Adorable Geek

Kaisha got her teeth today. To her it was like a gift or a prize or a box of chocolates. She was so excited! Dental assisting version of geeking out. She was adorable about it.

We're still waiting on my mom's property. It's still unbelievable...

Ania is getting a little cold and was trying to convince me tonight that she is very, very sick and needs to stay home from school tomorrow.

I filled the dents and holes in the walls, especially up and down the stairs, from moving (there were lots of dings when we moved in from the renters that were here before us) and spray spackled them. All ready to paint tomorrow. Same color. Just without the dirt and stains and holes.

Showed my mom where to pick up Alissa when she has swim practice up at Western. I am counting the days until Alissa is 16 and can drive herself places! I love that she is on the swim team, but the driving is hard. Three mornings a week at 6AM and five afternoons a week to/from the different pools. Plus team parties and Young Life and youth group and extra credit stuff. Then walking the little girls to/from school ten times each week. It's a lot. It just started and I'm already feeling a bit worn out. It'll get interesting next week when I start my 18 credits. Ahhh, life can be crazy!

TOMS

Up early. Coffee. Study. Make lunches. Girls to school. Went on a run. Well, a jog. A short jog. A short, slow jog. Short, slow somewhat pathetic version of jogging. But I did it! Went to three stores looking for matching tile for the basement. Found! Home to shower. Grand accomplishment of the day...completing the 7hr HIV class online in 3hrs, printed off the certificate for PTA school. So glad to get that off my plate! Chat with Jen a little bit. More coffee. Cleaned the house. Hung out with Collin. Two different Grants stop over. Walked to pick up the girls from school. Feed starving children. Pull weeds. Hang out with Kaisha. More coffee. Help Alissa with chemistry and algebra. Make dinner. Say hi to Cody as he comes and goes dropping off flowers to his girlfriend's room while she's at work. Clean up from dinner. Read books with Ania. Little girls to bed. Go over tomorrow's plans with Alissa. Check emails. Blogpost. Study in bed. Sleep. Ahhhhh.

If you are very adorable sisters...

And you accidentally wear matching outfits one day...

Your mom might just have to do a 10 minute photo shoot in the entryway.

The bigger sister might attempt to teach the little one to pose like a fashion model...

Changing your pose with every click of the camera.

These girls. Love them.

Forty-Eight Hours

My brother gave smell-good colored pencils to Ania. I love them!

A great day. A great weekend. But totally exhausting. Do you think we'll get to relax in heaven? It's ten pm on Sunday night and I'm not so patiently waiting for my littlest crying person to fall asleep so I can do something besides wait for her to fall asleep.

Nicole's bridal shower that my mom and I put on was a smashing success. Nicole is darling. Darren is perfect. The wedding is just around the corner. And they were showered with gifts, mostly for camping! Who can beat that?

Ania lost another tooth this weekend. She was so, so proud of herself because I promised not to touch it and told her that she could pull it out when she was ready. She could hardly wait to come home to show Cody! And I learned that the tooth fairy builds a castle with the tooth after she claims it. How did I miss that for 44 years?

Garage sale, done! I think garage sales are like having babies. Ten minutes after you're done you promise yourself that you will NEVER do that again, but ten days later it's all forgotten and two years later you're having another garage sale! Ugh. This one was definitely more about scraping up some money than getting rid of stuff. But both things were done and life is simplified a little bit.

I've spent the whole week moving things. Moving our things out of the basement. Moving the office to my room. Moving the TV room into the office. Moving Kaisha into Alissa's room. Moving Alissa into half of her room. Moving garage sale stuff up to my mom's house. Moving the weights into the garage. Rearranging the garage. Watching my awesome renters move their truckloads into the basement. Next week will be watching Collin move out. I'm super excited for him!!

