just stuff

You remember the post about all of Jessica's projects HERE. This is her latest and probably last for now. Life is getting way too busy for her.





She's replacing the boards in our steps that are getting bad. These aren't the steps she built, they were here when we moved in but probably hadn't been waterproofed--at least not well.











She pulled off old boards, put on new boards, and waterproofed with a cedar stain. The color is uneven due to the different ages of the boards.














The new boards that she's adding here were pressure treated and can't be waterproofed for several weeks.















This side is done.

We missed Jasmine's half birthday August 18! It is four days after Jessica's birthday but we celebrated Jessica's over a week early due to her schedule and being out of town so Jasmine's half birthday slipped my mind.

We have new neighbors and it looks like the kids are all going to be friends. Their children still at home are 14, 12 and 4 yrs old. So one is the same age as Adam, the girl is 3 grades ahead of Jasmine so unfortunately in the middle school not elementary and the boy is of course the same age as our twins who are not yet home. They came over just in time to help celebrate Jasmine's half bd. Normally we just have the cake with supper and that's it but we'd also bought some ready-to-bake cookies.

The girls drink their Pepsi out of tea cups.

Playing Ty's Wii.

The boys play pool.

Don't miss my book give away for girl's ages 6-13 on my GIRL'S BLOG.

Oh yes she is

all grown up on me. And I am so proud of all she's becoming.

This and That

Yesterday was a bit of a crazy day for us. First I had to deal with the problem mentioned in the last post. We have counseling set up for this afternoon.

Then Rick calls and says he thinks his arm is broken. He has been riding his bike to work for fitness but unfortunately there isn't a bike path and some of the drivers aren't too kind. He went off the road and as he was trying to manuver back on, he wiped out. And yep, the wrist is broken. We are waiting to see if they are going to cast it this morning.


Here is what we all did yesterday. Of course everyone was off to school between 6:05 and 7:10 a.m. Jasmine got home at 2:00 and Adam at 3:00. Jessica had to catch the city bus to work and was 24 minutes late. Ty just bumped around after college, went to the mall and hung out until church. Then he caught the city bus to church and I didn't see him until I got home at 10:00 so he's not in these pictures.




Jasmine brought home cursive home work! She did a good job with it. I hope her teacher realizes how hard she has to work to form letters correctly. I sent in the same special needs form from her Shands team that I've sent in for three years only to have it ignored and be told that she has to be failing to get help and she doesn't qualify for OT or PT either because those don't affect her school progress at this point. But she had an "N" in handwriting last year so that should tell them something. I think she did a beautiful job on this paper!


Yep, it's broken. He's hoping they'll let him just wear this splint.

















Adam is getting to be quite the handiman. He is fastening his screen from the outside so that it can't be removed.

Rick took Jasmine to GAs and church choir. I went to the mall to look for a couple of things and Jessica was in the food court talking to someone. She had nine minutes left on break so we got pretzel nuggets with carmal dip and a Dr. Pepper.

She really is ringing up customers in this picture. It was two guys and they kept wanting to pose with her but I got her alone.

Jessica got off at 9:45 and we went to Dominoes to get Rick some pizza. Figured he could use it. Besides the broken arm, he has a bad scrape on his leg, swollen lip, scrapes on his face (you can't really see them in this picture) etc. Dominoes has large one topping pizza for $5 from 8pm until closing and you can chose any topping so we got one sausage and one ham. We had half of each left because Jasmine and Adam were already in bed (it was well after 10:00 by this time).


Today is going to be really crazy too. So far I've driven Jasmine to school so we didn't have to walk down to the bus in wet weather, dropped Ty at the city bus stop and then took Jessica's marching band music to school. I don't do delivery service much but since it's the beginning of the year...

When Jasmine gets home, we are going to pick up the child for counseling, pick up Jessica's senior portraits and then go to counseling. We need to stop at Walmart on the way home for school supplies.

In the meantime, Jessica will march from 3-5 and then catch the city bus (we hope) to church for a special 3 hour orchestra practice. So she will have been gone from 6 a.m. until 9:30 p.m. Oh to be young and have that kind of energy again.

Ty will go to karate on bike if it's not raining, then come home and eat and Rick will drop him off at the police dept for Explorers, then pick him and go pick Jessica up. I can tell school has started again because our schedule is getting crazy again! And soccer practies and dance hasn't started yet for the year.

Today

I'm dealing with the aftermath of a situation I didn't want to ever have to deal with. A child who was not only not where he was suppose to be but accessed my computer and went to many inappropriate sites--the kind where today his heart and mind are full of the pictures and videos he saw. And my virus scans are working triple time to clear out a bunch of junk too.

My laptop can be used by anyone and is right in the kitchen/dining room so that the user can be seen. Normally the network card wouldn't have been in it but Jasmine was watching Hannah Montana videos online and since no one was going to be in the area last night, I didn't worry about it. Now both the laptop and the desktop have parental controls set on them as an extra safeguard.

I'm not angry about what happened, but my heart is heavy because I love my child and he's lost some of his innocence and put things in his mind that will be there for a very, very long time. I encouraged him to spend a little time filling his mind with Scripture last night and gave him Prov 4:23 to memorize-- "Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life."

