic tradition, and since I was raised by a Catholic mother, the idea for it makes a lot of sense to me. Basically, the way I see it, is that a godparent's role is to be a part of the child's life, be involved in their religious upbringing, and agree to raise the child to adulthood if the parents should die or be completely unable to complete the job. So, Christina and her husband, Steven, are our backup system. Our kids' second set of parents, ready to step in at any time in case of emergency.

Fortunately for us, they've said they would adopt all our kids if the need arises, even if we have a whole bunch at the time. Fortunately for them, we've set up a really good insurance plan so they can afford it if that ever happens. And fortunately for the kids, Christina and Steven have always taken their job seriously, staying actively involved in our kids' lives so that our kids feel completely comfortable with them. We've always been up front with the kids about what it means to have godparents, so Danya and Gloria can explain it clearly and won't ever have to worry about what will happen to them if we are gone. It's not a fun subject, but I've definitely been thinking about it more with all my recent time spent in hospitals. I'm so thankful that we have faithful, trustworthy, Godly friends. I do wonder, though, if Christina has actually thought about suddenly having to homeschool my six along with her two...?

Homeschool Book Fair in Loveland

We found out about a homeschool used book fair shortly before Grandma Nancy and Aunt Christina were expected to make the trip up here. We invited them to join us as long as I was feeling up to it, since I knew I was having surgery just two days before the fair.

There were so many books there and booths that we couldn't possibly see them all in the three hours we had available. We made the most of our time. Thankfully, a few book sellers took pity on Gloria, who had volunteered to carry my growing bag of piles of books around as I shopped, and they let us put our bags under their table until the fair was over. So when Daniel came back with the kids shortly before noon I led him around the whole place stopping at various tables where we'd deposited books that I'd bought.

What we were mainly looking for was preK-books, easy readers, and simple math books. I've been thinking a lot about the fact that when our new school year starts I will be teaching two preschoolers, a K-1st grader and a fourth and fifth grader. Technically, Brother and Snow White would become a Kindergartner and a First Grader, but I plan to spend the beginning of the year teaching them all the things they weren't taught this year. They are behind in several areas, some of which is due to their speech problems. I'll be teaching Kevin and Brother at the same level. Since, in our homeschool, I expect quite a bit more from the kids than is expected at their schools they will really be doing Kindergarten work by the second half of the year.

Also, we picked up a TON of Magic School Bus books. We even got the activity guides that go with them, which I'd never even knew existed before. Daniel got all excited about the magnet kits and other science equipment. We even picked up some Christian science videos for kids. Yesterday the girls watched the one about cells and had to write a paper about what they learned. While they were doing that, Snow White's teacher, speech therapist, and special ed teacher all came over for a parent/teacher conference and IEP review in my living room. Every so often my 7 and 8 year old would come out and ask me questions like, "How do you spell nucleus?" and then head back to their desk to work on it. You could see these women's eyebrows going up and I was trying not to grin. I did manage to restrain myself and not brag that my girls had memorized all the U.S. Presidents in order in about 30 minutes in the van the day before. Of course, they had help from an amazing little book. It was so good that I even managed to learn them. I found that book at the book fair, too!

History Made Easy (or Easier)

The girls and I have been using the Story of the World history books for the past couple of years. We've only made it half way through the second book so far because we paused for several months last year to try out the Sonlight curriculum which had it's own history books. The girls actually came to me and asked if we could go back to the Story of the World books because they liked them better.

We had learned, about halfway through the first SOTW book, that it was a lot more fun and stuck with the girls better when we bought the activity book to go along with the story book. So we've been working with the second activity book. But I only have one, so I've been photo copying the workbook pages so that Danya and Gloria could both have a copy. We've had to buy so much ink for the printer, that we realized it would be cheaper to just by a second copy of the book. Also, with my broken leg, it's become more difficult to make copies. So we looked online and found the companies website where we bought pre-printed copies of the activity pages and also some test pages. Then we got binders in each girls' color to store them in. This has seriously simplified things for me.

Over the past few weeks I've had Daniel working on simplifying a lot of the homeschooling process for me since I'm teaching from my bed. He bought me a little three drawer box to put under my table. The first drawer is where the girls put their completed pages each day, ready for me to file them. The second drawer has paper, scissors, glue, etc. The third drawer is for some scrapbooking paper. I've also got a stack of books for the girls to read underneath the baby's bassinet and am keeping our homeschool books in my bookshelf next to the door. It's all improvised and temporary, but it's working.

Fingers and Toes

Don'tcha just love baby fingers and toes? Katie has absolutely irresistible little digits and of course cheeks that you just have to smooch on. The problem with this is that her siblings are drawn to get close to her face and give her kisses and touch her fingers, too.

