Room of Disaster

This is what a tantrum looks like at our house: That is black sharpie on the bed. The bed is on the floor, not a frame because we learned years ago that any empty space is where all the nice and useful things go, all gobbed up and covered with any liquid close at hand, such as: lotion, glue, nail polish, blood, the list goes on. There was a washable marker in her room that she pulled apart, drained onto her hands and wiped on the walls, carpet and clothes. Thank goodness, this washed off pretty well.

Now, notice the purple marker on the box spring and on the carpet and then notice the spot just to the right of it that is NOT washable but black sharpie.

The interesting thing here is what set K off. D told her to eat her dinner. We had chili, which she usually likes and didn't say she didn't want. In discussing this with the therapist we think she can feel us withdrawing from her and acted out. D has been done for about a year and can't wait for this phase (foster parenting) of our lives to be over but I'm so concerned with the regression she will make. We haven't had a big tantrum in so many months but we can't have her constantly destroying our house. This is probably a good thing because as much as I've been hanging on, I think I'm on the same page as D now and CJ has been ready to be done for a long time. I think L thinks we are just giving up but as much as she wants to save the world she hasn't volunteered any time to help out. About a year ago R told me that she told her husband A that she wishes he had known us before K because we used to be fun. I thought about that and I'm not sure we would have been fun anyway. We used to have kids that got good grades and enjoyed school and friends and activities and were very involved in band and plays. Now we have K and CJ who just wont do school work even if he does understand it. It's not the best time of our lives but we are happy we are not in the position of some of our friends whose son is stealing and doing drugs and they are afraid to be home with him.
OK, back to the story. So we've discussed this with the therapist and case worker and it was decided that K needs to go to another home with higher level of structure and supervision. The interesting thing is that K asked if I would talk to the case worker and ask if she could go to another family for a while. Now we will do as she requests and she feels like she has control of her life. Maybe it all will work out just fine. The case worker wants her to stay in the area so she can go to the same school so I could still take her and do things with her without her taking over our lives. After being her mom for 4 years I can't just stop.

The consequence to the tantrum was to have the door removed and I took her "extra" clothes
so she wears her school uniform all day. She also lost TV, computer and phone privileges all week. D can't wait to get into that room and fix it up so it will stay nice.

Book review

Yes, I read a book and it was a 600 page book at that. I've read most of the Ender books by Orson Scott Card and wanted to read some of his non sci-fi books. Saints is a book about an LDS woman/family by an LDS author but certainly not considered an "LDS novel". It has some parts that are just to risque to be published by Deseret Book. It is however a story about a generation and polygamy in a positive light and tells the story of the characters gaining a difficult testimony of the "Principle". It made me laugh and cry. Since I don't have a lot of time for reading but become obsessed I usually read when I have a day or two off so I started it Thursday and finished it Sunday night and worked two of those days. Now I need to give my family some attention.
Last week I read The Associate - John Grisham. It was typical John Grisham and enjoyable.

Freshen up the house

So, back in Risa's high school days she had an interior design class and for a class project she and a friend painted our family room downstairs. they did faux painting and stenciled the ivy. It was the year 2000 and ivy was in. Now it's 2010 and ivy is out and the color never really matched the carpet so we decided we needed to move furniture down stairs but I wanted it painted first. This is what it has looked like for 10 years: This is the mess we created so we could start:

We had to prime the bottom half of the room and it took two coats of primer and heavy coats of paint

The colors are "baked cinnamon" which is a pretty tera cotta color and the other color is taupe.

This picture is blurry because the flash distorts the color.

See the legs behind the TV table? That's CJ putting all the electronics together.

The tera cotta color matches the fleks in the countertop of the kitchenette. I love it. Now I want to find some plaid with the right colors to make a quilt or two to hang on a quiltrack and would look great on the couches too. One more project done.... Many to go.

Christmas fun

We decorated and cleaned and prepared and spent time together.

I worked Christmas Eve so we had an appetizer night and everyone prepared their favorite appetizer and we feasted like we (I) had spent all day cooking.

We all hung our stockings and pretended we had been good all year.The next morning it was all over in a flash.
There was plenty of bounty to go around.

We kind of like the mess afterwards.
Where's Waldo

We even had some light-hearted tickling/wrestling fun.

Now everyone goes back to their homes/apartments and we go back to work and the Christmas music stops playing on the radio but I'm not ready to be done so I will still listen to my Christmas music on my i-pod and have as much fun as we can till everyone goes back to school and we get back to our routine. I can't wait till Christmas next year!

Ready for Christmas!

The tree is decorated, the presents are wrapped, the choir has sung and it's time for Christmas! Our new mailbox has a power outlet so we bought lighted garland. It looks so festive and made it through the wind. It doesn't lay as nicely but it stayed on, then the snow fell and it may be months before we get the lights out of the snow.

We've had get-togethers with my family:

and with his family:

The teens and young adults plalyed a rousing game of Perudo. It was so fun to watch them play. I think everything is taken care of. Now I just have to go to the grocery store to buy supplies for our Hors de'voures night for Christmas Eve. It's exhausting but so much fun to get together with family and friends. It's fun to imagine the excitement of our kids opening their ever-practical gifts. Maybe the fact that the gifts are practical reduces the excitement but I just can't give useless gift. It's fun never-the-less.

I'll try to get my Christmas pictures up soon.

