Where have I been....

Oh I have been here, parenting.... thru difficult teen years. Seems everytime we get two teens headed the right way, two more head off in the wrong direction and the last two start fumbeling.

My parents missed our kids and begged until we allowed two to spend two weeks with them after Thanksgiving. Both are homeschooled and my Mom was sure she could handle homeschooling.

This is the same Mom who had back surgery last summer, caught MRSA in the hospital and just got off many months of daily IV's of antibiotics.

My Dad is still recovering from cancer and from caring for my Mom.

Yet I gave in. I scanned, copied, printed school lessons for the entire two weeks. Less than a week later, I was on my way back to pick them up. My poor mother was worn out. Turns out my two were a bit harder than she expected, especially when their school work was added in. Boo likes to control the homeschooling and to be honest, I let her quite a bit. Ducky... well Ducky is smarter than every member of our family and is a con man to boot. He didn't actually lie to Grandma.... but he did mislead her with honesty, which frustrated her terribly.

I picked them up at the Great Wolf Lodge.... one of my brothers was holding his 4 year old son's b-day party there.... Wow, it was such an awesome place. We got there too late for the other 4 kids to swim, but they played for hours in the arcade.

Boo and Ducky were there all day and rode every slide. Uncle J said Boo was so much more couragous than last summer. Last summer, we went to another b-day party (we can't afford the Great Wolf Lodge and are so glad our kids occassionally get invited to parties there)... and Boo would only go down water slides that allowed groups. One big round raft held 6 people. Several of us were a bit larger than average.... OK maybe a lot larger than average. Boo sat between us large folks... OK putting the two largest people on one side of the raft... not smart. We came so close to flipping the whole way down. Boo, instead of crying, laughed her little heart out. She made us ride it over and over. She later became lost at the water park. I found her. Uncle J was suppose to be watching her. He trusted Blondie to take her down a slide. He went to the bottom to "catch" her. Boo changed her mind and instead of walking her back to Uncle J., Blondie told her to walk back and Blondie rode down the slide, leaving poor Boo to make the long, winding walk back down. Now the sad part, the entrance to the slide was on one end of the park... the exit on the other. So Boo was headed down to an entrance.... and Uncle J. was on the other side of the park waiting at the bottom of the slide. I had Uncle J.'s son with me, going down a two person slide. We exited just in time to see Boo walking down the steps to the entrance gate, all alone, with big tears, and obviously very scared. We took her hand, as she told us what Blondie had done, and knowing Uncle J. would be terrified, started walking toward the slide exit. We met him a few minutes later, him looking like he was ready to have a stroke. Once he saw us with Boo, he wanted to lay into Blondie. Amazing how worry can change to anger once you see the child is safe, LOL.

Anyway, I get the kids back home from Grandma's... and Boo cannot sleep alone anymore. She is back in my bed. I asked her why and got this response.... "Momma, I am conflicted".

Not exactly what I expected from a 6 year old.

I asked her what was causing this confliction. She responded, "Well I use to sleep with you and Daddy, then by myself, then I went to Grandma's and I tried to sleep by myself, but I couldn't, so I slept in her room but in my own bed. Then one night, I got scared and she let me sleep in her bad. Now I am back home and I just cannot seem to sleep unless I am with you, but I really want to sleep by myself, and it all makes me so conflicted. I just want to cry".

I went back thru all her homeschooling lessons, and "conflicted" was not one of our vocabulary words. Not sure where she picked up conflicted, or how she knew it's meaning. Hmmm... maybe I am not a half bad teacher after all.