Ordinarily that wouldn't be a problem. Currently, however, the kids are sick. Snow White has strep throat and, even though she's been on antibiotics since Tuesday night, it's still knocking her down hard. Kevin has a full blown case of the flu. We never bother with flu shots, so we're really hoping that his flu doesn't spread. I'm particularly concerned about Katie getting it, since she's so small. She already sounds raspy and is coughing and sneezing. Daniel and I are debating whether or not to take her to the doctor.

Daniel's mom and Christina and her kids all arrived today. Everyone's trying to avoid spreading germs, but with Hope getting sick last night on the way here, I'm thinking the odds are slim to none that this won't spread. Grandma Nancy is depending on long distance diagnosis and advice from Daniel's sister, Jennie, but I'm sure that's limited to the fact that she's in another state! I can't fault her, though. Daniel and I often consider Jennie to be our "1-800-dial a doc" line since she's a nurse practitioner. Well, I'm nodding off while typing, so I'll let this be my last post tonight.

Night Shift Dad

Daniel is certainly redefining what it means to work the night shift. Not only has he been working from home during his usual shift from 8pm to 6am, but he's also been in charge of Katie for most of that time. People ask me how she's doing at sleeping through the night and I have to reply that I honestly don't know. Daniel brings her to me when it's time to feed her. I have a light snack while she eats, and then he takes her into the living room and lays her down in her car seat to sleep while I go back to sleep in our room. Typically she sleeps quietly while he works on his laptop. I don't know what we'd do if Daniel's boss hadn't been so amazingly understanding through all this.

Daniel's "dad shift" has gotten a little tougher just these past couple of days. I had my ankle surgery on Thursday afternoon. What they didn't mention ahead of time is that the pain medication would make me so drowsy and spaced out that it isn't safe for me to hold Katie without supervision. I could nod off or zone out and accidentally drop her. So, Daniel has to fill in and pull double parent duty even more than before.

Nothing went quite the way we'd originally planned for the day of the actual surgery. Our friend, Debbie, wasn't able to come until almost 3pm, so Daniel and I brought Danya, Gloria, Kevin, and Katie with us to get me checked into the surgery center. Then they left to pick up Snow White and Thumbelina from school and took them all to Westminster for Snow White's speech therapy appointment. Meanwhile, Debbie was at our house to meet the bus when Miss Lady and Brother got home. Daniel swung by and picked them up from the house and then came and got me with all eight kids in tow. The nurses, of course, spoiled the kids by giving them snacks and such while I was recovering a bit.

Everything went well overall in my surgery. The only problem was a miscommunication regarding the proper pain med dosing, so when I woke up apparently I was screaming. The doctor had said he was giving me a local shot in my leg to help numb it, so the anethesiologist gave me less pain medication, and it ended up not being nearly enough. They fixed that quickly with a dose of morphine. I remember waking up in agony at 3:40pm, blinking, and then suddenly it was about 4:15pm. The nice thing was that the anesthesiologist said that since she wasn't giving me any more anesthesia than what they'd give a woman having a c-section, it wouldn't hurt Katie any for me to immediately nurse her. No pumping and dumping required.

Since then, I've been hurting and feeling dopey, but otherwise not too bad. The one thing that concerns me is that my foot seems to be curving in towards my body, making me wonder if my tendons aren't all out of whack or something. I'm going to ask about it on Monday when I go back to see the doctor. I've added a picture to this post of me and my family in post-op. The nurse was nice enough to take it for us.

Showing Off

About a week after Katie was born we brought her to church. I probably shouldn't have gone, but there was no way I was missing her first time at church. I even gathered all my short lived energy and strength to go to Sunday school. That's actually quite a daunting task since our class is up a steep flight of stairs. I made it by leaning on Daniel and hopping one painful step at a time.

It was totally worth it. Our Sunday school class all ooh'd and aah'd over Katie and were suitably surprised and impressed that I made it to church and up all those stairs. Believe it or not, after church I was actually crazy enough to agree to Daniel's idea to take the kids out to celebrate Katie's birth at IHOP. We had over a half hour wait, but all the kids were excited since we never eat at restaurants as a a group because of the cost. It still kills me that we get charged the auto gratuity because we are a party of eight or more. I don't think that should apply to a single family with small children. At least Shannon and Sarah got to go with us. Since Sarah got her license we don't see them nearly enough any more. Oh well. What a day.

Katie's First Firsts

Katie is starting on a long line of "firsts". She's had her first two doctor checkups. They tortured her by sticking her heel at the second one. They tortured me at the first visit by placing very low to the ground chairs in the examine rooms, so that when I tried to stand I ended up taking a bad fall and hurting my ankle all over again just before my x-ray appointment last week. The doctor also said she hasn't gained quite as much weight as they would like to see, so he wants us to bring her back in for a weight check this week.