I know he did this because guys at school are talking about looking at that kind of junk and he wanted to be able to get in on the discussion. We need a change of friends. There are two Christian clubs at the school--Ignite and Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Jessica was going to try and find out where Ignite meets. It was suppose to meet at 6:30 this morning. I guess that's the good part of being at school an hour early. But it's a pretty big school and she wasn't sure if they could find it. FCA meets on Friday mornings and she was in that last year so already knows where that one meets. Perhaps there will be some strong Christian guys in those clubs--I'm sure she wouldn't mind if there were some sincere Christian guys in them too : )

The enemy is everywhere and he has a big foothold in the public schools. It's really important to saturate our own lives with Scripture and to encourage our children to do the same. And also, set your parent controls on your computer even if you don't think they are needed because kids can stumble on those sites even by mistake. We love our kids and we need to help them keep pure hearts and minds.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Philippians 4:8

Second Day of School

Everyone posts the first day of school so I thought I'd post the second day of school. If you read my last post about the school "uniforms" this will show you how much leeway there is within the rules for individuality. I don't consider it uniforms since there is no one brand you have to buy. More like a strict dress code as far as the colors are very limited.




Ty's in his second week of college. He would wear the same blue shirt and the black vest every single day if I'd let him but I tell him to rotate his shirts so they all get worn and if there are some he doesn't like, just give them to me to pass on to Jeff or Adam. He's not wearing his favorite shirt here but still has the vest. Can you tell he's not a morning person? He waits to get up until the first group is out the door. I'm not requiring him to get up for morning devotions this year.















If you want to leave a sweater on at school, it has to be one of the three colors. Hers are red, any shade of blue and white. It was cool this morning and broasting by afternoon. She loves her light up High School Musical shoes. She was stomping down the road home and I thought she was upset but then I realized that she was making her shoes light up. I walk her in the morning (it's .4 miles) but she walks herself home. I want her to get used to it so if we have young foster children I won't have to get them up so early to walk with us to the bus stop. Same for when the twins come home.














Jessica and Adam go to the same high school and the colors are gold/yellow, black and white but see how different they look both within the guidelines. This year they can wear any color belt and have any number of buttons on the shirt. Last year it was brown or black leather belts. Yep. They checked. Jessica got in trouble for wearing a plastic belt that came with her pants!

Also, we had trouble finding shirts with three buttons. Most of the girl's shirts have five. She got in trouble and I told her next time borrow the office scissors and cut two buttons off!!! And all the boy's shirts had only two buttons like the one Adam is wearing below. But this year we don't have to worry about it. I guess they realized you can't always find a three button shirt.








Don't they all look so nice fixed up for school?

Off to School

Tyler started college last Wednesday but the others started today.

The schedule goes like this:
5:45 morning devotions, everything cleaned up from breakfast
6:05 Jessica and Adam leave for bus, 6:17 high school bus picks up, it arrives at the school at 6:30--a full hour early because they reuse the buses, school starts at 7:30
6:30 Jasmine and I walk to bus, 6:45 bus arrives, school starts at 7:25
(middle school bus comes at 8:03 but I don't have anyone in middle school this year)
7:10 Ty leaves for city bus, his classes are 9-12, M-Th, only 12 credit hours this semester

Uniforms:
blue or beige pants, jeans, short or skirts (no extra pockets or loops)
button shirts in the school's designated three colors

Jessica & Adam- white, gold/yellow/black
Jasmine-white, red, blue (any shade accepted)



Jessica is off to her senior year.

Gotta get the first day of school look just right.

Ready to go with lunch, saxophone and work clothes because she has to catch the city bus to the mall for work immediately after school. I don't really think she has a prayer of making it in time but she thinks she does. We'll see. I think she's going to need to tell her boss she'll be there a half hour late. The load is going to get worse when she has school books. She's not carrying a backpack today.








Adam starts high school today. Not his usual "public face." I normally only post pictures of him looking cute with a big smile but that's not truly the face we get at home most of the time and this is the best I could get today.

Off to third grade!

Backpacks and supplies ready but no VPK babies to use them-sniff, sniff, sigh.

Purpose Driven Life

We had been doing a chapter of Purpose Driven each week but stopped for summer. People were coming and going all summer and it's a challenge to work around T & J's work schedules. Ty even works Sunday afternoons. Today the first load of people home took the kayaks and left for the bay. Jessica and I waited for Ty to get home from his church. He took his work clothes to the bay so he could go straight to work from there.




Jessica grilled steaks.










We read chapter 27 today about overcoming temptation. Warren says most people think too much about the temptation-- "I will not do so and so" instead of distracting themselves by refocusing on something else. The key to breaking addictions/bad habits is through accountability and small group involvement. Not sure if I totally agree with him but he probably knows what he's talking about.





Adam kayaking after we read the chapter.















Three roasting marshmallows.
















Me kayaking.

Ty in a tree. He only stayed an hour and had to leave for work.

Jasmine kayaking









Jessica

Jasmine

Jasmine on the bars. I love to see her do this because she has some muscle weakness on her left side. She reached forward each time with her right arm but still had to hold on with the left.

Rick and Jasmine

Beach Time

We haven't really gone to the beach this summer. We took the kayaks to the bay a couple of times but with the two oldest working and Adam gone, we haven't gone to our favorite beach since Memorial Day. Even then Jessica was missing because she had to work.


Adam is my entertainment at the beach. The older two were never as energetic at the beach and are less so now.

Jasmine gets upset at me because I make her wear a life jacket if she goes out into the waves. There are few second chances if you get caught in an undertow or just swept out with the waves.

Adam on the skim board.

Finding treasures.

We walked to a little store in a hotel nearby.