My mom's property...wow. It would make the most intriguing, deathly boring novel ever. Basically, one guy on the city council (who will not have my vote in the next election :), wanted a clause added to their statement requiring the property owner to sign a contract with the city re: watershed regulations, which, just like the water issue, was already ironed out over the 5 years my father spend on the short plat. He spent 20K on that issue, hired multiple engineers and a construction company to install curtain drains and storm drains, etc. He also hired a land use attorney to work through impervious surface issues etc. So, mom's buyer is working on those issues with the city and the county now. ALSO, although my mom is in the county, they seem to be unable to decide under whose jurisdiction her property falls...the city or the county. So, they seem to want to impose BOTH sets of watershed regulations on the property now. The buyer, a very able realtor that has worked through untold number of watershed projects in his years, said yesterday that he has NEVER seen anything like what they are doing to my mom's lots. He sat in a room in city hall last week with 8 city workers from different departments ALL working on ironing out what they were going to require next. Your tax dollars hard at work. That said and ridiculousness aside, we have not met a single person through this process that we didn't actually like very much! They've all been kind, pleasant people. It's just the web of the system gone bad.

Bottom line, when the sale closes and her money is in the bank, then maybe we'll buy bottled soda's and toast to the rest of our lives without thinking another thought about city politics.

Little crying person stopped crying. Now the fun begins! Alissa and I are so addicted to watching Bones. It's really going to reek havoc on our grades this fall.

A Few Thank Yous

We spent most of our day cleaning, rearranging, and organizing. We're making room for renters in the basement next month. Thank you to each of you that have inquired about our little spot of rental real estate. We're super excited for who might be down under soon!

Thank you to each of the 186 "unique visitors" that have visited my blog the last few days, checking in on my mom's property situation. And thank you to each one of you who have written letters to the city council on her behalf. You have until first thing Monday morning to shoot off a brief letter if you are still thinking of going to bat for her. Here is a paragraph that one friend wrote...love this:

It is imperative for public officials with power over the citizens, in this case land division and all the related requirements including water, to be professional, knowledgeable and provide reliable information.  Land division is a long process and there is no excuse for government officials to not take the time to be able to provide accurate information on a process as painful and expensive as platting.  If water was going to be refused it should have been refused long ago before the government took her money without providing her a service and long before the Thaut’s were allowed to have spent $50,000 to complete a process that would apparently never be allowed to be fruitful. 

The council meets at noon on Monday and then again in the evening. And really, a simple letter is wonderful too. This friend has fought his own land use battles (and won!) so he has a unique angle on the whole thing. See this letter from another friend that is also helpful to mom's cause:

Dear Members of the Bellingham City Council,
 My name is XXX and I lived in Bellingham for 22 years and have been a Whatcom County resident for 43 years.  I am writing to you today asking that you would please rule favorably for Judy Thaut.  This appeal is not for grace but it is for wisdom and courage in your decision as you have the opportunity to right an injustice that has befallen this dear woman.  Thank you for your time and consideration.

Please pray for a favorable outcome for my mom. It would be so, so nice if (along with favorable) we could get a definite answer on Monday too. We're both so worn out from this. It's consuming. And my full time classes start up in a few weeks. I need to be done so I can focus on kids and school. My mom needs to be done too. This has been a huge interruption to normal life with terrible, almost daily, ups and downs. It just needs to stop.

Thank you Kaisha and Mom for this beautiful painting for my very blank walls. I love it. Happy birthday, to me!

And thank you, to Collin's friend, you know who you are, perpetual Favorite Person, one of my OtherSons that I love to death, for this incredible orchid! I've never owned an orchid in all my life. I absolutely love flowers, especially in the house! But I have too many kids to attempt sustaining plant life as well. I didn't know orchids are so simple. It only needs a good soaking about once a week. And the flowers stay for months! And look how perfect it is in this corner. I love this! 

And thank you everyone who has been ordering jewelry! This picture is a special order that one friend had me make for another friend. I love it. Today I put 4 necklaces together for someone. This is a great time, before school starts, for me to be putting in extra time on orders. Ahhhh. It's been a crazy busy week. I cannot wait for things to slow down and I can get more study time in. Sounds so relaxing. Maybe tomorrow.

There's Always Tomorrow

Wishing there was enough time in the day to do everything. Like make s'mores, go buy bricks at Lowes, and watch a show with Alissa.

