musings

Haven't posted in a while. I know I owe lots of pictures, vacation and what-not. Just haven't had the time or inclination.

Markeese is here, and Johnley is completely out of sorts. It is interesting. Markeese is actually being really great (he always is at first - and I always have hopes that he will stay that way!), but Johnley got thrown, I guess.

He has been just miserable. For three days now. It's exhausting!

He was like this the first couple of days of vacation too. He apparently cannot handle change. At least not yet. And I can't say that I blame him, but some change is inevitable.

I guess this doesn't bode well for a camping trip!

I am up to my eyeballs in paper work. We are finalizing Johnley's adoption. I had to contact someone else who has been through this, to get a copy of all the paper work. She sent me three documents - complaints and judgements and such. I have to substitute all the information and then call the county clerk and find out what documents they need and submit them all. I'm not at all sure how that works.

We got out homestudy back from the social worker for Avena. So we had to make a copy of six documents, send them to be state certified, and simultaneously send them to get translated into french. We received those documents back in two days and then had to send them all to the Haitian Consulate in N.Y. to get authenticated. In the meantime, the adoption agency emailed us and asked if we were ready to send it in! Are you freaken kidding me!

Anyway, we got them back and gathered them all up to fed-ex. I was supposed to do that today, but I noticed we are missing a signature so I will have to wait till Nick comes home anyway.

And today I got another package in the mail of more paperwork to fill out for our match with Avena.... and the invoice.

So the money is flying out (every step has cost hundreds of $s) and my head is spinning!

And I still have to call the county clerk.

Today, the kids worked on grammar and math, (I have started Markeese working as if he were staying, cuz what the hell!) and the little kids worked on their alphabet.

The pool is almost completely clean (not warm yet, tho) and my house looks like a hurricane hit it.

That's my life in a nutshell.

This and that!

Not much has been going on around here. We are going to Hatteras next Sunday and we tend to slide into vacation/summer mode for a few week before hand! I have not even begun to pack yet, and anyone that knows me knows that by now I should at least have a dozen or so lists, and most of my stuff packed.

I have gone over the food list, extensively, but only because Merrille is doing half of it and she likes to get a head start. I would venture to guess that she is completely done by now. I haven't bought a single thing.

We plan on starting a new curriculum, in addition to adding Markeese to our homeschooling year, so we've been pretty busy planning for that. I'm actually really excited about this book that was recommended to me called "The Well Trained Mind". It's a bit overwhelming, and I certainly won't be using everything on it, but I think it is good for a basic program. We are going to try it out this year, and I expect that we will have a lot of stops and starts, while we figure things out, but I am confident that we will find our groove. The boys will be in kindergarten (or at least that age) so it should be some fun times.

Nick is in Chicago this weekend for a CIO boot camp. Its a really intensive training session, and an accomplishment just to be able to go. He was very excited about going. He left right from soccer yesterday.

And speaking of soccer; Sammy is doing phenomenal! He has definitely found his groove with it and went from kind of hanging around the ball to getting in there and kicking it and following through. He made like three goals yesterday! Johnley has made some great strides too, he gets on the field now! And that's progress!

Taishauna went to Boston last weekend with her Church group. She is such a beautiful young lady. She handled herself so great and thought to buy t-shirts for her brothers, which was wonderful. She had mucho fun with her friends and at the activities. Apparently they visited alot of churches, and that was BORING! But she had fun anyway!

I was thinking this morning that something is wrong with me because I used to be so organized and was able to accomplish alot. Lately I can't seem to accomplish ANYTHING. And then I realized that with a 4 year old and a 5 year old (not to mention the 14 year old) with me all the time, that is pretty much all I can do. Keeping them fed and dressed and sorta clean, and keeping the house sorta clean pretty much takes up my day!

Somehow I have to fit in packing, some spring cleaning, preparing the gardens and powerwashing the deck into that schedule.

Wish me luck!