Adult Children part 2

Okay, as promised, a post about the other three adult and almost-adult children.

Tyler and Jessica are in Explorers. This is a police department program for kids 9th grade and up. You don't have to be going into police work to be in it. They do learn police procedure in the weekly meetings, but the color guard unit marches in parades, all the Explorers help with parking and security for events, they patrol the malls and walk people to their cars Friday and Saturday evenings between Thanksgiving and Christmas. They host a party for one of the poorer schools. There is also a Swat team. During the summer they go to a rugged boot camp and also have competitions. They do bike work and ride alongs.

Jessica was not in it before because she had dance, tumbling and marching band. Then she decided she wanted to go into criminology about a year and a half ago, and she'd quit marching band, so she joined Explorers. Tyler has been in it about 4-5 years but not totally involved because he doesn't plan to go into police work. >

Jessica got to know Anthony at boot camp last year. Then he started hanging out at the bay with us, jet skiing and kayaking. He and Tyler did some exploring by kayak.

These aren't the older kids, but they went along to support the older kids. Adam had gymnastics and tumbling and didn't get there until it was basically over.

Jessica got three awards--sixty hours training with academy, 16 hours training and 25 hours involvement and one-year award. She also got promoted to corporal.

As I mentioned earlier, Adam is in tumbling and gymnastics. He has been doing pretty well minus the incident with the iPod. Sometimes the kids get upset with him but it's just differences in personality. He's a lot more outgoing and harder to ignore. He turns on the charm with the girls and when in trouble. But if it's not a values issue, I can accept it.

We have a wide spectrum when it comes to personalities from very introverted to very extroverted. It can be challenging to sort out what are personality differences and what are behavioral issues.

Adam just got a job at Church's Chicken. There is a delay in his paperwork so he hasn't started yet.

Tyler got his acceptance to UWF. He has to pull up one grade first. He is hesitant, but he needs to try this. Money is going to be an issue and he'll have to apply for loans. I think he needs to try being away at college for a semester. And the community college doesn't have his program. He could do one more semester at the community college but that's it.

Jessica has another year at the community college and then she can transfer next door to FSU for the underwater crime scene major or other criminology major, she can go into the police academy or she can go to UWF. Well, there's hundreds of choices but these are the ones she's considering. She's not sure she can scuba dive due to some damage to her ear.

I am taking Tyler, Jessica and Adam on a college visit to UWF next Friday. They've been before but now that Tyler has his acceptance there are certain things we need to be looking for.

All in all, I'm proud of these three, happy that they are all Christians (as in born again not as in we are a Christian nation) although there are different levels in how openly they live it. I have talked to all four older children about this recently trying to find out how real it is to them and making sure they aren't just living by a list of rules. Each of them has an idea of what they want to do in their adult life and how to achieve it. And they are getting much better at supporting their siblings in their activities. Each has summer plans that we'll share more about as the time gets nearer.

All for now!