A Busy Weekend!

Thursday night Jessica and I went to watch Adam's last regular game of the season. It was pretty cold--in the 40's.

Friday there was no school so we tried out the panini press I got from my sister for Christmas.  We grilled hamburgers on it one evening, but hadn't made sandwiches. This was roast beef and ham. Adam worked all day Friday and just saw this picture and couldn't believe he'd missed the paninis. We'll have to do it again. Maybe Monday since it's another day off of school.

Jessica did the cooking, then she worked closing Friday night and didn't get in until close to 11:30 and to bed until 12:30 a.m., then had to get up at 6:15 to get ready for the race. 

It was 47F when we got dressed for the race and about 53F when the race started.

Tyler helped Kaleb out.

Ready to run. Very colorful! Yep, I know Kayla is missing. She was trying to sabotage the day for herself. And she pretty much did. She pouted and poked around and missed the start of the race by six minutes. That was her choice, but it was kind of sad because this would have been the first 5K all the kids ran together.

Jessica checks out the race route. Many of the runners said there was a lot of small hills and the final stretch was uphill. A somewhat challenging run.

Ready! Over 200 were registered. I don't know how many showed up.

The three side by side--gold, blue and white all came in a few seconds apart. I don't really know what the first place guy was wearing.

Adam was third overall with a time of 19:02. He'd pulled a muscle in the back of his leg but I don't know how much that affected his time.

Tyler ran his fastest 5K-27:32.

Kaleb came in at 31:59. He was really focused.

I actually missed Jessica crossing the line but a friend got  a picture of her that I'll get later. Kaleb hadn't come out of the chute, and I was looking for him. Jessica came in at 32:52, so about one minute after Kaleb and I didn't notice : (

Jasmine looks beat. She came in at 38:28 which is about average for her.  Her words, "Never again." It was a tough course for her.

Love this photo. They can be best friends, and they can fight like siblings! Kaleb can sometimes have behaviors that  are a bit annoying. But today everyone got along fabulously. 

Everyone 14 and under got a medal just for running either the 1 mile or 5K.

Jessica got first for 20-24 females. She was 3 minutes ahead of the next one in.

Kaleb got second place in 10 and under boys. The good thing is that  he still has three more years in that age group!

We drove Jessica to work and got a Sbarros pizza. She works a double today so won't be home again until after 11:00. She's going to be really tired after little sleep last night, a 5K and then 10-11 hours of work.

We had to hurry to get Kaleb to his basketball game at the other end of town.  Coach Dad and Coach Adam  (he didn't work today so helped coach) with their team. Their uniforms are supposed to be purple but haven't come in yet even though it's almost halfway through the season.

Kaleb is quite a bit behind other boys his age in his behaviors. I don't know if it's due to the years in the orphanage or just him. He'd do better in the next younger age, but you can't play down, only up. Sometimes he just doesn't get it. But he had a good attitude out there this week (once he saw I was there watching).

Jessica is at work and Jasmine's coach took them to the basketball games at the college, so the rest of us got pizza for the second time today. Also got some frozen TGIF potato skins and wings. They watched Despicable Me. Kaleb has eaten a week's worth of food today! He got about 8 snacks at the race.

Adam went out with a group of friends to celebrate a friend's birthday. They went to Chilis.

Then Tyler left to go see Red Dawn and wait for Jessica to get off work.

Rick and Kaleb played Spiderman Sorry.

A final goodnight story.

Can you tell that it's been a crazy day? Right now Tyler, Jessica, Adam and Jasmine are all out. I'll feel better once they are all safely home for the night. Any other moms feel that way about theirs?

Quiet Week

I haven't posted much this week because there hasn't been much going on. Also there haven't been many comments on the blog even though people stop by. I wonder if every one is bored? We occasionally have some very interesting drama here, but sometimes it's too personal to share.

There are no saints in the house, although some of the children are much better at doing the right thing just because it is the right thing to do whether or not anyone is watching. A couple of them have shown that they'll purposely do something totally unacceptable if no one is watching them rather than choose to do right. So that's an every day battle.

