Happy Mothers Day

Happy Mothers day to the moms out there, In reality, I just kind of think of it as Women’s Day and appreciate all women.  It was another great day out there weather wise, and this time of season there are no bugs so being outside is very enjoyable.  Kathy and Paul did their usual shopping for flowers and planting them today, the other kids helped out with some of the planting and did a lot of cleaning inside and outside the house.  I spent a lot of time precooking a few rack of ribs then finishing them off by cooking them on the grill, they turned out pretty good.  Along with the ribs I grilled some vegetables and made a fruit salad with a variety of berries.  We were able to eat outside and sat there talking for an extra half hour or so taking in the calmness of the day.

We bought another car this week, luckily not another cat.  When I responded to the car ad, I typed – Can I come and look at your cat this evening?  Apparently he new what I meant and replied ‘yes’ and when I showed up, it was the car to look at and not a cat.  Anyway, we own five cars now and have three drivers, the cars we have are far from new but this new car we bought is a 2008 Ford Taurus and rides really nice.  If plans go as expected, Marlene will take one of our vehicles then we will keep the rest having one in preparation for Brenna getting her drivers license in October or November.

I’ve been working long hours lately and even through Saturday and Sunday of last week, this week should be back to forty hours, then maybe sixty hours again next week.

Paul went to prom last night, said it was okay but for a few reasons said it could have been better.  He’s thinking about graduation and for plans after, may be going to a local college for a year with putting in as much work as possible then going to Mankato state next year.

Brenna and Shaylin are having a good time doing track together, after the track meets they like to talk about their events went and how they felt they performed.

David has been thinking he wanted to be a bull rider or a horse jockey for the last couple of weeks and read up on what it takes to do that type of work, like he has with a lot of his career jobs, but now he’s back to wanting to be a bounty hunter.  He will ask me a lot of times what I think he can do, I say he can do most things but first he has to get his grades up because he does float at a D to an F in a couple of his classes – a lot of that is missing assignments.

Kathy had a fun Mothers Day today and relaxing right now reading a book for her book club which meets next week.

Snow days of April 2018

It’s been a snowy April, so snowy that some schools have had two snow days this month.  Paul and the girls had one snow day at the beginning of April then a two hour delay for school at the start of this week while David had a day off at the beginning of the month plus another day off for snow this past Monday.  Most Minnesotans are getting tired of the snow especially since we have had some nice fifty degree days but Brenna and I like the late season blizzards.  Outdoor sports have been tricky this year because of all the snow, Brenna and Shaylin have had cancelled track meets and even the Minnesota Twins have had three games cancelled that were supposed to be played in their new stadium that doesn’t have a roof on it.

Paul was accepted to three colleges, University of Eau Claire, Mankato State and University of Mn.  After looking at the prices, Kathy, he and I talked about the best direction to go and decided he may take a year to work more hours but go to the local college (Century College) to get a few of the basic courses in then head to Mankato State.  He and Kathy toured it a few weeks back and they said it was quite nice.

Brenna has one more volleyball tournament for the season, it’s ten days away and will be in Duluth – you know who will drive most of that trip (SHE will).  I don’t even know if I brought this up before but she got braces on her lower teeth a couple months ago.  She didn’t complain anything like Paul when he had his braces but then he had the full deal which did look more pain full than what Brenna has.

Shaylin is enjoying track along with Brenna, Kathy and I were not sure she would because she doesn’t want to put too much effort into it.  We’re glad she likes it and is getting to know some others kids because of it.

A couple weeks ago, David wanted to be tattoo artist but after a few days, that feeling went away.  He’s not sure what he wants to do as a grown up but is hoping to work four or five weeks this summer at Camp Shamineau, the camp he was at last year and loved it.  He has usually had pretty short hair but is now trying a bit of a different dew with his bangs longer but the sides still short.

I have been working weeks of ten hour days, with more weeks to go, and Kathy has been working three  to four days a week so we really have to figure out in advance who will get Brenna, Shaylin and David to their activities.  Paul does help out but works and hangs out with friends a lot.

Happy Easter

This morning, Easter morning, the kids wake up and start looking for Easter baskets.  Kathy kind of tricked the kids when she helped the Easter Bunny hide their baskets because last night she told the kids to go down stairs for a short time so if the Bunny came by he could get start looking for hiding spots.  While they where down there we hid the baskets in their bedrooms.  Come morning they where all looking throughout the house for their baskets when we had to give hem a hint that the baskets could possibly in their rooms, because they never thought we hid them the night before.  They all found their goodies and enjoyed the kick off to their morning.

Today we went to the 9:00 Easter service, had some egg bake at church then came home to get food ready for company.  We hosted Kathy’s mom, Kathy’s brother and wife and three others (nieces and nephews).  The food was plenty-  ham, turkey, cheesy potatoes, fruit, veggies, rolls and berry pie for dessert.

