Random Update Bits

It has been a rather rough couple of weeks with the kids as far as behavior and attitudes.  Oh, we've had a few good days in there, but looking back there have definitely been more problems than not.  I don't really know what's been causing this, and it's hard to deal with when I feel like I'm always scolding and lecturing and enforcing consequences.  I have been trying to really focus on the positive things, praising them when they do the right things, making sure they know how great it is and how happy it makes Jesus when they make the right choices.  Still, I hate it when I have to continually deal with negative behaviors and wrong choices so often in short periods of time.

I heard some very exciting news yesterday, and can't wait until it becomes public =D.

I've gotten a couple of boxes of things in the living room packed up, but general life (i.e. dishes, laundry, homeschooling, kids, etc.) has prevented me from doing as much as I originally pictured myself getting done in a couple of weeks.  However, today and tomorrow I hope to get more done in that room.  I have even more incentive now that things are beginning to move forward with the house hunt.

Hunter just came upstairs to tell me he was finished with math.  He has been struggling with memorizing his basic multiplication facts, and after several weeks of trying different strategies to help him learn them, his assignment the last two days has been to start with 3x3 and see how high he can get in 5 minutes.  Yesterday he got up to 7x7.  Today he got up to 9x3!  You have no idea how this thrills me.  I am very impressed with his dedication to his school work, much more so than last year in public school.  He also finished his fifth grade level reading comp book a couple of weeks ago.  I plan to order him the sixth grade level soon.  When he ended the fourth grade in June, his reading comprehension was at a beginning- to mid-fourth grade level.  By the time this June comes, he will be well into the sixth grade level.  He is also thriving in his Bible studies, which are comprised half of his Awana book and half of a Rod and Staff Bible book.  He has quite a bit to catch up on, in a manner of speaking, but in a way I think that starting his studies now makes him more interested in learning about God and the Bible than he might be if he had grown up in a different situation.  

The kids just went outside to play in the snow, which is good since it is going to be super cold again tomorrow.  The dog is barking and whining like crazy because as we all know, it is just plain WRONG for kids to go out to play without taking the dog.

Speaking of dogs, when we move we want to get another dog.  We have always agreed that once we owned our own house, we would have a second (and bigger - Madi is 25 pounds) dog.  I have been compulsively just for fun, researching different breeds of dogs. We wanted to get another Irish breed, but they are all either terriers or shed like nobody's business.  Madi is a terrier (although an atypical one), and though I love her, I don't want a second one.  The breed I have decided on and just need to convince my husband to go along with is a Norwegian Buhund.  I'll give you a minute to Google it.

I have gotten back to working out at home (our lives have not allowed us time for the Y since Thanksgiving) 3-4 times a week.  It's probably not as good as the Y, but I try to do plenty of aerobic exercises, and also some yoga, although it's hard to do more than a few poses because our basement ceiling is very low.  Between the exercise and employing willpower to avoid junk food during the week, I have finally started to lose some of the weight I have gained since getting married.  

Hunter has found a new book series: the How to Train Your Dragon series.  He is plowing through the first book, which is wonderful to see, since he hated to read when he came to us.  

We got Kaleigh a V-Tech Mobigo for Christmas, and she loves playing it.  All of the games are educational, and they teach her much better than most workbooks could.  I've been doing preschool work at home with her of course, and prior to getting the Mobigo, I did a few skill checks with her (basically a kindergarten "screening"), and she is more than ready for kindergarten.  Six months to a year ago, I was a little concerned about her cognitive abilities and readiness for preschool, which is why I have taken it slowly and pressure-free this year.  But she has come a long way in the past 6 months.  It has been awesome to watch her grow cognitively, in reasoning ability, and in fine and gross motor skills.

My classes start on Monday.  I am not overly excited about that, but the one thing I am excited about for this semester is that one of my classes is entirely online, and the other is half online, which means I only have to go to campus roughly every other week.

Kaleigh just came in so I could fix her hat, and on her way back out the door she said, "Are we going to have hot chocolate, cause my toes are trying to be cold!"  HAHA!

We are going to see 2 houses on Saturday.  I am very excited.  

Well, time for me to start hot chocolate and bring the kiddos in for lunch.

That is all.

Plans

I use the word a lot, although I use it loosely and with a grain of salt.  Because it is true that if you want to give God a good joke, you should make plans.

So the plans to which I am going to refer are made prayerfully and with a mindset of flexibility.

