The Beach Trip

We took a short trip to the beach. We didn't take everyone and I can't even begin to explain how heartbreaking that is for me because I love sharing experiences with all my kids. What a difference it made. Driving there was smooth, no bickering, no one annoying anyone. It was nice. We left at noon which was little mans nap time, good choice because he hates to sit in a car seat and does not fall asleep in one unless it is nap time.

We rented a three bedroom condo and invited Sarah's roommate from last year.

Little man is a no go for sand. We stood him in it and he literally froze. He wouldn't move. I sat him in it and he tried to pick his feet up out of it. Finally I sat him in a chair and then took him to the water. He did like the water.

I love the relationship that these two have. They squabble at times like siblings will do but overall they have a loving relationship. They took turns sharing a board and attaching it to each other. There was another one in the room but they didn't want to go up and get it. It is nice to watch a healthy sibling relationship.

The resort had a big curvy slide that the kids loved.

He wants me to put a similar slide into our pool.

We went to the Ripley's Aquarium. I didn't realize that they offered military a 50% discount. I hadn't been to the aquarium before, it was actually very nice.

The kids were fascinated by the sawfish.

and got to touch some jellyfish.

I may try to paint this fish one day.

They had an area about Pearl Harbor. It was actually a great educational experience.

It was a nice trip. Time for the kids to play and enjoy each other without conflict. All the kids got along great. I enjoyed the lack of conflict! 

Joselin stayed home with the girls and our foster girl went to a respite home. More on her in the next post. I am behind and need to catch up. I have a little free time so may do that today.

Trying

Benjamin was invited to a birthday party at the local skating place. I decided to let him do his party and take the other kids and pay for them to skate. I try for normalcy. I just want to be able to take the kids out and have fun. Somedays I take all the kids regardless of behaviors. Some kids actually miss out on stuff because of other kids behaviors too often.

However, as some of you know, a fun activity is often followed by negative behaviors. I know it happens, I simply don't understand it.

However, all the kids did enjoy skating. 

I can see that I need to get Benjamin a pair of skates so he can practice at home.

Who else has this backlash of negative behaviors following a fun event?

Anyone feel that other kids in the home miss out because some kids can't manage their behaviors?

Awards Ceremonies

A few years ago I attended an awards ceremony with two babies. That ceremony was 2 hours long, 1 1/2 hours too long. They gave everyone awards just to give awards. It was then that I stopped going to them. Anthony had his ceremony to go from middle school to high school and did plan on attending that. However, Anthony said he didn't want to go. I know why, he worked hard to get out of special ed this year but they don't give any awards for that. He said that he didn't want any of their "here you go" awards.

So instead we went to our own awards ceremony at the trampoline park.

I didn't get to Emma's awards ceremony. She got an award for missing 3 days of school. Seriously! I wonder how many days they went down to. She also got an athletic award, I asked her what she did for it. She said she didn't know. OK. Then she got some atta boy award for which she did nothing. The only one that was of value to me was the all B's award. That is a great improvement for her and I am proud of her for finally seeing that she is capable of doing the work when she tries.

Larissa and I are still working on homeschooling work. We are going to work sporadically through the summer. Some days we don't finish work depending on how the night went with seizures so we have some things we want to finish up.

My kids got out of school last Friday, is everyone else out for summer?

Bathroom Project

We have a problem with Emma and Michelle's bathroom. They don't like to close the shower curtain, turn on the fan or even get in the shower sometimes. Michelle for some reason will turn on the hot water and steam up the bathroom and after a while of hearing the shower I go to tell her to finish up only to find she isn't in the shower at all. The steam coming from the bathroom has been known to set off the fire alarm!

We went to replace the toilet but realized that there was a lot of damage to the flooring and everywhere else. We had to tear up the tile and replace some sub flooring.

Steam can do some damage, the door was peeling and all the metal in the room is rusted. The shower curtain had to be replaced and even the light in the room had rust on it.

All the trim had to be replaced.

My son Jason came a while back and tore up the tile for me. I had a challenge because the sub flooring is not the same height as anything I could find.  I didn't want to retile it because I don't think that the flooring is level enough. I decided to go with waterproof vinyl. It looks great but we will see how it holds up to my girls.

I had to suddenly rush this project because the girls were using Larissa and Sarah's bathroom and they were trashing it. They were flooding it out, leaving their dirty clothing, making it generally nasty and then on the way out they were stealing Larissa's clothing.

After finishing the church project I squeezed in the bathroom project. In two days I: finished ripping out part of the sub flooring, replaced the sub flooring, put down the new flooring, painted the room with Larissa's help, put in a new toilet, and replaced all the trim.

The handle came off of the paint creating another mess!

I scraped it up and used it.

What a mess.

I love the flooring but it sure was a pain to put in. Since it is such a small space less than two pieces fit in a row. I had to measure and cut for every row. That meant for each rom I had to get up off the floor and walk down the stair and out into the 100 degree heat to the chop saw in the garage to cut the piece. I then went back upstairs and put it in then measured for the next row. On the first day I quit when I could no longer get up off the floor, the struggle was real and I am getting old.

There is caulking even on the caulk strip.

I am happy with the result and sadly we have new bathroom rules. After showers an adult is going upstairs to make sure that there isn't a pool of water on the floor. I have told Michelle that if I feel that she is just steaming up the shower and taking too long then I will have to monitor her showers. Seriously, I had to repaint the walls because of the damage to the walls. I painted this bathroom fairly recently and it shouldn't have had the damage that it did. It is going to take more monitoring on my part to try and prevent damage again. Sigh....

Church Project

For a while I have asked to paint something at the church. With some previous administration we were literally banned from our nursery duty after I asked to paint something in the nursery. I said I would paint whatever they asked for, not my own agenda.

Well, new folks lead to new ideas and I was asked to paint an activity room in the kids area. They asked for Biblical characters as children.

Larissa helped a lot.

A friend from chiurch came out our last day. We put a broadcast out giving others an opportunity to contribute. Sarah came out as well but more importantly she babysat so I could make it out.

Lately I have been doing the chalkboard as well but that is someones job and I don't want to step on her feet. I was just there and available while she was out of town.