None of our kids have school tomorrow, David starts his spring break and the others get an extra day off for Easter.  Nothing too crazy happening with the family, Paul quit track and wants to work a few more hours at Office Max, Brenna is in track and volleyball and gets a little time in driving for behind the wheel, Shaylin is doing her dance while still singing and dancing for fun around the house and David really has to focus on getting his class assignments in on time and studying for tests.

Anyway – Happy Easter All.

Spring break is over for some.

Well, Paul, Brenna and Shaylin had their spring break last week but Davids break is still a week away.  There isn’t a whole lot of special events we plan for the kids spring breaks, but they always enjoy the time away from school.  While David was at school though, five of us went to a The Mongolian BBQ – an all you can eat Chinese buffet with a big enough variety of food that even Brenna and Shaylin found something edible.  On another day, Kathy took the girls out shopping with Grandma Webb, they bought a couple clothing items then went out for lunch to Panera Bread.

This will  be a four day week for the kids and my work because Good Friday is on the schedule, then we can enjoy Easter with some family come Sunday.

Happy St. Patricks Day!

Happy St. Patricks Day!  It’s right on the edge of fifty degrees here, the snow is melting and have seen a few motorcycles on the road – it’s awesome.

Trickling along with the blog, not getting to it as much as hoped, missed a couple of big dates.  March first was Davids 6th year anniversary with us in America.  Many trails have been had and many still going on, but it does make me think of life from such a different perspective as compared to before the adoption.  Before the adoption I think I was focused more on my own self satisfaction along with my families and it wasn’t too tricky too keep everybody semi-happy.  Now that David joined us, he needs lots of attention which makes the flow of things much different than what we’re used to.

Four years ago, March 10th, was the passing of my Dad, definitely still have lots of great memories that come back now and then and get brought up in discussions with anyone who knew him.

Right now Kathy, Paul and myself are talking about the family reunion coming up this summer because turns out the date is set for the same day as Paul grad party – we’ll figure out something to make the most of both events.

Snow warnings, snow removal.

In the last week, we have had two decent snow falls, that put snow warnings on the weather forecasts.  They were both around six  to seven inches which can make it hard to get around on the roads with any kind of traffic.  Luckily we didn’t have any accidents within our household but I did see a few fender benders out there.  Davids school started regular time on Friday, the others school had a two hour delayed start because of the snow.

Snow removal follows snow falls, I can see why our kids don’t like shoveling snow when it’s sub zero but when it’s twenty five and thirty degrees (like it has been the last week), it can be a little refreshing – apparently the kids don’t feel that way.  Shoveling is one thing, still okay and refreshing, but when I offer them to run and operate the snowblower you think they would almost want to pay me, but they still run the other way and act like it’s child abuse.  They do get out to help with Brenna always being the first and last holding the shovel doing the work.  I will get out with the snow blower and hit a few of the neighbors, it must be some of my dad in me because sometimes I think I do it just to see if they will come out to talk, sometime they do.

Paul has been working a couple days a week, he was hoping to get three to four days so with only getting two days a week he may go out for track.  He didn’t really want to but knows the coaches would love to have his long legs for running.  He has been doing some video taping of sports at school for video club, and has been doing a few outings with foreign exchange students as another extra curricular activity.

Brenna has been averaging an hour or so of driving a week with her permit, most of it is driving at six thirty or seven on weekend mornings going to her volleyball games (every other week), a lot of the games are forty five miles away.  Last week she was sick with flu like symptoms and didn’t go to school from Wednesday through the rest of the week – she’s feeling better now.  She’s enjoying volleyball and has had some awesome spikes.

Shay is still singing on a regular basis around the house, Kathy asked her if she wanted singing lessons and she said “No”.  She also enjoys her dance class and tries dancing around the house but it’s not quite big enough for al of her moves.  She had fun being paired up with a foreign exchange student for three weeks, the girl was from China and was actually pretty quiet but friendly.

David keeps talking about different plans he would like to do when he gets older, the plans change from being in the military to a firefighter to a CIA agent to a sports star and so on and so on.  Hopefully something will pan out when the time is right.  He still hangs out a lot, most weekends, with either of his best friends (Timmy or Spencer), this weekend he was able to spend Saturday night with Spencer.  He’s working hard on getting good grades for school but still has a hard time getting everything in on time, which shows up on the report card.

 

Make money / Spend money

I’ve been working a lot lately which means we make more money, so we decided to spend some of it.  To warm up spending the money we bought a new microwave and Kathy got new winter boots.  Today Brenna was able to get a new dress for an event at her school and we ordered a new gas range that should show up Thursday.  We are planning on getting a new refrigerator and a new dishwasher, looked at a few over the weekend and decided what ones we plan on ordering sometime this week.  It’s been fun talking about getting new appliances and I’m sure we will be happy for a least a couple days once it’s all over with.  We decided to go with stainless, will be quite a change from our white appliances now.