Katie also cried all the way through her first bath at home while Danya and Thumbelina helped wash her down. I'm glad her cord fell off, because now I can just take her in the tub with me, which she loves. It's a bit tricky with my splinted leg sticking out one side of the tub and me trying not to crack my head on the faucet. That's one first Daniel is forbidden to take a photo of.

Whole Lotta Hair

BEFORE
We decided that all the kids (except Katie, of course) needed hair cuts recently. Daniel took the first batch of them down to the Walmart salon and had the hair stylists line 'em up and mow 'em down. Danya, Gloria, Snow White, and Brother were the first ones to get done. The next day Daniel took Miss Lady and Thumbelina. We decided that Kevin could wait a bit, although he's starting to look shaggy now since all this happened about the same time that Katie was born. Usually I trim the girls bangs myself then line up all three guys in the back yard and use the clippers to "lower their ears", but I haven't figured out how to easily do that on crutches. We won't even discuss, however, the cost of paying for hair cuts for 7 kids plus Daniel. After what the hair stylists had to say about the job I did on the girls bangs, maybe I should just admit that sometimes it's worth the added expense.

AFTER

Life on One Leg

Since Katie's birth, my foot looks weird. Instead of staying puffy and swollen, my toes look dehydrated all the time. They've started to crack and peel. I hope they get better after I can walk again. My ankle surgery is scheduled for Thursday at 2:45pm. I have to arrive by 1pm, and should be able to go home by 5pm. We've got a friend from church, Debbie, coming to help with the kids. It will be an interesting day. She'll arrive just after we put Brother on the bus at noon, at which time the only kids left at home will be Danya, Gloria, Kevin, and Katie. Daniel will take Katie and I to my surgery at 1pm.

Katie's coming so that I can nurse her a half hour before the surgery starts. After she eats, he'll rush off to pick up Miss Lady, Thumbelina, and Snow White from school (they share a building) and take them to Snow White's speech therapy appointment at 3pm. Meanwhile, Debbie will be at our house to get Brother off the bus at about 3:30pm. Speech therapy will be over at 4pm. Daniel will take the four girls back to pick me up and hopefully leave at 5pm. We hurry home, say good-bye to Debbie, and wait for another friend from Sunday school to arrive with dinner.

Two strange situations have resolved themselves to make all this work out. The first one is that while I was in the hospital recently with an infected uterus, the pastor's wife informed me on the phone that our family had used up our limit of help from the church because it had been almost two months at that point since I broke my leg. She pointed out that there are lots of other families in a church as big as ours who also need help, which is unavailable for them since everyone was coming to help our family. Since she's on the "meal ministry" email list of women who are willing to bring meals to families in the church who need help, she was aware of how many people had been helping us out three days a week. So, when the meal ministry lady called to ask if I needed more meals I explained that we couldn't accept.

She, knowing we could still use some help, contacted our Sunday school leaders. They passed around a sign up sheet last Sunday and she called me today to tell me that the people who volunteered to bring us meals and/or make themselves available to help us are not on any regular ministry team. They only volunteered to help our family specifically, so we are not taking away from anyone else by accepting their aid. (And on a side note, she pointed out that the pastor's wife is in Africa currently.) So we'll have a few meals and some friends to help out here and there for the next week or so after my surgery.

The other issue was that the transportation department (bus barn) for Brother's school informed us last Monday that they would no longer be picking up Brother in front of our house. They'd given us six weeks, they said, to find alternate transportation for him. I explained that he was a foster child and could not legally be transported by anyone else, but they said they could not make an exception or everyone would expect the same. I'm guessing they meant that every foster parent with a broken leg and a newborn would complain that they couldn't make it a mile to the bus stop. So, I told them I'd let Brother's caseworker know the situation and then I'd un-enroll him from the school since I had no alternative. We were waiting to get permission from the caseworker to pull him from the school, so he missed school all last week. We'd planned to go un-enroll him today, but the transportation lady called this morning to tell us they changed their minds. They're giving us six weeks from my surgery date. So from the day I can officially put weight on my leg I'll be expected to drive him to the bus from then on. I told them that would be fine. Daniel says they probably didn't want to lose the money the pre-K program gets from a special needs kid attending the school. I like to think they just felt guilty about the whole situation.

Katie's Blanket

This may be a first for me. I'm notorious for starting a crochet project and leaving it half done. Years ago I had planned to make a red and black striped blanket for my brother-in-law Ben to use in his college dorm room. I didn't measure it and ended up making it WAY too long. So after I realized my mistake, at about the half way point, Daniel suggested I just unravel it and make it over in the correct length. I got it about halfway unraveled and gave up in frustration. It's currently in my linen closet, looking like two blankets, a twin size and a king size, connected by a long strand in the middle.

