The year in pictures

Ok not really the year, maybe just the late summer/fall. We have been too busy with activities of various sorts, and I haven't been feeling well so that adds up to lots of pictures and not a whole lot of writing.
These first pictures are of the indian houses the kids were working on all summer. And I must admit, while I wouldn't want to spend a rainy night in one, they did a pretty good job of making them authentic-looking. Check out the bark action and everything.

Climbing trees happened quite a bit, too.

We harvested most of our garden to protect against frost. This is the last of the cucumbers.

We got LOTS of potatoes, lots! The kids had a blast digging them up. "This one looks like a boot!" "I got one that looks like a teddy bear." "Look Mom, a gun!" "That looks like a solar system." "An Ardvaark!" Not sure what kind of potatoes they are but they sure are fun!

Ryah's class went to the pumpkin patch with their families. I had to get everyone in front of the height sign. The girls had dancing eyes the whole time. They enjoyed it all. I forget that they never had the opportunity to pet farm animals, go through a hay maze or ride a hay wagon. It was fun to watch!

The only problem it was beastly cold and we were ill-equipped! But that wasn't too much of a wet blanket.

Caleb- 5 1/2 feet tall.

Ryah-3 1/2 feet tall.

Miriam- 4 1/2 feet tall.

Alina- 4 feet tall.

Jonas- 4 1/2 feet tall.

Anastasia- nearly 4 feet tall.

Kristina- 4 1/4 feet tall, almost.

Elijah- 3 feet tall, 3'2" with hair, 5 feet tall with that smile!

Elijah holding his pumpkin and trying to get warm.

Alina TRYING to decide on a pumpkin.

Miriam wanting the "prettiest" one.
Ryah just wanted to go back on the wagon. Not too interested in picking a pumpkin, any one will do. Riding the hay wagon. This is her canned smile. I was trying to get a good pciture of her dancing eyes but was trying to juggle too many things and kids for that to work well.

She loved the ducks, but only after she was relatively confident that they weren't going to bite her. She must have had some bad experiences with animals in Ukraine, especially dogs. Which is funny because I had no idea, even with Sheba in the house, until we went to a friends not too long ago who had 3 dogs. She is TERRIFIED of dogs. T.E.R.R.I.F.I.E.D!!! Don't ask me why Sheba didn't bother her.

Elijah couldn't get enough of the animals and wanted to hold all of them... especially the kittens.

Anyway, that is our fall in pictures.

A great service! Hey, make it a family activity

Dear Friends & Family,Just a note to ask if you and your family and friends would like to help us raise money to buy pajamas for an orphanage here in Khmelnitsky, Ukraine for the upcoming Christmas Season. We would like to help 75 children, ages 5-17 yrs. We would purchase the pajamas here and then our Branch would label, wrap and deliver them to the children sometime in Dec. Any amount would be helpful, i.e. $5.00 would be wonderful. We would ask that you send the money to ***************. Please include everyone's email address so we could keep you updated and send photos of our visit to the orphanage.
If you have any questions, just email us and we would be happy to answer you.

Love, Elder & Sister Thatcher
PS - This is not a church sponsored event, but rather something we would like to do personally.

The above email is from Elder and Sister Thatcher who were (and still are) the branch president in the Khmelnitsky branch in Ukraine where our girls were adopted from. They were definitely sent by Heavenly Father to aid us (in case you haven’t read our blog) MANY times. They are good people (of course) and this is a good cause. I don’t think this is the orphanage that our girls lived in but they could still use the help! Our orphanage was very grateful for the scarves that our Young Women made for them!! I’m sure this orphanage will be grateful for these pajamas. Please consider helping because I know they can use it and will be VERY grateful for it. Also, it will help the missionaries touch people they might not otherwise. The church is struggling in Ukraine, and we can help all the way across the world. We will be sending money. If anyone wants to donate (ANY amount even just a dollar) If you are nearby I would be glad to collect and send it for you! Just email me shimai@comcast.net or call me 455-8613. If you don't live nearby send me an email or leave a comment with your email address and I'll send you the address to send it to. Let me know if you want to add your email to Sister Thatcher's list to see pictures of them donate the pj's

And what do YOU do for fun?!?!?!

(Warning this is very long, probably rambling and if you don't want to finish reading, I'll understand.)

Can't anything be "normal?"

The kids had a day off and we had some fun activities planned. In the middle of trying to get chores done so we could have some fun, I remembered that I wanted to take Jonas in to get allergy shots.

We are supposed to get his shots twice a week, separated by two days (Ideally Monday and Friday) but because of various circumstances and short of taking him out of school each week we have been only able to do once a week. So, with the day off I figure that I would get twice a week this week, at least. Plus, when Caleb was in last they didn't have the chicken pox vaccine in that he was supposed to get AND the school called and said that first graders were required to have their second chicken pox vaccine so Anastasia needed that. Oh, and Miriam has needed to have another blood draw for a while for the diabetes study she is in. That is on that side of town as well. Whew, kill 4 birds with one stone.

So, I haul 8 kids to the doctors office for shots.

The nurse takes Caleb and Jonas back and gives them their shots. So far so good. Jonas is a pro at this getting allergy shots thing and has been VERY brave! When I remember how 5 people had to hold him down to get an IV in one time when he went to the hospital, the fact that I can send him down the hall by himself to get shots is big, very BIG!

