Jasmine is 17!

And Adam came home to help celebrate. He took Jasmine to a movie the day before her birthday, and we had cake that night.

Then Sunday, which was her real birthday, I took her on a shopping trip along the panhandle. We got look alike Nikes among other things. Mostly we had fun.

Our photography assignment was to take portraits, but I haven't taken any except a few shots of Jasmine on the trip. We were going to go the beach and take photos, but ran out of time.

Jasmine has decided to collect keys, but they are harder to find than you'd think. And expensive. The man wanted $10 each for these at a flea market (not ours) but let her have them 3 for $20.

We ate lunch at the Destin Panera.

And bought shoes at the Silver Sands Nike store.

Right now we are in the middle of several projects around the house, but I didn't think about taking photos of the work in progress. Guess I'll take photos of the finished projects.

Jasmine's Pageant

Most of you will remember that Kayla, Jessica, and Jessica's girls, Winter and River, were in a pageant in December. Jasmine had a rash on her face and neck at the time. She's still having some problem with it, so we are getting a referral to a dermatologist, but it had cleared up enough with general meds to do the pageant. You will see the darkness on her eyelids though.

Winter wear category. She lifted her sunglasses and smiled at the judges, but I didn't catch that. I was shooting with my Nikon and also doing live feed on facebook on my phone.

Formal wear:

Awards:

She is wearing three tiaras and several medals.

One thing I did not like about the pageant is that the girl who took overall in December showed up again for this one. This is still regionals, and there is nothing higher than overall, so why come back? You only have to be in the top ten to go to state, and the top four get their way paid except for a $100 fee. So someone might came back if they hadn't made the top four and wanted the fee paid, or even some die hard pageant moms might bring their daughters back if they hadn't won their age group. Kayla took first in her age group in December, and I had expected to see the second place girl there because her whole family is all about pageants, but she wasn't there.

Back to the girl who took overall--I asked the mom why she was here again when she'd already qualified for state. She said, "Well, you can never have too many crowns can you?"
Ummm, yes. I think you can.

The girl is not even two yet.

She took overall again. 

They use a scoring system. You have to sign up not only for the beauty judging, but for all the extras to be considered for overall winner. The extras are things like smile, hair, eyes etc.  So not everyone is in the running for the overall crown. Then the judges rate each child who has entered the extra categories on those things. Top score wins.

She beat Jasmine but only a point or two.

Jasmine did this pageant for the fun of it, but the other girl's mom is obviously very serious about it. There is one more regional pageant near us, and the mom has already said she plans to take her daughter and take overall for that one too. 

(The Jessica, Kayla, Winter and River did not enter the extras. Jasmine did because Adam wanted her to and paid for it.)

I chatted with the judges afterwards while Jasmine did an interview, and I off handedly mentioned about the mom planning for her child to win overall for a third time. The director said she hadn't realized it was the same girl who'd taken overall previously until she'd already been judged, but she was not in favor of the mom entering the child in more than one regional because that is not the point, to see if you can scoop all the medals and crowns at each regional. But neither is there a rule against it, because all three of these pageants have a separate theme. The December one was the Winter Wonderland pageant. The one today was the Winter Princess pageant, and the one in March is the Under the Sea pageant.

The girl was a cutie, but I disagree with the mom's thinking. Then again, I'm not really a pageant mom. I do however plan to write a YA book, The Pageant Princesses Murder, so maybe I can count this as research. 😀😀

PS I bought Jasmine's dress at Goodwill for less than $3, same as Kayla's.

More Than I Wanted to Know

I wish I could say all is great here, and in some ways it is. But in others, it's not. I am learning more about the juvenile court system than I wanted to know. I wish I'd known about the teen court program long ago, but maybe it didn't exist.

The information below contains specific details because I know I am not the only one with kids who steal. So please pass on this post if it offends you.

