Random Thanksgiving Photos

It's been a quiet week here, so I'm going to post some random photos from Thanksgiving at Jessica's house.

Adam photo bombing Jasmine, Tara and ZonaMae (Hunter's niece)

Part of the crew. We were waiting for Rick and the twins to arrive.

Rick carving one of the turkeys. Jessica got one from work and baked it, and a friend of Hunter's gave them a fried turkey. It was amazing.

Adam, Tara, Kayla, Jasmine, Kaleb

The three "littles," but with Kealen, River and Winter (on the way), they aren't the littles anymore. I guess they are the middlers. Or what else could they be?

I played around with the filters on this photo. Which of the 4 do you like best? (I can't' remember which I ordered for Christmas cards)

Adam, Tara and Kealen. Wasn't sure if Tara and Kealen would be there. They are on again off again a lot. But they are young and have plenty of time. Still, Tara and Kealen would be welcomed members of the family. Adam spent 18 + months with Deja, but one year after they broke up, she had a baby. Didn't lose any time there.

The only thing I did in the last few days was dive and manage to lose my fairly new $450 dive camera :(

The camera is still strapped to my left wrist in this picture.

 Ty and I were supposed to dive today, but conditions are poor.

Hopefully I'll have something more exciting to post about next time! Slow week here.

And the name is ...

Winter Robin!

(See last post and the comment if you have no clue what I'm talking about. Hevel had it.)

Thanksgiving Day

Thankful for my family and sad that we are missing a few.

Jessica and Hunter hosted Thanksgiving.

Missing Jeff, Ashley and family and #9. 

Front: Kaleb (striped shirt), Kayla (bright pink), Jasmine (greenish), Tyler (jacket and hat) Back: Kathy (me) with River, Adam, Rick, Jessica, Hunter

Jessica also revealed the gender and name of her next baby. Any guesses? They are sticking with nature-ish names.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Just Stuff

We are finished with adoption class. But as I think I said last time, they've said they aren't going to even get to our paperwork until January at the earliest. So I just need to focus on other things and not sweat the wait. 

The good thing is that I know a social worker in another county that I had the privilege to meet at a writer's conference. She is genuinely a good person, and she let Parris' case worker know we are interested in him but that our county is in no hurry to get to our paperwork. She sent our 2008 home study, but that is 8 years old. The twins weren't even home yet. Jessica was a junior in high school, and she now pregnant with her second child! I wrote a description of our family now and included a couple of pictures, and she sent that too. Unfortunately, she hasn't heard back.

We really haven't done much this week. I signed up for nanowrimo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it's a commitment to write 50,000 words of a novel during the month of November. That comes out to 1,666 words a day. I am at 34,263 so far, and pretty much on target.

Yesterday there was a write-in that went to three places. The writers started at one place and wrote (or drew), walked to the next place and then to a third place. Jasmine and I caught up with them at the third place. We took a couple of pictures outside and a couple inside.

Ha! Check out all the sugar in this picture! Jasmine helped me with it :)

We are coming up on crazy times, as are the rest of you I'm sure.
We have friends coming for taco soup tomorrow night and hope our adult kids can join us. Jessica is hosting Thanksgiving.

The big Christmas parade is Dec 3, and I think both girls are in it. Kayla can't really play the music, but I think they are going to let her play with the older band anyway. It's a title 1 school who just hopes the kids show up for school, and she will have lots more chances to succeed without having to be the best of the best.

December 4th is Jasmine's carols concert, and the 5th is the festival of choirs. 

The 8th is Kaleb's band concert.

The 9th is the Millville parade, and all the schools bring their preschool and kindergarten children. I think every school band in the county is there for it. I find it a lot more fun than the long. boring Christmas parade.

The 10th is breakfast with Santa. After breakfast with Santa, Kaleb has a swim meet and the parade of boats is that evening. It turns out the 10th is family day where Hunter works, so River can't go with us.

The 13th is Kayla's concert.

The 16th is Rick's work party, and the kids have early release on the 21st.

So that's what is ahead for us!

What's next up for you?

Fun Friday: Easy Rolo Treats

We were looking for something to make using what we already had, and we ended up doing a variation of the idea on the back of the Rolo's bag. It listed pretzels, Rolos and pecans. We didn't have pecans, but we had crushed walnuts.

So this is what we did:
Place pretzels on a cookie sheet. We used the square butter snap pretzels.
Put one rolo on top of each pretzel.
Bake at 350F for 3-4 minutes.
Remove from oven and push nuts down on top of soft rolo.

Answer to last week's Brain teaser: All three comments on that post are correct.
1. They are pronounced differently depending on whether they are capitalized or not.
2. They are both common and proper nouns.
3. They have two very different meanings.

The Weekend

On Friday, Jasmine marched in the Veteran's Day parade.

Then on Saturday Santa arrived on the mall! Yes, it does seem early since we haven't had Thanksgiving yet. Maybe he could just arrive on October 31 and hand out Halloween candy too?

Anyway, Jasmine's band played for his arrival, so she had to be at the mall at 8:15 a.m. for his 10:00 arrival. We made a family activity out of it only missing Adam, Tyler and Hunter.

Jasmine with her bass drum.

Kealen in his new wheelchair (he has CP) and River. She can almost stand alone. She barely holds on.

Jessica and River in coordinating clothes

Santa arrived in a helicopter and walked into the mall. My video is too long to upload!

Then the band played inside.

(Video at the top)

I took everyone to the food court and bought Teriyaki chicken with noodles. We shared between partners.

