First Day of School 2009

Okay, so Baylee's birthday pictures were not the only thing I was behind on. We had four kids starting school this year! Shockingly, Tyler & Cameron are no longer willing to pose for first day of school pictures. We did have a couple of willing participants, though. Amata & Caleb are always more than happy to have their pictures taken.

This was Caleb's very first day of school, ever. And, actually, he is the youngest person in his class. Normally, they don't get to have their Early Family Special Education classes at the school until they turn three. But, since Caleb's birthday was only a month & a half after the school year started, they decided he could start early so he didn't have to make a chance after the year started. He gets to go three mornings a week. We weren't sure how he would do at school, since he tends to have a tad bit of stranger anxiety (which is putting it mildly). Obviously, we underestimated the thrill of getting to ride the school bus when you are 3! (Town kids don't bussed around here, which makes it even cooler to have the bus pick you up.)

The bus was a little late, so he got anxious & decided to wait outside.

Amata gets to go to ECSE 3 afternoons a week & regular preschool 2 days a week. It just worked out that her first day of school was the day after Caleb's. She wasn't thrilled about that, but Nana & Great Grandma were able to be here for Amata's first day, so that made it a little better.

Too bad their excitement for school will fizzle out within the next few years. We'll just have to enjoy it while it lasts!

Happy Birthday, Baylee

Okay, so technically, Baylee is now 2 years, one month & 10 days old, but none of the other kids have had a birthday yet, so it’s okay that I haven’t gotten around to posting any pictures yet, right? Heck, we had our family pictures done in August I think and I haven’t posted or ordered prints of those yet, either.

No worries, even though she is the youngest of 5 children and really has no concept of what happens on her birthday, let alone *when* it actually is, we did in fact celebrate her birthday, on her birthday, complete with cake & ice cream. We may have skipped the whole going out for dinner part, but she didn’t seem to mind, and really, it’s not my fault that she chose to have her birthday on Wednesday when Amata had dance. I even had all of her gifts purchased before hand…granted it was the night before, but still before. And, as a matter of fact, I actually bought the cake 4 whole days before her birthday!

Lucky for Baylee, she had lots of help opening her gifts from her older brother & sister!

She changed into her new Barbie cheerleader outfit before enjoying her cake.

And, of course, Amata & Caleb also had to blow out the candles.

We were not prepared enough to have remembered to get extra Schwan's ice cream, so we had to make do with Kemps. Chris has gotten really picky about that!

Notice how excited the teenager is…as usual!

Sunday Afternoon Fun

We went to our areas last parade back in August, and we remembered to bring the camera to this one. Tyler stayed home with CJ, as CJ is not so much fun at things like this, and Tyler feels he's too old.

Waiting patiently for the candy.

Here it is.

Big brother steps in to help out.

It's too hard to wait until we get home to start in on the candy.

Break Time

After the parade, we went home & Amata helped us get the corn on the cob ready for dinner.

And then, of course, we had to eat it.

Or most of us....Tyler & Cameron decided they don't like corn on the cob anymore.

And then it was time to help Daddy mow the lawn.

Go Twins

I may have mentioned that Caleb has a slight obsession with balls. Okay, when a 2 year old will sit and watch a Twins baseball game on TV...and when they get upset come October when the baseball teams on TV are not the Twins...maybe it is more than a slight obsession. So, we decided to take him to his first Twins game...and only game in the Metrodome.

He was very excited about it, until we dropped the rest of the kids at Auntie Marnee's and discovered that she set up a pool for them. But, we did manage to talk him into coming along with us with the promise of swimming later. (We never said how much later). He was kind of in awe when we walked into the Dome. This is a boy that recognized the word Twins as baseball, so there was a lot to see!

(side note...ignore the smudge on all of the pictures...somehow the camera lens had a smudge on it. I'm wondering if that was at all tied to all of the random pictures of feet that were on the memory card)



We brought Tyler with too...although I believe his bad attitude was the reason the Twins lost. (As soon as he found out who the pitcher was, he said that they were going to lose.)


Caleb enjoyed all of the food required to eat at the ball park...

