Kid Updates part 2

Jasmine
Jasmine had MPA (Music Performance Assessment) on Saturday. Thirty two bands from our county and surrounding counties played for judges to get a rating 1-Superior (best)  2- Excellent 3-Good. I don't know what 4 & 5 are. Probably means you should have stayed home.

Jasmine played orchestra bells.  

Vibraphone, xylophone and bells

You can see the chimes, bells and xylophone behind her. We couldn't really see her once the tubas were in place.

Jasmine is still part of the county Christian youth choir but has decided not to go on the Boston tour this summer. We were hoping that it would work out so I could meet her there, and we could do our NYC trip. But they are flying to Boston, starting there and working their way back south.

 We have been planning a trip since she was in 5th grade. It keeps getting put off, so we've decided to do it as her 8th grade graduation present because she is not going with her class on the Williamsburg trip or with the choir to Boston. 

She originally wanted to go to Mount Rushmore for our trip, but changed her mind after hearing about Jessica's trip to NYC last year.

Ready to leave for hip hop class.

In our back yard

A lady from church gave "The A (for awesome) team" pillowcases.

Sometimes it's tough being the brother.

Kaleb

Kaleb is playing baseball for the first time. He has practice Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. His team has been invited to be part of a very competitive league, and the opening day exibition game is Saturday. He is not very athletic, but he is trying. He is almost ten, so he is on the nine and ten team. He's delayed enough he'd fit in with the seven year olds, but that's not how it works. Opening day is Saturday but it is supposed to rain, so we'll see what happens.

Good news is, I did get the okay to take him for specialized pysco/educational testing, so maybe we'll get some answers. I know they say boys mature more slowly, but the delays are more serious than just that. I'm hoping he's not on the autism spectrum. The problem is in getting an appointment scheduled. They are closed the month of March!

A lot of times he just really doesn't get it. And some days his behaviors are so immature the other boys avoid him. He's normally a very nice kid, but does things like rolling on the floor, laying on other kids, dancing around pretending he's a ballerina, and other things you'd expect from a four year old, not almost ten year old. 

In fact, at gymnastics, he was put in the 5-6's class because that's how old they thought he was when observing him during a trial to class to see if he'd like it.

Hopefully we'll get some answers for him, because like I said, he is a nice kid.

Kayla

Kayla finished basketball. She's taken a few steps backward in behaviors, and it started when she started basketball. 

The goal of discipline is to change hearts, and nothing is working right now. So she is staying near Rick and I at all times during this time she needs to be so closely monitored. 

It's hard when other people are involved (coaches, Sunday school teachers etc) because, as you adoptive parents know, people see what they want. They don't realize some kids are masters of manipulations and play right into it often reinforcing and even rewarding the behavior because they miss what's really going on. 

For her sake, I chose to post photos where she is smiling.

Max always lays on someone's circle time notebook. Crazy.

We continue our circle time at night when we can. This is a time that everyone is together. No matter what has  happened earlier in the day, everyone is on equal footing during this time. We talk about a character trait and watch videos or songs from youtube about it. Look for verses that go with the trait, and try to find real-life examples. 

We did "respect" and the kids learned the respect rap and respect song from youtube. We just finished "perseverence." We watched the Book of Virtues stories on youtube for both. We also found videos of a boy named Ezra Frech who is a good example of a lot of things. If you haven't heard of him, check out his interviews on youtube. We are starting "initiative."

When we have more time, we watch the "That the World May Know" DVDs that give really good background knowledge about Bible lands and times. 

We also read aloud, because I think it's important to read aloud to your kids no matter their ages. We read The Courage of Sarah Noble, The Giver, Call it Courage, Number the Stars, Heidi, The Year of Miss Agnes and have started The Children's Classics version of Robin Hood from 1923.

At the end of each month we review the goals we chose for the year and to see how we are doing on them. Everyone also has a wish list for the year, and we check off the things we've done.

So that's the update on all the kids for now. If you missed the older kids' update, go back a post. And I did hear back from Jeff. He said he's on the Army combative team. It's a military martial art competition.

Kid Updates part 1

I haven't done an update on all the kids lately, so I will attempt that now. Unfortunately, I have few pictures of the ones who aren't living at home anymore.

Tyler is still at Job Corps. He hates the computer program he's in. He wants to do something hands on. So when he had a chance to do fire training for a week, he jumped on it. To qualify, he had to power walk, not run, 3 miles with 45 pounds on his back in 45 minutes. He made that easily, even in the snow.

