A Few Brief Updates

Rick and Tyler left last night to drive through the night and today to reach Elkhart, IN where they will spend a couple of days helping his parents and my mom and sister with some things that need done. Tyler is shopping his way to IN and back to get new stock for our flea market shops.

Ready to roll at 10:30 p.m. Ty had to work late.

Jessica has gone back to college to take a couple of classes that are prerequisites for the nursing program, and then she hopes to enroll in that. She has school Tuesdays and Thursdays. Her husband  has Tues, Wed and Thurs off, so that take care of the babysitting issue. Mondays are Jessica and my day to get together. We do exciting stuff like getting dog food at Sam's Club!!! The girls love water so we turn them loose in the yard. There is no school this coming Monday, so we hope to go to the beach so the twins and Jasmine can have some time with Winter and River. 

Sam's Club

Jeff's wife finished army basic training.

We don't hear from them, just what she posts on face book. Maybe some day that will change.

Adam has been in town supporting Tara. There was a motorcycle ride in Keke's memory Sunday, but my car was in the shop. It took off less than a mile from my flea market shop where I was at, so I did hear it go, and Jessica was driving and saw it.

There is a  good possibility that Adam will be going to Norway as an active reserve.

I will post updates on the younger three later.

And, unfortunately, there will be no child #9. We never heard back from the latest caseworker assigned to us. Best guess is that she ran everyone's SS #s and found three police reports for the twins. She probably talked to Kaleb's JDAP coordinator who does not like me because he stole again while he was in that program, and I did not fight to keep him in it. He thought that program was a big joke, and he got kicked up to the regular juvenile court system. His case manager wanted him to stay in it and thinks I'm horrible. I think he needs to face some real consequences. Even now they are being really lenient on him due to his age.

Our home study coordinator could have at least had the courtesy to notify us if they put a halt on our case. 

Our home study was actually complete March 2017 except one signature. No one signed it, and the really nice guy we'd worked with had moved without signing it because they said we needed one more reference. 

The next lady we were assigned to took so long to even contact us that they said we had to start over. She left before doing that. 

Then a third lady was assigned. A year had passed by now. She did one visit and seemed quite pleasant and supportive, but Rick and Kaleb got stuck behind an accident and weren't here for the interview and that set her off even though we said they'd come down to her office so she  didn't have to come back out to the house. We never heard from her again. Welcome to Bay County efficiency.   

Kid Updates

There's a lot going on with several of my kids, but I can't share all of it obviously. So I'll share the stuff they don't mind me sharing.

Tyler
Ty is currently firefighting in Louisiana. Here is a link to a news segment online. He is one of the guys they mention when they say 20 guys came from job corps to help with the fire. He is one of the guys shown, but I don't know which with them all in uniform.

Watch here


Jessica
On Jessica's 24th birthday everyone got together, and she and Hunter revealed that they are having a girl.

Jessica starts her internship at the ME office tomorrow. I don't think I'd enjoy working with dead bodies.

Jeff
Jeff is currently stationed in Louisiana and is only an hour from where Ty is, but unfortunately won't meet up. Ty's group will leave as soon as their job is done. Jeff will be heading to NY sometime in the future.

I'm not sure what kind of fashion statement he is trying to make. This may be in Korea before he left.

Adam

Adam is currently looking into options in law enforcement. There are a lot of choices. He did not sign up for college classes this fall. He is mostly really busy with work now and trying to figure out the best options for himself.

Jasmine
Jasmine usually takes dance, but the two classes she wanted this year--musical theater and hip hop--are both during after school marching band time. So for now she has county Christian youth choir on Mondays and marching band after school Tu & Th (in additional to having it zero period). She might be able to join dance after football season is over. We need to see how the homework load is too.

Jasmine and I work in two year olds one morning each month, sometimes more if they need help. Today we met our new group. There are three different rooms of two year olds. I think we have the older ones. Our group that promoted July were much more rowdy and vocal. Of course they were all three by  then and a couple were close to four. I don't think we ever had that whole group sitting at the table at once.

Kaleb

Jessica, Kaleb and I swam the 3/4 mile shell island swim yesterday. He did great for his level of experience. He was tired near the end but pushed on.

 We swam from the grassy area you can see behind us to the pier in the last picture.

Kaleb tried out for the city swim team. You only have to be able to swim one length front crawl with proper breathing to make novice, and he did that. The coach was kind of surprised when I said he wasn't in their summer lessons, I taught him myself.