Yummy Dome Dogs
The did let him bring his Twins cup into the park.
But of course, once he saw we had pop, the cup of water was no longer good enough.

The cotton candy was the big winner, of course. Pure sugar combined with lots of sticky...who doesn't like that?! Look, even Tyler is enjoying it!

But by the end of the 5th inning, all of the excitement wore him out. (The fact that he decided not to sleep at all during the 2 hour drive up to the Cities didn't help.)

Plus, they lost anyway, so he really didn't miss anything. He also did a whole lot better than the two girls sitting directly behind us who were several years older, they were ready to go by the third inning.

All in all he did awesome. I bet he'll be even more excited about going next year to the outdoor stadium!

More Changes

Well, we finally did it. After today, Chris is no longer employed with Schwans. The great part about that is he will no longer be gone 14 hours a day from Monday through Friday. The really scary part about that is that neither of us has another job. Instead, we bought another house and are opening a second daycare.

This means that neither one of us has a guaranteed income. And by the end of the month, we will no longer have health insurance. (Or, at least Chris, myself & the older boys won’t have any, at least the babies get MA until they’re 21 since they were adopted out of foster care.) Right now, the plan is once we have the second daycare filled up, or close to full, we would try to find a semi-affordable plan that will probably have a substantial deductible. Or if that fails…see if we can purchase insurance through MN-Care. Until then, Chris & the boys are under strict instructions not to get sick or injured in the next several months. And I am planning to “stock up” on my migraine meds as much as I can before the insurance is gone. (And while I’m usually not one to give opinions on any pseudo political issue, at this point, I’d have to say I’m “for” national health care because, well, we no longer have an employer paying for most of ours!)

We have tried to be semi-intelligent about this business venture. We did create a budget that I hope is pretty accurate. And the house we found is pretty small and doesn’t have a garage (that’s important also because there’s a whole slew of licensing requirements, including a visit from the fire marshal if you have an attached garage), and therefore pretty inexpensive; although we did have to get a little creative with the financing since nobody is willing to finance a house that you are not going to live in these days. But I still go back and forth about 30 times a day between being very excited and scared to death. Hopefully that will go away soon.

Wish us luck…or better yet pray for us, cuz if this doesn’t work, we could end up on welfare and then you’ll have to support us! (Tee-hee…that was a JOKE! Again, not against welfare, and I do not judge people who are on welfare…as long as they are attempting to work or find work or complete their education.)

Soccer Star

Cameron and Amata are both playing soccer this year.


It’s Amata’s first year, but I thought she’d enjoy it since you pretty much get to run the whole time. She’s been acting a little shy thus far, though. She has kicked the ball a couple of times, though, and the ball has hit her foot a couple of more times, so I think she’d enjoying it.

Cameron is the one that I always used to say just enjoyed soccer because if you just keep running around the field, nobody knows your not actually kicking the ball. However, I can no longer say that. Last year, with Chris as his coach, his team didn’t lose a game, and no other team even scored a goal against them until the very last game. This year, it has been just the opposite. They only have one game left and hadn’t scored a single goal…until last night…when CAMERON scored his team’s first, and only, goal so far this year! Don’t get me wrong, it is very much a team sport, but he literally took the ball from mid-field and made the goal all by himself. Way to go Cameron!!

It’s too bad that this is the last year he can play unless we can figure out a way to get him on a team in another town.

Happy Birthday to me...I guess

Yesterday was my birthday. Chris of course had to work. He left the house around 7:30 am and didn't get home until 10:30 pm. We did go out for lunch on Sunday, after we got haircuts for 5 of the 6 kids. (Baylee will let me put her's in a pony tail, so I haven't had to cut hers yet.) Tyler didn't even complain about the fact that I picked Mexican for lunch...that in itself was a great gift!

We also did cake & ice cream on Sunday. I didn't take any pictures of it, but I do have pictures from when we celebrated Yummy's birthday. Long story short, for Amata's birthday, we had gotten a Brownie/Ice cream pizza for her cake. Tyler ordered it again as his pick a few weeks ago and when we went to eat it, Caleb went and grabbed birthday candles out of the drawer. I asked him who's birthday it was and he said "Yummy." So we lit the candles and sang happy birthday to Yummy. Then Caleb & Amata blew out the candles and we ate.

