Silly, Kind and helpful

Sean and Jake playing Wii. We've corrupted neighbor Jake. He'd never played a video or computer game until he started coming to our house. His mom had surgery and was in the hospital for a week and is still recovering so Jake has spent a lot of time at our house. I think the kid could stand to have his horizons broadened. He suffers from a lack of exposure to other children. He is so far behind at school, he can't read, he can't color. He is always the last one to get done wit his work. He is always kept in from recess. Don discovered Jake has something going on with his hands that interferes with his ability to use scissors. I told his teacher and she had PT do an assessment. They said, it's just deprivation. I don't by that. Granted he is the only child of a 50 year old mom and 60+ year old dad but it's not like they don't read to him or spend time with him. They've sheltered him and he hasn't been around a lot of kids his age but that doesn't mean he shouldn't be able to hold a pair of scissors. There is something else going on with that kid. His parents are socially awkward so it may be a he's a strange kid because his parents are strange. I'm not sure. His mom had him at 45 and he is her one and only child. Still, it's not like they abuse or neglect the kids. The other day Jake said "I have to play at your house because my mom is sick and my dad has to get a new hearing aid." Ah, the words of children of old parents.  He told Sean he couldn't wear his glasses at the dinner table. That one made me laugh.

Friday and Saturday were the annual bison round up at Antelope Island. Horse back riders gather up all the bison into corrals. Bison are tagged, get their shots and at the first of November they will auction off about 250 of them to keep the herd at 500. We counted 17 bison wandering around the island. I guess they weren't done rounding them up.

Checking out the buffalo. Sean said they were boring.

We went to the far side of the island to play on the farm for a bit.

 

 

Sean wanted to dress up like the Be-do minion from Despicable Me. We hot glued some cups on a head band from the dollar store and made a megaphone. Sean wore them all day and was still wearing them at bedtime. I was laying on his bed and he was sitting on the end of the bed with the cups on his head and I had to smile. I said Sean "I'm going to miss this when you are a teenager." He said "miss what?" I said "miss you being silly and wearing cups on you head. He said "I will still be silly when I am a teenager. I'm silly, kind, helpful and respectful, it's who I am." That's an excellent creed to live by.

Glasses

Sean got sent home with a little note from the school nurse that said his vision needed to be assessed by a doctor. Knock me over with a feather. We knew that was coming. The question I had for the eye doctor was "is his vision bad enough that he will see enough improvement that he feels motivated to wear glasses?" I don't want to have to nag him to wear glasses.  He said he didn't know and then proceeded to try and sell us $350 glasses.

I decided to go online to a website Catherine told me about where you can get glasses starting at 6.95. I figured it was worth some cheap glasses to see if he would actually wear them. All well and good except you can only try the glasses on virtually. You upload a picture and then try the glasses on the face. The only problem is there is no measurement of the head to correspond to the size of the glasses.  I order children's in a size medium and they are way to big. I re ordered some small frames, hopefully they will fit better. When he wears these too big glasses to school the teachers are going to feel sorry for the poor little boy whose parents can't buy him glasses that fit. These are the better fitting of the two pair I ordered and they look like safety glasses. Still, he looks cute!

Silly Pictures

Khloe playing with a magnifying glass.

AJ and his pretty baby (minus the magnifying glass.)

We went bowling and Steph went bowling with baby. We thought the bowling alley worker (kid) was coming over to tell us to stop bowling with the baby but he only wanted to sell us snacks.

Sean and Tyson played miniature gold with Don.

Sean and Tyson attempted to play with water guns in the hot tub. I think the water guns have seen better days.

Fancy saucer. So much to play with and such a short attention span. Sometimes she acts like such a baby:) When she cries I tell her if she's going to act like a little baby I am going to wrap her in a blanket and walk her like a little baby. That usually does the trick and she goes to sleep.  I told one of my students my granddaughter was a cry baby and they asked how old she was. I told them almost six months and they were confused, they said "that is a baby." Well, duh, that's why I call her a cry baby because she's a baby and she cries!

 

She's really interested in picking things up and is very observant.  Such a pretty baby. AJ and Steph keep debating who she looks like. Well gee, she looks like Khloe.  She's rolling all around. She'll be crawling before too long.

Sean teaching Khloe about Lego's. Sean said "I really like Khloe except when she cries then she makes my head hurt." Note Khloe is playing with a plastic lid to storage container. That's how she rolls!

The empty lake

When I think the reservoir can't get any lower, it gets lower. We went to the lake to take the boat in to get winterized. If we don't have snow and rain this winter I can't imagine what next year will bring. Scary.