But I did have coffee with an old high school friend today.
And picked up Alissa after a bike crash that left a great need for dental work on Monday morning.
I watched Ania pull the rear view mirror off my dad's truck this afternoon from across the yard. (There is always something newly broken that needs fixing.)
I shoveled a load of dirt into it's new home along the front of the house.
And enjoyed the sunshine!
I had time to read in my book about kinesiology and another about forgiveness.
And I'm super excited about church tomorrow in our new bigger, better, beautiful building!!

Commissioners and Soy Sauce

My normal daily life is pretty much over the top busy. I try to not think too hard about it lest a nervous breakdown show up on my doorstep some morning. But this week...um...ya. Way, way, way over the top.  

First, there is the spilled milk sorts of things. Only try a Costco sized bottle of soy sauce basically exploding in the kitchen when a unnamed person sort of missed the counter. Of course, it had to be just as I was on my way out the door to meet with city officials to beg for mercy or common sense, whichever they are willing to come forth with first.

And my favorite part of the week has been the summer version of the flu. Flu in the summer is twice as wrong as flu in the winter. And I'm now viewing the 24 hour throw up flu as the friendly version of the flu. It's way more pleasant to puke every half hour all night long rather than sit on the couch with a fever for seven days. And, it couldn't be just one person with a fever for seven days. It has to be four. So far. Which says nothing of the severe seasonal allergy turned to bilateral conjunctivitis along with a suspect bacterial infection AND the flu. Poor Ania. So, of course, you go to the doctor, which just about gives her a panic attack (I'm not kidding), and then when you go to fill the $200 dollars worth of prescriptions they smile nicely and tell you the system is saying you have no medical insurance as of June 30th. So you take your VERY sick person home without medicine and start making dead end phone calls for hours, to no avail. You end up asking the doctor for cheaper medicine, which includes the need to dispense eye drops (um, dropped into her eye!), which is pretty much not an option because of last year's allergies which still produces post traumatic stress syndrome if you even TALK about it in front of her. And, of course, it's hard to get past pink eye when you can't drop eye drops into a person's eyes.

Plus it was my birthday. Which, of course, is mostly a happy thing, except when everybody is too sick to celebrate it, which is totally fine because the next best thing to celebrating your birthday is to keep thinking that you are going to celebrate it TOMORROW and then postponing it another day and another day so that all week long you are about to celebrate your birthday. And looking forward to celebrating your birthday is way better than actually doing it, so it turned out great for me. But the sick people end up feeling a little bit bad about it, and guilt of any form is the last thing you need when your tonsils are almost cutting off your ability to breath. So there is then all the psychological soothing that needs to happen.

And a great thing that happened (but still took hours and my friend says that even good things are stressful sometimes) was that we sold the van and bought a new car. Cody pretty much gets Favorite Person for the next 7 months because he was the impetus behind all of it and now it's no longer hanging over my head as 'one of the big things that needs to get done before I start classes in the fall.' My favorite part of selling the van was the guy I sold it to. I couldn't understand his English to save my life. Like, if someone said, "We're going to shoot you unless you can tell us what this man is saying," I would be dead. And how many polite ways can you say, "What?" on the phone? I felt quite horrible about it. And because he was getting a bank loan and he was a careful buyer with lots of questions (which Cody answered), we had to talk a LOT. By the time we were done we were pretty much best friends because I just flat out told him on the second day at the bank, "Hey. I'm so, so sorry that I can't understand a word you say." And he smiled, explained that he was from Africa (I had figured it out) and from then on out we were tight. I basically babysat his adorable one year old in the bank lobby for over an hour while the banker woman worked up the paperwork. He told me I was a "strong lady" when he found out I have 5 children and no husband and that his wife complains with one child. I assured him that I also complained when I had one child. In the end, they got a great van for a good price and I had money enough to go buy a car that gets decent gas mileage.

