Zoo Time

We got to the zoo right when it opened and I was glad that we did. The weather was great and by noon the place was filling up with people and I was ready to go.

The kids had a good time. We purchased a membership where many of the activities are free.

Riding the train.

Feeding the giraffes.

Apparently Larissa got licked and thought it was gross

Milking the "cow"

Attempting to drink the cows milk

Riding the carousel

(Benjamin refusing to get off)

Rock climbing, this is Emma's highest point. She was asking me how to get down here.

Feeding the birds

Taking pictures on statues.

We paid $3 extra for the kids to climb this rope course. Anthony and Larissa made it to the top.

Benjamin sneaking up on some cotton candy.

It was a very good morning. The rest of the day was spent playing and swimming (after a short nap)

We will have to go again, we only saw a part of the zoo. There is a splash pad and gardens as well as many animals we didn't get to.

Glasses Time

 The kids were past due for their eye exams. Larissa and Michelle got new glasses. Anthony and Emma didn't need any. Emma has -.25 in one eye and wanted glasses real bad but even the optician said she didn't need glasses.

I try to keep up with eye exams because of my own experience. In the 4th grade I was put into a special math class because they thought that I had a learning disability. Once I got into the math class I excelled because it was all on paper. It was at that time that everyone realized that I did math fine, I was just blind! I remember that first day wearing glasses. I didn't realize that roofs actually had straight lines and so much detail out there in the world! I don't want my kids to go through life seeing everything blurry and not even realizing it. Seems like most of my kids do wear glasses!

The girls picked out their own glasses.

Benjamin wanted some too

He got a pair of blue glasses from the children's store next door.

New Hardware

We seem to be spending a lot of time (and money) at the orthodontist lately.

We had Vaida with us this day. Vaida and Benjamin enjoyed playing on the train table.....

And eating up all of the homemade cookies that they had available.

They were very interested in the procedures.

Yay, Anthony got his braces off.

Emma got hers on. All those scratches on her face.....kitten. She is covered in scratches. She always does this with our pets, gets them to rough house with her.

Double trouble 

Michelle and her braces.

Our orthodontist has put braces on all of our kids. During this visit he told me that he felt he should get a bench and put a plaque on it with our name. Instead he checked Larissa's brushing,which was great, so he gave her candy.

Licensing

I am often asked if we have any foster kids yet, nope. Our paperwork hasn't even been submitted to the state yet. It is so frustrating. One hold up was my moms SLED check. It didn't come back with the others. Our licensing worker got frustrated and called SLED herself. They had a big turnover so only one person was working that section. She asked me if we could just pay the $25 and do it online. We did.

She submitted the paperwork to her boss and she came back wanting 90 days worth of pay vouchers (it has taken so long that our other ones were old). We sent her that and she sent it up to her boss. Now we wait for her to give it back to our licensing worker so she can submit it to the state.

In the meantime we are trying to get some house repairs done and yard work is always in progress. We had a hole in the pool and it took us hiring someone to find it, well worth the $400.

Either way, we are ready. We have 2 free beds and a crib.

Snapshots

We have been really busy here so I am way behind in blogging. My objective is to catch up in the next three days, in the meantime here is a small snapshot of our days.

We have had several storms come through, school was even closed at 11 am one day. Unfortunately our roof is leaking again. It hasn't leaked for a long time and through many storms.

Eating at our favorite place. We love our San Jose.

Larissa has a problem with someone taking her mechanical pencils so we made some with messages for whoever it doing it.

When you have many kids and go through the Krispy Kreme donut drive through, you may get handed many napkins.

When you have one child who has destroyed two different vacuum cleaners so you borrow a Rainbow, you may get a nasty surprise.

Kitty is getting so big and is so sweet.

Learned how to make these wreaths at a church event. 

When your daughter decides to take her braids out (and she is excited because a substitute teacher came to school with her hair down).

After a rainy day!

Seussical

This last weekend we went to Sarah's school to watch her in a play, Seussical. She doesn't sing, dance or act so this was something totally out of her comfort zone. She was a bit overwhelmed by the amount of time she had to put into it as well as the requirement to get all their own costumes but she loved it. 

It was a very entertaining play, even Benjamin and Vaida made it through the entire 2 hours! Sarah did a great job and I was very proud of her for overcoming her anxiety to do this.

Great job Sarah!

Hair

I have not been posting because I have been dealing with a lot of life at our house. My last post was of the girls heading off to school for picture day. Larissa wanted to wear her hair down so we did that. She came off the bus very upset. A boy on the bus who often says little negative comments to her told her that her hair looked like a plop of poop. I have had a lot of discussion on my facebook page about this. Every time she wears her hair down she gets negative comments from she is ugly to the new plop of poop. Then when she wears it braided she is called ugly and she has even been told she looks like a boy.

I don't understand it but I know it to be true. Emma can go to school with the worst haircut possible and she might get the "who cut your hair" questions or even people laughing about her hair but she is not told that she is ugly because of her hair.

Larissa can go to school with braided hair, beaded hair, natural hair and someone will tell her that she is ugly. Not just her hair but her. Her hair makes her ugly.

That night she wanted me to braid it, I almost cried. I want her to be strong. I want her to not care what everyone says. I work towards that but we aren't there yet. She is very much a people pleaser and takes all the comments to heart. Lets face, it is human nature to want others to accept you. We wouldn't have as big of a bullying problem if words didn't hurt. But they do hurt and when they are spoken often it is hard to fight that.

Some people say that the kids are mean because they are jealous. I have seen some of that specifically in the dance area because she is so lean and long. However, that is not the answer in many cases. Sometimes there is just hatred, lack of understanding, the inability to see the person outside of skin color, the inability to accept someone different than themselves. This is not just a child issue, some adults act the same.

I will continue to build up my child and teach her about the world. Some days it is just hard. Why can't we all just learn to care, love and respect one another. Parenting from the trenches is hard.