So he got to go to another location in KY to train. Due to the snow, they did not get to do the outside hands on training. But he passed the written test with a 99% and did the official pack test (45 pounds/45 minutes), so he has his FFT2 certification. That's for wildfires and such. He's back at his own location now and hoping his crew gets called out for a fire before he ages out this coming summer. He would really like to do something more like that than work with computers. I'm hoping he'll go ahead and push to get his computer certification too before he ages out.

He's gotten to do several trips lately for being in leadership (he is head of recreation) and for winning dorm of the month.

He went to the rodeo, to the Muhammad Ali Museum, to the mall and Amish store and out to eat. Not all on the same day! I posted some rodeo pictures back then, but I don't have any new pictures of him.

Jessica is still going to school part time. She was supposed to graduate last May, but didn't. She had two classes to finish up. She will not be graduating this May either because she hasn't done an internship. They fill up very quickly and she didn't get a spot. She hopes to get one for the summer and to start police academy in the fall.

She got her official wedding photos. (Took long enough, right?)  I'm posting three below.

Jeff is now stationed in Korea. He reported in January 10, and I think it's a year long tour. He is competing on the combative team, which I have no idea what is. I've messaged him, but don't hear back often. No photos of him since the wedding.

Adam shows up for special occasions. He is going to school full time at the community college and is also manager at Church's Chicken, so he doesn't have a lot of free time. He goes to his marine reserve base the first weekend of the month, and may get to go to California for two weeks for reserve training this summer. I would love to share his future plans with you, but they change often :)  He has mentioned going active duty, but he's mentioned other plans too. So time will tell. I'd like to see him doing something more exciting than frying chicken. But he's making very good money for someone his age, and he likes seeing that money in his bank account. And he likes buying expensive name brand clothes and athletic shoes. Both he and Jessica drive new 2014 cars, while I drive a 2001 SUV! But he has a good heart, and I know he'll do well at whatever he does.

Adam is especially close to Jasmine.

To be continued....

Working Together--Chicken Stir Fry

The last two times we made chicken stir fry, I wondered why it tasted so blah. Well, we didn't do the last step which is to add a cup of chicken broth! Big difference. Otherwise you just have chicken and vegetables. I prefer our beef stir fry recipe, but the others like this chicken one better.

These pictures are from both last time and today. That's why they are in different clothes in the pictures.

Shaking the chicken, soy sauce, garlic powder and corn starch.

We don't follow the recipe exactly. It says to cook the chicken first, but we cook the vegetables while the chicken is sitting for the half hour. In this one, we left out the onions and added pea pods and water chestnuts. Jasmine cut the broccoli pretty small, but it doesn't really matter.  The important thing is that it's something we are doing together and having fun with.

Stir Fry

4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves

3 T cornstarch

2 T soy sauce

½ t ground ginger

¼ t garlic powder

3 T oil, divided

2 cups broccoli florets

1 cup sliced celery (1/2" pieces)

1 cup thinly sliced carrots

1 small onion cut into wedges

1 cup water

1 t chicken bouillon granules

Cut chicken into ½" strips, place in resealable bag. Add cornstarch and toss to coat. Combine soy sauce, ginger and garlic powder, add to bag and shake well. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

In large skillet or wok, heat 2 T oil; stir fry chicken until no longer pink. Remove and keep warm. Add remaining oil; stir fry broccoli, celery, carrots and onion for 3-5 minutes or until crisp tender. Add water and bouillon. Return chicken to pan. Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly.

Remember the cheese cake from last post? Well, I used it to help Kaleb understand fractions. I cut it in half, then in quarters, and finally in eigths so that he could see that 2/2, 4/4 and 8/8 all equal 1. And he could compare the other fractions-example 2/8 is the same as 1/4. Then of course we ate the cheese cake.

If you don't follow my blog for girls, please go to it and click to follow it. Check out the post on Jelly beans and Jesus. You can also follow our progress as we make a pinata for Easter! Here

Next post I will try to update about the kids. There have been some changes for some of them.

Working Together- Cheese Cake

The kids have not cooked as much lately as before. Life's just gotten busy. But not too busy to do every day stuff. But more likely than not, the kids and I work in a team to cook now, rather than me just working with one child or them doing it simply by following the recipe. With only the three youngest in the house now, following the recipe alone isn't likely to happen.

Two things we made recently have several steps and were more fun in a group. One was cheesecake from my grandmother's recipe. The other was chicken stir fry.

