Terminated

We received a call today from the boys layer informing us that the judge has ruled to terminate the rights of both parents for the boys. There is of course an appeal period and such, but my understanding is that there really isn't anything to appeal on. At this point the state will file paperwork to finish out the process and we should have an adoption finalization court date in a few months. We'll keep you posted on that one. But for now, the biggest hurdle is over and it's just waiting for paperwork.

Happy New Year!

Christmas

Well, it's a good thing we started Christmas early, because on Christmas it wasn't very Christmasy around here. We got a little gift from DCF, the boys had a visit with their birth dad last Friday, and DCF was a hopping place. It really was quite sad, watching all the kids visit with their parents and knowing that's probably the last time they'll see them before Christmas....and knowing that there was a reason for it. For me sitting watching everything while my boys were visiting it was hard to watch. Anyway, the moral of the story is, I think the visit gave the boys the stomach bug. We went to church Sunday with no signs of anyone being sick, and we left after first service when I picked up the boys and was told that Little Boy Blue threw up....although they thought it was because they filled him with goldfish and then spun him around...but when he threw up on me again in between services we knew it wasn't the goldfish. He was fine the rest of the day, just really subdue. The next day I took the girls shopping and to the library, I came back and Green Machine was on round two when I walked in the door. At that point I knew there was no hope for Christmas. I ended up sick early Tuesday morning (midnight to 4 am ish, aren't I thoughtful to be sick while the kids are asleep?), and slept the entire day Tuesday while Nathan watched the kids. Nathan and Hannah were down for the count on Christmas, and Evie managed to hold out until yesterday. But we managed. I learned a couple things, six people do not eat very much when the stomach bug is going through the house, so all the food I bought for this week is still around. I can get a lot of laundry down while people are sick. And when Nathan wants to do everything on his to-do list for his break on the first day of his 12 day break I shouldn't stop him :-) Last Saturday he started trying to do everything, I suggested just relaxing the pace a little, as he had almost two weeks....I was wrong. Anyway, I hope you had a very Merry Christmas!!!!!

starting Christmas early

We really started Christmas the day before Thanksgiving. My kids received some wonderful gifts from the boys foster parents (Thanks Barb and John, the kids have really been enjoying the gifts! They did the crafty stuff almost immediately and have been enjoying the chalk boards ). Then the day after Thanksgiving we did Christmas with my side of the family. The girls enjoyed making some window stickers from Aunt Rachel and Uncle Magnus the past few days. But there have been more gifts coming in the mail recently and we've been opening most (not all) of them as they come in and enjoying them. We received some Psalty CDs from my parents and my girls have been listening to them non-stop, we received amazing gifts from my sister and her husband (thanks Becca and Lucas, we got the gifts yesterday) and Hannah and Evie have enjoyed the fun books from them. The book they sent to Hannah was a Klutz foam book for creating pictures. Here's what Hannah made today:

If you can't tell, the one person is a baseball player with a ball in his hand and the other is doing a split. 

Hannah has really gotten into doing art with shapes, I meant to post this picture too: 

It's a clown juggling....and it's for Dad if you can't tell :-) 

Anyway, I think we've found some good art outlet for Hannah!

We've also gotten some super cute clothes from my mother in-law that all the kids enjoyed today on our Houston weather day (muggy and 65). 

Aren't they cute?

no more cribs

Monday or Tuesday this week I wasn't paying much attention to the boys as they were napping, until they started getting really loud, so I went in their room. Little Boy Blue was in Green Machine's crib....hmmmm that wasn't how they started....I put Little Boy Blue back and left, checking them again a little later Green Machine was in Little Boy Blue's crib. Apparently they not only know how to climb out of their cribs, but back in as well. They managed to break Little Boy Blue's rail during that nap time, so we have removed it and he now has a toddler bed. We're going to remove Green Machine's next week. Right after Thanksgiving we also switched them from high chairs to sitting at the table. They are quite the big boys now!

