For James....

Dear James,

Yes, I got your text at six this morning telling me to turn off the sprinklers. I figured it out once I found a flashlight-however I had to get Austin to open one of the boxes. For some odd reason I couldn't get it to open and he walked out and waalaa-opened it with no problem. Go figure. Pretty much anything in the garage tends to have bad karma with me.

So, is it snowing in Wyoming? Or are you just psychic?

Miss you and love you!

PS (Anyone else watching this video-please know we are not morning people and Devree is acting like she is so afraid of me which in truth, is just the complete opposite! I think her look of fear is based on the fact that yesterday she DID tell me it was the 25th and she knows it! And that mess on my counter is not only oatmeal for breakfast but me making five lunches! Only six more days of lunches to go!)

PPS (Then it got even worse! The snow that is, not the lunches!)

Alex Update & Life At Our House

Alex's journal entry today was just too sweet not to share. (I have his permission by the way-in fact he wanted to know if I was going to put it on Facebook too!)

Here it is AFTER spelling corrections.
Hello my name is Alex. I am writing my journal here. Do you think that I write good journal? I don't think so. My family is really awesome. I have great life and everybody is so nice to me. I really, really like America. You can play with your friends. Do you know that? I am doing great on my English. I really want to say this to my parents, you don't know what I am going to say? My American parents are the best parents that I have. I am going to try to not lie to my parents. I will be the best gentleman.
Sweet huh?
For dinner tonight I made Butternut Squash Soup. (Thanks to my Bountiful Basket of produce!) My older kids said it reminded them of the soup they had at the etiquette dinner only better and Alex piped in with "That cause Mom make everything best!" Yeah....he likes me. Hard to understand why sometimes but he does. I'm always at the computer when he comes home from school and he'll come in and just smash his check against mine and wrap his arm around my shoulder and sigh. At least once but sometimes three or four times a day. He is also my executive assistant. Reminding his siblings when I've asked them to do something and they're not or I'm calling for them when they don't hear me. He'll shout at them, "Mom call you!" or "Mom say do job." Etc.
I asked how his core testing went today-it was on science-he thinks he did "awesome".
I love that he has such confidence. He knew he wrote a good journal entry-you should have seen how proud he was. He told me it was the first time his journal wasn't "baby". I had to agree. Normally he says the same thing over and over. I am doing homework. Today I play with friends. Mom make awesome dinner. That's the general theme of his entries. So today was banner!
In other news.....


I went outside and counted how many children were in our yard this afternoon after school. 21!! Yes, TWENTY ONE! I always wanted to be the Kool-Aid house on the block but twenty one?? That's a little excessive don't you think? That's more than a Kool-Aid house. Kool Aid only serves ten! Apparently we're the industrial size/Costco Kool-Aid house!
Austin merely had ten friends over, Devree and Jazmine a gaggle, Alex had two and Kambree had one. Rylee was with me inside.
When I left for rehearsal the number was down to five Austin friends. All boys and all that I recognized (which is not always the case). I made them promise to not do any stunts on the trampoline that would require an emergency trip to the ER and to make sure Austin mowed the yard.
When I got home from rehearsal at ten I had to wake Alex up to finish his job, get Rylee out of bed-to do her's and then told Devree she could not go to sleep until hers was done. Luckily the lawn was mowed or I would have made Austin do it in the dark. (Sigh) I don't like being the heavy. Maybe next time they'll get their job done during daylight hours?......... Or not.
Well, I'm off to bed myself. I should have been there an hour ago but kids were vacuuming and taking out the trash and sweeping floors. All sounds that are soothing to my soul and I love to hear....just not at ten thirty at night!!

What the kids have been doing....

Here's Kambree at Spartonian ball. She is busy preparing to dance for Spartan Spec, in her one act play, and doing all the senior year things. She's also needing to get measured for her Badgerette outfit so next Saturday we're leaving rehearsals early to get to the mother/daughter Senior Brunch then leaving the brunch early to run to Provo for measurements only to get her back in time to perform in her one act play. I really hope summer slows her down.....a little?

