Super Dad

When there was just us. Hard to believe such a time existed.

From that time on, he's been super dad.

Though many moves.

Through some fun times... and not so fun times. (This was right after Jeff left)

He's been to TMI camp twice. And won the piggy award.

He's the all round computer repair man.

And sometimes the coach (to avoid attachment issues or just to show support).

He's the #1 Dad whether he's wearing the shirt or not.


How many dads would say, "What's one more?" five times.

He's in the middle of most projects whether they're his own or not. (more often not)

He's truly out of this world.

Turtle Cookies

Turtle cookies for a dark, rainy day.

They do look kind of like turtles.

With the frosting. I guess you could add little round candy bits for eyes to make it look like a more authentic turtle.

Here are how you make the cookies. They really need the frosting to balance out the cocoa in the cookie dough.

Turtle Cookies
4 eggs 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 c sugar 2 c flour
1 tsp vanilla 12 tbs cocoa
1 c melted shortening frosting (see below)

Beat eggs. Add sugar and vanilla. Beat well. Mix in salt and
flour. Add shortening and cocoa. Beat. Bake in hot waffle iron
one tbs of batter into each section for one minute.

Frosting: Melt one cup chocolate chips and 1/3c butter stirring
constantly.Add 3 cups powdered sugar and 1/4 cup hot water. Mix.
Drizzle over cooled cookies.

Week End

This was a crazy weekend. Some weekends we have nothing to do. Others, like this one, there are 6-8 places we are supposed to be on Saturday. We didn't do everything we wanted to, and I don't have pictures of everything that we did do.

Caspian likes to be out back with Scrappy. When someone's not watching them, they are on chains because they can get through the gate.

What to do with the visitor in the water bowl?

Soccer action with Jasmine. It was team picture day. The recreation league has the different colored uniforms, but the arsenal kids all have the same bright green shirts. It's a step up from recreational soccer for the kids who will go on to competitive soccer. I really don't think Jasmine will though. She just doesn't have the drive.

Throw in

Saturday was open house for the FSU

Jessica met with the underwater crime scene people. She's driving the video ray. They use it to search in the water for weapons, bodies etc.

This is the view from the college.

It was hard to see the video ray screen in the sun.

This is what it looks like. Basically it's a camera made to search underwater, and it is controlled from land.

Jessica is making it submerge.

Jessica in the dive locker. They have all sorts of scuba tanks, wet suits and other equipment.

Anyone tried the harvest orange tomato soup?

I made it for the kids, but I didn't actually have any myself.

This weekend was also fall festival at Jasmine's school and the coach's soccer game and movie night. No pictures of that. We ended up skipping the rest of the stuff on Saturday. On Sunday Jasmine caught up on some things after church and then we went to Spy Kids 4.

I hope this school week is better than last. One child was suspended from the bus and another from school for hitting a teacher : ( I'm hoping they both were totally bored being grounded this weekend so we won't have repeats. Overall everyone is doing pretty well. And everyone is making progress. Sometimes a couple of them don't think before they act, and that's something they have to work on--or face the consequences.

Today is soccer try outs for Adam. We'll see if he makes the high school team.

Loss of a Child

I was going to call this post, "The One that Got Away," but that doesn't really tell the story. Or maybe, "The One that Wasn't Meant to Be." But that's not really true either. We think he was meant to be.

Many adoptive parents have faced losses. It might be loss due to infertility. That wasn't our case. I did miscarry our first child, but found out later that I have translocated chromosomes. So I had an above average chance of either miscarrying or having a Downs child. We didn't know this until after Tyler and Jessica had been born and we were already in the process of adopting.

Many adoptive parents have had the child they were going to adopt either die or be removed from an orphanage by a relative, or just mysteriously disappear. There was a third child we had said we were going to adopt from the twin's orphanage, but we let a child's (serious) reluctance along with a lack of finances keep us from it. Another family was in the midst of adopting him when the mom, along with a man she said was the dad (even though she'd said he was either dead or she didn't know who he was), showed up and took him out of the orphanage. No one knows if he is even still alive. There are two others that we wish now we'd spoken for. But you can't go back.

We had put in to adopt through the state in 2004. But nothing came of it. We'd see kids on the list and inquire and hear nothing. One of the very first children I asked about was a 4-year-old. We got a form letter saying, "Your family's strengths do not best meet this child's needs." I think it was because Jasmine was so young and they wanted only older children in the home. The child is now ten and he is still on the list.

After time went by with no results, we turned to Haiti to adopt. We had adopted a child in 1997 when it only took 6 months so imagine our surprise when it took 3 years and an earthquake.

The twins have been home 21 months. Things are pretty calm here right now. They are settled in well although they can have some quirky behaviors and we still limit situations we feel are attachment disasters waiting to happen.

We were trying to certify for foster care right before they came home. The state of GA will not send our records, and the state of FL will not certify us without them. Once the twins came home, we kept trying to get our records sent. Now that Jeff is 18, we could take one foster child but GA refuses to send the records. An appeal to the state capital went unheard.