Recently the kids stumbled upon a three quarters finished blanket that almost looks like an American flag. That was the one I had planned on making for Kevin's baby blanket since he was due on the 4th of July. Somewhere in the house there is an unfinished crazy multicolored blanket that I was making for my best friend from high school when she was expecting her first child... she has four children now.

Anyway, my broken leg actually had one positive outcome in that I was able to spend plenty of time working on this baby blanket for Katie. Gloria took this photo of me as I was finishing up the border around the outside. I brought the blanket with me several times to the Children and Family Services building to work on while I was waiting for Miss Lady and Thumbelina during their visits with their parents. Several caseworkers and foster parents who know me stopped by and noticed the blanket in progress and were surprised to find out that I was pregnant. I guess the blanket was a more obvious sign than my not-so-large belly. I can't tell you what a feeling of accomplishment (and relief) it brought to finish tying off the last bit of yarn on Katie's blanket. Now every time she uses it I smile. For once, when someone sees a crocheted blanket on one of my babies and asks who made it, instead of telling them that a friend or my mother-in-law made it as a gift, I can say, "I did."

Sugar and Spice

Miss Lady and Danya, our two oldest girls, have both been under a lot of pressure lately to walk a fine line. We expect them to show leadership and responsibility lately without crossing over into trying to be the parent to the younger kids. It's been hard on both of them, especially when they feel like we hold them accountable for things that happen when they are "in charge" in a room out of my sight, but don't give them the authority to discipline their siblings.

Instead, we require them to tell the offender to stop what they are doing, and if they don't, then to come quickly to tell me what's happening. If I can just call that child to my room and deal with the problem verbally, there's usually not too much of a melt down for either kid, but when it's a situation that needs the actual physical presence of an adult, I usually have to send someone quick to wake up Daniel and have him rush to the scene of the crime. Poor, Daniel, he's not getting nearly enough sleep lately. There's no way I could effectively deal with all the issues that come up daily without him here.

Kevin and Brother seem to be taking the most advantage of my being temporarily disabled. It seems like the moment I let them out of their room, off time out, they are in trouble again. Kevin grins as he heads back to his room and I suspect that this all seems like a big game to him. When I tell him to stick his nose in the corner he goes, but then he constantly calls out to me, "Mommy, I'll be good now. Can I come out?" And no threat of punishment for talking or time added makes him stop. Now Brother is starting to copy Kevin, except that while he's on time out sitting on his bed he yells every 30 seconds, "Ma? Ott?", which is the closest he can come to asking me if he can come out yet.

The list of offenses for the boys seems to be never ending and the same ones committed daily. Kevin throws things at the other kids or hits them with things. They strip all the sheets, blankets, and pillows from their beds and pile them in the middle of the floor. They jump on the couch, slide down the stairs, barge into the girls' rooms while they're changing, draw on the walls and furniture, steal food, hide wet pull-ups in their rooms, scream at the top of their lungs, open the front door for fun, stuff toys down the floor vents, and destroy anything they can get their hands on. Today Kevin branched out a bit by ejecting Daniel's Star Wars Lego game from the Playstation 2 and breaking it into jagged shards then hiding the pieces in the couch. Yesterday he broke the monotony of the same old routine by secretly removing his pull-up and putting on a pair of Brother's underwear and then pooping in them. Tonight he stripped naked and hollered from his room for people to come see his "winky".

He's currently two years old. My hope is that he'll outgrow most of this behavior. My fear is that he'll simply get older and more diabolically clever at inventing new ways to misbehave and that Brother will continue to be his willing accomplice.

**This post is for my good friend, Glenda, who rightly pointed out that by failing to talk about my children's misdeeds and bad days enough, my blog might be giving the false impression that my children are perfect. Hopefully this helps show that they are very much normal children.

The Mouse and the Motorcycle

Daniel took both of these pictures on the same day shortly before Katie was born. He's been doing a great job of making sure that photos are taken often even though the usual family photographer (me) is off her feet for quite a while. He thought it was a good idea to document me in the pose I spent most of the month before Katie's birth in; hanging out with my foot propped up, browsing the internet and using my big pregnant belly as a mouse pad. Whenever Kevin was getting too fussy or crazy I'd call him into my room, let him crawl into bed with me, and then google cartoons or funny youtube videos of kids to distract him and get him into a better mood.

The other photo is of a motorcycle that Gloria built following the directions that came with the K'nex. She's been very creative lately coming up with projects and ideas to do with the boys or just to keep herself occupied. I was very impressed that she managed to make this motorcycle.