Alex was proud of his play last week and he is counting down the days until school is out.

Here's a picture of Dev with her awards from Galaxy of Stars! We have a parent meeting next week to see what being the VP of the ninth grade is going to entail.

Rylee served at her first wedding reception. This is her with the brides veil on!

And this picture needs a little explanation. This is what happens when your husband is called to serve on the float committee (making a parade float for the 24th of July) and a bunch of paper mach e rocks are dropped off in your driveway for painting AND said husband asks said son Austin and friends to do some painting-unsupervised. Need I say more?

Looking at summer....

So rehearsals started.
Rylee went Monday night and came home around nine so pumped. She couldn't stop singing. Even after I put her to bed I could hear her quoting lines from the play. She had so much fun. I think she is the only girl lost boy and she is loving it! I sent her in a cap with her hair tucked up in it to give her more of a boy look and feel. We're both going to be cross dressing in this play with Rylee playing a boy and me a pirate. Funny huh?
Last night we blocked part of act one (my Mrs. Darling part) and she worked on choreography. I finished before she did so sat in to watch and wait for her and Caleb-our neighbor boy who is also a Lost Boy. Rylee is having a blast and showed off her bruise this morning from hitting her knee so many times while dancing. (Dancing bruises are common at our home and Rylee was proud to show off her first!) Dev & Kam don't rehearse until Saturday and they will be dancing like crazy. I've worked with the choreographer before. In fact, I start dancing Thursday and I'm a little nervous. I don't like bruises or aches, or pain. And I know ALL of that is in store for me.
James is back to work. Sixteen days. Boo. Why is it his day's home go so fast and his days gone go so slow? He worked like a crazy man on Monday trying to get things ready for us. He had to get the sprinklers going-which involved re-doing the garden, got the central air ready to go, changed the furnace filters, filled the water softener with salt, got the lid out of the sink pipe in the basement bathroom etc. What would I do without him? I told him I would try really hard to not kill the garden or break anything while he was gone. Poor guy. He fixes things only to come back to a new list of repairs. I have figured out how to plunge toilets and get garbage disposals running with this work schedule of his. I've also learned how to bribe Austin and his friends to assembly bbq's, carry heavy stuff and open the wheat bucket. (I hate opening those!)
I am savoring every last moment of my quiet days of freedom. Ten and a half left. Then SUMMER! I look forward to not making school lunches each morning and the morning ritual of trying to motivate everyone out the door, I also look forward to Friday swimming days, and just hanging out but I am dreading the "I'm bored, there is nothing to do" whine that can be heard echoing repeatedly through the summer break. Sigh.
I've got Alex set up with a tutor twice a week, going to the summer reading program twice a week in June and then about six days of working as a peer leader for the summer program for the special education program in our school district. I'm working on gathering worksheets from the ESL teacher and the special ed teacher. I made a deal with Alex that if he will study for two hours, five days a week. (Including all these programs and his independent reading IN that total) he will get $100 at the end of summer. The catch is he has to be self motivated, look ahead at his schedule and work over the weekend if he needs to miss a day and have his studies done before eight pm. (I can just see him starting to study at ten pm to midnight!) He's excited about it. He's already made a schedule of how many minutes of what he'll work on. I'm thinking of offering him ten minutes of Rosetta Stone studying Russian in that two hour time frame in hopes that he can brush up and retain some of his language? I'll have to see what he thinks. He's so funny about Ukraine. He claims he doesn't like how it sounds. I think the sound of his language just brings back so many sad and bad memories? I don't know. I'll just have to talk to him and see what he thinks. I think I might have Rylee try to learn Russian and have Alex assist her? That might be a good plan....
I've always held "Mom School" over the summer with all my children. Some years I'm more motivated than others. I start out strong and by mid summer I fizzle to nothing. Having Alex has changed that. So both Rylee and Alex will have "Mom School". (Once they're teenagers-forgettaboutit!) For the most part the kids have fun-I mean seriously, what else to they have to do? Besides play mindless video games on end? (BTW I'm limiting video and computer time to an hour a day. I am a cruel mother aren't I?) And although we now have an antenna on TWO TV's we don't have Disney or Cartoon Network so TV watching is to a minimum. When we didn't have TV we just got out of the practice of watching it. We don't know anything about this year's American Idol, or who's even on Dancing With The Stars or tune in every week for a favorite drama or comedy. And guess what? It's wonderful and the earth has continued to turn and life proceed like normal without TV. I honestly don't know how we fit it into our schedule before. Of course, I didn't blog as much before, maybe I've only switched one vice for another?
Rylee and Alex are going to week long a day camp in June. Dev has Oakcrest and Girls Camp. Kambree has drill camp, Austin has scout camp and Alex turns twelve in July and will got for an entire week of scout camp too. Add Peter Pan rehearsals and performance at the end of June, school starts back up August 26th and we've got a pretty busy, crazy summer. But I'm sure not busy enough to avoid the prevailing whine of "I'm bored, there's nothing to do."
(Sigh)
Here's to my next ten and half days!

