Wednesday Rambles

1.  Brishen is quizzing me on where my thumbs are when I hold the steering wheel and when I start to turn in an intersection.  He must be in driver's ed.  I think it's Jon's turn to drive him around for a while.

2.  Basia has been insanely excited for her birthday.  The next time I see her, she will be 11.  Oh, my.  I'm not ready for this.  They bumped her up to the teen group at drama.  In one short year she will join the youth on Wednesday nights at church.  I'm just plain not ready.

3.  Brishen taught Roo how to say, "kick," today.  It's pretty cute, but I'm encouraging Brishen to use his powers for nicer words.  There is just something about Brishen.  I worked and worked on getting Roo to say, "love you," but it didn't work.  Brishen is also the one who taught him to say, "clap, clap."  I'm going to give him a list of the approved future words for fear that "take down" will be his first phrase.

4.  I got high compliments on how my kids acted in the nursery tonight.  ALL my kids.  That's a change!

5.  Jon is teaching a study on I Macabees to give some historical context to the time period before Jesus was born.  Tonight was the first night.  I feel smarter already.  A sweet lady from church asked me to join her Wednesday study on broken and blessed families.  I really wanted to keep from doing anything like that in the mornings because it messes with our school vibe, but I could tell that it meant a lot to her to have me participate.  It lasts for six weeks, and I know that my own life plans are not always the most important ones.  I have no doubt the study will speak to me.

6.  My school kids want to stay home.  Cassia had a stomach ache yesterday and wanted to stay home.  In the end I sent her because I could tell she was eating and playing normally.  Tobias hurt his leg this morning and was pretty sure that was reason enough to stay home.  I wasn't sure what we would do about school next year, but I am starting to think that I will keep everyone home to start kindergarten here.  I may change my mind a few more times before then, though.

7.  Soren's teacher told me that she doesn't think she will be able to challenge him this year.  She tells him something once and he has it down.  It's funny because I know he's smart, but my kids are all smart in their own ways.  Zade can play memory games way, way better than any of the other kids.  In fact, today I had all the kids sorting a huge basket of socks (that I hadn't folded in weeks).  Basia won the $1 for making the most pairs in ten minutes.  Brishen was a close second, and Zade blew away all the little kids.  Cassia knows her letters and letter sounds better than any of the others.  She also loves to memorize books.  As a homeschool mom I really try to figure out their learning styles and guess how they are going to learn.  This will be interesting.

8.  Basia is my gift wrapper.  That messes me up when it's her turn for a birthday.  Shucks, I'm going to have to wrap tonight.

9.  All my little ones call praying mantises, "pretty mantis," until today when Zade called one a "mantis pray," which confused me because I thought he was telling me there was a manta ray in the play house.

10.  These are the best purchase ever:

11.  Zade and Edison were sickish yesterday morning.  Edison kept falling asleep wherever he was, and Zade didn't eat his breakfast (if you know Zade, you know that's big).  Luckily they were back to normal by mid day.

12.  Tomorrow is the 9-month hearing for Roo's case.  The goal for him will most likely change to adoption by us.  That means we will no longer have to constantly tell people that the goal for him is still to return to his mom.  Even though that is always the goal, it seems strange to say 9 months into a case when the mom has only seen him 5 or 6 times since last December and is currently not responding to anyone.  It will be nice to hear the department and court make it official that the most likely outcome of this case will be for us to adopt even though it is never over until it's over.

13.  Shutterfly was giving away free photo books, so I decided to pick my favorite five pictures from each month in 2013 with an extra page of pictures added for birthdays and holidays.  In the end I realized that I have had 8-9 kids for much of 2013.  How do I whittle that down to 5 photos in any given month?  I ended up having to pay quite a bit for my free book (as they expected, no doubt) because of all the extra pages I added for extra pictures.

14.  I want to wake up at 5 to do silent devotion and start my day off right, but, when Roo wakes me up at 4:45, all I can think about is getting back to sleep even though the timing should be perfect.  I have the craziest dreams when I fall back asleep at that time and then I feel horrible and grumpy.  When will I learn?

15.  It's time to wrap the gifts and steel my nerves for another one of my babies turning another year older.