Favorite Person had done research to find the PERFECT car for me. I needed great gas mileage, not a white car, and not an old lady car. Cody picked out the year, make, and model of the car he thought would be best. We test drove one in Lynden (while sick people were babysitting sick people at home), then drove to Woodinville to drive another one. Cody won rewards in heaven when he did not take the ripe opportunity to mock me when, after we decided to buy the car in Woodinville, I realize I hadn't brought my checkbook. (I don't carry one anymore, which is a fabulous method unless you are buying a car out of town.) The next morning, Collin and I drove back to Woodinville, paid for everything, completed all the paperwork, became best friends with the kind Russian man, looked at 40 pictures of his 18 year old daughter on his cell phone, said all our goodbyes, got into the NEW (to me) perfect car...only to be unable to start it. *sigh* It so fit my week. Collin comes over, "Mom, push the gas pedal down!" (Really? Oh, duh, silly me! jk I had been pushing the gas pedal.) He tried it. No start. Probably my favorite moment of the week was when I walked back into the office at the little dealership to tell them the car wouldn't start. It was SO worth the look on all their faces!!! Haha. The car was out of gas. It's been perfect ever since. LOVE my new car. Thank you, Codance!

And all of that doesn't even get into the biggest, horriblest thing. It's really the topic of another blogpost. Or, actually, a letter to the editor of the Herald (which I've already written). We've spent hours trying to find someone with guts enough to stop posturing against lawsuits from their political counterparts and just acknowledge that the city and the water district have both given prior approval to my parents to serve the completed, short platted lots with water. We've had a lot of people in different offices glance over their shoulders to see who in the office can hear them, move in a little closer, lower their voices, and say, "You have water. You have documentation. There is no question here." And then refer us on to someone else. We're slowly working our way up the chain of command. We've been to water district meetings with commissioners, to city hall over and over again...ugh. It's criminal. And my tax dollars are paying their salaries. My dad spent 5 years completing the short plat, along with over 50k dollars.

And of course, because the short plat was my dad's project, it's stirs up missing him, which stirs up grieving losing him, which colors all the other stuff I've already written about my week. I can only imagine how badly my mom is hurting through all of this. I know that the kids are far from done working through the sadness of losing him.

A few more weeks like this and it will feel like a vacation when school starts up in the fall. Public apologies to my neglected friends if I've failed to connect or left details unfinished. I think we'll have time to catch up in heaven. Or maybe next week.

First, you need a fire.

 I've, oh-so, wanted a fire pit ever since we moved here. Today the fates saw to it to make it happen. Which is actually just a contrived, sort of dumb way of saying that we bought one! Well, first you have to know that I pressure washed the bottom patio. Actually, first you need to know that I pressure washed the swinging chair I got for free outside of someone's house a few weeks back. It was green and slimy and my mom had to bring my dad's truck down to get it moved to my house and my kids thought it was disgusting, which it was. But it won't be. Ok, never mind all of that. We'll stick with the fire pit story.

I had to assemble the fire pit. 

Pretend that that sounds hard and you're impressed.

  Then we had to build a fire. I had actually moved a small pile of wood from our country home a year and half ago because I was so sure we would someday have a fire pit!

 Then Mia had to look creepy,
like something out of a teenage boy's video game.

 Then we had to be silly because we were so happy
to be moving toward the most awesome smores!

 Is more fun possible?

 Have you bought the jumbo marshmallows yet? Yummmmm.

Now we're just playing with the camera and flames and marshmallows.

Alissa in front of a camera...

Gosh, Lis, you have the best eyebrows. 

 Beautiful and sticky all at once.

How could a fun evening get any better?

Braden could show up. Unexpectedly. 

Two Make a Party

When Kaisha and Cody come over it feels like a party. We miss Kaisha when we don't see her for a couple days. It's so nice when she walks through the door. And Cody is Mr. Fun. He goofs around and plays with the little girls. He and Alissa give each other a hard time constantly. He's game for anything. Tonight was Apples to Apples. Even Ania played. Then brownies with peanut butter chocolate chips in the center. And spooning out the brownie batter at the end. Cody even ate chocolate. A tiny bit. How can anyone not like chocolate?

Emesis producing, viral loaded, diseased male. Poor man child. 

Run the Numbers. Not Good.

When you do the math on my Parent of Teenage Girls years, I have ten years down. Thirty-eight to go.

There is Collin, of course, who is 18. And being male, he pretty much rocked out on the whole teenage experience. He brings sanity to an otherwise wrong situation and has and continues to enjoy the perks of not being female.

