Weekend Events

There was a lot going on this weekend with getting Jessica's new puppy, the bike rodeo, dance photos and the musical Annie. Jasmine at the rodeo. They biked around cones and had their bikes checked for safety and such. There were also free snow cones and a bouncy house.

They said Kaleb's helmet was too small and gave him a new one.

Jasmine and I were watching Mystery Woman and something hit her as funny.

Dance pictures were Sunday. We had way too much drama. Lots of trouble getting the little ones to get dressed so when recital comes, I'm just going to dress them. We were running behind and the girls didn't have make up on. Then the older two got major attitudes with each other and drew way too much attention to themselves at the studio. I was so embarrassed. I bet many of you can relate to that! We finally got the pictures taken, but I don't know how they'll be. Kayla's lips were peeling from dry skin, Kaleb had tear streaks down his face and Jasmine didn't have her dance make up on.

Perhaps the smiles will be so bright that the other stuff won't be noticeable. Like the fact that Kaleb's outfit is way too big. They say it's a 5 but it fits like an 8! Today we were just there for the tumbling 1 photo, but I took the older girls with to have a family photo too. I did not get one taken on my camera, so I hope the photographer did a good job. Jessica's class photo is tonight, but she's skipping because she has college and she hates her dance costume. Jasmine's jazz and tap pictures are Tuesday, and I'll get her individual ones done then.

I had planned on everyone going to the musical Annie at the community college after dance photos, but ended up only taking Jasmine and Jessica. They were able to pull out of the downward behavioral cycle.

Once Annie started, I regretted not bringing the twins because the orphan girls, one from our church and two from Jasmine's school as well as other local girls, were amazing. The singing and acting was really well done. They practiced very long hours.

But then Daddy Warbucks came onstage with an opening line with the H-word and used the D-word about 30+ times the rest of the play. It really took away from it for me and the girls too. It was too bad because the orphan girls did such a good job. And I really can't in good conscience take the twins next Sunday like I planned when I know they'd hear at least 30 instances of bad language. They've never seen a live performance because the college ones are most often not appropriate. We saw Fiddler on the Roof and The Sound of Music at the college before the twins came home.

After the musical.

Our church picnic was today too but we had to drop Jessica at work right after Annie, so we didn't get to the picnic. We got home and all went outside for some play time, dogs included.

This morning Jessica decided on the name Kiara (key-r-uh) for her new puppy. I was hoping for Abby Grace, Daisy Joy or Sadie Rose, but Kiara it is. She's a lion in Lion King 2. Jessica didn't want a girly name because the puppy is a bit rambunctious at this time. But she's only five months old.

Jasmine and I

The twin on the playset. They were eating their Easter candy so that's why Kayla looks like that.

Scrappy isn't doing well : ( He has heartworm (yes he's on the meds), respiratory issues and arthritis. We've had him since 2001 and he was 2-3 at the time.

Caspian isn't too sure about his new playmate yet. But she loves to play with toys and she's taught him to fetch a ball!! Previously we'd toss a ball, and he'd just and watch.

She goes after any balls! Thankfully she couldn't get a good bite on this one.

Jasmine has FCAT testing for 70 minutes each morning M-Th of this week and next. Please keep her in your prayers each morning. Today and tomorrow are reading, and she's good at reading, but she has some serious stress going on. She may panic and just mark answers. W and Th are math and she is nowhere near ready but there's nothing to do about it. If the comprehension isn't there, it just isn't there. She's working a full year behind in math. The test will have algebraic equations with exponents and things like that on it that she has to be talked through and can't do independently. We didn't do those until 8th grade or so.

So we're looking ahead to a week of testing, more photos, animal diorama projects and I'm not sure what else. Next weekend Jessica and I go to Pensacola for the Extraorinary Christian Women convention. We'll take Ty out for lunch since we'll be just minutes from his college.

New Family Member

Today Jessica and I went to a humane society not in our area. We have two here, but they are very difficult to work with. Before she got Caspian, she filled out applications, and they said they had to do a home study first. But we couldn't get them to set a time. They put her off for weeks and we gave up. Sounds kind of like trying to do foster care or adopt a child in our county. Maybe it's just something about this county! So we took Caspian and Scrappy and went to another county to visit their pet. This dog is a two year old lab-something small mix. She was friendly, but would have been the dominant dog in the trio.

They had a multitude of kittens.

They had quite a few cats all neutered and up to date on shots. And they were giving them away. Absolutely free. You can't beat that deal.

They offered us our choice.

Look, it's two gray "Max" cats. (Our Max looks like this but yellow). And these were my choice. But those of you who know our cat Shy know those cats are still at the shelter : (

Sigh. Shy will tolerate a new dog if he absolutely must and they acknowledge his superiority. But not a new cat.

So, this is the new family member. She's a hound/terrier mix whatever that means. She's about 5 months old. She has to go back in a month to be neutered.

Sure we can get a picture of all three dogs together-ha.

On the ride home. Actually the ride to get Jessica to work (a little late).

Uncle Scrappy, poor guy. He's 12-13 and has heartworm (yes he's on the meds) and arthritis. He tries to keep up with Caspian but wears out quickly. That's why we got a younger dog to be a playmate for Caspian. And Scrappy can join them when he's up to it.