 Beyond that, we celebrated Adam's 18th birthday last Saturday. Late that evening I realized that I didn't have a picture of the two of us. I was going to let it go, but I also realized he was never going to have another 18th birthday. So I did what any mom would do--put on a shirt on over my PJ top and just enough make up not to scare people.

Here we are. I'm holding iPod touch cases and he's holding the iPod touch, but you can't really see it.

From Jessica.

From Tyler. Jasmine gave him two packs of Reeses too.

Outfit I gave him for sports.

I did not realize we had a four day weekend this weekend. The kids are off tomorrow for a teacher preparation day and then Monday for MLK Jr day. If I'd known, I might have tried to scrape up enough money to go somewhere. Our Disney passes have expired, and I can't buy them for everyone this year. Maybe we'll do Universal/Islands of Adventure later on if I get royalties this year. But for this weekend, the kids are all signed up to run in our church's 5K Saturday morning. I'm hoping for good weather. Today is dreary--gray, drizzling and very windy. The dreary weather really affects my family. How about you?

Jasmine was supposed to present her power point on the Space Program in Florida for the history fair on Tuesday, and she still hasn't been given the chance to do it. I hope they have her present today rather than hold it over until next Tuesday.(I don't think she remember to take her meds this morning, so it may be a very interesting day!) She redid her book report in class, but I wish she'd brought it home for me to check it. There were questions you had to answer about the book, and she just wasn't thinking on some of them. Like she wrote the book "Catching Fire" took place in the districts after the capitol took over, and the teacher did not give her credit for that because it should have said in the twelve districts of Panem and in the arena. She forgot to fill in the genre and she didn't finish the list of main characters. Most teachers would have pointed out the mistakes to her and had her fix it, but not this teacher. Unfortunately I do not think Jasmine will make the A/B honor roll this grading period. She really is not feeling the love from this teacher (as another teacher put it,) and she has her for the first two periods of the day.

Hope you all have a good weekend. I hope to have good news about the 5K next time I post.

Saturday

Today started with two basketball games.  Kaleb and Jasmine both played  at 11:00 at opposite ends of town. Jasmine made two baskets, so when we stopped to pick up Adam's cake, we got her cupcakes. We were going to get them anyway because they are Hunger Games cupcakes and they were half price mark downs. But we made up the excuse that they were for her two baskets :)

Ready to go to Adam's party. The family didn't go, but I went because I was both driving him and paying for it. Jessica was suppose to go but forgot to take off of work. So Jasmine went along to keep me company.

She was pretty wiped out after her game and then a two-mile run to  prepare for next Saturday's 5K so she rested once she was ready for the party.

Jayden doesn't need an excuse to take it easy. She's a cat. It's what she does.

We had his party at Genghis Grill. I thought it would be more interesting than  just going to Pizza Hut, but I think they would have been fine anywhere. They weren't all that impressed with choosing the ingredients and watching their food cook.

Jasmine and I sat at a little table across from them. No one needs his/her mother sitting right next to him/her at a party.

I had gotten Adam a cake not knowing that one of his friend's mom makes cakes and was making one for him. That one was better because she knows Adam and made it very personal for him. 

One friend got him Vans.

Another got him an expensive watch. When did kids start buying each other such expensive gifts? Some of the friends took up a collection and gave him a wad of cash.

My mom, sister and brother put money together and got him the most deluxe tracfone and a minutes card.

I didn't want him to guess what I got him, so I wrapped a 2.5 pound weight and put it in the bottom of a box that was bigger than needed for his present.

It was really an iPod touch (4th generation), and I think he was really surprised.
Jasmine got him Reese's, and Ty and Jessica both got him small gifts.

This is the cake I got him. I have no clue what that thing is on the side. It wasn't supposed to have anything around the edges because I was going to add soccer balls. When we saw the other cake that was so perfect for him, we decided to freeze this one, then scrape off the writing and whatever that thing is, and add a picture and use it for the twin's third coming home anniversary in a couple of weeks. They'll never know. I planned to do pizza and cupcakes like the last two years, but this will work out fine. Shhh. Don't tell!