As most of you know, we have been outgrowing our little house for almost two years.  To be honest, the house feels smaller every day.  I am certainly not complaining - I am more than thankful that we have a home to live in and a family to live in it!  But, the fact remains that we need more room.  So the big goal we've been working toward and praying for and dreaming of for 2011 is buying a house and moving.  As soon as we get Randy's W2 and file our taxes, we can meet with our Realtor and begin looking for a house.

I am trying to do as much as I can between now and then, to make the move as smooth as possible. 

I have only moved twice in my life: once when I moved out of my parents' house and once when I got married and we moved into this house.  The first time, I had very few things of my own and was able to move them with my car and the help of a friend with a pickup truck.  The furniture I bought for that little place was delivered by the furniture company.  The second time, we moved both of our apartments on the same day into this house.  We were able to move everything in one trip, with our two cars and a Budget rental truck, plus a number of very kind friends.  We had each lived in our apartments for just a little over a year.

We have lived here for almost five years and have had six kids here.  I'm also certain that the longer you stay put in one place, the more you accumulate, so I'm convinced that this move will be bigger than the moving of the two apartments into this house.  

So, in the interest of trying to make this move less of a hassle than I fear it will be, I have made a plan.  I intend to move through the house a room at a time and pack up what we don't need right now and purge our belongings by tossing out anything that we don't need at all.  While I'm doing that, I'm also going to do some deep cleaning, so that the move-out cleaning won't be a week long process.

Sorry for the rambling and randomness of this entry.  I write this here so that I can keep myself accountable and also keep track of my progress so that I feel like I'm getting something accomplished.

Happy first week of 2011!  =) 

Happy New Year!

Our turkey just came off the grill - for the first time ever!  Randy has been wanting to try this for several years.  It looks soooo yummy.  I would post a picture, but I can't seem to find my camera.  Anyway, we are basically having a mini Thanksgiving dinner, since my husband can't eat turkey without stuffing and green bean casserole.  We also had some appetizers this afternoon; chips with guacamole, mini wieners in a special sauce, cheese curds, and baby pigs in a blanket which Kaleigh helped to make - her first successful cooking attempt :).

Our dinner will be enjoyed with a family movie, and the kids will ring in the new year with sparkling grape juice at 10 p.m. before hitting the pillows.  Randy and I will then enjoy the grown up movie with a few grown up snacks (crab cakes and stuffed mushrooms) and will ring in the new year at midnight with grown up sparkling juice (aka Asti) ;-). 

Tomorrow we'll head to my mom's for brunch and then homemade Chinese food later on in the day with my cousin and her family.

I hope you all have a safe and happy New Year's Eve and New Year's Day!

Good bye, 2010!

Hello, 2011!  May you bring happiness and good changes for all!

Parent Frustration

My ten year old has made some poor decisions in the last few days.  He turned his TV on in his bedroom after he was put to bed.  He cheated on his science homework.  He lied to my face twice in less than twenty-four hours.

And because of his past hurts, he cuts himself off from the emotional repercussions of consequences, so that nothing I take away from him does anything to affect his behavior.

So yesterday, after the cheating and the second lie, I took a page from a friend's book (thanks, Laura), and had him write a verse about lying 50 times.  

Okay, we are all sinners, we all make wrong decisions from time to time, and kids are (definitely) no exception.  So yes, my kids are going to do things they shouldn't, even things they know they shouldn't.  I sometimes do things I know I shouldn't.  So I can forgive him and we can move on.  

But that doesn't mean I can just say, "Oh well, everyone sins.  No big deal," and let him think that it doesn't matter that he tells a lie once in awhile, or disobeys his parents, or cheats on his homework because he's too lazy to look for the answers.  Or anything else that he knows he shouldn't do.  My job as a parent is to teach them how to overcome, with God's help, the temptation to sin, and to right their wrongs when they do sin.  That is why it is important to me to choose consequences that are effective in changing behavior rather than simply punishments for the wrongdoing.  

I also believe that the lying is a habit for avoiding getting into trouble for other wrongdoings.  Not that that is an excuse or makes it okay, but I believe it needs to be treated as a habit to be broken rather than an issue of a hard heart or pre-planned decision to lie.  Of course, there is still a heart issue to deal with, since in order to break the habit he needs to believe that it is wrong to tell a lie.  So I've decided that the verse-writing will be the consequence of choice for awhile, in addition to losing privileges.