Gone With the Wind

Can you imagine a fabulous wreath like this on my front door? Maybe different colors so it wouldn't clash with the burgandy on the door but it would look so lovely framed by the etched glass of my rectangular window. Or maybe an elaborate lawn display with some lighted snowmen, twiggy trees or angels like these:

I had a cute tree similar to this with little white lights on a wire frame. Not a lot of mass, I figured it should be able to withstand the wind...but NO! I cannot decorate outside because our decorations either blow away, blow over or bang into the house by force stronger than the big bad wolf ever dreamed of producing. I even tried the little tree on the back deck "protected" from the wind. I could still see it through my french door and it looked so wonderful. Well, it blew over several times and broke the little bulbs so then we had bent wire and shards of glass. This year the three men at my house got out and hung our Christmas lights. It was beautiful for about 3 days then the winds kicked up. Either the bulbs blew into the house with such force that it dashed the glass bulbs into pieces or the wires shook with such violence that they became unplugged from the other set which was plugged into the outlet. When our house has all it's lights on it's a festive gingerbread cottage. After all the work done we have no lights on the roof lines, top or front edge. We do have lights around the front bedroom windows and around the garage so at least we are balanced.

These things we should have known and understood before building in the wind tunnel. I love it here but our options are greatly reduced when it comes to decorating. The new mailbox looks wonderful with a small garland and white lights wrapped around it and has endured the wind. I used to put out holiday welcome mats but I got tired of retrieving them from the neighbors yard or finding them under snow in the spring in my backyard. So, lest you think us a pair of Scrooges realize our decor is dictated by a house that faces right into gale-force winds.

Landscaping is another issue....

Thanksgiving memories

Ahh the planning, preparing and presenting of Thanksgiving.
I love it! It stimulates me and exhausts me.

I did some cute little toll painted pilgrims and indians a long time ago when I dabbled in that stuff a little. Daren put them on bases a couple of years ago and I like them even better now.

I bought a large white tablecloth so it wouldn't clash with my China. I love it and it came with 10 cloth napkins. But alas, it made for a very boring table so I looked for some darker colored napkins or non holiday table runner. My China has dainty pink flowers with silver trim so the Burgandy napkins I found at Penny's were perfect and after my "fall" that day I needed to be done shopping.Little E keeps showing up on my camera. I didn't even get pictures of R and T because they were off doing their own things. Mostly R was playing Mario Kart with CJ. E is just the sweetest little thing and look at her new teeth.

Next Year we will have a baby of our own to love on and take hundreds of pictures of! We had all of our family which was important to me because this was B's first Thanksgiving home since his mission and if L goes this year we wont all be together for a couple more years. Joining us this year were my parents, my sister S from southern Utah and my sister J from just a little south of us along with some friends whose family had plans with thier in-laws. That's just the way it is when your children grow and have other family obligations. I'm learning about that but so far it has all worked well for us.

This was the young table with Wade and his parents. Since my kids have been such good friends with theirs I figured they would be more comfortable with the kids, besides, they do all the kid stuff.

This is how they digested their big meal. I'm glad I didn't get smashed by Big J!

It was also Younger S's birthday so we had German Chocolate cake after our pie. Yum!

Oh yeah, the fall... I was out shopping two days before Thanksgiving and stepped off a curb and totally tripped on.... uhh, nothing. I went down on my left knee scraping it and hit my hip on the edge of the curb making a bruise. Next I put my hands out to catch myself and scraped both heels of my hands and took a piece of skin off the palm of my hand at the base of my thumb. (Imagine trying to keep a band-aid on that area and have your hands in the water all the time) Well, then I had enough momentum going that I went right over my hands and did some pretty good damage to the muscles, tendons or whatever makes your hand work, of my left hand. and continued on to hit my shoulder and the left side of my face. Commical, no? Oddly enough I don't thing anyone saw it happen and I got back to my car to stop the bleeding on my hand and assess the damage. When I realized I could still move I went to the next store and continued my shopping just holding my very sore left hand closely in front of me. The next thought was "Oh no! I have a perm to do in 2 hours!" I got to the salon and took some Ibuprofen and went to lunch with D. I worked and flexed my hand as much as I could and by the time we were done eating I had regained most of the motion in my hand and went back and did a splendid perm. I had another one the next day and had to loosen up for that too. Now, two weeks later the only things that hurt are sweeping (after every haircut) and tying my shoes. Big movements and small movements.

To end the day fabulously D called me an hour before I was to come home and told me he was heading to Insta Care to get stiches in his hand! He has been building a trailer and cutting metal. He had a cutting blade on his metal grinder and it caught the metal weird, jumped and hit him on his first nuckle. If the thing is made to cut metal imagine what it could do to even a gloved hand. Yeah, it wasn't that bad and didn't hit the bone but it cut the joint pocket. (I didn't know there was such a thing) so the Doctor wanted to wait for a hand specialist but after an hour of waiting D talked the Doc into stitching it and letting him go home. So we managed the next couple of days including Thanksgiving prep with two gimpy left hands and sharing a latex glove so we could keep moisture off our wounds and germs out of our food. Aren't you glad you didn't eat at our house? Haha

Oddly enough, with our two injuries the pain we still feel is in about the same place. We just have that tight of a bond between us.
Now we prepare for Christmas!!!!

More later