This is our ward's youth. This picture was taken yesterday before the program for the Temple Celebration.

 

This was our bed last night. Apparently our two littles needed some mommy and daddy time/cuddles after our evenings events.

 

Quynsie is in the very front.

 

We got this picture today from Quynsie's birth-dad. We met up with him this morning to get some things that he still had of hers. These pictures are gold to us.

We didn't tell Quynise where we were going this morning. We just said that we had to go somewhere and would be right back. When we got home, we had her open the back door to the van and she immediately recognized the boxes and knew exactly what it was. She just about cried. Then I showed her a picture of her little brother that was adopted at birth and she was in my arms hugging me so tight I couldn't breath.

 

 

 

 

Dang this kid has a ton of stuff.

The best part was the pictures. I can't wait to get them scanned into the computer so that we can get them printed off.

 

Nadia and Carson

 

 
Nadia and Carson
 
Carson
 
Carson
 
Nadia
 
Carson
 
Carson
 
Carson
 
Nadia
 
Nadia
 
Nadia
 
Carson

  
Nadia and Carson

Carson

 

 
Raven and Quynsie in the background brushing her teeth.
 
Nadia
 
Nadia and Carson

We got these pictures from another birth-family member and we are so very thankful for these. Our kids have asked many times what they looked like when they were babies and now I can show them pictures of at least when they were really little. These pictures are gold to us because we did not get to experience their earlier years.
Thank you so much for these pictures. They mean more to us than you will ever know.


Raven's birth-grandma sent this to me. I think this was her first Christmas.


This is the only new born picture I have of any of the kids and it is Carson.


Nadia

 

I think Carson has himself his first little girlfriend. Her name is Chloe and she is the cutest little thing ever. She lives behind us. Don't mind the huge amount of weeds in the picture. We have been so focused on the other corner of the yard, that this one has been neglected.

 

See!!! And the results are turning out amazing. I can't wait until the apple trees are trimmed up and we have our fire pit. We are excited for how this is turning out.

 

I think we have learned a valuable lesson tonight. Carson would not clean his room, so when Nadia offered to clean it, we told Carson that he would have to pay her a $1 out of his own money to clean it. We thought that would get him to go clean his room, nope, didn't work. He was perfectly happy paying her a $1 to clean it for him.

We also told him from now on every time he poops his pants he has to pay us to do the laundry. Sadly, he was perfectly fine with this as well. He pooped his pants shortly after we told him that he had to pay us. I just don't understand. He is perfectly fine sitting in it until we smell it and realize what has happened. We have tried ignoring it and just saying, "go clean yourself up" and we have tried punishment. None of it works. I don't know if he is just lazy, or if there is seriously something wrong. We have taken him to the Dr. and they seem to think he is fine as far as health goes.



Payson, UT Temple Celebration 2015

 

 

That is a lot of kids that are participating.

This picture was taken before the rain and hail.

Quynsie was supposed to dance in this.

 

Quynsie and her friend Hannah.

Carson was beside himself to find out that we have a Hannah in our new ward as well, but dang she has some big shoes to fill in order to catch up to our amazing Hannah from our other ward.

 

 

This is what it looks like when you have been hailed on and rained on. We are all huddled up with thousands of our closest friends under the BYU stadium.

Once Quynsie found us and we stood there waiting for awhile, it just seemed to not want to let up so we decided to leave. We were parked on the grass on University Ave/University parkway. The soccer fields that are right there on the corner and we did not want to get stuck in the mud.

 

Picture this corner, but up a couple of blocks. It was worse closer to the stadium. The water went up to my knees. The current of the water going down the road actually knocked Quynsie and I down. There were road block barriers floating down the street with us. We had to wade through two of those types of rivers before making it to dryer ground. Then we made it to this corner and it too looked bad, but believe me, it was no where near as bad as the two previous ones that we got washed down.

Nadia says that it was an experience of a lifetime.

Yes, baby girl, that it was.

I was even scared and on the verge of tears, but I held myself together for the kids. Its amazing how strong you can be when your kids need you the most.

 

The waterfall going down the steps at the stadium. Joe went to get the kids jackets that we left sitting on the bench to save our seats and took this picture.

 

I am thankful for the power of prayer tonight. We made it home safe after our flash Flood experience. I think the kids learned a valuable lesson on the importance of prayer. Carson kept saying Jesus lives us and he will protect us all through the crying and screaming.

 

We did watch some of the celebration on the computer, but then the kids decided that they wanted to watch the movie their dad rented this morning. After our evening of chaos, we were happy to do what they wanted to do.

 

This is how we are spending our evening. Safe at home in our pj's having our first family movie night in our new house.

 

On a side note, Joe and I just bought our first ever bedroom set that actually matches. It will be delivered on Monday and I can't wait. We have had one brand new bed in the 15 years that we have been married, but we hated the bed and gave it to Joe's brother. At the time our bedroom was really small and it did not fit. Here at our new house we have a bigger room and the new bed has drawers in it so that will help with storage since we no longer have a walk in closet.

