Oh the places we will go.......

We have been on the go lately. We drove to Hays for a wedding a few weeks ago. I used to spend lots of time with the groom and his family. His Mom and I started 1st grade together and graduated from high school together. She married her sweetheart very soon after we graduated and they settled down to farm and raise a family. I was the single one, footloose and fancy free. However, I realize now that deep down inside, I wanted to be the one with a family and I made them my surrogate family of sorts. It was a beautiful wedding and a chance to see people I grew up with. The girls had a great time...what little girl doesn't love to see a bride walk down the aisle to get married. A fairy tale come true! Of course, blowing bubbles to help welcome the new couple to their reception is fun too!










This past weekend we were invited to a birthday party. Not just any birthday party, it was my stepdaughter's son's 2nd birthday. I guess that makes me the step grandmother. I should be excited..right? Well, my stepchildren have not had much to do with their Dad since we started adopting. Why? I really have no idea...I have multiple guesses. My stepdaughter went to China with us in 2000 when we adopted her baby sister. My stepdaughter was living with us when we traveled to China in 2003 to adopt her second little sister. Then she started dating a man who we were told "doesn't really like kids." So the relationship between us and the daughter became strained to say the least. We moved and distance didn't help. We moved back and adopted again. She married the boyfriend and asked her stepdad to walk her down the aisle. More distance grew. Her little sisters asked lots of questions, "Why don't we see her anymore?" "Why weren't we in her wedding?" "Why doesn't she come to see us?" Questions I didn't and still don't have the answers to. I see how this hurts my girls and I go into Mama Bear mode. Don't hurt my girls!!

Anyhow we went to the party. The girls had a great time. Maybe an olive branch has been extended? Don't know...guess time will tell.





The afternoon before the party we received a phone call that most parents never want to hear. My almost 20 year old stepson was being arrested for driving on a suspended license!! My husband had asked him if he had paid his ticket many times in the last few weeks. Evidently he didn't! He was on his way to Salina to watch his high school team, the Great Bend Panthers, play when he cruised around a cop on I-70 going 82 miles an hour in a 75 mile/hour zone. She pulls him over and during a routine check of his license and registration it pops up that they have been suspended! We hope that this has been a learning experience for him. Since it was a Friday evening his vehicle was impounded until Monday when we could clear up the fact that the state had suspended "his" tag in error. The Jeep is registered to us!! He will still probably have to go to court to get his license reinstated and in the mean time his Dad has to drive him to and from classes!





Photos from the county court house. The jail is on the fourth floor and only Dad was allowed in the building. We kind of wanted photos of him behind bars...to blow up and remind him that unpaid tickets can come back to bite you!!

Never a dull moment around here! Calgon...take me away!!

The fun things were the girls deciding what to be for Halloween. They dressed up differently for school than they did to actually go treat or treating.





Then on Halloween night there were sudden changes in costumes.



During all this running around...Jordis came home with a sore throat and sure enough..it is strep!! Now I have a wonderful sinus infection/bronchitis that I am dealing with!! Things have got to start getting better around here soon?! I hope!! What's a Mom to do???

Pumpkin patch!

With gorgeous fall weather here today...we HAD to go the pumpkin patch!! It is very hard to find THE perfect pumpkin. The girls spent at least an hour wandering around the pumpkin patch looking for the very best one. Daddy did a great job of directing the girls to each possible perfect pumpkin. However, sometimes even if you think you have THE pumpkin...it can be a false alarm!! And sometimes if the pumpkin is too heavy to carry, you have to find a smaller one!

RaeAnne found her pumpkin first, then she helped the other girls examine each of their pumpkins....of course, she told them "If this one is better than mine, I get to keep it and you can have mine." What a great big sister!! We started at one side of the patch and worked our way across the field. It was decided that we should have stayed on the one side because, of course, all the best pumpkins were where we first started! There was some back tracking to search, but eventually we walked back to the barn with our choices.

Now the great debate is on. Paint the pumpkins or carve them?!? I am thinking that we may have to carve the big one and paint the smaller ones.

It's coming along.....

Our ceiling and walls are DONE! It looks like a new room and we love the new color! The bad thing about painting walls...then the walls that aren't painted look awful! We are just so glad that now our ceiling will not fall down on our heads!




Now I am trying to shampoo the carpet in sections to keep little feet off it. Can't wait for our new furniture to arrive! Any volunteers to help me figure out where to hang all my photos? The girls have suggestions but.......

Oh Tooth Fairy will you please.....

come to our house tonight to make a little girl very happy?! Tessa has been wiggling this loose tooth for a couple of weeks. She told me one day that she was going to the school nurse so she could pull it. Well that night she came in the house and said that the school nurse couldn't get it to come out.



So this morning she was playing in Zora's bedroom. Tessa grabbed the tooth and out it come! Then she lost the tooth for a little while. Mom had to come down and find it for her. It was all wrapped up in bloody kleenex, so we put it safely away in a snack pack ziplock baggy so she can put it under her pillow at bedtime.

Under repair.....

We have been having some long needed repairs done to our house. After we decided to buy our house and move in we found out that the person who built our house was a "wanna-be" house constructor. Seems he bought this parcel of land and started "building" houses. He knew just enough to make them look good, but unfortunately he was not a master house builder. As our house is outside of town, there were a lot of things in the house that was not inspected like in most homes. In other words, somethings are not up to code...so to speak. Of course, we did not find these things out until we were already in the house. Because our house in Lindsborg had not sold, we could not get financing to buy this house. My Dad stepped up to the plate and put this house in his name until we could get our other house sold and refinance this one. My Dad chose not to have this house inspected...after all the house was only a few years old...it looked good and to "borrow" the money he did not have to have the house inspected. We were saving money not to have it inspected. WRONG!

The latest project we are having done is getting the sheet rock in our living room re-taped, but most importantly, we are getting it securely attached to the ceiling. Here we have been relaxing in our living room, thinking that life was grand, when the sheet rock at anytime could have come plunging down upon our heads!!





Thankfully we found someone through our friends, Sophie and Gary, who is dependable and willing to come out and fix our mess. And mess it has been. He had to firmly attach the sheet rock to the ceiling, then re-mud all the cracks, then sand all the mud down, and finally paint the ceiling. We really love our cathedral ceilings in our living room. That was one of the things about the house that we were first drawn to. It will be so nice once all the scaffolding, plastic and mud is gone and we can enjoy our living room again!





This is what our living room has looked like for the past week. Hopefully he will be done by Tuesday this week. Then I can shampoo the carpet and enjoy our living room!!