Yesterday, on my actually birthday, we had daycare kids until about 5:30. Then I had to rush to Shopko and exchange the shin guards that Cameron needs for his game tonight. I made it back with about 10 minutes to spare before my online chat for an ADHD class I'm taking. After my class I ran the truck over to the repair shop to get the window fixed and rode my bicycle back home. I know, you're jealous about how exciting my life is! But I'm officially another year older. And yet I'm still not old enough to be shopping for a "mother of the bride" dress no matter what the lady at Dress Barn thought!

Before and After

We've lived in this house for almost 9 years now, and we have officially pretty much rebuilt the outside of the house. Unfortunately, we haven't been picking away at it that entire time, everything but the windows has been done in the last 18 months. So, we've spent a good chunk of change the last year, but with the economy being what it was, we got some really good deals. The siding alone was cheaper than the estimates we had gotten for it 4 years earlier. Maybe once we finish paying off our home equity line in a few years, we can start working on the inside of the house!

I am too lazy to find the original picture of the house before we replaced the windows, but here is what the house looked like before we did the siding, roof & landscaping.

It looks just fine from a distance, but when you get closer, you see the crumbling concrete patio, the rotten panels in the siding and on the really windy days if you were lucky, you could see some of the shingles blowing off.

The patio was the last thing we did. It rained practically every day when they were trying to put it in, but once they were done and we had grass seed to keep wet...no rain! So after weeks of watering, here is the final product.

I'm not drinking it!

When CJ was initially placed with us, he was on Soy formula. I really didn't know why, I just figured it was working for him, so I continued giving it to him. (And really, there's no point in asking why, because chances are pretty slim chance that the social worker would know why anyway. The parents don't usually write detailed care instructions when their kids get taken away.) When we went to his WIC appointment, I asked if the nurse thought he needed to go to Soy milk, too, instead of whole. She said that typically babies who are on soy formula have outgrown the need for it by the time they turn one, so he would probably be fine with whole milk. And, in order for him to get soy milk through WIC, he would actually need a doctors note.

She did say that we could get lactose free milk with WIC, so if he didn't do well with whole we should try that. At first he seemed to do okay with whole milk, but after a couple of days he started getting a light rash on his chest & his back, so I decided to try out the lactose free milk. (Which, in case you were wondering is twice as much as regular milk...thank goodness for WIC!) Since we made the switch to lactose free the rash has gone away, so I will probably stick with it.

There is just one thing that is bothering me about it, though. I bought the carton about a week ago, and I just happened to notice the expiration date on it. September 10, 2009. Since when does milk last for over a month & a half? And while I admit I don't like milk anyway, unless it's chocolate, there is no way on earth I would drink that milk on September 9th. Is lactose really what makes milk expire so fast?

Dang Them!

**I decided I needed to edit this post because I broke my rule about not posting about anybody specific who could possibly see this.

This past year has been full of changes for us, and it turns out, the changes aren’t done yet. Schwan’s is turning out to be a bit more than we anticipated. For the past month or so, Chris has been gone from about 8 am until 10 pm Monday through Friday, and there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight. That just does not work very well for us and the 6 kids we currently have. So we’ve been exploring other options. But lately, I’ve been wondering why do we even bother?

I get so tired of seeing people do the absolute minimum that they can just so they can continue to recieve welfare. I actually watched a documentary once where one of the single mothers interview said that she has the "right" to be a stay at home mom for her child. I hear so many people complaining about Human Services and what they expect people to do…like work. (Oh, and the term "work" is used very loosely, as that can mean "looking" for a job, which can mean putting on your application that you may have a conflict with jail in the near future) Now, I’m just saying, if you want to be a stay at home mom, you should probably wait to have a child until you’re in a stable relationship with a partner who can support you and the baby.

If it was a "right" for people to stay home with their kids, there wouldn't be anybody paying into the welfare system to support them. I get that it is a very fine line that the welfare departments are walking. Yes, the children absolutely need to be supported, as it is not their fault who they were born to. But the problem with that system would be the reason my youngest 3 children are so close in age. If you lose your benefits because the county took your child away, the only way to get those benefits back right away is to get pregnant again...because then you get benefits throughout your enire pregnancy.