But then something happened in August that really surprised me. A social worker in another county said that based on a 2008 home study she thought we were the best placement for a nine-year-old boy. I sent her an update on our kids and their activities and interests and she said it looked like a really good fit. Wow. All we had to do was get our homestudy updated. And that's where it ended. There are certain papers that have to be filled out when two different counties are involved. And neither county could agree on the order of the paperwork. So it all came to a screeching halt. But by this time I was getting excited about another child. So in just a matter of weeks we all went from being in a normal routine with the children in our home to making plans for a new child--to nothing.

I'm not really looking to add a child. But if a child shows up (and is between the twins and Jasmine in age) and we feel we can successfully parent him and have the resources for him, then we want to at least meet him and see if he can fit in with the kids. And it looked like this child would be a good fit from what we were told about him. We'd planned on the twins being playmates for Jasmine but it hasn't turned out that way at all. This child was just a year younger than her, and since he was a boy, there wouldn't have been much rivalry.

But since the counties didn't come to an agreement, another family has been chosen. I'm happy he has a home. And maybe he wouldn't have been a great match for us once we met him, but we at least wanted the chance to start the visits and see.

So that's the story of the child we lost. I'm going to include his photo since it's still on the public website even though a family has been chosen. He may not have moved to that placement yet.


Doesn't he look like he would have been a great "playmate" for Jasmine?

Meet Caspian

Jessica has been thinking about getting a puppy for while. She even tiled her room to make puppy accidents easier to clean up.

She almost got scammed by those people in Cameroon. Then no one in our area wanted to work with her because of her age. I wanted her to fill out the application and be responsible for the adoption herself.

She found a puppy on a photolisting for a place quite a ways away. It's an area we'd wanted to visit anyway. The lady was happy to work with Jessica. Unfortunately it was raining when we went Monday so no side trips.



We took Scrappy along to meet the other dog. He's pretty mellow though and he was okay with the puppy.

While Jessica met her puppy, Jasmine and I visited the kittens.

I am really a cat person, not a dog person. But we have an alpha cat in the house. No other cats would be allowed. He will tolerate dogs as long as they know their place. There is still some hissing at the new puppy if he tries to get friendly.

Isn't this little one adorable? Reminds me of Max's baby days. Sniff. Sniff.

But nope. Shy would think it was a chew toy. Jessica got the puppy and that was it.

We stopped on the way home to let the dogs walk a bit. Caspian had a twin who was adopted on Saturday. He is not used to being alone. Right now as a write this, he is yelping for attention. Mommy Jessica put him in his kennel for a nap after two short morning walks. He wants nothing to do with the kennel. Jessica told him she might be home earlier today because it's midterms.

He is around 9 months old and is a pug/pekingese mix. He's just about full grown.

Checking out some new sights on the way home.

Caspian and Scrappy were still checking each other out.

Scrappy wanted to make sure Caspian knew he had seniority.

Finally home.

Next project is to make the fence secure so he can be let loose outside.

Orlando

We planned another weekend with Tyler. Remember that our snorkel trip was canceled due to a tropical depression. This time I checked the weather before buying him a Universal/Islands of Adventure two day pass. The rest of us have FL resident passes that expire next month. Well, the forecast was for a sunny weekend when I bought them, but that all changed quickly and a rainstorm moved in.


So we went to Wonder Works since we were already in Orlando. I didn't check the weather right before we left, or we would have found something closer to do. But I had already reserved hotel rooms anyway.


I took a picture of practically every child doing every activity so I'm just going to post a few.





Jessica had her hand in 28F water. This is how cold it was when the Titanic sank. The 36 is how many seconds she's had her hand it in. It got painful very quickly. I don't know how anyone survived the cold water. We only had our hands in, their whole bodies were submerged.

Ready to experience hurricane force winds.

Wow.

They had an earthquake machine too. The twins went in it and it didn't trigger any memories for them. I know some kids have real trauma from the Haitian earthquake, but mine don't.

Bubble room. Jessica and Jasmine

Tyler and Jasmine

Jessica using pulleys to pull herself up.

Kayla

Everyone tried the pulleys, but only Tyler and Adam successfully pulled themselves up.

Only Jasmine and I didn't do the bed of nails. Kaleb took it in stride.

Kayla wasn't so sure.

Jessica on the giant piano.

Rick

Jasmine

Me

Kaleb

Tyler in the shuttle.

Jessica

Tyler

Ready for the ropes course. It was tame compared to the one at Stone Mountain, GA but only Jessica and Jasmine did that one, so it was new to everyone. Kayla and I stayed on the ground. That was for behavior reasons not heights. Tyler and Jessica used our passes later.

Adam

Tyler giving Kaleb a hand. Kaleb did awesome. You could tell he was scared, but he kept going and didn't ask to go down.

Rick

Tyler

Jessica

Jasmine

It cost $179 to get everyone in and that included all the activities except laser tag. One turn on the ropes course and one time in the 4D simulator. We spent six hours and could have stayed a lot longer but it was a holiday, Saturday and a rainy day in Orlando so it was literally packed wall to wall. I'd like to go to the closer one some day when it's not so busy.

Tyler and Jessica went back to the hotel with us to check, then returned to Wonder Works by themselves and got home at midnight! They loved it. I'm glad the day turned out really well even though we didn't get to go to Universal. Tyler and Rick and possibly Jessica will go another day because I already have Tyler's ticket paid for.

More news and photos to come.