There was a person water skiing. It looked like they were boating down a river instead of a lake.

After we dropped the boat off in Ogden we went to the train station for lunch.

Saturday in the Park

Empress came to play. We hadn't seen her in nine months. Sean was excited. They played in the park, played at the house and had a great time. Sabrina has been living at the Y again. She's talking to Jennie a lot. She said she is trying to convince her to stay in Texas. The sister Jennie has has been with got sent to jail but is now in a psych facility. Apparently the one kid that didn't get taken by DCFS as a child didn't fare any better than those that were taken. Now Jennie who lost custody of all her kids is taking care of her sisters kids. Sabrina said Ryan went through rehab for his meth addiction. I find that hard to believe. The story goes something like this: "Danielle found out she was pregnant when she jumped out of her car, that Ryan was driving. She was on drugs." Hm, guessing they were both on drugs. Weird to think how many half biological siblings Sean could have by the time he's an adult. Somewhere in that story Ryan ended up in rehab and he and Danielle haven't been together since. At least not as far as anyone knows.

This is Sean's poster for the Reflections program. The theme, Believe, Dream, Inspire...... Sean dreams about Mario and that's why he chose to draw these pictures. Pretty cute.

Pumpkin Patch

It was the perfect day for a visit to the pumpkin patch. A little cool but not really cool enough for a jacket. Khloe doesn't look very witchy.

Steph's cousin Gianni has been here taking care of the baby while Steph works. Khloe is doing all sorts of tricks. She rolls over and is thinking about crawling. I bought her a fancy play saucer yesterday  but she was mostly interested in playing with a wooden spoon.

Hm, Don put his head in backwards, so silly. Don's work contract with the VA is up for renewal. Not the best time to be in contract renewal mode with the Government shut down. So for all realistic purposes, he is unemployed. They told his group they could bill 24 hours this week. My biggest concern is insurance. Hopefully in January we should be able to get private insurance even with all our pre-existing conditions, until then we will COBRA.

Cute kiddos.

Alika came to the pumpkin patch too. She is also looking for a job.

"Seriously mom, that's the pumpkin you picked for me?"

Just adorable!

Sean held Khloe when Steph promised she would play Wii with him. Actually it was Gianni that ended up playing Wii. They got all the way to the end of the game and she defeated Bowser.

Sean's doing really well in school. I hate to even mention that he isn't having any potty accidents for fear they will start. I had him wear pull ups the first four days and he was dry so we stopped doing that and haven't had any problems. He really loves Chinese. He passed or exceeded all his pre-K testing expectations. Not exactly surprised, the expectations were not high.

 I was worried he was getting sick yesterday. I was at school helping out in the classroom and he started to cry (In English class) because he did not understand the instructions. I ignored him because the teachers don't like parents babying the kids in class. But the teacher sent him over to me. He never cries in class. Even the Chinese teacher came over and asked what was up she said "he's not one of the clingy ones." He cried during lunch because I didn't get to the lunchroom as soon as he expected but then for the rest of the day he was fine. He was OK at home too but his eyes did look a little tired like he was thinking about getting sick.  He slept good and he ate good.

Wedding

The wedding went off without a hitch. Nova was adorable in her little white dress. Dave's sister Donna and her husband flew in from Idaho.

Dan and Tiffani. The wedding quote goes to Tiffani who as part of her vows said that she would love and honor Dan and in the unlikely event of a zombie apocalypse she would obey. Gotta love that.

With the camera flash they look like a bunch of zombies. Maybe to apocalypse is coming.

Alexis and her boyfriend Chase. Addie came at the end of the reception when we were on our way out the door. She had just finished winning a volley ball tournament. I didn't get a picture of her. We left at 8 because our plane left at 6 a.m.

Matt, Tiffani, Dan, Dava and Don. They had a little memorial table set up with picture of family members who had died. Seeing Darci's picture on the table made me cry.

Dava, Dave and Don.

The boys! Calvon, Sean and Donovon. We only see the boys once or twice a year so the progress they've made is so obvious. They are doing amazing. Listening, sitting still, no outbursts. They haven't had any visits with their birth mom since their rights were terminated a year ago and their progress is amazing. Kudos to Dava and Ghan for lots of patience and love. I couldn't of done it. At one point the kids were chasing each other through the building and we were sitting at the table. I said "I wonder who the parents of those two biracial kids and that little Hispanic kid are. Seriously, they should control those kids." People were looking around but know one was looking at us. They are adorable and had so much fun playing.