So, Anastasia wants me to go with her. We get back to the little room and she freaks out. Mind you, there is no needle in sight yet. She starts crying and screaming "I don't want it." At the top of her lungs... and for such a small body, she has some pretty big lungs as evidenced by my diminished hearing over the last 7 months. I sit her down on my lap trying to soothe her. "Hold my hand and squeeze hard." That worked to distract her when she got shots at the dentist when she smashed her face. No such luck here. Finally, the nurse and I were able to get her calmed down. She was totally silent and didn't even flinch when she got the shot. Then she went out and told everyone that she didn't even cry when she got her shot. Ya, well, I guess technically that IS true.

Then, we are in the waiting room trying to manage hungry kids, sample books and fill-out cards he has stashed around his office, waiting for the 20 minutes Jonas has to wait after his allergy shots. Jonas stands up, in the middle of reading a book and starts coughing like he is in serious trouble. (In all the years that he has had this asthma, I have never seen him go so bad so fast before, it was almost instant) I told him to go back, see the nurse and have his arm checked. The nurse came back with him and said "is he ok?!?!?!" Well, no. He needs a treatment (at least). So I sent Caleb out to the car to get the nebulizer. I later thought, just before the Doctor said it, that this is a doctor's office, they've got a nebulizer in the back (we know, we've used it before). But when you get in those situations you go into survival mode fall back on what you know works.

I started giving him a treatment and the nurse came out with the oximeter -- the machine that measures the blood oxygen saturation. 70%. Whoa, supposed to be in the mid nineties or higher. The nurse nurse kind of freaks out at this point. She has only been working for Dr Blackner for a couple of months. To her credit she handled herself very well but you could tell she was VERY nervous. In her nervousness she kept getting up and down, back and forth. I'm rocking Jonas trying to get him calmed down. The Ukie girls were all lined up in front of us like they were watching a play. Kristina, every few seconds, called out the oxygen sats number, until the nurse stopped her by saying that it is actually better if the patient doesn't know what the numbers are. The nurse went and called the doctor back (he is only there half days on Fridays, one of those "sets of circumstances" I mention above) and had left just a short time before that. Then she came back and added another vial of albuterol to the nebulizer, bouncing a little in her seat. The receptionist answered a phone call and then told us that Dr Blackner was stuck in traffic and was really trying to get there.

Finally, much to the relief of the nurse, he arrived. After a quick glance at Jonas he ordered the nurse to get an "epi" (epinephrin-- that they give you to help anaphalaxis, severe reactions) and 6 mm of something I learned later was a steroid. I looked at Jonas' arm at this point as I was curious what it looked like. He had a welt nearly the size and shape of a dollar bill raised about 3/4 of an inch, red and very ugly looking. So the doctor, through much protest from Jonas, gives him the epi shot (in the same arm, poor Jonas).

Then we all wait. Oxygen sats bounce around in the 80's. Finally, I could tell, near the end of some comfort zone of the doctor, Jonas started improving. It is always about this point that Jonas gets a headache and gets sleepy. But we had to keep him awake to remind him to breathe deeply. When he breathes deeply his oxygen sats go up with each breath.

During that waiting time I was trying to keep 7 other kids from tearing the doctor's office apart, or each other for that matter. I shouldn't say that, they did very well for sitting so long in there and being hungry. But I did have to (try) to keep the girls out of the way of the doctor and nurse, which was not an easy task. The whole thing kinda freaked Anastasia out. She cried at first and was near tears the rest of the time. She is so tenderhearted. Sweet girl.

After the epi shot finally started working the doctor took pity on me and pulled out some cinnamon rolls and granola bars for the kids to eat. Did I mention, that our doctor is amazing? Through all the troubles with Jonas, adopting the girls and especially with Talita and Gideon, he has been extremely compassionate, supportive, willing to listen to us like we were the only other people in the world and be an advocate for us to other doctors. I can't imagine having any other doctor.

Anyway, I digress. After much, much convincing Dr. Blackner (who was worried about getting the steroid in before the epi shot wore off) was able to get Jonas to let him give him the other shot. Jonas has improved enough the doctor will allow him to go home and not to the hospital. I had the kids pick up all the books and crumbs and try to put the waiting room back in order, while the adults collectively heaved a relieved sigh.

Ok. We are on that side of town and I'm not going to take Miriam out of school some other time to get it done, so we might as well go and get her blood drawn. After a brief trip to do that we are headed home.

You would think that the excitement would be over and we can relax some.
But no, we have to step it up a little.

I hear from the back of the van, "Mom, I itch. All over." Sounds suspicious. So I find a safe place to pull over and look at Jonas' stomach and back and sure enough, he has hives. I tried to call the doctor to see what we should do but my cell phone is dead. Again. (arghhhhhh, I need a new cell phone!!!) Since we were closer to home, I decided to just go home to call.
They don't know if he was reacting to the allergy shots, the epi or the steroid. But benedryl helped and he had a nice nap.

That was pretty much all we got done yesterday. No fun stuff. Anything after all that would be anticlimactic.

Dr Blackner and I decided:

• lower the amount of allergy shot he is given next time
• Watch Jonas VERY closely next time, as well
• Jonas needs to get shots twice weekly
• get shots when Kim (the nurse that has been with him FOREVER and we LOVE!!!) is there. She has had more experience in emergencies
• have food on hand for starving siblings
• add another 10 pages to Jonas' already substantial chart

Ok, maybe we didn't decide on those last two, at least not together. But I also decided:

• make sure to keep the nebulizer stocked and in good repair (I've learned this before, too, many times)
• the 20 minutes that we are supposed to wait after allergy shots isn't just to be annoying to a mom trying to keep 8 kids in line at the doctors office
• things really can't be just "normal"
• how blessed we are to have the doctor we have
• don't take breaths for granted (I've learned this before, too but somehow have to keep being reminded)
• get a new cell phone