Spring Break

We were more than ready for a break!! Me especially! Some of the behaviors at school were escalating, and we were seeing more inappropriate behaviors, lying about it and so on. Usually when they are just with me, I can get them back on track. Or at least deal with it directly. That usually means losing out on something because of not being able to be trusted. Jasmine has also been really stressed out with school work, too. And we have FCAT testing next month.

I really wanted to start out strong Friday doing fun stuff, but that's when I realized that school planners with teacher comments about behaviors had been hidden and altered. So on Friday instead of having a big Frozen kick off to spring break, Jasmine and I went to the theater to see Divergent.

It's similar to Hunger Games as far as genre--and unfortunately, as far as violence. I'd love to see a "survive the new world order without any violence" movie. I was happy that there was only one a** word and one b***** word in the whole movie! I really like it, but didn't particularly like seeing kids gun down other kids.

Saturday was still a little rough because little people were testing me as far as did I mean it when I said the yard job they'd been stalling on and being downright disobedient about had to be done before we could do anything fun. All of us have been working on some jobs to clean things up outside. But some have been wandering off and hiding or trying to get a sibling to be disobedient too. That doesn't doesn't earn privileges.

One of the biggest jobs was power washing the outside of the house. Rick tackled that with some help from the others.

Then Rick and Jasmine went to Nut Job at the cheap theater.

Sunday night the Nelons were at church. Jasmine and the twins sat really well during the whole thing, so we finally did our Frozen night. We stopped at Walmart to get ice cream.

Ready with two kinds of ice cream.

Um, yeah, she is licking it out of her bowl.
This time (in Frozen) when the gates are open to the castle, I saw Rapunzel in the crowd going in. At the theater I'd just see a quick glimpse of her at the last second. Did you all catch that they did that? Disney kind of has a reputation for putting in characters from previous movies.

This morning we went to the park. The kids ran/jogged three miles. I walked four miles. So they had time to play while I finished up.

Then we went to Chill. I'd never heard of them until about a month ago. Anyone else ever go to Chill or have one in their city? Jessica has school this week. She caught the trolley from the college and met us there.

You can choose from 30+ flavors and as many toppings--fruit and all kinds of candy--and they weigh it when you're done. It's kind of expensive because you pay per ounce, but we had a buy one, get one free coupon and a buy one, get one half-price coupon.

This bowl was almost $5!!!

This bowl was around $4.

So that's what we've done so far. We plan to go back to the park and walk/run tomorrow and also grill lunch there if the weather is good. We hope to get to the beach although the water will be really cold. We hope to go bowling and to a movie at the cheap theater. So just around town stuff this week. But fun stuff.

Rick will be heading to see Tyler at the end of the week. So we had to get $1,100 worth of repairs done on the van!! Thank goodness for tax returns!

What is everyone else doing this week? Anyone else on spring break?

More of the Same..and Different

Some of last week and this week looks like the rest of the summer, some is new.

A couple of days, Jessica took the kids to the pool without me. I'm still battling some sinus issues.

Tyler is only here to go on Fridays.

We got Jasmine signed up for dance. She has 6th-8th grde jazz on Tuesdays and teen hip hop on Wednesdays. She has male teachers for both classes, and they both auditioned for So You Think You Can Dance. One of them made it on the show. I don't know any of the details about that.

On Saturday Rick took the three youngest to Lowes to build the plane from Planes.

Unfortunately, Kaleb decided that since he'd built the car two weeks ago, he didn't need to listen to the instructions, and he ruined his plane. He's had a rough week, and this sent him spiraling down farther. I won't go into details, but it wasn't pretty!

This was Kayla's first time.

The girls with their finished planes.

We worked on projects this past weekend.

One project was taking out the bottom of a wall that had gotten very wet and was mildewed and replacing it with new sections of wall.

While some of us were working inside, others were outside weedwacking and carrying wet boards to the trash.

Then I sent Tyler to DQ to get treats for everyone.

On Monday Jasmine and Kayla tried out for the play Rapunzel. It is more of a comedy take off than the real story. They will practice all week and perform it on Friday evening. So it's not a long commitment. A good way to end the summer, although it means the end of our beach trips in order to do this.

Jasmine is at the left end in the bright pink shirt and purple shorts.

The auditions were informal with the whole group in a big circle. The directors would go around the cirlce and have each child say the same sentence or two. They did this several times. The age range is going into first grade to going into 12th grade. But there were only 3 15-year-olds and everyone else was 12 and under. The majority of the 63 kids were 8 and under.

Kayla was castas an ogre. (I told you this wasn't a true-to-the-story play) This is a speaking part.

Jasmine is Monique, Rapunzel's mother.  This is also a speaking part.

Lines had to be memorized by today, so two days basically.

We missed Jasmine's adoption anniversary in July, so we got Chinese for her today. Everyone had Chinese, but not everyone got in the pictures. Jasmine had already been our daughter for almost 3 1/2 years before the adoption was finalized.

As if Monday wasn't busy enough, I took Jasmine and Kayla to Despicable Me 2 for finishing their summer work. Jessica bummed along.

Today is Jessica's 22nd birthday. So we celebrated and then she went out with Hunter.

On the day Jessica was born, I woke up at 5:30 a.m. craving deviled eggs. Rick made some for me, so that was breakfast. I went to the hospital a little after 10:00 and gave birth to her by 11:00. Jessica and I don't mess : )

Hunger Games blanket from Jasmine.

Shirt and hat from my mom.

hat from Tyler

swim suit from my sister (this is for UNDER her wet suit :) )

tools from my brother

check from grandparents

gift card from Adam

shirts from us (she was with when I bought them because we'd seen them 3 for $10)

swim suit from us (again, she knew because she tried it on)

Sue Thomas FB Eye from us

Newsboys and Skillet from us

a black dress, denim vest and two pairs of sleep pants from us If the dress fits, I'll post a picture of it later. She was already dressed up to go out with Hunter.

True story--I saw this cookie cake and it was the only one they had. I remembered that a couple of months ago Jessica had mentioned wanting a cookie cake. I begged for a different color to no avail. When I bought it, it was plain and only had the gawdy pink around the edge. They added her name in light pink in large letters. When I actually looked at it, I realized it was the ugliest cake I'd seen in a long time. I needed something to fix it. I was hoping for mini minions from Despicable Me or something cute. Nothing. We went to the Dollar Tree. Still nothing, except that we got the #2 candles. Then I thought maybe I could add Nerds to decorate it and give it a confetti look. Jessica loved it!!!!

Yeah, okay, so Jessica is all dressed up, and he came from work in his T shirt and dirty jeans. Really? Hmm.

Today my step grands started school.

Phoenix started fourth grade.

Griffin started kindergarten.

I haven't heard from Jeff and probably won't, but I saw this picture with some others. The guys are on their way back from Afghanistan. The first group arrived back in July and they are staggering the returns with the last group arriving in September. I've written him a letter and am sending him a book I got him at convention. Don't know if I'll hear back, but I'm going on as though nothing is wrong.

The girls are hard at work on the play Rapunzel. We look forward to seeing that Friday. I'll try to get photos. We aren't allowed to take any during the play.

Unfortunately, Kaleb has started the habit of getting up before anyone else in the morning, going into the kitchen and eating all the treats or anything not in the locking cupboards. So he has been home with me this week. No trust = no privileges. 

We are less than a week from the start of school. I wish we had another week or two of vacation. There's more we wanted to do. Oh well. Next summer!

Those of you with adopted children, do you celebrate the day they came home or their finalization date? Or a different day?

The kids are writing their final journal entries of the summer about the three highlights of summer, and I'll post those soon.