Spring Break 2011

Wednesday we set out on our Spring Break trip! We went to St George to find some sun and fun with my cousin and her cute family. 

Here's the kids on the long drive down....

We rented a condo and checked in around five. We made dinner there and watched Tangled and went to bed. The next morning Rylee made us Chocolate Chip Muffins (from scratch) and then we were off to visit a ghost town! 

• Grafton Cemetery:

• Town of Grafton:

Then we stopped at a small park for lunch:

Then back to the condo for sun and swimming:

 That night we went to dinner at Samari 21 and then Paul treated us to chocolate fondue dessert at the steak house he works out. It was heavenly!

We played cards and a fast paced version of scrabble that night:

Crazy House we saw with very odd yard art:

The next day we packed up and headed to Ephraim to see Kambree in her Badgerette Review:

We stayed that night at a little B& B that was more creepy than quaint (at least in the "basement" suite that we stayed in). Austin went home with my parents as the old house/mildew smell was making him sick. These pictures were taken upstairs....which was charming and cute!

 The cute lady that owned the B& B made us a lovely breakfast.

 On the way home we stopped for some target practice:

 Learning gun safety 101 from Mr. Safety himself!

The second gun had a bit of a kick and scared Ry.

 The road trip home....

Alex Update....the good, the bad and the rambling.....

I've been re-reading each day about your adoption adventure which we were on exactly two years ago. I am so glad I blogged. It's so good to re-read and remember and realize just how far Alex has come. So here's an over due, way to long, and not that interesting Alex update:

• Today in church Alex was complaining that it was boring. I told him I knew a way it wouldn't be so boring, he could get up and bare his testimony. "No.", he said. "Next week." "Next week will not be fast and testimony meeting. Two years ago we were in Ukraine adopting you and you knew nothing about the Church. You could say something about that?" He shook his head but got up and walked to the front of the chapel.  His first words were "I am up her because my mom wants me to bear my testimony." The congregation laughed. He said he is thankful he is alive and that all of us are alive. He is grateful for the scriptures because they teach us about God and the Church is true. In the name....
• Alex had strep throat a couple of weeks ago and informed me that he had the same sickness in Ukraine and was put in the hospital for 28 days. TWENTY EIGHT DAYS and TWENTY EIGHT SHOTS. I asked if he went to school during his hospital stay? No. How often did he go the hospital? 6 or 8 times with the minimum stay of twelve days. No wonder he's so far behind scholastically. He told me how he was in a room with a little boy and an older lady. No one from the orphanage visited. No one came to see him.  As I gave him ibuprofen and brushed his hair off his forehead while tucking him into bed, I thought of him in a hospital bed without a mom or family to comfort him and how little and alone he must have felt. Hurts my heart.
• He is over Strep but now has a cold that all the children have been passing around. He informed me - very dramatically - about how sore his throat is when he coughs. I know. Being sick isn't fun. I think he felt neglected because I wasn't rushing him to the doctors but I know this is viral. Finally I just gave him some nasty cough syrup and he miraculously started feeling better. I explained in America we don't go to the doctors for every little sniffle, cough or pimple. 
• Friday night we had a wrestling match and I wrestled with Devree, Rylee and Alex -individually - and won! Twice! (It helps that I can't stand to be pinned so my fear of claustrophobia makes me very feisty!) After tucking Alex in to bed he crept into my room and asked if he could sleep with me? I told him if he wasn't coughing he could but that I didn't want to catch his cough. He understood. It warms my heart that he still wants to sleep with me. I wonder when he's going to realize that most boys his age don't sleep with their moms? I think I'll just let him figure it out on his own....
• He's been really hug-y and lovey lately. Last night after ten or fifteen hugs goodnight I asked him what he was feeling. "Like hugging you." "Why?"  "I don't know." He has a hard time putting his feelings into words. I challenged him to a week of not saying "I don't know." But to come up with the words that describe what he's feeling. He wanted a prize for this challenge and suggested a week of no journal writing. I agreed. I think I"ll just add a day for every "I don't know." rather than a one time win or lose. Trust me, he's going to need a few chances as he said "I don't know" within 10 minutes of taking the challenge. 
• Our road trip to St Geroge over spring break was a bit trying. I think anytime we take Alex out of his routine he gets a little over stimulated and many of the behaviors we've worked so hard to over come come rushing back. Our trip started off with Alex not doing his job properly and lying about it. For his consequence (this weeks vocabulary word) he had to write about what happened and why he did it. He was fine with that until James added "And write about how it makes your parents feel!" With that he shut down, started to cry and his eyes glazed over. We made a pit stop and I pulled him (literally) out of the car to talk about what was going on. After some coaxing I got that he was fine with me giving him a consequence but that "Dad is not nice!" I think it hurts his heart to disappoint his dad. James is a lot of fun and I think Alex considers him his "buddy"  and it's hard to realize that he's his dad too. (All my kids feel this way. Why is it when James says something they listen better or take it to heart more?)
• We went to SEP's this week and he's getting A's and B's. Wish I could find more joy in that but upon questioning his teacher about what he was actually studying in each subject I was sort of upset. For English he  1. Writes in his journal - it is not corrected or even looked at and 2. Memorizes a quote and recites it. I asked about worksheets? Diagramming sentences? Grammar? Writing assignments? Sentence structure? Nope nothing. In fact I realized that NOT ONCE has he had a creative writing assignment this year and only two book reports the whole year. (And the book reports were more like art project - decorate a cereal box about your book.) For social studies, they study as a group and write down the answers together. Good grief. This boy is going to be chewed up and spit out in junior high. I tried to talk with his ESL teacher but she wasn't around. The speech teacher claims he hasn't been turning in his assignments (What assignments?) and his citizenship grade wasn't very good. He's been talking and goofing around a lot. Great. I've got him scheduled to be tested at Sylvan this week. I am hoping that will give me ammunition to get him some additional help in school?
• The first day back to school after spring break Alex had to call home and tell me that he had a "black card" pulled. Which means he had three cards pulled in warning before the dreaded "black card" - which means you have to call your parents. He wasn't upset or even afraid. He informed James later (as I sent him in to talk to the boy as apparently he is so much more effective than me)  he "just wanted to have fun" and play baseball with his ruler and wadded up ball of paper. Good grief.
• Which reminds me about how his teacher told us that he should be playing baseball. That he has a really good arm. This we know. He can also run like the wind but he has no interest in playing baseball. Oh, well. I learned long ago not to put a child in a sport unless he really wants to play. (That would be me bribing Austin to play soccer at age 5 and he tying his sweatshirt hood into a little circle where only his nose stuck through and wandering blindly around the soccer field. OR playing goalie because "he likes to sit" but then getting distracted trying to find four leaf clovers in the grass! Nope. Not a first time mom anymore!)
• I have picked up quite a few good deals on clothes for Alex for next year. We were organizing his closet and cleaning out the too small items and he remarked about how many clothes he has. He was proud to realize that he has just as many things in his closet as the rest of the kids. It's not that I think he cares a smidgen about fashion or the latest styles. I think his closet full of clothes his proof to him that we love him just as much as everyone else!