There is Alissa, newly 15 and fully permitted to drive, who is the quintessential classic teenager. Amazingly strong and mature at the most surprising moments and shockingly dorky when you pretty much expect it. She's far more level headed than I expected her to be at this point. And I have great confidence that she'll be out of her teen years around the age of 21.

Then there is Mia. She's approximately 13 right now, which is a full 4 years ahead of schedule. If you do the math she will be a very pleasant person when she hits 19. The math works like this: a teenage girl is unreasonable and not at all to be taken seriously until they are 23, at which age they finally become nice. So if Mia is four years ahead of schedule and you stop being a teenager at age 23 if you are female, then she should be a decent human being at about age 19. Being that she is actually 9, I have ten years left with her.

Ania isn't anywhere near being a teenager in any form or nuance. BUT she is about as much work as fourteen year old twin girls. My estimated projection time for her is a bit grim. I think it will be about 3 more years until she is only as much work as one fourteen year old girl, which will plateau until she actually reaches 16, at which time she will progress from fourteen to the estimated time of female pleasantry, age 23. So, with the math that is (3×2)+7+9=22years.

Kaisha is twenty-one. She stopped being a teenager about half way through her 20th year. It was the best of surprises, completely unexpected, that she graduated early, since the theory of 23 was developed with her. The other shock was that it wasn't gradual. She was dreadful and then she wasn't. Pretty much overnight. Just ask her.

Total.....6+10+22=38. I have 38 combined years of parenting teenage girls left.

I tend to be a bit of realist and think we should deal with these types of things straight up. Thus this declaration to the world of people.who.have.nothing.better.to.do than read my long, fairly stupid blogposts.

The bottom line? The absolutely obvious conclusion we should all draw?

image by Alissa

Collin might do well to move out. Soon. Before...um...before...hmm. You tell me. What horrible thing happens to victims with toxic doses of estrogen exposure? It can't be good.

Although...two very good things that have come out of the whole unfairness are: one, he's never had a girlfriend. He knows faaaaaar too much about girls to be dumb enough to date one. And two, he will, I would bet my life on it, make THE best husband someday. The girls would be lining up for interviews if they had any idea how completely amazing he is.

Leave the Mess

image by Alissa

cute legs belong to Kaisha

I've never been happier to clean my house than today. 

For eleven weeks I've forced myself to walk past the messes. Decent grades and a sparkling house were mutually exclusive. I could pick one or the other. And while I'm onto true confessions, cooking didn't happen either. I think Grant cooked more meals in the past three months in this house than I did. (Yes, I fed the kids. And read to Ania. And watched Psych with Mia. And stayed up late laughing with my older kids. Just the cooking and cleaning didn't happen. No people neglect.) 

School won't always be like this. Just this quarter. Future class schedules will be the same or harder, but I won't be going through the stupid life drama that tainted every waking moment of this quarter. 

I finished my last Anatomy & Physiology test online this morning, and I have one more exam that doesn't open online until Monday morning at 6AM and I don't even need to study for that one. I'm so close to being done it feels like being done! So to celebrate, I've been cleaning house. 

You know how when someone has a terrible accident and they really, honestly thought that they were going to die ... and then they didn't die? And not only did they not die, but they made a full recovery. And then you hear how they see the world in a whole new light? The sky is bluer, the grass is greener, the sun shines warmer ... ?

That's how I felt about vacuuming under the couch cushions this afternoon. It was beautiful. I loved it.

I've never been happier to clean my house than today.

Coming Soon

When my classes are finished in a few weeks I will have 6 months off school before I (hope, hope, hopefully) start the program I'm trying to get into. I may need to get a part time job (only to pay someone to babysit? I could make a whole $2 an hour then! Ha!) But, even so, I'll have some free time again! And these are the things I'm excited to do:

[The reason I say "hope" is because the entry is done by a point system. I won't be getting the point for the BA degree, and I got a couple B's from 25 years ago that they are applying so that will bring my prereqs points down. And other people may have more job shadowing hours/points than I do. Last year they turned away almost half the applicants for lack of space in the program. So, it's really not a sure thing. Please pray! I would have to wait a whole year.] 