It’s hard keeping up with the blog, working long hours ( a lot of those are the night shifts) and having to run kids around – so I’m done for now.

Golden Sweet Sixteen

David’s birthday was yesterday, it was his Golden birthday plus he turned sixteen.  He’s been begging for a phone for quite some time and we did end up buying him one as a gift.  He was able to help pick it out a couple days before his birthday but we didn’t let him use it until the day of.  I got home from working a nightshift at seven in the morning when I was greeted by David at the front door.  Normally he wakes up around seven thirty, (I guess he got up at six thirty and stayed awake) he told me he’s been waking up every hour throughout the night waiting for morning so he could get his gift then he said it feels like Christmas.  Kathy was up, I spoke with her a few minutes then we decided to give him the phone, no need to wrap it as he’s been holding most days with us keeping it at night.  Of course, I’m in a hurry to getting kids to places again then hitting work for another nightshift but for the rest of the story, David loves his phone an knows we will be making sure he still gets to his homework and other duties.

Hello 2018, Birthdays and 6th yr. anniv.

Well – we’re in the year 2018 and have my birthday happening right now, the 14th, David’s is on the 16th and the sixth year anniversary of David joining our family is right around the corner.  Six years ago we were in the air, on a plane, to Ukraine for the adoption to happen.  It’s been a heck of a ‘trying’ experience but one that God intended for us to keep things in respective.  We know of at least a dozen other families that adopted children and three or four of them didn’t work out, so the children went into our government foster child care system.  Sounds easy, but it’s a lot of paper work, it’s hard on the families and tough on the child going into the system.

Today for my birthday, I told the family I wanted the gift of labor.  Each Saturday, the kids do their chores but that only hits the fluffy part of cleaning.  What I wanted was the cleaning of the inside of he refrigerator, clean our silverware drawers and the many other drawers that collect crumbs and other junk, clean out closets and some dusting in places that kids didn’t know existed.  I told them if they hit it hard for a few hours we will go to Perkins for dinner, that’s where were off to now.  I’ve been working many different hours, longer days plus some night shifts and will be working Monday night, Tuesday night and maybe more nights depending on how the job goes.  Blogging just doesn’t seem to get done when work goes wacky plus me playing chauffeur to three of the kids while Kathy works.  Bye for now going out to eat.

Merry Christmas

The last day I worked was Friday December first, today is December 26th, where did the time go.  Well we did have a good Christmas and a little more to come being the Junker side will get together on the 30th.  I always think I will put something on the blog when the kids come up with something for me to do or I have to fix something, there also general maintenance and a million other things going on for activities and entertainment.

Paul has been working two days a week, usually one weekday plus a Saturday.  A month ago he was in a car that his friend was driving, they ended up in a fender bender.  There wasn’t much speed involved but his friend did get a concussion and his car did have a lot of damage because of where the other person hit them.  The other person was a lady and she couldn’t speak any english, she did get a family member on the phone to help interpret the situation.  Not fun, but it will remind Paul about how quick things can happen in a car and that accidents can happen to anybody.  He got accepted to a couple of colleges and is waiting to hear if the University of Minnesota will accept him, not one hundred percent sure he would go there but would like to know it’s an option.  He has been enjoying his time off of school for Christmas and loves staying up late (midnight or so) with candles lite and Christmas music playing.

Brenna has to get more driving done for practice, she has been getting out once a week but needs to really get the natural feeling of the gas pedal and brake pedal.  She is in a winter volleyball league, not through the school as her fall league, and likes the new coach and is getting used to the new players.  There are only seven or eight players so when the games start she will have plenty of playing time.  The Christmas break from school has been fun for her as she is keeping in touch with her friends, doing Christmas shopping and hanging out around the house in her pajamas.  She played her oboe in the school concert a couple weeks ago, it was a nice concert that Marlene and my mom were able to go to.

Shaylin has been doing some baking during her break.  She does get help from Brenna and the two of them went to town making a few dozen Christmas treats a week ago.  They made their favorite cookies peanut butter with the chocolate kiss on top, haystacks and sugar cookies that they decorated with fun colors.  She still signs and dances around the house consistently.  She liked her Christmas gifts and added two extremely soft throws (small blankets) to her other one or two she had.

David did sign off on CAP, he said he still wants to be in the military but doesn’t want to stay in CAP.  Some of him leaving CAP might be because a lot of kids tell him it’s dumb even his best friends.  Right now he is saying his life is all about being a rancher.  For Christmas, he got new cowboy boots, a picture of a black stallion and a new belt buckle.  He was talking about wanting to get a sniper bb gun but I said he wouldn’t be able to shoot it too much around the house so he went with the cowboy theme instead.

Stopping right now to go do some returns from Christmas, just not enough time to really finish my thoughts but it is what it is.