I do worry about my teaching. I don't follow the class plans completely. I improvise quite a bit actually. She is only in first grade. I worry because math doesn't seem to click yet. She passes all her assessments. She can do the worksheets. But she still needs tools to do them. She has counting cubes, number lines, her fingers.... all used to add and subtract. She counts great, but when doing before and after numbers, the 10's mess her up everytime. For instance, if I ask her what number comes before and after 69, she will get 68, but mess up 70 every single time. And it almost brings her to tears that she cannot grasp this concept. (I am trying to be careful not to add more conflict to her little life). Right now, I am just calming her and waiting for it to click but some evil voice keeps telling me I need to push her to memorize her facts and push her to grasp these concepts. I am shoving that evil voice away, but boy does it pound at me sometimes. Her reading is incredible. She can sound out almost any word. Does this build my confidence as a teacher... no... because she reads so slowly. She reads words, not sentences.... and it worries me that it takes her so long and so much sounding out to read a sentence. God must have felt my worry because Boo found my old "Dick Jane and Sally" book. She started reading it and was reading sentences. She stopped and said, "Mom, I can read this book the same way you read". Poor Boo had noticed that her reading was slow and broken too... and I hadn't realized. So now, we have added reading Dick Jane and Sally each day to her Phonics program and guess what? Boo is now memorizing her sight words. She is down to 5 or 6 that she does not know by sight. I ordered more of the old Dick Jane and Sally books from Ebay. They are such a confidence boost for Boo. Now if I can just find a confidence booster for her math..... I want her to be as happy with math as she is with reading. Did I mention she is reading her Phonics books quicker now too.... Who would have thought those old 1940's books would have made such a difference to a young reader. I know DJ & S are considered bad learning tools because there is no phonics... but Boo is getting 80% Phonics from her school work and 20% memorization from DJ & S. So far it is working great.

The older three that I am homeschooling... well when they are not trying to trick me, they are doing fairly good. The two Jr. High boys are ahead of where they need to be. Our high school boy... he is just content to barely pass, which frustrates me to no end. He is incredibly smart but school.... he doesn't really care. He is such a good kid. He works full time on a farm and it is hard work. He was sick one day so I did his chores. They were tough. He does them twice daily. He doesn't complain about anything. I just wish I could get him to understand that passing is not good enough, he needs to be learning as much as he can.....

The two that are in public school... High school boy is doing great. All A's and two B's. And both B's are very high. He may actually get straight A's. Wow, not something we get very often. He is wrestling which keeps us running all over the place. He is on varsity again this year and very, very happy.

Blondie is barely passing. She finally realized she was going to lose a chance to be in a specialized choir due to her grades and is now trying to bring them all up.... she only has four weeks so we will see. She had her winter concert and did a great job. She is also into poetry.... all deep love poems where she opens her heart to the boy who just won't look her way.

Cute story though, I took her to get highlights.... and a hair style... and when we walked in, a teen boy was there getting his hair cut. He looked up and broke into a huge grin, waved and called her by name. He was a real cutie. I sat and talked with his Mom. Turns out, he was the boy Blondie loved last year. But he hurt her feelings and she said they really were not friends this year because of his hurtful words. I tried to tell her that boys are so busy trying to look cool to other boys, they sometimes say hurtful things they don't really mean... and based on his huge smile when he saw her.... and the way he watched her the whole time he was in the beauty shop, she might want to give him another chance....Plus he was really a cutie. She said maybe. The woman who cut her hair, turns out her younger brother is the boy Blondie is in love with this year. Small, small world.

When we were at the Great Wolf Lodge, Blondie ran around with a boy she met. They played games together for hours. Little Boo kept watch, very unhappy that I was not putting an end to this boy flirting with her sister. Ha.... I didn't have to keep watch, Blondie's pit bull baby sister watched her very carefully, and at times, ran up and pushed them a respectable distance apart. It was really cute.

Stresses.... grades... schoolwork.... boys and their hormones.... tantrums as a result of those hormones... anger fits that come out of nowhere and vanish as quickly as they came... Of course the hour the fit goes on and on and on... makes me want to buy gifts for all our neighbors who surely must hear my sons screams of anger. If we had not already been thru this twice already, with young teen boys, I would truly believe my son had mental problems. As it is, I joke with him asking him how many personalities are living in his body right now.

Employment... I am laid off... my husband is getting laid off..... times are tough. God is good though and for the past year, has been burdening me to stockpile food. We are set on food for quite a while. And hopefully, jobs will return. Mine is suppose to resume Jan 1. Dad's is suppose to return the end of Jan, or Feb... or March... or never. The problem is, my job is part time and does not offer insurance. So when Dad's goes... He, Boo and I are out of insurance. The rest of the kids have medical cards since they were adopted from foster care. I get paid more for this part time job than any full time job I could find out here in the middle of God's country. And it is work from home!!!! We are not sure what we are going to do... so we wait... his insurance will cover him for a time... and until that time runs out.. we will stick it out. Keep us in your prayers, those of you who pray. We are in great shape financially, only owing a small amount on our house. But all our cars have 200,000 miles on them. Dad hit a deer, putting one of our old vans out of commission until we get it fixed (we bought the parts from a junk yard, under 100.00, to fix, but have to find someone to fix it cheaply). Another needs new brakes. So we are down to one van and one car, too small for our entire family to fit in. Anyway, I hate to quit my little part time job.... just because of insurance. Plus I wouldn't be able to homeschool anymore... just hate the idea of going back to losing two hours a day with my children, driving to and from work... and another 9 hours actually working. Aghhhhh.... if I must, I will.... but God willing... it won't come to that. We really, really try to live meagerly... but there is only so much we can cut out of our budget.... I still want electicity... I still want phone service... If I want to work from home, I need internet... we can do away with the kids sports and those costs.... we can do away with TV again and that cost.... we can eat more eggs and beans... both cheaper meals... more pasta's... more canned veggies and fruits instead of fresh (which I hate to do but if we have to, we have to). WE already keep our heat low... we like it cold. We buy sides of beef to save costs, and freeze it.