Kambree's Graduation Announcement

My talented & beautiful cousin, Michelle made these for us!
Thanks Shell!

Dev's Dance Recital

Believe it or not, this is the BEST picture I got of the actual performance!

Hugs from Grandma....

With both her Grandma's.....

With her Dad....

My favorite.....hug from Grandpa.....Dev looks so cute!

With friends.....

The whole gang (less Austin who did show up but skipped out after her first dance thinking she was done-ohh was he in trouble from Dev when she found out he didn't stay for the 2nd dance!)

Afterwards we went to our favorite ice cream place....Leatherbys!

My Uncle Brent and Aunt Elaine surprised my grandma by stopping in for the night. The were traveling stand by and re-routed through Salt Lake. While grandma was with us at the recital Aunt Deb picked them up for the airport and then showed up with them for ice cream. They had never met Alex before and we're so excited to introduce themselves and hug him. He had no clue who they were and was polite but Ukrainian indifferent towards them. Pretty typical. He had one relative in Ukraine-his brother. I think all the aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins in our family over whelm him at times.

Kambree is squishing her eyes closed for a reason! She woke up with pink eye! She had a date Friday night and was so embarrassed that her eye was crying and red and puffy. The next morning we had our first rehearsal for Peter Pan so she came with an ice pack and her sad hurting eye then we went straight to Insta-Care, out to lunch, and then the pharmacy-she actually slept in the car while Dev & Ry & I went in. She came home and crashed on the couch for three hours and Dev began the process of curling each strand of hair on her head for her performance. (So much for my plans of getting to the Horlachers carnival.)

Dev danced beautifully. We are so lucky to have such talented, healthy children. We're trying to talk Alex into taking a hip-hop class but he's not hearing it. Austin took a class ONCE and refused to try again. I think he was about nine.

Rylee IS going to be a Lost Boy in Peter Pan and Dev & Kam are Indians. I am once again Mrs. Darling and a pirate. Our lives will be a bit crazy here on out with rehearsals every night until the show at the end of June, but we love it!

We watched a copy of our last production of Peter Pan this afternoon. Alex has been singing "I won't grow up" over and over this evening. He would be a PERFECT Lost Boy but like hip-hop lesson's his answer to performing is....."NO." Just like his big brother. I guess he and Austin will just have to entertain each other while we're at rehearsals for the next five weeks!

She Made It!

So, we went up to the school to check and see if Rylee made it. I actually knew she had as a friend of ours had text me to congratulation Rylee before we made it to the high school. Her daughter made it as well but I wanted Rylee to experience reading her name on the list. I had my video camera out and interviewed her on the way in and when she saw her name she was jumping up and down and screaming and than ran to hug me and I realized I had not been recording the whole time! Grr.....

Afterwards I tried to get her to reenact it but it wasn't the same. On the way to the car I confessed that I knew already and Rylee confessed too. She knew as well! That stinker! We could have stayed home but instead we're both pretending that we don't know for the sake of the other. She had found out at school when another excited dancer who had already made it in to see the list reported to her right after school.

