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!