The trial

The past week has been busy (see the posts below!), but it's all coming to an end. Today was the TPR (termination of parental rights) trial for the boys. We got up early and had the kids to their places by a few minutes after 7 am. The girls went to a family from church and the boys went to a friend of mine who we do AWANA with and is a foster mom (it's way easier to do it that way when having to deal with the state). After the kids were dropped off Nathan and I headed across the state for the trial. What should have been a two hour drive took us two hours and 40 minutes, due to rush hour and accidents (yes, more than one, three in fact). Fortunately, we had been told to get there between 9:15 and 9:30, which I translated to 9 o'clock because I didn't want to be late. When we got there at 9:45 we found that the boys birth dad wasn't there yet and their birth moms lawyer wasn't there yet. The lawyer didn't show up until 10:30, so we had gotten there with plenty of time! It was an interesting experience to sit through the trial and hear the case against the boys birth dad. Their mom was just there to give her consent to termination and was in and out fast. Since we were there early it gave me a chance to have a nice chat with her before the trail. We got out of there around 12:45, so it ran a little longer than I was hoping, but that was because it started late as well. We did stop and have some good Mexican! afterwards, something we can't find in our part of CT, so that was fun. We should have the ruling before Christmas on the case, so that will be kind of nice. The kids made it through the day fine. My friend who had the boys said they were super well behaved and very polite. She had seen them at their finest (sarcastic) at our house last week, so she was surprised they behaved so well. But that's how all my kids are....they're super well behaved for other people. The girls had a blast at the house they were at, it's a home school family with four kids ages 9-13 (no twins, just four kids in 3 1/2 years, crazy!) and played outside and did legos and such. They also watched movies, which is always a treat for them and not so much for me. Evie couldn't fall asleep tonight until after debriefing the movies for half an hour and sobbing over some of the parts.....ahhhh....my sweet baby girl. But we all survived and are looking forward to a calmer day tomorrow and a very calm next week!

a snowy Sunday

After all the snow Saturday, it had cleared up by Sunday and the roads were nice and clean for getting to church. The driveways however were not. We got our shoveled enough to get out and made it to church for first service so we could teach youth Sunday school. There was only one youth there, so we cancelled it and helped out with the younger kids, since a bunch of teachers hadn't shown up. I did nursery first service, which meant I had six kids on my own, two of which were mine. The boys are normally very well behaved on Sundays at church, at least this is what they tell me. I had them both in time out twice during first service....Nathan did nursery second service, he said they were great...he also had enough teen helpers to have one for each kid, instead of six kids on his own. Anyway, I make some comment about the boys not behaving during church and he gives me this funny look, like what are you talking about. Apparently my kids love me enough to not listen/obey/care about what I say, but are perfect angels for everyone else. You gotta love that :-p but I supposed it's a good thing.....

Work "open house"

Every year Nathan's work hosts a family "open house" ie Christmas party. Well, this year it was the day after fudge making, so it made for a busy week, but we went to it. The girls slept in until 9:30 on Saturday! That's super late for them, also the time that the open house started, but we weren't about to wake them up to go. After the girls got up, we got out of the house and dropped off all the fudge at the post office. It was also very snowy on Saturday, so it took us a little longer than normal to get down to Nathan's work. But we made it there around 11, which was just in time to see Santa who has elves that give gifts to all the kids and for the girls to go to the magic show. The boys watch for about 15 minutes and then I took them out and got them lunch. The girls really enjoyed the show.

Evie also had time to get her face painted before the magic show. 

The boys, especially Little Boy Blue were slightly terrified of the large costumed people. Green Machine did okay, Little Boy Blue had a death grip on me the whole time we were near them. 

Unfortunately after the magic show everything was closed up, so the kids didn't get to get the balloon animals, but we did get to see Nathan's office and it was a good experience for the boys. By the time we left the snow had stopped and our road had been plowed, which is good, because otherwise we wouldn't have been able to get up the hills to get home :-)

fudge making 2013

Last Friday Nathan took the day off of work to do our annual fudge making! We won't talk about my attempt and complete failure to make some of the batches on Thursday, so we'd have less to do on Friday. We'll just talk about the fact that we made 60 lbs of fudge on Friday!

Here are some of the ingredient. Those are the base, there were many other things used as well. 

This is Tim, he came over Friday night to help make/pack the fudge. He's a co-op at Nathan's company and goes to RIT and is on servant team for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship there. We were very involved with IV when Nathan went to RIT. Tim was also home schooled, so it's been fun having him over and getting to know him. 