I don't know if you've ever had this happen--you go through old recipes that have been used for two or three generations and there are no amounts given. Add a pinch of this, a jar of that. At the time the recipe was written, there was probably only one size jar of something, but now it comes in four sizes of cans! So I've made my best guess.

Cheese Cake 

8 oz cream cheese              large pack lemon jello

1 c sugar                             1 c boiling water

1 tsp vanilla                        12 oz can of condensed milk

Graham cracker Ready Crust

Chill condensed milk. 

Combine boiling water with dry jello mix.

Set aside. 

Mix sugar, cream cheese and vanilla. 

Add jello mixture and whip. Set aside. 

Whip condensed milk. 

Combine with cheeseand jello mixture. Whip. 

Spoon into crust. Chill three hours.

You need three bowls for this. One for the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla. One for the condensed milk. One for the jello mixture.

The white bowl is the condensed  milk whipped. We used to use "milnot" which really whipped up foamy. They don't make it anymore. This time we used Walmart's Great Value brand.

Since the twins are learning fractions, we cut these in half, then fourths, then eighths and talked about size differences and how any number over itself is always one. We also talked about improper fractions--like when there is more than a whole cheesecake left. At that time we had 9/8 cheese cake left, and they were able to understand that 9/8 is the same as 1 1/8.

You can add toppings. We usually top with blueberry pie filling.

I will post the stir fry pictures next time. I just realized that we made it wrong the last two times! We left out the water and bullion. I created the recipe using a combination of ones we found online, so I don't have clear directions. I think we found most of them too blah and added chicken broth made of water and bullion, and I didn't do that the last two times. That explains the "blah" taste!

Regular Week, Gearing up for Weeks of Stress!

I haven't posted much, because there isn't much to post! It's been a regular week.

I've been working on a young adult fiction project.

I don't know how I'd get anything done without all the help I get!

Sasha especially likes to walk on the keyboard and type for me! You can see all five of our pets in this photo. Starting next to Jasmine--Sasha, turned one this month, Travis smushed under Sasha-turned 2 yesterday, Max next to me, 15 -got him when we first moved back stateside from England summer '99, Jayden-somewhere between 8 &12?, Caspian-4.

One day Travis was in the house, and all of a sudden he went crazy. Like "danger alert" crazy, jumping and growling and snapping. We've only seen that behavior on walks where another dog dares come near his people. Turns out he saw this balloon Adam had given Jasmine and though it was a threat to his people. So we held him up to it so it could see it wasn't real.

Jasmine got a game as one of her gifts from my brother. It's a bit complicated. Anyone ever play this game? It came from the calendar store in the mall that's only there for a couple of months.

While she and Rick figured it out, I went on a DQ run for anyone who was cooperating at the time.

Yesterday was Travis' birthday. Pets don't normally eat on the counter. But it was also Trifexus day. We smash it up in canned dog food and have to separate the dogs so we know each dog gets his/her meds. 

Travis thought maybe mom's cereal would be tastier.

Sasha is playing with Travis' present, because Travis gets attached to one toy and only wants that toy.

So the cow is all he wants. He will fetch it over and over. This is actually the second cow, but I'm not sure he realizes the first one was replaced. 

Waffles for supper. We do this some times on Friday or Saturday night.

Daddy/daughter ready for church.

I know some of you are shoveling yourselves out this week, so I won't complain about our 50ish, rainy weather (30s at night). We don't have to shovel it. First part of this coming week is suppose to get up to 74F for a high and be dry. Second half of the week is supposed to be 50F and rainy.

On Monday Kayla has the state writing test. I was looking at her practice papers and was blown away. She was given several article on a topic to read. From them she had to prepare an web, transition and outlines.

From that she has to write a five paragraph essay with at least one quote with documentation in it. Her essay is two and a half pages long.

Jasmine has her writing test on Tuesday and Wednesday. If fourth grade has to write a five paragraph essay, I hate to know how long Jasmine's has to be. She really struggles with it. Kaleb's test is the same as Kayla's, but his is next week. He has not done nearly as much practicing as Kayla has.

I do not remember ever learning how to write a paper in school at all!

Spring break is the week of the 23rd and then we go into the regular state testing. FCAT has been replaced with a test that is "more compatible with the common core standards." I've heard it's straight from &^%%. Instead of multiple choice, it's short answer and essays. Won't that be fun for our kids who struggle?!

Jasmine has MPA next Saturday. That's where all the bands play before judges and get a rating. She is playing orchestra bells or xylophone and feels ready.

What's next for you?