*organize my photos

*do summer school with the little girls

*scrapbook, knit, and make cards

*exercise - I miss it

*see more of my mom and dad and other family

*read

*study ahead for PTA stuff (my kids think it's the weirdest thing ever that I study before a class starts)

*see my friends again

*meet new people

*watch tutorials about my computer so I can learn more than the pathetically tiny bit I currently know

*follow the Rugby World Cup to watch for Sara in the stands and see Shawn play

*hang out even more with the big kids

*water my flowers, walk the dog, go to the range, cook real meals, drive somewhere ... 

 ... ahh, can't wait.

Two in the Picture

Love this picture. Two of my favorite people!

The nothing-exciting that happened today:

*schools were running 90 minutes late because of the snow and so we had a lazy morning.

*I did school with Ania in our cozy warm office much of the afternoon.

*Ania and I walked all bundled up to get Mia from school. We took Wellington.

*Alissa used my camera to take pictures with a friend for her photography class after school.

*We washed dishes by hand because our dishwasher is broken.

*There is a huge very dead rat in our driveway.

*There were adorable, tiny paw prints on the front porch this morning. We thought squirrels. But now I'm sort of thinking rat-friends? Ewwww.

*We sorted through books and found some stacks to get rid of. Bliss to Collin. Why does he have such disdain for my books? But then he had me put five of them back on the shelf. He hopes to read this summer! Gasp of surprise. 

*And some hard stuff. Four out of five kids having significant issues to untangle before 11 o'clock this morning. Divorce paperwork to figure out. Taxes. The house that I worked at cleaning off/on all day that is a mess right now. The school work that I didn't touch ... yet. An overly tired 5 year old. The afore mentioned broken appliance. 

In the end, it was actually a pretty quiet, uneventful, good day. 

What do they have in common?

I like to color.

I love my teeth.

I like my math book.

I love fat boys.

What do these four sentences have in common? There might be chocolate for the right answer ...

I just have to say ... I had a great Valentine's Day!

(Except the part where Jason at work dropped his knife on the back of my hand when I was putting his stuff away on a low shelf. I didn't want him to feel bad, so I hid the blood.)

Speaking of work (aka freejob), I love it. The whole PT scene is awesome. I'm so excited about being on the right job path. Hope, hope, hoping to get into the program this fall.

Last and First

My last child to lose her first tooth.

Toothless looks cute on her.

Other than the tooth ... last week included all the thrills of broken pipes and mr nice guy plumber, a meeting with the biology teacher, doctor appointments and antibiotics, job shadowing hours, way too long at the orthodontist's office, five exams, studying til midnight ... ahhhh. A much better week than the week before! 

Infrequent Posting

Pretend that these pictures actually make up 4 or 5 separate blogposts. Short is better. But short requires frequency, of which I have none. Life at our house. Lately:

This guy, one of Collin's more amazing friends (no slam on Braden intended), consistently makes my days. He came over the other day to unsqueak all the doors so they wouldn't wake sleeping little girls. He even brought his own hammer. On Sunday Dylan came with Collin to unstick my silly van from the snow. I stink at driving in the snow.  One day he chatted with Mia in the freezing cold while she was sledding. A while back he went to the grocery store for me! And he hangs out and talks. Flying helicopters, future plans, chemistry, black ops, squeaky doors, Colli-boo ... you know, stuff like that. And if I need anything, I'll call him.

Ok. It's what we're all thinking so I'm just going to say it. Kaisha is adorable. Beautiful. Her hair is like always right out of a Martha Stewart magazine ... or something. She's dresses unpredictably cute. She buys me my own half gallon of peppermint ice cream! Not to share. She comes over when I can't stop crying and helps me clean up my tissue mess. Listens to my woman's version of life that poor Collin seriously needs a break from. Says just one or two things that are the perfect one or two things. And before you know it we're all off to Starbucks. Ahhhh ... Kaisha is tops.

Can she even be normal for a picture? I asked her to try. She came pretty close.