The new big brother. He is not aggressive at all which is why we didn't choose the dog in the first picture. I didn't want to bring in a dog who would take over.

She is unnamed as of right now. I have suggested Sadie Rose, Abby, Dixie, Bella, Gretchen, Daisy, Lucy, Chloe, Sasha, Katie, Gracie, Emma, Madison, Maggie, Holly, Ziva, Tiana and a bunch of other names, but Jessica doesn't like any of them. She wants to call her Katniss from Hunger Games. She just doesn't look like a Katniss, plus I am not yelling that out the back door!! I suggested Rue from Hunger Games or Madge. The final say is Jessica's of course, but the rest of us have to live with it too. Any name suggestions?

Track Meet

Yesterday was Adam's district track meet. I was going to take pizza for the team but the coach said no pizza. I bought $109 of junk food--oatmeal pies, Swiss rolls, pringles, Doritos, sun chips, juice bars, carrots, bananas, four kinds of chip ahoy cookies, coke, dr pepper, 3 kinds of Gatorade, cheese sticks, Reese miniatures etc. They were there from 9 a.m. until 8 p.m. ish so it was all gone. Seems like the pizza would have made more sense since they were there all day and had several hours between events sometimes.

Adam had to be there at 9:00 a.m. I was told he'd run at 1:30 in preliminaries but his events went straight to finals so he didn't run until 4:30 and again around 6:30.

Start of the one-mile run.

Adam finished 6th, but had to finish in the first four to go on to regionals. He has a good chance of doing that next year.

He also ran the 800. I'm not sure how he placed in that, but he didn't make the cut for regionals. We'll get his times later.

Adam outran this guy to get first in his heat, but he was in the slower heat. This is his first year. We're hoping he makes regionals next year. He also couldn't do any field events because they were mostly Saturday mornings and he had Saturday school the past 8 weeks because he did not pass the reading FCAT his first three tries. He just retook it this week, so we're hoping he passed and that it's behind him now.

I spent over 6 hours at the meet just wandering around taking pictures and watching the different events. These high school kids are amazing.

Easter

The plan for Easter was to go to early service and Sunday school, but Jessica and I had nursery duty during the second service. We had the kids who were crawling but not yet walking or barely walking. It was a fun age. Then Jessica and Adam had to go to work.

Jasmine, Kaleb and I left for the beach. They played together so well! And it was a beautiful day too. I pulled them up and down the wet sand at the edge of the waves on this skim circle for a while, and then they pulled each other. Kaleb really couldn't pull Jasmine though. It felt a little strange only having two at the beach with me, but they got along so well it was nice.

Kaleb really did well considering Kayla spent most of the day sabotaging her Easter and trying to pull him down too. I was proud of him for not going along with it, and doing what he was supposed to. He sat really well in church, cooperated in going to Walmart for missing ingredients and helping get things ready for lunch and the beach.

I love how colorful this picture is.

For the past few years we've had ice cream on the beach on Easter. We usually fly kites too since that's what they do in Haiti but not all the kites pieces made it to the beach.

Ready for the flashlight egg hunt. They wear the hooded jackets due to bugs, not the temperature. Kaleb didn't listen to the others and went out barefooted in a tank top and shorts. Guess he doesn't mind the bugs as much.

Kaleb quickly became unhappy with the egg hunt because he didn't like having to pick up the eggs. He just wanted someone to feed him candy. He did the same thing the last two years during the daytime egg hunts we had just for the twins. He wants the candy but doesn't want to walk around picking up eggs. We don't make anyone do the egg hunts of course so we all gave him the choice to take the one egg he'd found and go inside or stay out and help find eggs and split them evenly with the other kids. We even left some right out in the open this year since the twins were doing the flashlight hunt with the bigger kids.

He chose to go in but was not very happy about it. But the other egg hunters were pretty up front about him having to help get the eggs if he wanted the candy since he's almost 7.
I normally only post the photos where everyone is smiling, but that's not reality. We see plenty of pouting throughout the week and plenty of tantrums.

After a couple of very competitive egg hunts when Tyler and Jessica were toddlers where they got run over (literally) by overzealous parents and greedy kids, we decided to have our own egg hunts and have the kids work together and put all the eggs into one big basket. Then they are evenly shared by everyone.

It was hard to get pictures outside because my camera didn't want to focus in the dark. The light is all from the flash (or flashlights but not in this case). The only other light is from a street light. We turn off all the inside lights to make it as dark as possible.

Counting out the eggs. There were 140 in all but one came open so wasn't used.

They found 130 out of 140 originally and went back out. They found 9 more but couldn't find the last one. It was easy to see by light of day today. They did a good job because some of them were a little challenging by flashlight.

Last year Adam had to work late so the others saved him an equal number of eggs, but we also had Tyler and Anthony last year. This is the first year Tyler has not been with us for Easter.

It's Jasmine's third or fourth year doing the flashlight hunt. But now they are all old enough to do the night one. So this year we didn't do the daytime one. It's not much challenge and it's not that much fun with only two. Next year we are going to add a few special eggs with prizes. And we've even talked about moving the egg hunt underwater at the bay.... What do you think?