Oh, well. Sweet that we both were trying to make it special for each other!

Here is the video confessing to already knowing and then a 2nd reenactment for my benefit!

Junior Starletts

Last night was a big night for Rylee.
She tried out for Junior Starletts.
The first step in becoming a member of "Company". She was so nervous. When she first learned she qualified to try-out she was dead set against it. Her teacher told her there were thirty spots and sixty girls trying out. She made the tryouts sound grueling and terrible. Rylee and her friends unanimously agreed that they were ALL not trying out. Their conversation was hilarious as I drove them home.
"No way, I am NOT trying out."
"Yeah, only half will make it"
"And we're just ten years old"
Etc.
The were working themselves into a frenzy!
After a few minutes of ranting and raving I asked them what did they have to lose? So what if they don't make it. They won't know if they don't try.
To which I got a exasperated. "MOM!" and the conversation stopped.
Weeks passed-because of course the teacher brings this up a couple MONTHS before the audition. I finally talk to Rylee and convince her to go just to see what it's like, so she'll be prepared next year when she REALLY tries out. That sits well with her. "Yes, I'll go and just check it out." Yep, no stress.
Rylee is a fabulous dancer and she's been dancing since she was three or four. I think she has a very good chance of making it.
All week she's had butterflies but insists she's just going to "check it out." The day before I got one "I sort of hope I make it this year." but that was it.
I drove her up to the high school, went in and got her registered and she pinned her number on. Then my baby went in with the gaggle of other dancers all hoping and dreaming that they'll make it too. We were informed to come back in two and 1/2 hours!
I ran home, grabbed Devree, ran to her awards assembly where she was honored for being an exemplary Spanish student and having a GPA higher than 3.7 (It's a 4.0 by the way but her certificate say's higher than a 3.7)
Brought Dev home, helped Alex with English, folded laundry while he read and then set off to pick up Rylee. I wasn't sure what I'd be in store for. Would there be tears? Drama?
She walked out beaming and I asked if she was hungry. YES! So we went to Mimi's for a late dinner and I just happened to bring her spelling words and a notebook to give her a spelling quiz for tomorrows test while we waited for her food.
She told me she felt wonderful! Wonderful about her audition and about spending time with just me. "This is like a mom and daughter date!" She must have thanked me five times for taking her to eat and spending time just with her. I hadn't realized how few and far between these one on one times had become.
So, today is the day! The day we find out! The list for Junior Starletts will be posted at 3 o'clock at the high school. I have Kambree checking on it and texting me so I can be prepared. I won't tell Rylee but if it's bad news I want to be ready!
Cross your fingers and wish us luck!

Testing and Language Ramble....

Testing
CORE testing is this week for my kiddo's.
I've been worried about Alex and his testing. Monday I gave him a big pep talk. Just do your best, don't get frustrated, don't cry. Just do your best.
Monday afternoon he said he did fine.
I made sure everyone got to bed on time and made a big protein rich breakfast all week only to find out that there wasn't any testing for the last two days and for Alex there hasn't been any testing at all.
I got this email from Alex's teacher yesterday.

Alex will have his very first Core Test tomorrow. He did not have to take Language Arts but will have to take math and science. I gave him some word problems today to see what he could do, he was very frustrated. He just started to guess. I hope these core tests do not make him nervous.