 Everyone except me because I'm taking the picture.

                                      Tara took this picture!

So that was last weekend. This coming weekend starts Thanksgiving vacation.

Another Diagnosis

A difficult week with pediatric appointments, counseling appointments, and an ultrasound and bloodwork for Jasmine. 

I took Kayla in to pediatrics after seeing some very negative things at counseling. We wanted to rule out anything weird that might require medical intervention. Of course it's hard to tell. She is doing well in her new school. She went from the most demanding school to the lowest performance school. She now has all As and Bs and is doing well in band. Now she needs to do the hard work of facing issues and healing. And we and her counseling are all willing to work with her.

I took Jasmine in to peds because (she said I can share this) she got her periods at ten, but they have always been 8-9 weeks apart. But now they've stopped totally. The doctor ordered bloodwork to check hormone levels and such. I requested an ultrasound. The ultrasound was this morning, and it was not very fun for Jasmine because she had to "pee pee" so badly she was crying. But the lady was nice, and it was quick. 

The pediatrician called later and said Jasmine's blood work shows she had Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). This caused the early periods and her short height. It's unfortunate that no one screened for it early due to her ECC syndrome so that it could have been treated in time for her to grow more. Her growth plates are fused, so she is done growing. Anyone know anything about CAH?

We will be going to a pediatric endocrinologist to follow up and see what needs to be done.

The ultrasound did not show anything unusual.

I will post about the weekend later.

Fun Friday: Three Words

Here's a short one this week: What do these words have in common: polish, job, herb?


No one guessed at last week's quiz. At least grade yourself and leave a comment as to how you did.
 1. The happiest place on earth. Disney
 2. I'm loving it. McDonalds
 3. Life's messy, clean it up. Bissell
 4. Ideas for life. Panasonic
 5. Leave the driving to us. Greyhound
 6. For everything else there's ____________. Mastercard
 7. Betcha can't eat just one. Lays
 8.____ gives you wings. Red Bull (There's a lawsuit over this I guess)
 9. Believe in yoursmellf. Old Spice
10. What's the worst that could happen? Dr. Pepper

11. The taste of a new generation. Pepsi
12. Just do it. Nike
13. A passion for the road. Mazda
14. Eat fresh. Subway
15. We know money. AIG
16. All in or nothing. Adidas
17. Behold the power of cheese. American Diary Association and Dairy Council
18. Get your own box. Cheez It
19. Open happiness. Coke
20. Does she or doesn't she? Clairol
21. Play. Laugh. Grow. Fisher-Price
22. The best a man can get. Gillette
23. Don't dream it. Drive it. Jaguar
24. Let your fingers do the walking.Yellow Pages
25. When you care enough to send the very best. Hallmark

I made this quiz up from slogans I found online. In reality I only knew about nine of them because so many have changed--Coke, Dr Pepper (What's the worst that could happen???) How many did you know?

Be sure to check out my craft idea on my blog for girls

Stalling on Paperwork for #9

As you know from previous posts, we are nearing the end of adoption class. Tonight was week 7 of 8. So next week is it. I asked the adoption coordinator tonight what we could do to make our home study go more quickly. She said, "Well, November is adoption month, so we won't be doing any new paperwork. And thennext month is the holidays, so nothing will happen that month. So if you're lucky we will get to your paperwork in January." Really? Really?????? All these kids need a home, but no one can look at our paperwork until January?

The boys we are interested in aren't getting any younger. The older ones probably figure they won't get chosen and don't know we are interested in them. Parris may. He's only 12 and adorable. I can't really post his best pictures here, but if you go HERE  it will bring up the Jacksonville heart gallery. Click on "children" at the top. Parris is the end photo on the top row. Click on his photo and it will bring up pictures on him on the beach.

When I mentioned to the adoption coordinator that the boys we wanted are probably going to get chosen before we get our home study, she said not likely. The teen boys are not often chosen. I said that one we were very interested in is only 12 and cute. She said "We don't chose a child for the family, we chose a family for the child." I told her that I realized that, but from the little on his profile, we might be a good family for him. It appears he enjoys the beach, and he's athletic.

The three things we are most interested in are: open to going to church, likes pets, likes water sports. Beyond that of course we want him to be open to new things and willing to be part of a family.

If you are new to our blog, here are our top four choices just from the list. But Florida is not the easiest state to work with, so we will see what happens. 

Parris, 12

Christian, 15

Justin, 15

Antwan, 14

Missed Them Both

We did not make it to even one fall festival out of the 30 or so at local churches the past two weeks. There were two more this weekend, so I thought we'd try to catch them both. Didn't work out so well.

We arrived at one Friday evening less than an hour after it started, but the hayrides were over. The horse rides were over. All the hot dogs, corn dogs and cakes for the cake walk were gone. The popcorn was gone. There were three bags of hard cotton candy. And they started sno cones. So we got a sno cone and left.

Jasmine and I hung out at the mall with River for a while.

Determined to look anywhere but at the camera. LOL

Saturday we were going to go to a fall festival from 2-5. That's what it said in the entertainment section of the paper. I arranged to meet Tara there. We got there at 2:45 because Jessica was sick, and I went and got River for it. In reality it had been from 12:00-2:30! I had a carful of kid, and Tara had Kealan and Sierra, so I grabbed sodas and chips from the gas station, and we went to a nearby park.

Sierra is a year younger than Jasmine. They have a lot to talk about!

Next week we have to be at the mall because Jasmine's band plays for Santa's arrival. 85F and Santa is coming. Are we really that close to Christmas?