The frustrating part is when it seems like nothing works.  Some days I feel like a horrible parent because I must be doing something wrong if he is not learning or does not care about doing what is right.  But I realized last night that all I can do is pray for him and be consistent.  God has to do the rest. 

Family Christmas 2010

The Shan Clan had a wonderful Christmas.  We hope your family did as well!

The kids - and grown-ups - all enjoyed their gifts.  (Okay, fine, there was one gift that sort of had to be... um... shall we say, graciously accepted.)  The grandmas and grandpas all followed the rules about gift-giving, which I have to say really took the majority of my stress out of the day.  I really enjoy shopping for others, so I was quite pleased that everyone - kids and adults alike - was happy with their gifts.  Randy and I decided not to shop for each other (except for gifts from the kids) this year.  We're going to go shopping in a month or two, after we recover, and buy our gifts to each other together.

Of course, the day was not just about gifts!  We also had great food, yummy treats, and fun games.  The best part of the day was being able to just relax with family and enjoy being together while celebrating Christ's birth.

I hope you all had a blessed day and were able to spend it celebrating with friends and family, and that the remainder of your 2010 is fun and memorable. 

The (Second) Best Christmas Gift

Randy and I were reflecting the other day on where we were one year ago.  We were sitting down with our kids' great-grandparents and both of our lawyers to discuss a schedule of when they were going to see the kids.  We were so afraid that we wouldn't be able to come to an agreement and would end up going back to court to see what the judge would decide on.  But God showered us with grace and mercy and rewarded our faith by leading us in His will; we came to an agreement that we all could live with, and to top it off, were able to cap it at six months with a follow-up discussion between ourselves at that point.  (That has since come and gone, and things continue to go well.)

And so, after six+ long months of court hearings and stress and exhaustive scheduling, the judge granted the TPR and we got the best Christmas present we ever could have hoped for: our children.

But I have to argue that THIS year we have our best Christmas present.  Our children are truly ours now, having finalized adoption in February.  They have a full family - a mom, dad, brother, and a consistent, permanent home, three sets of involved grandparents/great-grandparents who love them, aunts and uncles, great aunts and uncles, even great-great aunts and uncles, cousins and second cousins.  I'm looking forward to watching them enjoy their first "normal" (for lack of a better word) Christmas.  

And of course, I'm looking forward to enjoying it as well.


I hope you all have a wonderful, safe,and happy Christmas and holiday season and enjoy spending time with friends and family, wherever you may be.  And may you always remember the true meaning of Christmas and the very best Christmas gift any of us have ever received! =)

Friday Funday

I woke up this morning feeling like we needed a fun day.  Especially since I was starting to feel crabby, I think because I haven't slept much at all in the last four(+) nights.  In any case, we needed to do some fun things.

Our day started with a standoff on the interstate, not far from here.  Long story, but around 4 a.m. two people in a stolen car ran out of gas by the side of the road and when cops approached, refused to get out of the car, eventually waving a gun magazine out the window and telling them he would shoot them if they came near the car.  There were city police, county sheriffs, SWAT, and a canine unit at the scene; the entire freeway was shut down in both directions, and people who had been sitting in traffic for 2-1/2 hours were finally turned around and rerouted to the other interstate.  The whole thing didn't end until after ten, and we were pretty much glued to Channel 4 news until then.

After that excitement, I got Hunter started on his school work, and I got out the Christmas tree.  Kaleigh and I put up and decorated the tree, and Hunter finished up a health assignment and took his math and spelling tests.  (Okay, school work isn't necessarily fun, but he needed to take those tests and the fun part was that I didn't make him do every subject!)  Then we made a yummy lunch - something relatively new (similar to another dish that I make, but put together a little differently, which the kids loved).  We had a little quiet time, then headed over to the mall.  We did some shopping, saw some kids playing in an orchestra concert in the rotunda, and headed over to pick Ryan up from swimming.  When we got home, Kaleigh opted to work on some of her craft gifts (Christmas presents for relatives), but Hunter chose to play with toys instead.  (Fine by me - as long as he was having fun!) 

Now we have stuffed crust pizzas in the oven, and the kids are picking out their movie for tonight.

In all honesty, it wasn't the day I had in mind.  I originally envisioned more craft time, a game, a little more time out of the house.  But the kids didn't seem to mind.  Hunter's eyes when I told him he was done with school for the day, and Kaleigh's facial expression when I turned on the Christmas lights....  they made today a fun day for me.