Happy Anniversary!!!

I know, I'm looooooong overdue on this.
The girls have officially been home over a year.
We celebrated Gotcha Day by playing hard and working hard.
We went camping on friday night.  Well, ok we went cabin-ing on friday night.  We squished it in after play practice (oh, yeah, in case you hadn't heard, Caleb is in the play Aladdin at the Middle School,  good experience but he doesn't get home until 6:30 at night).

We went to Zion's Camp and rented their cabin for one night.  I made dutch oven stew. We woke up and had pancakes, sausages and eggs.  Then we had smores.  It rained the whole time we were there but the kids played like crazy, got soaking wet and begged us not to leave.

Think he is a true Washingtonian?!?!?  Soaking wet, playing in the rain, and he finds another source of water to play in.

Then on Sunday, Valentines Day, the official Gotcha Day, I gave everyone Valentines candy (though that was anti-climactic when they had been eating candy for several days) and reminisced. 

Then on Monday we planted trees that we bought from Costco.  Some were where we had holes already dug and didn't have trees and two were from trees that died last year.  Then we started clearing land for blueberries.  Costco had some for $6 a plant (a steal!!) and we have been threatening to expand our bluleberry patch for a long time.

Tuesday, I had a bonus day with the kids.  They didn't have school (Mid-winter break or some such excuse).  So, I challenged the kids to see if we could get the rest of the blueberry patch cleared and surprise Dad.  They worked soooooo hard!!  We didn't quite get it cleared but it was nice to see the cooperation.  We had some pretty deep bushes to dig out.  They worked hard and long.  We were exhausted!

Then for the icing on the cake we took the kids out to the movie The Lightening Thief. 

So like I say, we worked hard and we played hard.

Then, last sunday, Kristina happened to mention to our Home Teacher that we on thursday we would celebrate the first day the arrived in America. (We weren't going to "celebrate" it-- officially, as there are many days here to celebrate-- Metcha Day, Court Day, Gotcha Day, Physical Gotcha Day, America Day-- and we chose to celebrate Gotcha Day).  But Brother Von Forell and his sweet wife brought over this cake for us to celebrate.

(Sorry about the smooshed part, Elijah got a hold of it)

Tidbits

Language
I wouldn't want to have to be learning English.  There are so many idioms and sayings and odd way of saying things that you just have to learn.  So I know where these girls are coming from... however that doesn't stop me from getting a kick out of some of the things they say.
I was dropping the girls off at Activity Days.  Everyone was saying "See you later Alligator."  Alina said, "Bye Alligator," and then didn't understand when I chuckled.

The food thing again.
"I don't want to go to the moon (telestial kingdom) because you can't live with your family and then how would I get food?"-- Anastasia

And again
Anastasia won a bingo game at our school and from the whole table full of fun things to chose from she chose a package of microwave popcorn.

School and things
I ran into Alina's teacher in the hall at school when I was volunteering.  She spent 10 minutes going on and on about how Alina is really improving in reading and how she is quickly becoming the highest in math in her class.  Why oh why then do we not see it at home?!?!?  Still takes her 12 hours (and I do mean 12 hours-- that is no exaggeration) to do her homework that should only take 1 hour?!?!

Potty talk
From Ryah, running in to tell me, "Mom, Elijah needs more paper toilet."

Parenting

This kinda describes it well.
http://mormonmommyblogs.blogspot.com/2010/02/what-no-parenting-book-will-ever-tell.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MormonMommyBlogs+%28Mormon+Mommy+Blogs%29

Read it, commiserate, laugh or cry.  Then multiply that by a million by adopting.

Our house is a dangerous place...

if you are made of fabric. 
As part of Grandma J's Christmas present I purchased some underwear for Ryah.  We are forever searching for underwear for her in the mornings.  So I bought some more.  10 new pair.  They sat by the computer for a day waiting for me to find a sharpie marker and put "R"s on them (because in this house, if it isn't labelled it is fair game and a feeding frenzy ensues-- size is irrelevant).  Then she needed a pair to get dressed in the morning so I doubled my efforts and found a sharpie and labelled them.  I gave her one pair and then stacked the rest by the computer waiting for me to put away.  If you remember from a past post we keep all of Ryah's clothes in our room so I couldn't send someone else to put them away.  Therefore they sat by the computer for an hour or so more.  I guess I was driving Ryah nuts because she asked if she could put them away.  I told her, "yes, but put them by door."  And that is the last I saw of her underwear.  I have searched the house over.  I have asked Ryah a MILLION times where she put them.  She doesn't know.  They are just gone.  GONE.  G.O.N.E!
Most people have a black hole in their laundry.  I know all the clothes that go through the wash come out.  It is when they enter their rooms that their chances of coming out alive disappear.
And we still don't know what happened to a bag of clothes (Ryah's size, incidentally enough) that a friend (with expensive tastes) donated before the kids got home.  It somehow disappeared between when the people helping arrange our house put in her drawer and the week after they came home.

I'm tellin' ya.  If you are made of fabric staying away is your safest option.  If you should (against all sane advice) chose to enter herein, take a friend, and have someone on the outside notify the police if you don't return within the hour.

Are we getting somewhere?!?!?!

Kristina and Anastasia were fighting and got in timeout.  As is often the case when I can't think of something for a consequence I asked Kristina what we should do about it. (that way I don't have to come up with something and it makes them a part of the solution). She thought for a moment and said "If I fight or hit again then I go to bed."  I said, "And you agree to that? No, arguing?"  She assured me several times that she would go right to bed. 

Well, it wasn't to long before that exact scenario happened.  I said, "Did you just hit her?"  She got half a sentence out there before she thought about and just went to bed.    She didn't even try to deny it.  I was so impressed.  I was so impressed that I let her out after a little while.  Could it be that we are getting somewhere???????????

New castle for the tooth fairy

Latest count:  5 missing teeth
                     4 loose teeth
                     3 teeth waiting for the tooth fairy

More glasses

I was trying to kill two birds with one stone.  Looking for pictures of girls in their glasses and looking for pictures to print to send with the girls' report.  And I found more pictures of the girls in their glasses...

To see with your eyes

This is a long over due post.  These 3 girls got glasses back in May.  Kristina and Ryah felt really bad because they didn't get glasses.  Each of these three had fun looking over all the glasses and picking some (of course with the approval of Mom).  I think they look darn cute in them. 

However, now they all hate them. The reality is they ususally look like these pictures.  Crooked because they got sat on, or stepped on or slept in.  We go at least once every two weeks to get glasses adjusted.  Alina's have been adjusted so much that the ladies at Pearle Vision are afraid they are going to break them when they adjust them. On the tip of their nose because they don't fit right (see above for reasons), they are too dirty to see through,  or just because they don't want to look through them.

I almost always have to remind them to put them on in the morning.  And Alina is forever leaving them somewhere, church, school, on the floor, on chairs.  Anastasia finally lost the screw in one side and then lost the ear piece.  The boys never had this problem.  Maybe it is because their eyes are bad enough (like Keith and I) that they literally CAN'T see without them.

Forget the keys to the car.  It should be:

Glasses, oh glasses

Wherever you are

what a terrible, horrible

burden you are...