Many of you remember that Kayla was charged with a misdemeanor for stealing $40 from Tyler, taking it to school and then leaving campus with friends to  spend it. Ty dropped Jasmine and Kaleb at their schools and was driving home near where Kayla goes to school and saw her waltzing down the street, arms full of shopping bags. She saw him and took off running. He called me, and I called the school.

They were waiting for her. Since she had stolen money many times before, Tyler went to the school and talked to the School Resource Officer (SRO) and pressed charges. However since he only pressed charges for those $40 and not the rest of his money or the money stolen from me,she went to teen court and was tried by other teens. Prior to going she had a notebook of information to read and answer questions about and essays to write. Three times they wanted to boot her out of the program, but we begged them to let her try again. Finally we told her we would not intervene again. If she had another violation she'd have to go to DJJ instead. At court she received an essay and community service hours. She ended up with an extra week for violations. 

She finished the program, but she has never really felt remorse. Since she stole from her brother, she does not feel that's really stealing. Then she took $5 out of Rick's wallet and recently took an iPod belonging to a family member and had no intention of returning it. However, she was seen with it, so I was told. This makes me think maybe teen court did not get her attention after all. Rick called the SRO, who of course remembered her. He let her know that removing an iPod from the house with no intentions of returning it is every bit as much theft as stealing money from a stranger. But she doesn't see it that way. And she really made that iPod hers, adding subscriptions, watching videos etc. And she got indignant that Rick called her SRO, but since the iPod was at school all week, it made sense. She complained to me about the SRO, and I told her fine, let's go to the sheriff's office and press charges, and she got quiet in a hurry. 

At the same time, Kaleb has been stealing from Ty for months. Ty always felt he was missing money, but couldn't prove it. Then he found money on Kaleb. 

I accused Kaleb of taking Ty's keys and opening his cash register style box from our shop. He said, "No. I didn't need to. I can work the money out the little hole on the top"!!! No remorse, no nothing. We made Kaleb list everything he'd stolen and from where. Hidden in Ty's underwear drawer, out of the bank envelope hidden in Ty's van etc. Almost $200 and that does not include what he's taken from me.

Rick has taken Kaleb to the sheriff before, and the sheriff said, "You need to apologize and stop stealing." I guess they never really listened. Ty got really angry last time because it was $50, and he needed gas for his van. So we took the list and Kaleb to the sheriff's office. Gave them the list and said Ty was pressing charges.

When they saw the list, they took him back for questioning. They were back there a long time. I wondered if Kaleb was trying to get their sympathy by telling them how horrible we all are. I don't know if it's just my kids, but they will lie about things to get the attention off of them and on us. 

The sheriff finally came out and said, "he's not going to teen court, he's going to DJJ." But I thought they said DCF and thought that he was getting off the hook and was filing an abuse charge or something. I started to panic, and Ty repeated what the sheriff had said. Then the sheriff said Kaleb was defiant, oppositional and showed no remorse. They booked him for 3rd degree felony and took him out in cuffs. 

Yeah, I lost it when I saw my 70 pound son cuffed and put in the back of a squad car to go downtown to DJJ. I picked him up three hours later, and he acted like nothing had happened. They indicated that there might be mental health issues, and I was actually happy because I've always thought that, but no one would listen.

The problem is that he's like two different kids. One calm, helpful, funny and a great kid. The other dark, defiant and a bit scary. The sheriff and DJJ saw that side. But by time we went to the mental health screening, he was calm, easy going and came across as a normal 12-year-old child.

So we waited for his court date. The sheriff said he'd probably get six months for a third degree felony, but when we got there, they'd changed the dollar amount (maybe they couldn't read the sheriff's writing?) and called it a misdemeanor. Since he is so small and young and a first time offender, they offered him a program called the juvenile alternative program. He didn't even have to go before the judge. He was sentenced 25 hours of community service, but his representative knocked it down to 15.  

He has not yet started the program, so I don't know what all is involved. But he is not taking it very seriously at this point. Maybe once the program starts he will. We meet with the lady in charge on Monday.