 I learned to swim in college and went on to lifeguard and Water Safety Instructor. I miss teaching swimming. I tried putting my kids in lessons, but I didn't like how they teach--18 kids to two teachers so in 45 minutes they might get two turns to blow bubbles.I don't even start with face in the water, bubbles and all that. I teach them to do a glide and then add kicking, then arms, then breathing. 

Also, we have a lot of thunder during the summer and if there's thunder or lightning, the pool shuts down. Lessons are not rescheduled. So we lost a lot of money the summer they had lessons and all they learned was to put their faces in and blow bubbles. The next summer I started teaching them and in a few weeks they were swimming the length of the pool (without the breathing), last summer we added the breathing and added back crawl. 

This summer the pool has hardly been open due to random thunder. Or imaginary thunder. Rick too the kids today after church and the pool was closed. He asked the weather person for the area, and there was no thunder reported. Hmmm.

 Swim team  practice

Due to the expense of swim team and the fact that it is four nights a week for an hour, Kaleb isn't currently doing gymnastics. He may add it back later.

Kayla
Kayla has just started meds for ADD/ADHD (one dr called it one, the other dr called it the other). Hopefully this will help with the issues. The pediatrician is not too sure though since what may look impulsive is sometimes very well planned out-ex. running over to a shelf, grabbing someone's back pack and throwing it across the room. I am not convinced she is ADD or ADHD at all, but the specialist coded her that way. I guess time will tell. For now she has an ODD, ADHD diagnosis.

We are working with her counselor to manage some of the behaviors. She can be a very kind, helpful person. And she can be mean, hateful and antagonistic. We are working on seeing the kind, helpful side more. The school year seems to be off to a good start, but we are only a week into it. She told me she probably won't get in that much trouble this year because they are too busy. That's good thing! There are privileges she can earn, and of course there are activities that don't have to be earned, but many require trust.

Check out our highlights of summer HERE. You can also read some of the kids' journal entries on earlier posts.

My Dad

This is a different kind of post than I usually write. And it's long. And it's personal. So read with a kind heart :)

I haven't really said a lot about the family I grew up in. I probably won't at this time, but I am going to post about my dad.

My dad's family had mental health issues. He was born in 1919, and at the time diagnosis and treatments weren't readily given. His family wouldn't have been able to afford it anyway. He had a twin, but sometime before the age of 2, both my dad and the twin had high fevers and the twin died. My dad was delayed in skills and such from that time onward.

My dad and someone. Maybe his sister? 

At age 16 he dropped out of school although he had not yet passed 8th grade.

He was drafted into WWII. I have the New Testament he was given,his dog tags, uniform and some misc medals and such. I don't really know much about his time in service. He didn't talk about it.

These are the medals etc.

These were with them, but I don't know what they are.

This too. I don't know if it's from the army or something else.

Here is his WWII NT alongside myNT from 1973 (5th grade?) and 1982 (college)

Can you imagine a message like this coming out of the White House now?

This is the flag from his casket.

My dad moved out when I was 8 or 9, and from then on I only saw him on Saturdays. The routine was the same. He'd pull up outside the house at 11 a.m. every Saturday. Drive to Hardees or Wendys or occasionally the nice Chinese place. Eat. Drop me back off.

To say that our family was not affectionate either in words or physically would be an understatement. Imagine the Care Bears Land Without Feelings, and you're close. It was just the way things were.

However, my dad was definitely the most social member of the family. But being quite delayed, he didn't relate the way most adults do. That was okay with me because I don't always "get it" either. I have a master's degree in education, and I still don't "get it" most of the time.

I wish I had inherited his ability to sing and his sociability. I seem to have gotten the downside of both sides of the family.

My dad and a friend (the one whose lake house we went to on our IN trip) on graduation day

But anyway, during my high school years I wrote for a special Saturday section of the local newspaper that was all teen written. My dad would get a copy of the newspaper and read my article before he picked me up. And it never failed, we'd be in line to order our food and he'd pull out that section of the paper and ask the unsuspecting waitress/cashier "Have you read this yet? My daughter wrote  it." And thrust the paper in her face.

Sometimes I wanted to crawl under something. But I didn't. Because I realized that by doing what he was, my dad was affirming my writing and in his way showing that he believed in me. It was just never verbalized. I wish it would have been. Doing it over, I would go into journalism. I went into teaching because I like kids, I thought I would probably stay single and adopt children, and being a teacher would work well in that scenario.

The problem with teaching is that it changed too much, plus you have to be certified in the state you live in and there is a test to pass in order to do that and you have to take more college classes. I was once certified in IN and ND and by ACSI when I taught in FL before I got married. I am certified nowhere now.