This morning I told Carson to make good choices today so we could have a good day. His response was: "I can't until uncle Sonny gives me a massage.

 

I can report that Carson did an amazing job today making good choices.

 

Today I had to deal with a broken dishwasher. We are not sure what happened to it because it was working fine up until yesterday. I called kitchen Aid to come fix it. They are charging us $288 for the service, labor, parts and a 1 year warranty on the dishwasher. It was either that or pay $115 just for them to come out and then pay for labor and parts and shipping. Yeah no, I think I will pay one flat rate and call it good.

This house has become a money pit. The only thing that really pisses me off is the A/C. The seller promised to fix it, said that he did and come to find out he didn't. I came to check it, but what do I know? I know nothing about A/C so I took the sellers words that it was fixed, but after moving in, we noticed that it still was not working. That cost us $300+ to fix. Then the pests. Why did they not disclose that to us? Either way that cost us $105 and it still has not solved the problem so they are coming back out to respray on Monday for free since it has only been a week since they sprayed last. I am afraid this might be something that we are going to have to pay for every couple of months for awhile until the problem is completely taken care of. This house sat empty for over a year so it doesn't surprise me that there are bugs, but dang they are annoying. We probably also caused them to be a bit worse by pulling pushes and trees out, but we are hoping that it will help by taking those things out.

To finish the night off, our fridge randomly decided not to stay shut. Joe has done something to fix that, but dang, things come in threes what's next?

 

 

 

 



I was invited to be on a foster care panel at an adoption support group. I have to admit, I enjoyed being on the panel. It has been a while since I have been a part of anything to do with foster care

The kids went with us and they were even included in some of the questions and were able to answer them. They were so good. I was impressed with how they handled themselves.

 

I don't mind talking about us being foster parents. We did it for the right reason. We did it to help children in need. We just got lucky and was able to adopt them.

One thing that drives me crazy when people find out that we were foster parents, their first comment out of their mouth is "you are amazing". No!!!! People NO!!! We are not amazing. We are just like everyone else who longs to have a family. We do what we have to do in order to reach that goal. For us, we tried a few other avenues that did not work out, so we decided to do foster care.

Foster Care is hard, but I would not trade it for anything. The main goal from the beginning has always been to adopt eventually, but we did not think it was going to be the first placement either. It just worked out that way. We knew what we were getting ourselves into. We knew the main focus would be to reunify the kids with their parents. We supported that from the beginning. We cheered their birth mom on. We wanted her to make better choices so she could get her kids back, but ultimately, that is not what happened. We feel for her. We know that she is probably feeling heart break over losing her kids. We always keep her in our hearts and pray that she can find peace and be able to find strength to stay clean and on the right path in life. After all she is our kids birth mom and for that we will always have her in our hearts.

This is how it is with my mom, except she is grammy.

But this is also how things go with my nephew Aiden. I will never forget when I asked Aiden if he wanted lego's for his birthday and he said yes, but my mom will ground you if you buy me some. I said, Well, I am Aunt Nana and I will buy you what I want to buy you. (This was before we had our own kids)

 

  

Carson's first ever professional massage. My brother in law is in massage school and he needed a child younger than 8 to practice on and so Carson was it.

We were extremely worried that he would not sit there long enough and would be out of control, but he did amazing. He loved the massage.

I think we are going to hire my brother in law to come and give Carson a massage every morning. He has been on his best behavior today until about 7:30 and then things fell apart. I am just thankful to have a day of peace in our home.

 

 

My day:

8:30-9:30 AM: Carson's massage

11:00-12:00: Carson Therapy

1:00-2:00: Raven Orchestra

2:15-3:15: Raven Therapy

I came home in between things, but dang it was a day stuck in the car.

 

Despite having an amazing day of peace with Carson, I was so exhausted. I think dealing with the power struggle of him for the past couple of weeks and my extremely busy day today, I was just done. I laid down on the couch, Quynsie started playing with my hair. She did it like this, and because she was playing with my hair, I fell asleep. She took advantage of it and took a picture of me and edited them.

When I find things like this on my phone, I just melt and fall apart. It makes it so worth the struggles that we are going through right now. We are just trying to settle into our new home and it has been pure chaos.

 

Tonight we finally found the time to take our old washer and dryer to Joe's mom's house. She didn't have one and we bought new ones when we moved into our new house so we decided that we would help her out since she is on assisted living/housing that way she would not have to pay a ton of money to wash her clothes anymore. They have coin operated laundry on site at her apartment complex, but that is $5 a load and because of that, she has let her laundry pile up. Now she doesn't have any more excuses.



This morning I was getting ready to take the kids to my dad's work to swim and Carson has to sit out and watch because of some serious bad behavior.

 He told his sisters I don't get to go swim I have to watch you guys and it's my fault.
Hopefully this is the start to him understanding that this nasty behavior is not ok.

 

 

The girls having fun in the water with grammy!

 

 

 

This is what Carson had to do while sitting there at the pool. He had to do math (subtraction in a 1st grade math book) and write some sentences.