Right now we are dealing with two kids who feel entitled to steal from family members and who have negative attitudes about being asked to do extra chores to make up for what they've taken. Hopefully this will end once they really realize it is not getting them what they want.

In the meantime, we continue to have family circle two nights a week, and a game night one night a week. Everyone takes part no matter the behaviors during the week. I did not do this when the first two adopted children were having similar issues, but I wish I had. Still, it was a whole different situation and I doubt either of them would have wanted to take part in a game time at that time. Still, I wish I'd had something fun that was unconditional each week. But it's hard to see that when you're in the middle of it. And their stealing was constant. Every single day. But mostly it was not money as with the twins probably because the other kids didn't have that much money at the time, so there wasn't the option to steal money.

At times I'm tempted to send both twins to bed before games, but I know that sharing fun times is important to bonding and feeling part of a family, so we do it.

I've also told both of them that they can try out for track this month, but if there are stealing violations or seriously poor behavior, they will give up that right. We will see what happens.

The biggest difference between the issues with the twins from the issues with Jeff and Adam is that I've learned not to take it personally. Now I will just say, "I see that you've chosen to do X, and I accept your decision to give up X" (a movie, playing outside or whatever they would have been allowed to do). They will say, "I didn't say I wanted to give that up," and I will simply remind them that their behaviors made the choice.

So this is the end of a long true life post. I wonder if any of the rest of you are dealing with stealing, lying etc and what has worked for you.

Night Photography

Night Photography is NOT my favorite. I did worse this time than last time I had it. But last time I took a three week class and had the instructor with me when I took the photos. 

I went back to the marina where we'd taken those photos and found that I was right in the middle of the Mardi Gras celebration. So instead of a dark, quiet place to shoot, I was surrounded by drunken partiers. Since the whole place was lit up, my night photos were not dark enough.

  

At home:

 

Sparklers:

Glo sticks:

Light Saber fight: (Jasmine and Tyler dueling in the dark)

Any thoughts?

Best photo

Since I didn't get a lot of feedback on the photos in the previous post, I submitted 7 of my photos, instead of the normal 3 the instructor wants. At the beginning of each class, she shows the photos each person sent (some of the class members didn't send any) and the class comments on them and chooses the favorite for each photographer. With mine, they were split between four, with the top two being the favorites and the second two close contenders.

This one led their eye to the beach, and to most of them, it looked like he had the pole in his hand. It's actually firmly "planted" at the beach.

They liked this one for the lines and also the mood created by my using "burlesque" when I edited it.

It was the light breaking through that captured their eye on this one.

This one had stronger lines, and they liked the black and white effect.

It's hard for me to judge. I thought some of the photos the others had taken were outstanding. Some of them looked really professional.

The homework for next week is night shots of any kind. Most of them are planning to shoot the unusual moon tomorrow, but I am not. I am going to go with light painting. She didn't cover it that much, but I did it in another class with her a couple of years ago. I just need to find those photo to get the exposure times and such.

I have some updates, but it's hard to know how much to say in an open blog. Some people want to know what it's really like to parent adopted children (or even birth children with issues) while others just want the happy stuff.

We were going to go to St. George Island tomorrow (no school due to teacher work day) and climb the lighthouse, but two of the children have had behaviors lately that tell me we need to wait on that trip.

If my night photos come out well, I'll post them.

Photo Class Assignment

I started intermediate photography Monday night. We talked about light and lines. Our homework was to take pictures with lines that lead the eye, and to take picture with unusual, strong, or interesting light.

I wish I could afford a much better camera, but I am working with a Nikon 5500. I thought it would take a higher quality photo, but oh well. The pictures below are the kids' favorites. I did edit them for stronger colors.

I don't know which to send as my homework. She puts them up on a large screen for everyone to critique.

What do you think?

 Counting the fence as lines

 Thinking the lines of the chair in these

It was cloudy, so not a very bright sunset