 

22 packed boxes!

I totally forgot to take pictures of the kids helping with the fudge. All of the kids helped stir and did quite well. I took the boys to the library (because Fridays are their library story hour day) and Nathan said the girls were a huge help and did almost all the stirring on the batch he made while I was out. The boys thought stirring was the best thing every and now the ask to stir everything and anything I'm making. We changed up the flavors a bit this year (as we've done every year) and ended up with some color in our fudge (mainly because I didn't think to buy enough white, white chocolate melting wafers), red peppermint, green Oreo, at least they were Christmas colors right? :-) We also had a record fast delivery, my Aunt and Uncle in Albany got their Sunday afternoon! Watching the tracking on the packages was fun, as weird things happen with your mail. My sister Becca's package went out for delivery Monday morning, but didn't actually get delivered until Tuesday.....I guess it got lost in the truck. And the slowest package was to SC, but it made it to CA by Monday. Interesting how mail travels.

Ginger Bread Houses

Last Wednesday we hosted a youth group "ginger bread" (we used graham crackers) house contest at our house. We put the boys to bed at the start of it (7 pm) and let the girls stay up and join the fun.

Starting supplies! At least most of them, I think they ended up using eight packages of graham crackers.

These two lovely young ladies took Evie in and had her helping with their creation. They were super sweet with her all night!

Hannah decided she wanted to work on her own and did a great job!

Evie added a beautiful pattern of M&Ms to the bottom of the fence.

The craziness at the table!

And people working at the kitchen island.

Hannah was part of the island group. Isn't hers looking good? 

A close up

And here are the final results of all the kids hard work!

This was a dance club, with water outside it and gummy bears dancing.

We ended up with this one because the girls who made it didn't want to bring it home. Everyone has been enjoying eating this one along with the one Hannah made. 

NY City anyone? This is the one Evie worked on, you can see the fence better in this picture.

The guy who made this one told the story of Jesus' death and resurrection with it....there is a gummy bear instead it :-)

This was the golden gate bridge with a car on it!

This bowl was all that was left of the candy.

Snow Day

Last Tuesday and this Tuesday were snow days for the local area schools. Nathan has found this a bit amusing, as he does a 6:30 am Bible study on Tuesday normally and has driven to it the past two weeks to find it's cancelled since school was cancelled before it's even really started snowing. Oh well, he's gotten into work early those two days which has been a good thing! Anyway, the kids have all been enjoying the snow, last week all four of them were out playing in it. It was perfect snowball snow and the girls made some huge snowballs. It then got colder and I haven't had the boys out since, but the girls have been enjoying it every day.

 I love the look for a fresh snow fall! 

The girls working on their snowballs

Getting bigger.....

So big they had to work together to push it.

Snow angel!

 A snow angel, or a smiley face, depending on how you look at it :-)

 Just chillin' out.

nap time

I told the boys to lay down and go to sleep when they were in their cribs for nap time. Little Boy Blue was not so happy about this idea and started crying. Green Machine was talking to him and Little Boy Blue stops crying says "I'm crying!" in a normal clear voice and then starts crying again. Oh to be two!

Mama called the doctor.....

No, I did not have little monkeys jumping on the bed. I read the book at least twice while at the doctors office today. We came in and found that our appointment that had been made, was made accidentally for tomorrow instead of today, and for the wrong twin (apparently you can't see their first name when selecting them for an appointment, I told the person to make sure she had the right one because she was new, but I guess it didn't happen). It turned out okay though because we got to see the doctor instead of the nurse. Anyway, the doctor walks in the room, says hi to all the kids and asks "What happened to him?" referring to Little Boy Blue. Little Boy Blue did not report, much to my disappointment. So the doctor took a look at the scrape, decided it needed some silver sulfadiazine cream on it and that he'd fix him up. The doctor said the cream should help prevent scaring, we'll see if it works. Then he took a look at Green Machine, whose ear infection didn't clear up at all and gave me a new antibiotic for him. I mentioned Evie wasn't feeling well, so he decided he should get her chart out and take a look at her. Evie and Green Machine both had a low fever. Evie has a sinus infection. We walked in for one appointment and walked out with prescriptions for three kids.