Shout Out To Debra!

Yep.

Still alive.

Lived through Spring Break and a road trip to St George. 

More details to come.

But I just wanted to give a plug to my dear bloggy friend Debra, who I met in blog land when she started following my blog while in the process of adopting her daughter from Ukraine. We have never met, never spoke but we follow each others blogs faithfully and are facebook friends. (Who would have thought my circle of friends would extend clear to the east coast all because of technology?) 

She just sent me a box of hair-bows to have delivered to an Ukraine orphanage. I'm hoping to send them back with one of our families home for their ten day wait or one of families heading there soon! 

Debra is amazing, she just came home with her sweet Ali (who has the cutest dimples) in January and get this......she's headed back again this year to get Ali a sister! 

Check out this blog for a chance to win and I-pad AND support Debra, Ray & Ali add to their family!

http://ourukrainianfundraiser.blogspot.com/

Ry's Dance Pictures!

I love the back of these costumes!

Today I shared this story with Alex.

Alex, what if you decided you wanted to save a puppy that lived in an institution. You wanted to offer this puppy a life of love and happiness. This puppy didn't get the chance to do all the fun things other puppies did and missed out on a lot. It took a lot of time and money to get this puppy out of the institution but you knew you could offer him such a better life. You spent hours working with your puppy trying to teach him all the things he missed out on and all the rules of being a kind, nice puppy. One of the first things you taught him was NOT to bite. He understood and most the time was very good at not biting but just when you thought he had conquered not biting you, he would bite you! Hard and for no reason at all and when you were least expecting it. Would you like that?

No.

Would you like the puppy?

No.

But you would still love the puppy right?

Yes.

What should you do with the puppy? How can you help him?

Let him learn.

But how do you help him learn? You have tried everything. You've talked with him, you've taken away privileges, not let him play with other puppies, made him go to bed early. Nothing seems to work. The puppy will be good for a little while and then turn around and bite you when you're least expecting it. 

How can you help him learn?

I don't know.

Me either Alex. I don't know. I just know I'm getting tired and it's hard to be around you when you do things that you know you shouldn't. I don't want our relationship to be this way, you sneaking and doing things you shouldn't and me catching you and you getting in trouble. Do you like it?

No.

Is that what you thought having parents would be like? Is that what you want? 

No.

Me either.

And with that, the tardy bell rang and I told him he better hurry and he took his sad self and ran into school. 

Sigh.

It's usually the dumbest things, last night it was sneaking his Ipod in his room to listen to music LONG after lights out. We had had a rough spring break and I had just talked to him about being sick. You see, when Alex is at all sick, sore throat, running nose, sniffles, he expects me to magically fix him. He's so very helpless and pathetic about it. I realize that for every cough, itch or pimple the orphanage sent him to the hospital, but that's not how life is here. I explained to him that we all get sick and that rarely do we die from it. That if his throat hurts, tell me and ask for an ibuprofen, don't act like he's dying and/or much sicker than anyone else. (Yes, we've had a couple of sick kids over Spring Break.) Anyway, after our talk I went to get ready for bed and realized that I didn't really hug him goodnight and went back into only to catch him playing with his Ipod under his covers. Grrr.

On our trip it was not admitting he didn't have his toothbrush until two days into our trip.

Before our trip it was lying about doing his job when he hadn't and delaying us leaving for thirty minutes while James supervised.

On the ride home I had him list all the things he's had to learn since coming to America. As many as he could think of. Together we came up with sixty things. Some were simple like "chew with my mouth closed" (something he still struggles with)  and "not kick my sister" (something -thank goodness - he's mastered!) out of the list of sixty things, he feels he's mastered about 25. This list was probably better for me than for him. I needed to be reminded of how far he's come, how much he HAS worked on and changed and how many, many things he is working on and how different life is for him here. 

It was also good to get it from him the items he thinks he has mastered and what he still needs work on.