I spent too much on Christmas, but to most, it would be considered a very modest Christmas.... certainly nothing like what my brothers and sister will spend on their kids. We are by far the most modest spenders in our family. I got great deals, as usual... but became addicted to Ebay for some used accessories to go with their main gifts... and won too many auctions. Dad was not happy with the bill....not at all. And who could blame him.... knowing we are going to be living on very small unemployment checks for the next few months. Aghhhhh... I was a bad wife.

Did I mention we have four teen boys to feed... who all have bottomless pits for stomachs!!!!

Teen1 works full time as well as goes to school. He puts almost 100% of his checks in the bank for college. He would help us if we needed it, but truly, I would hate to take any of his money when he is saving so deligently. If he were wasting it... I woudn't mind him helping us get by. But he is saving... and I just admire saving so much.

So how do I handle the worrying... I don't worry about it at all. I am serious. I try to save money where I can, not spend foolishly, try to find things to cut out of our budget.... but I am not worried. God has been so good to us. He has always been there for us. I am certain when we need something, truly need it, God will provide it for us. If he doesn't provide it, we didn't need it to start with.

Dreams.... I can't stop dreaming about owning a farm. I am serious. I want a self sufficient farm. I want to grow my own food, save seeds from my crops for the next year, and feed my family. Teen1 works on an organic farm. We get our milk and meat from them. Spanky loves helping out on the farm. He begs to help. He is too young to work but we do let him go help, just for the fun of helping. And he loves it.

This spring, he will be old enough to work a small amount of hours and the farmer has told him he will work him this summer. He is so excited.

I see my boys working together on that farm and it warms something inside me. It must be doing the same to Dad because I have caught him web searching for farms on more than one occassion. But even a modest farm is half a million dollars. Goodness... how does a person get into farming, when the start up costs are so high. It is just crazy. And we would need 150 acres or more to be self sufficient. I would want to grow the hay and feed for our animals, on our own land, all organically... as well as garden for our family to can/freeze. Our boys want dairy cows of course....and meat cows..... I want chickens and eggs.

But the yearning won't go away. It reminds me of the yearning we felt before adopting Boo. We were sooooo done with five children. We had no desire for a sixth.... until this yearning hit me that would not go away. It was a crazy yearning. It became so bad, I was crying at night. Now, we have this incredible child who simply amazes us daily. She fits right in with our other kids.

I wonder, is this farm yearning, God preparing us for what is to come... as the yearning for Boo prepared us to open our hearts to adopt one more time?

I do know, with a certainity, if we somehow came into money, that farm would become a reality and our boys would run it.

The boarding school we sent our eldest to was a working farm. There is something about farming that is good for children with special issues. It builds up the man inside of them..... it worked with our son and many, many others before him.

OK enough of my rambling about frustrations, stress, jobs, dreams, kids....

All of the above shows that even though we have not been posting... we are here... alive.... healthy.... and for the most part, happy.... except during the stressful parenting times... you know, those times we wonder what in the world we were thinking when we adopted six children, five so close in age that they would all be teens at one time!!! What the heck were we thinking. And at times we wonder... will we ever be finished parenting... will there ever be a time where our kids will not need us.... and if that time comes... will we be as sad as my parents are. They hate not being needed as much as they use to be needed. My dad even craves these crazy teen years. It is hard to fatham that I might one day wish for these teen days.... and it makes me feel for my poor Dad who is so lonely. Goodness I hate living so far from him....

Keep us and our jobs in your prayers and have the Merriest of Christmas's ever!!!!

Sorry for the long absence.... I will try to get pictures of all the kids soon. They are growing so fast.