slacking

So I've been totally slacking and haven't updated the blog in two weeks. Sorry everyone! We had a wonderful Thanksgiving in Maryland last week. We got to see my family (all my sisters were there, plus my Mom's family) along with the boys foster parents and some good friends from Texas who now live in Maryland. We made it through the holiday with only a minor injury and ear infection. Little Boy Blue fell off a railing at the school behind my parents house on Friday and ended up with a large scrape and even larger goose egg on his forehead. Green Machine had the ear infection, which we made it to the doctor last Friday for and he's been on antibiotics for the past week....although I'm not sure it's getting better, so we're probably taking him in tomorrow. Little Boy Blue's head is heading nicely, after hitting it twice last Monday and causing the scab to fall off, I'm hoping this second scab lasts until it falls off naturally. Whenever Little Boy Blue hears someone ask what happens he says "fall off railing. fall off railing onto concrete" because he's heard us say it so many times. It's super cute :-) And now he can report his own injuries to his social worker!
The other resulting funny story from Thanksgiving is the girls response to "Did you eat lots of turkey?" They reply "No" and then whoever asked the question looks at me like I am anti-American for not having turkey on Thanksgiving. I assure them there was turkey available, the girls just chose not to partake with all the other wonderful food available.
I hope everyone had a marvelous Thanksgiving. And maybe I'll get back into the blogging routine soon! 

deer

I went to CVS tonight with the girls after putting the boys to bed. We drove there, got lots of good deals and then headed for home. On the way home the car right in front of us hit a deer. There was a group of deer that ran across the road. I had to slam on my breaks to avoid hitting the car in front of me. The girls got to see the deer that was hit laying in the middle of the road. After a car or two went by the hit deer got up and ran off, so it appeared to be okay. The person who hit the deer was fine, but shaken, as to be expected. We stopped to make sure she was okay. Everyone was fine, but it was a great opportunity to reenforce seat belts usage :-) And made for a great story for the girls to tell Daddy when they got home.

all I want for Christmas....

Is my two front teeth!

a new brother

Evie bought herself a new brother at the AWANA store on Thursday.

His name is James, he's in bed for the night in this picture

He sleeps on the couch every night. His birthday was today and he turned eight. He's taller than the girls, that's why he's older than them. The kids had a birthday party for him and sang to him. They wanted to eat M&Ms at the birthday party, but I wouldn't let them. Just thought I'd keep you updated on new family members!

baking

In a 24 hour period starting yesterday afternoon and ending this afternoon I ending up baking like crazy. I had some fresh cranberries I needed to use, and had planned on making cinnamon rolls with, so I made a quadruple batch of dough for that, the girls helped make the dough and knead it. Hannah thoughts on kneading "I'm never doing this again!" I assured her she would :-) Yesterday evening I took the dough and made four pans of cinnamon rolls, I froze three of them and we had one pan for breakfast! The girls were super excited about that. Since I use the same dough for cinnamon rolls and kolaches, I had planned ahead and bought sausage. I made fourteen sausage and cheese kolaches, along with 11 cream cheese kolaches, I had never made cream cheese kolaches before, but I had extra dough and cream cheese, so I figured it was worth a try. They are super yummy. After finishing wrapping up the kolaches for the freezer and being all excited about having 24 kolaches I realized that was only four meals worth for a family of six. Although the sausage ones are huge, so I'd probably split it for the boys, and possibly the girls too. But still, it seemed like so little for so much work. Oh well. Today was the youth groups Thanksgiving feast, so I made a chocolate pie and apple crisp for that. I had also signed up to bring food for a family in our church who just had a baby, so I made bread, brownies and beef stew for them. All four of the kids helped with the brownies. When I went to start them I found I needed more sugar, so I said "Evie will you get more sugar?" Little Boy Blue responds "I get it" by the time I convinced Evie she needed to go with him he was coming back up the stairs with the sugar. I thought that was pretty impressive for a two year old!