 

We are at a loss as to what to do with this boy. We can take everything away from him and he could care less. He thinks that we are being mean when we discipline him and it makes the behavior worse. Yes, he does have ODD and SPD but still there has to be something out there that will work and be able to allow him to realize that we are not mean, we are just trying to teach him right from wrong. We love this kid to pieces, but the trauma in his life even at such a young age has really played a factor in his behavior.

The girls are older and able to voice their opinions and how they feel, but because Carson was so young and still is, he just is not able to voice them, so he acts them out in a negative way.

We just started going to a new therapist at a new counseling center and I know that the behavior is going to get worse before it gets better.

Adopting kids especially ones that are old enough to know what happened to them, is not easy! There is no way to sugar coat it, it is ROUGH!!! I don't think birth parents realize how much damage they are causing their kids when they choose drugs, a man, or neglect over the kids. If more people realized this, then the less need there would be for foster parents and the less kids in the system means less struggles in the world.

These kids all deserve to be in a home where they are loved and taken care of and where they are number 1. I am so thankful that we get to be their parents and get to show them what a true family is like. A life without drugs and neglect.

We are so blessed to be their parents. Even though I am thankful for the opportunity to be their parents because of bad circumstances, I still do not wish any child to have to go through what our kids had to go through.

We are truly blessed.

 

 

Joe started a new karate class tonight. Nadia is only in the picture because her dad is her teacher and she can be in the new class if she wants to be.

Quynsie and Raven have decided to be apart of it this time along with one of my friends little guy.

Wednesday nights are crazy around here. Joe stops and picks up our niece and nephew who are white belts, they come eat dinner and then class starts for the new students at 6-7 and then the white belt class is from 7-8.

Thursdays are not any better. I am exhausted just thinking about it.

Carson has therapy from 11-12

Raven has orchestra from 1-2 (only through the month of June. She goes M-TH)

Raven has therapy from 3-4

We live busy lives.

 



These are the tender moments. Big sister helping little brother get a splinter out of his foot.

After Joe got home from work, we took these two with us to empty the trailer that we had filled up on Sunday while doing yard work. We were hoping that the kids would be more helpful when we got back and would help reload the trailer so we could go empty it as well before they closed, but that just didn't happen. We did get it loaded, without much help from the kids, but we didn't make it back to empty it. Hopefully tomorrow we can get that done because there is still a big mess out back that needs to be cleaned up.

 

(Sorry the picture is blurry, but right when I took the picture Joe pushed on the gas at an intersection.)

 

This morning Carson was yelling and I asked him to stop and he said well I can't seem to be able to switch my bad switch to my good switch. It's just to hard for me. I told him he better oil that switch real fast.

I am telling you this, this kid pushes my buttons so bad and then makes me laugh two seconds later and then he is back to pushing my buttons.

I wish I was better at not showing him that he is pushing my buttons, but I am not sure how to go about that.

 

I should have turned on the light when I video taped, but it was a split second decision to tape her. She is catching on so fast. This is her playing tucca tucca stop stop on notes E, A, D, G and B. Those are the notes that she has learned in her 2 days of orchestra camp. She is also learning the first 4 strings/notes to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

I am actually surprised at how fast she is picking it up. She is not our musically inclined child and nothing interests her unless it is the TV. I also love the orchestra teacher. She is fun, and very patient with the students. She takes the time to show them how to hold the bow and how to hold the instrument the proper way. I am even learning how to play.

I have wanted to play the violin or flute since I could remember, but never had the money nor the know how. Since Quynsie won't let me play her flute, and Raven will let me play the violin, I think I will go get me one myself and learn with her. It will finally give her and I something in common and something that she can relate to with me. We have struggled in that area for some reason. We have a great bond, just not much in common.

 

Joe is working work Nadia on the 10 karate commandments tonight and she couldn't remember something, but Joe kept telling her that she knew it and Nadia says, "No, I just lost my swag."

Well ok then child. Whatever you say. LOL



Dang I was hoping Carson would wake up this morning and be in a better mood. Not sure what his problem was last night but he pooped his pants twice in a 10 minute span and then lied about it. This morning he seems to have gotten up way to early and lost his listening ears somewhere.

The day has not gotten much better either with the boy. He is extremely defiant. He did start therapy back up this past Thursday, but I thought the behavior would have started then, but I think he has had a delayed reaction.

Not only was he a handful today, but so were the girls. They all just want to be rude to each other and if it keeps happening, then they are going to find out that we are not going to be doing anything fun this summer.

 

  

 

 

These two turds finally talked me into coloring their hair.

Quynsie's ended up having multiple colors pull through so her hair doesn't seem like their was much difference, just a bit blonder.

Raven's on the other hand, pulled extremely well this time. I am in love with how it turned out. Next time I will have to use bleach on Quynsie's. I just hate using it because it ruins your hair.

This beauty also had her first orchestra camp/violin lesson today. She has picked up on it much faster than Quynise did the flute. I am actually surprised that she is so into playing the violin. Not much interests this child except TV. We are at the point that we have to keep making things up for her to do so she stays away from the TV most of the day. I am hoping that she will continue to love the violin and practices it often.