I didn't go into journalism because I didn't want to write obituaries and cover school board meetings for the local paper. For one thing, I have IC so don't have the bladder for long meetings!! And I wanted to write features like I was for the special teen section. I could pick any topic and write about it. That wouldn't be true as a real reporter.

If I'd known I'd be moving a lot, I'd have gone into journalism and photography and done travel writing. But we can't go back, so forward we go. (And I'm still trying to figure out what I want to be if I grow up. I was happy being a military wife and then a foster parent, but those years are behind us.)

I don't actually like news, people interest me. And I can get really nosy. Just ask my kids :) We study people on our trips. We find characters for my books etc. "Doesn't that boy sitting in front of us on the Epcot trolley look like he could be the boy who dies in  "Death List" (an idea for a book I have). At Turkey Run, "Do you think that boy behind us on the trail looks more like the boy?" At pool the guard was telling another guard his ethnic background, and I was like, "Could you say that again? I need the perfect character for a book I'm writing." My kids don't blink. They even point out cool looking teens to me now. The small blonde drummer in marching band with Jasmine, also a 9th grader, as small as her or smaller and marching with a bass drum. The kid we see at the food court in the mall. A teen who has made the news and so on.


But, back to my dad. He and I went on vacation together every summer starting when I was either in jr high or high school. We went to Turkey Run State Park one summer and Brown County State Park the next. I was sharing about this with my kids as we hiked the trails. Told them about the time my dad stepped off the bottom of the ladder and fell flat on his back. I wanted to take a picture (film camera of course), but I was afraid he might have been hurt. He wasn't. I should have taken the picture. :)

This is from a year we did the covered bridge routes near the state parks.

Jessica, Jasmine and I did the covered bridge routes several years ago.

Around 2009?

Me in high school or college

The same or similar place this summer.

I wonder where Ty got his need to climb everything?

My dad on the ladders in the late 70's

Kayla at the same spot this summer

My sister, dad and I went to Mackinac Island together. She and I shared a bed, and he was in the other bed in the same room. Thing is, he could really snore LOUDLY. We could not get to sleep. We kept laughing because he was so loud. We woke  him up laughing, and he was like "Was I snoring?"

One time during the time I was a college student, I was at his room at a boarding house. I brought up how our family was never affection. I pointed out that no one ever said "I love you" even once while I was growing up. Or hugged. He said, "But you always knew I loved you, didn't you?" I affirmed that.

He had a stroke between then and my next visit. So much for that discussion. Sigh.

He was never the same after the stroke. He had another one the next day. For a while, he seemed to be getting better. He was moved to the Veteran's hospital in Fort Wayne, and  they were doing therapy with him, and he could talk. But then he had more small strokes and lost that. But then for some reason, he was moved back to town and put in a nursing home and wasn't getting any therapy. Very little care at all. It was really bad. And I think he gave up.

About five years after the first stroke, and seven weeks before my wedding, he died. I had just signed a DNR paper because they kept resuscitating him, but the dad I knew no longer existed. He could not eat on his own, pee on his own etc and didn't know us most of the time. I think he would rather have been dancing on streets of gold. I'm glad I signed the paper when I did, although his sister was really angry with me when she found out.

When we got the call, we were making Pillsbury cinnamon rolls, and my sister and I were addressing my wedding invitation. The hospital said we needed to come. He was already gone, but they didn't tell us that until we got there. We'd left the cinnamon rolls at home, and ate them much later after we got back from the hospital. Isn't it funny how you remember details like that?

I know he had plenty of faults. I know he had limitations. But he was the one who believed in me. And I didn't have to worry about being perfect with him. I think we understood each other.

For some reason he's on my mind lately. Maybe because of going to Elkhart this summer and stopping at the cemetery. Maybe because of Turkey Run.

 And I got an idea. Since he was proud of my writing in high school, I'd take a picture of some of my books by his marker at the cemetery. I knew I had the Trivia book and Princess book with me. And it turned out I had some give away copies of the others books. In fact, we found all but the Guide to the Bible in the SUV.

I also took a picture of The Women at the Well, which is the section he's buried in. I use it in a YA novel I'm writing.

Later it bothered me that there was nothing on his marker. (Not sure what it's really called.) So on another trip over there (it's a ways from the house), we stopped and put flowers on the grave.

Right after he died, I wrote letters to him in a journal. I did that for a year. And later I threw it away. I wish I'd saved it.

I hope he knows the difference he made. I hope he knows about the books I wrote. I hope he's still cheering me on. Or is looking down from heaven going, "You see that book? My daughter wrote it!"

I miss you, Dad.