the park

Yesterday we went to the park. It was a great park day, warmer, 50ish degrees. We met some friends their and had a great time. I also probably earned worse mother ever by one of the other people at the park. Green Machine decided he was a big boy and was following the girls around and trying to do everything they did. This included going down a "slide" that I was impressed Evie was able to do when we first moved here at three years old. It's a slide that has two bars, and you put your legs over the bars and slide down it. Well, Green Machine kept climbing up, and I kept taking him down, then I gave up and helped him go down it. I helped him several times, he'd put his arms over the bars and slide down that way, and then I went to see what Little Boy Blue was up to on the other side of the park, Green Machine continued going down the slide and made it down successfully twice, on the third attempt he fell. This slide was only about five and a half feet off the ground, he was hanging from his arms, well, the mother closest to him absolutely freaked out. Yelling about how he had fallen. My response "he's fine, it happens all the time" she didn't buy that, especially from "that height" but whatever, Green Machine was perfectly fine. He stopped crying in less than a minute and had no bleeding and wasn't saying anything hurt. Anyway, later, Little Boy Blue found the same women's stroller and attempted to push it....she wasn't too happy about that. Oh well, such is life. Green Machine also attempted to go down the firemen's poll as well. I helped him do that several times, he loved it. I guess I'm finding out who my daredevil is!

The girls also figured out how to pump the tire swing on their own. When they had four of them on it they actually got it going in circles as well! 

We spent over three hours at the park. Everyone had a blast!

first snow fall

This morning we woke up to a light covering on the ground. Hannah was super excited that it was supposed to snow in the morning and woke up early just to see the snow. She and Evie went and played in it right after Evie got up. It didn't last too long, but it brought lots of excitement and the girls are looking forward to more snow to come.
Little Boy Blue looked outside and said "grass all gone. where is it? grass all gone" he was so funny :-)

A beautiful light snow fall!

The girls exploring the new snow

Yale Peabody Museum of Nature History

Wednesday we took a field trip the the Yale Peabody Museum. We had gotten free tickets through CAFAP which is an organization which supports foster and adoptive families in CT. The museum was nice and empty when we got there, we practically had the whole place to ourselves. Except for the people working there...who weren't exactly as pleased to see us, as my kids were to be there. We walked into the Egyptian room on the first floor and were greeted by one of the people who work there with "You're not supposed to have that stroller in there, you should have left it out front, but I guess since you wouldn't really be able to walk through here without it you can use it. All the cases are alarmed, so make sure you don't bump into them. And you can't have that backpack on your back, it has to be on your front." Wow, what a way to start out our trip. We went quickly through that section and then entered the dinosaur room, the person in there was much more friendly and said the boys had the best seat in the house being in the stroller and that we could take our time and enjoy the dinosaurs since there was no one else there.

The girls enjoyed running around and looking at all the dinosaurs.

The boys enjoyed the dinosaurs as well. They kept pointing and saying "dinosaurs" "big dinosaurs"
After the dinosaurs we made our way up to the "Discovery Room" which on the website says "The Discovery Room’s most important rule is “Please Touch!”" Apparently their "Please Touch" is only half true. They had cool stuff in the discovery room, but it was no place for a two year old and definitely not a place for two two year olds. There were many things that you could touch, but were not supposed to pick up, and then there were things like animal cages that you weren't supposed to touch at all. And when my boys started running down the ramp and around the nice circle they had they got in trouble for running......I at that point took the boys out of the room, and fed them lunch while the girls enjoyed watching a snake eat his lunch (a mouse!) and the other animals (leaf cutter ants, stick bugs, breaded dragons) being fed.

Waiting for the snake to start eating.....

Yum!

The girls watched the mouse go all the way in and followed it down the snake. 

The girls enjoyed the upstairs Egypt room. 

Evie looking at hieroglyphics, she thought they were pretty cool. 

 Hannah pretending to be an Egyptian

 Both girls thought this mummy was really neat. 

They thought this one was pretty neat too. 

They had lots of neat exhibits of animals as well. The girls liked looking at these too, they had all the birds in CT too. 

We didn't get to spend nearly as much time on anything as I would have liked due to the boys, but hopefully the girls learned a little while we were there. I think part of the issue was due to a lack of sleep on the part of the boys due to the time change, when we left the museum three of the four kids were asleep within minutes of leaving. Evie doesn't like to miss anything, so she enjoyed being the only one awake with me the whole way home.