Gotta spend

Got money, Gotta spend. A couple days ago, a neighbor gave each of the kids belated Christmas gifts. They were given ten dollar gift cards for Target stores. Shaylin and David are always ready to spend when they have fresh money. Last night, I took all four kids to Target so I could get some groceries and they could spend some of their new green. Shaylin was the big spender, using her ten dollars plus a dollar fifty of her own. She bought five dollars worth of candy, three dollars on cat snacks (treats for our cat – that was nice), a disposable ace wrap – she says she keeps getting sprains, then another miscellaneous item or two. Paul was the next biggest spender, buying a six pack of Snapple and a couple cans of Pringle potato chips. Brenna also bought Pringle potato chips along with some gum. David brought his ten dollar gift card, plus fifteen extra dollars and was ready to spend any thing from all of it to none of it. He has a hard time making decisions and will have buyers remorse a lot of times after spending a big portion of his money. We were able to get out of the store with David buying just one giant three dollar candy bar, not bad considering he was going to buy two cars that would have totaled twenty five.

Paul did a short run, with a friend, last Wednesday. It’s called a winter run club but there are usually only two to four kids that show to run – more might make it on warmer days.

Brenna still has us buying twelve dollar reeds for her oboe every three months sometimes every two months. Didn’t know that when we had her sign up for it, the maintenance cost is the same as for a small car.

Shaylin was able to have a friend from school come over to today, seemed like they had a good time, maybe it will help her with being willing to go to school more so than in the past.

David stayed home from school last Thursday and Friday because he was sick. He’s doing quite a bit better now but is still very touchy when asked to help out around the house – that’s not much different feeling well or sick.

He quit playing sax three weeks ago – never wanted to practice but wanted to be famous musician.

Flying high

For Davids birthday, Kathy, Myself, David and Timmy (A friend of his) went to The Mall of America. The two boys did a flight simulator. The simulators are very close to what are used in the real world to train people how to fly jets. There are different set ups for different style of jets. David and Timmy had their own fighter jets hooked up (electronically) together so they could fight enemy planes. They wore head gear so they could talk to each other (and a person that worked there) to help make their fly time as fun as could be. When they were done flying high, they had a blast talking about what they each experienced and how fun it was to see each others planes on the screens in front of them. David said he just wanted money for gifts from people, he received a total of seventy five dollars. He liked the simulator so much, the next day he used forty five dollars of his own to pay for a half hour time slot on a another jet. This time he flew a simulated bigger jet, maybe compared to a 747 military style. It was a little different experience not having his friend there but he still thought it was great. He says he would like to buy a simulator when he gets older – right.

Kathy got her home work done, actually it was Paul’s school work. Things weren’t going well and they were up till nearly eleven o-clock working on it. During his free time, Paul has been relaxing reading books he got for Christmas – American history and Peanuts comics.

Brenna and Shaylin had a basketball game Friday evening and then a couple more on Saturday. Brenna has lots of playing time and talks about how rough it can get on the court. Saturday night and Sunday she talked of how she had a lot of sore muscles.

Shaylin was picked up by Kathy, early, from school because she was sick. Not sure how she’ll feel tomorrow. She didn’t get to play very much in the basketball games over the weekend. At times she thinks she wants to try harder at basketball to get better, then she thinks some more about it and feels maybe not. After we got home from one of the games, she shoveled off our little basketball court (our patio has a basketball hoop on it) and started shooting and dribbling in the cold – outside. She hasn’t done it since – she’s more of a brainiak (made up word for is naturally smart) anyway – sports may not be her thing.

A couple of birthdays

Yesterday (the 14th) was my birthday and tomorrow is Davids birthday. Mine came and went peacefully and relaxing. I took three hours off work for my day, it allowed Kathy and myself to have a nice lunch and shop for some new clothes for me. David is really excited for his birthday to get here so he can get on with his plans for his special evening with his friend Timmy. Kathy and I will take the two of them to Mall of America for a different type of experience. The two boys will get to do a World War 2 flight simulator. We saw these simulators about a month ago and David felt he really wanted to try it. We said the price was a bit too much to do just any old day but maybe we could try it on his birthday – so the time is here. I hope it will be close to the fun that he is hoping for.

Paul was somewhat sick last week but was able to go to school, he felt good for a few days and is back to coughing, sniffling and sneezing. We’re planning on him staying home tomorrow.

Brenna is enjoying school in general, says her main teacher is really fun to be around. She likes being in basketball, they have a game Friday evening then are in a tournament Saturday.

Shaylin is not doing as well as Brenna with school or basketball. It’s hard hearing about some of her bad days. A lot of it she says is because the kids say and do things that are inappropriate, since she won’t join in, she gets left out of their play time. Basketball isn’t fun for her partly because she doesn’t want to stay in it and when we play at a community center she doesn’t want to practice so she doesn’t get much better and lags a little behind her team.

David is doing okay on most fronts but has serious highs and lows. The last couple of weeks, he has said he wants get A’s in school and is very willing to do extra studying to get there (when he wants). It seems every hour it changes from him saying lets do more homework to I hate school. When he says lets study, we try to make it easy and fun but he gets playing and video games back in his mind (after he already played for an hour or so) then gets angry that we ask him to read a few more minutes.

Three years ago, on this date, we were spending our first night in Kiev for this adoption process to get rolling.

No heart attack.

The kids loved their Christmas break from school. When the weekend, before going back to school, was here they all expressed how school was going to be a huge drag and had many worries and concerns – basically wishing they didn’t have to go back. That Sunday evening we had our family group bible study. There are five of us families that get together, the kids hang out with an adult and do a short study or a craft while the adults go through the book of John. Our children really didn’t want to go but the way they were sitting at home ‘morning’ about going back to school we felt it might be good for them. The evening went well, then came bed time, their last night before going back to school after after living a dream vacation away from school. It’s funny, because throughout their school break, they did have bad times and felt some things weren’t as fun as they hoped but they totally forgot that part when it was time to think about going back to school. All we heard on their last day of break was how tough school was going to be and how hard it is to be around other kids. Well, here it is, a week of school has past – no one had a heart attack.  It sounded like a pretty normal week they even had some good things to say about it once in a while.  I think, at times, we all can think of life that way – wondering how will we get through certain situations or why is this happening to me. We’re trying to change from saying we have to pray to get though just the hard times, to realizing we want to pray for understanding all our situations – good and bad.

Champagne for everyone!

We had a couple join us for New Years Eve night. We have known them for a few years through our church. They don’t have very much money, have problems paying bills, don’t get to enjoy many things our family does, but will thank God for being great and wonderful and will praise him year round and even more during the Christmas season (something our family can work on). First activity for the night was to have pizza. Kathy and the girls made homemade dough for crust during the afternoon then when the company came, each person could put their own toppings on their (somewhat) own pizza. The pizza’s tasted great. Later in the evening we played games, after that we had nice conversation for an hour then watched TV for the ball to drop at midnight. There was champagne for everyone! (kids champagne the that is) at midnight. Our company stayed another half hour and called it night.

Last night David stayed over at Timmy’s house, our house feels more relaxed when he’s gone. He says he enjoys being there, I know he does but there is also stress for him there just not as much as at our house. We are all working at making our house peaceful and as time rolls on we learn more about ourselves and each other.

The kids have had a nice ten days or more off from school and are getting wound up about going back in a couple days.  They’re not looking forward to it a whole lot but Kathy thinks they’ve had plenty of time home and is ready to have her house back.