So, whatever he THOUGHT was a Core test on Monday was not. (I mean, how was he to know? He probably took some sort of quiz or test and assumed it was a Core test.) Today is the day. We had a talk again about doing his best. Slowing down. Reading the words and really thinking about what the answer is, not guessing and NOT getting mad and frustrated.
I was sitting at the computer talking to him and he leaned down to hug me and than just plopped right down on my lap, wrapping his arms around me and laying his head on my shoulder. He sat there hugging me for a good two minutes while I rubbed his back telling him he can do this, he is smart, he could call me if he needs a pep talk. He nodded.
Language
This morning at breakfast Alex asked looked around perplexed, "We not having lunch today Mom?" To which I quickly responded. "No, you're not eating lunch on Friday's anymore." Then Austin pipped in with a "Yeah, we're trying to cut back on food costs." Alex looked shocked and then puzzled. I quickly said "Of course you're having lunch. Why would you not have lunch today?" Apparently because I was sitting eating breakfast and not preparing cold lunches? I explained that the question he needed to ask was "Mom, are you making our lunches today?" Has he ever not had lunch? No. Did he really think he would not get a lunch today? No.
I know that sounds trite, but I'm trying to get him to think about what it is he's wanting to know. He's wanting to know if I'm MAKING lunch. He's always asking questions that he knows the answer to. I thought it was just to talk for the sake of talking but maybe not. Maybe it's that he has a valid question but can't formulate it correctly so what comes out is a question that he already knows the answer to? Something for me to think about.
It's hard sometimes. I don't want to be correcting every sentence uttered out of his mouth so I try to repeat what he's asking or telling me correctly before answering or responding but sometimes I just answer like he makes perfect sense-even though he doesn't. It's like when your babies begin to speak and only the mom understands what the baby is saying. We're at that point. I'm always translating his English to someone else. Sometimes it's Rylee who can better understand. Sometimes Austin. But usually me.
It hurts my heart to watch him try and talk to others and they look at him puzzled or ask him to repeat himself over and over. Sigh. He gets frustrated and sometimes just shrugs and walks off.
I can feel his funny personality all bubbling up and yet he cannot express it. He doesn't have the words for his quirky comeback or funny quip. Or he does but it comes out all wrong and the minute he utters it silence follows as we all try to decipher what it is he's trying to say or how that is suppose to be funny or pertinent to the conversation.
His favorite way to include himself in the conversation these days is to ask if someone remembers something. "Mom remember in Ukraine? We have stinky apartment?" or "Remember in movie, car drive fast?" And usually these memory's are not exactly in step with what everyone else is talking about. I try to acknowledge and validate his comments but sometimes none of us can remember-or more likely understand-what it is he's trying to remind us of.
HOWEVER, I'm just so happy he's willing to try and talk with us and be apart of the conversation! Last year at this time I wasn't sure we'd ever have a two sided conversation. He has come a long way. The last six months he's improved triple to the first six. I told him as much this morning. He replied that that is because he cares about his homework now. Which is true to some extent. He cares to get it done and out of the way and for that I am grateful. And he's towing the line here so very well. Last night everyone had places to go except Alex. I left him home with instructions to finish his homework and take a bath. Rylee and I got home after nine and the house was dark. Alex had put himself to bed! I was so happy. He's been so obedient and trustworthy these days that it makes me misty just typing about it. There was a time I never thought he'd get it but he is, he's getting it! I think we might be on the down hill side? (Maybe I shouldn't have typed that for the fate's to see?) But I do feel hope. I think one day it will just all click in his head. He'll start talking in full sentences. He'll understand and he'll be able to express himself. He'll want to learn, he'll want to try, he'll want to do his best. Yes, I have hope. Hope and joy for my boy!

Guitar Lessons

James gave Alex his first guitar lesson. He was pretty excited about it but since the lesson he hasn't picked up the guitar. I think-like the piano-the fact that he has to work at it is discouraging? Not sure. I can't fault him on the guitar though, I tried to learn and my fingers hurt so bad and the fact that it's not really reading music but memorizing chords was very difficult for me. I had visions of me singing and strumming around the camp fire-after a few lessons- and it didn't happen. The truth is I can't play in the dark because I have to read the chord, find where my fingers go on the strings, strum, then take a few seconds to find the next chord. Grr....frustrating. Add to it the painful fingers and my vision of being the next Joan Baez quickly evaporated!

James on the other hand is self taught. He works at it every day and has learned quite a few songs and has lovely callouses on his fingers to prove it. I guess I'll just sing and play the tambourine and he'll have to sing and play with me!

Now if I can just get James to learn some songs I like. His first song was that terrible country song about how a man chooses fishing over his wife.

I'm going to miss her but I love to fish.....

Grr....what a terrible song!