So this brings me back to my point about why do Chris & I even bother to both work? If he quit at Schwan’s and we just both ran the existing daycare, we should be able to get all kinds of welfare benefits, right? And before I get a bunch of hate mail, I am NOT against welfare, or food stamps or any of that. They are all important programs that people have a legitimate need for. But it was never meant to be a permanent source of income for people who just don’t want to work. And I really get irritated when people who are receiving benefits bitch about being expected to actually look for a job.

And so, Chris will continue putting in his time a Schwan’s until one of us can find something better. Dang my parents for teaching me that I actually had to work to earn a living and support my family!

Eight Minutes

So, Tyler & Cameron are at my sister in laws for the week. Fun for them…not so much for me. My last daycare kid didn’t leave until 6, Chris is working until at least 10, we were completely out of milk & I had my online chat for the ADHD class I’m taking. So, the kids & I rushed to the grocery store (as rushed as you can get with a 4, 2, 1 & 1 year old) to get milk …6 gallons to be exact, because I am NOT dragging them all back to the store again this week. We got home about 20 so 7, so I had twenty minutes to unload everybody & everything unloaded, put away the milk & get the kids something to eat so I could be online by 7 for my class.

And I did it. I made the kids a wonderfully nutritious meal of bologna & cheese with potato chips. (I wasn’t in a bologna sort of mood, so I seriously had bread & butter.) But I got to the laptop and logged on by seven, eating my bread & butter, and waiting for the next 8 minutes for the instructor to finally get logged on. She had an excuse…something about having to reboot twice, but still. Even though it wasn’t her fault…if I’d have known I had another 8 minutes maybe I’d have given them some mayo with their bologna or found something else for me to eat!

Parade Fun

We went to our first parade of the summer last night. If we were willing to put forth a little more effort to drive to more small town parades, I’m sure we could have made it to at least a dozen by now. These days, though, making it to FestAg & Kernel Days each summer is about the best we can do.

The kids had a good time. Chris headed up early with Caleb, Amata & Cameron to enjoy some rides, and then Tyler, Baylee & I went up right before the parade with some DQ cheeseburgers for dinner. (Because nothing says I love you like fat soaked cheeseburgers to clog your arteries) CJ was at the parade, too, but his paternal grandmother is in town this week, so he hung out with her for the day.

Caleb, Baylee & Amata all enjoyed the parade, and got more candy than they will ever eat. But now I can throw away the rest of their Easter candy. There was a girl sitting about 10 feet down from us who kept running in front of us and taking “our” candy, but when she tried to take my the kids’ candy corn, her parents finally noticed my expression and made her give it back to our kids and told her to stay by them. After all, it is an unwritten rule at parades that you don’t run in front of people and take the candy thrown to them!

Amata & Caleb had a couple of ride tickets left, so after the parade, we headed over to ride the carousel. While we were waiting for our turn, a woman came up and said, “hi, I’m J**’s mom.” She is Amata, Caleb & Baylee’s biological grandmother. Amata has been in our care for almost 4 years, and I have never seen this woman before in my life. J**’s cousin, who I do know, was also there, so I do believe that’s who she is, it was just kind odd.

She were nice, she just wanted to take a picture of the kids. She did ask a few questions about them, and so I told her about Caleb’s speech and Amata’s FAS. She said that J** was also very aggressive when she was Amata’s age, so according to her, it’s probably just hereditary. (Because I’m sure she never abused alcohol while she was pregnant.) I also couldn’t help but wonder to myself if J**’s aggressiveness started before or after mom’s boyfriends began sexually abusing her, because one might think that could cause some undesirable behavior. I was polite to her, though, and did let her take their picture.

After that it was definitely time to go home, since it was everybody’s bedtime. CJ got back about 10 minutes after us, he was so tired he didn’t even notice when I took him out of his car seat and took his jacket off before putting him to bed. He ended up sleeping until 10 this morning…and then grandma was back around 12 to pick him up again – I could get used to this, but sadly, she heads back to California this weekend. Guess I’ll just enjoy it while it lasts.