Alissa was invited to swim in China. The letter starts out like this: Compete Internationally in one of the OLDEST CIVILIZATIONS on EARTH......CHINA during Spring Vacation! How cool is that? Raising $3000 by spring break seems a bit unlikely, but maybe half the fun is being asked. Her other piece of coolness for the week was getting to hang out at Starbucks Monday night with some of the Young Life peeps after the regular fun was cancelled by the snow. Megan's parents keep her in rides to make it happen.

If you get up close to Collin and look intently at his eyes you will find the most amazing pupils. I'm not kidding. Well, first you would notice his eye lashes. They are so long. Any girl would die for them. But his pupils are always huge! Twice the size of the poor person with less beautiful eyes standing next to him in the same light and everything. Oh, and did you know? I have all these friends (I can think of 3 right off the bat, but I know there's more) that are talking to me behind his back about trying to get their 8 to 10 year old girls married off to him! I'm not kidding. The mom's think he's the nicest, sweetest, coolest teenage boy ever. "You don't think 10 years difference in age is too much, do you?" I hear it all the time.

I love this picture of Mia. See her silly bands? They're all the rage from grade school to high school. Mia had only 2 days of school this week. Sick on Monday, early release on Tuesday and Wednesday, and Thanksgiving break. She's been reading a lot. I've forced her into a break from her favorite genre. Banned until January 1st. I think she'll be ok though.

 See my new boots?

She loves them so much she is sleeping with them. Right now. As I type. But don't worry. The doors don't squeak anymore. She won't wake up. Shhhhh.

The Lazy Blogger

Its a good thing that blogging isn't cooking dinner or doing laundry or I would certainly be in jail for negligence. It's been a month since I last posted. But I haven't felt guilty. Lots of very important things have happened in our home since my last blog post.

Such as the day we were at the beach and Mia said, in total seriousness, "Mom, when I bite my tongue, I see people in yellow."

Or the day Kaisha started her new job after being home from Europe only ten days.

Or the amazing way Kaisha and Nicole fell upon their new *little* rental house that they'll be moving into soon!

Maybe the greatest boon has been that Ania is starting to watch TV. Of course, I'll just admit it up front, that Kaisha wasn't allowed to know that motion pictures even existed until she was about 12, but things are different now. I actually offered the older kids MONEY if they would somehow TEACH Ania to watch TV. She has never sat in front of the TV for more than a few minutes and actually been babysat by it. She is more of the follow-my-mom-around-all-day-and-require-her-moment-by-moment-attention sort of child. Which isn't all bad, except when you want to use the bathroom, talk on the phone, or even just have a clear thought. Enter annoying chipmunk movie. She laughs and laughs. It's delightful.

I bought two of these little mugs in China last summer and love them. I love Starbucks. And mugs. So, especially Starbucks mugs. I'm so excited that I've had the China mugs for a year and nobody's broken them yet. Kaisha brought home the England/Scotland sets from Europe for me. I was so surprised. I love them! One day when NewSonAndi was over, he noticed the set and asked if I would like some from Germany. AndiSon came back from Europe 2 days ago and today he brought presents. Awwwww. Germany mugs for me!
He brought this little shot glass from his grandma's house for Collin. He said it's really old. And he brought German chocolate and candies for everybody! If I wasn't so busy, I would start the adoption process right now. I love that boy.
The picture I actually wanted to post is one that doesn't exist. That is: Collin (Yes, they spelled his name wrong.) in his scrubs! White pants! He has to wear white pants! He walks in the door, goes straight to his room, and changes out of them immediately. The shirt is brown so that helps. He started clinicals this week. He is assigned to a little old person in a nursing home. Other than that, I can't tell you anything because he obeys HIPAA laws. Six of his 18 summer school credits are the NAC classes at the tech school. This is a requirement for applicants to the RN program at WCC. I'm amazed and totally impressed with how he's doing with his truckload of summer school classes.

Seventeen days until Alissa starts swimming with the Squalicum High School swim team. Tomorrow she has a meet in Marysville with BBST. She has been to 8 practices this week.She loves it. Works so hard at it. Post coming about an award she won! I'm so proud of my girl.