The one thing I didn't do was get a picture of him and I together. I sent him and his friends off to the movies with an 11 p.m. curfew since he has to be up early for church tomorrow.

Last Day of Being 17

Tomorrow he's 18. So I took a few pictures of his last day as 17.

We decided to make smoothies tonight instead of tomorrow morning.

Finally got his soccer picture. This is from back in November.


Tomorrow, his 18th birthday, he has to work out with his Marine Recruiter and the other guys from our area.  Then later in the day I'm taking him to Genghis Grill along with some of his friends. It's getting a little complicated though because I said I'd pay for him and eight friends. But there are some kids who won't come unless a certain other kid is coming and some who won't come if a certain kid is coming. Some of the friends coming invited other friends to come. I am going to let Adam sort all that out. I forgot how complicated it can be to be a teen!

Daily Life

Now that we're through the holidays, it's pretty much back to normal life around here.

I turned 51 on Monday. Rick bought me this for my corner of the family room.  (The room is supposedly my office but I don't need the whole room and right now there's a ping pong table in it that leaves me about a 6 ft by 4 ft area). Rick got me two FSU shirts (but they didn't fit and have to be exchanged) and NCIS LA #3.

My mom sent me this.

Jessica got me a CD of the top Christian songs.

From my brother. (He sent money and Jessica picked it)
My sister sent money, Adam gave me money and Ty gave me chocolate.

We bought pomegranates at the grocery store. Tyler looked  up how to eat them on the Internet.

I made potato soup in the crockpot. The recipe has loads of bacon, cheese, heavy cream etc. We're going to make some changes to the recipe before next time. It's good but it's very rich and uses a lot of ingredients. We only needed about half this much too. This is a 7 qt crock pot. 

I had a meeting at Jasmine's school to go over her testing, so Tyler and I had lunch with her--Sarku's and Chick Fil A.

Jasmine tested much higher this time. The last battery of tests had her IQ pretty low, and I requested a retest. This time is was 24 points higher. Overall she scored at 12 yr 3 mos in mental ability. (She turns 12 on Feb 18). Her math reasoning was quite low though. But reading was at the top of the charts. I think she scored higher on the test than what she can actually do in the classroom, but it doesn't really matter.

Jasmine worked very hard all last week on a book report that she understood was to be given orally today. So she practiced it until it was within time limits and pretty fluent. She got to class today and #1 she was the only one who'd done hers. #2 She was told it was to be written not oral, but no form had previously been sent home. No problem because she wrote it out anyway. AND #3 she was told she couldn't do her report on The Hunger Games Book 1 because it had been made into a movie and books that had been made into a movie were ineligible. That is NO WHERE on the forms she brought home. So her teacher told her to do it over.

That teacher left early from the meeting, and I was surprised when another person in the meeting said that Jasmine was having trouble in that class because Jasmine needs to "feel the love" and no one feels the love with that teacher. The teacher said that the other teacher was not a good match for Jasmine. Normally the teachers don't make comments like that about the other teachers, but I'm glad she did because it explains a lot. Jasmine has felt all year like that teacher does not like her all. That's sad, but Jasmine is going to have to realize that not all teachers are going to be warm and fuzzy toward her. So I guess we will be redoing the book report. She was originally going to write it on the second book in the Hunger Games series but it's a more complicated plot, and she was having trouble summarizing it. One thing the other teacher told me at the end of the meeting is that Jasmine's "extended time" clause applies not just to testing, but to other work so I can request extended time for the project.

Jasmine has  been putting together a major history fair project the past three weeks with lots of help from Jessica. I'm glad Jessica knows how to do a power point presentation. It's looking impressive but so much still to do in documented primary and secondary sources and preparing the oral presentation to go with it.

We've had plenty of assorted appointments for the kids the past three weeks too. It's been a little crazy--orthodontist, dentist, counseling, medications etc. They are scheduling an EEG for Jasmine too.

So basically it's just been our normal crazy life here lately.