Special Mail

The chore of going through the mail is one that I get done every 2 or 3 days.  There are lots of catalogs, offers to give us credit cards of all sorts, things telling us that we have won this or that, and a couple of times a month there is a bill or 2 which needs to be paid.  Mail fills up the shredder and recycling bin regularly. 

While going through the usual garbage I came across something unusual, a large envelope, decorated with snowflakes, a snowman, and plenty of glitter.  When I opened it gift cards fell out of it, (lots of gift cards).  The card enclosed with them read in part "spreading joy to people who are special in the lives of adopted kids.  All of us are wishing you happiness this season and good things in the coming year"  It was signed with "thank you from all of us.

The post mark on the envelope was from this area.  We have no idea who sent it, but it feels wonderful to know that there are people out there who appreciate what we do every day of the the year.   We very much treasure our adopted kids, yes, even when they are being rather challenging.  We are glad that others have taken notice of what we are doing, but we never expect to be thanked for it.  Anyway whoever you are THANK YOU! from all of us.

Making Adjustments

It is about time I get around to posting something here.  I know it has been awhile, but really I have been busy with all the tasks involved in being the mom of 4 kids with special needs.

Allen and Paul are doing just fine, as is usually the situation.  Rene`, Allen, and I took Allen`s Mum (birth mother) out for lunch.  She so much appreciates us letting her be involved in his life.  That is not the situation with her other kid, though and the whole thing is very sad.

Lauren had a seizure just before Thanksgiving so we had to adjust her medication and shunt a bit.  She is doing fine and hopefully that continues for a long while.

We have a new psych doc. for Hanna and I think this will work out, but it is going to take some time and the psych resident has got to go, lets just say that this resident does not get Hanna and does not know how to communicate with me.  The first thing was to take Hanna completely off her ADHD med.  She is just a bit off task, has a shorter attention span and is not able to attend to details.  She is sorting things into color categories so we have a bin with Elmo, a red crayon,  a red car, some red puzzle pieces, a red ball, red Duplo blocks, etc. in it.  We also have other bins filled with things of every other color of the rainbow just like that one and for all of the things that are to colorful, which she has not been able to decide what bin they should go in there is a pile that she calls the rainbow group.  She not only did this with the toys, crafts supplies, and games, but she did it to my pantry.  Needless to say I can`t find a thing around here right now.  We are going to have to straighten all of this out, but I have the feeling that there will be crazy land to deal with when we do it.  Taking her off this med has not done anything to lessen her extreme anxiety which is what we were trying to do so we will soon be trying something else.

The other day Hanna came home with a small candle which she had purchased from the "school store" for Jared.  Trying to explain to her that we can not send a candle to him in his Christmas box because he is in the Army, in the Middle East, where they work with bombs, guns, dynamite, and other things that can be blown up is not sinking in at all.  I will have to get that box sent off one of these days while she is in school otherwise there will be trouble to deal with.

Anyway things just keep moving along one day folding into the next.  It is all okay because very soon I am going to leave this routine behind for a week of vacation.  I am so ready to go!

Meow

I took these pictures of Chairman Meow a while ago.  He sits on top of his food box all the time.  Sometimes you can even catch him sleeping there.  I don`t know if he is trying to protect his food or get the box open, but he sure is persistent at whatever it is he is doing there.

The Entire Army

Yesterday there was a program at school to honor veterans with music and a speaker.  Lauren brought home the flyer from that event.  In it was a page listing 24 individuals from the community who have served in the military past and present.  She was looking for Rene` and Jared`s names on the list.  They were not there.  I have no idea how they determine who is on this list, but it does not matter, anyway Lauren could not find them and she was wondering why they were not on there. Hanna comes along to look at the list, too.  She tells Lauren that they are not in the Army cuz they have to be on the list to be in the Army.  I explained that Jared was in the Army and Rene` was in the Navy and that the list of 24 people is not the entire Army.  We could not get it to sink in with Hanna that the Army is a lot bigger then what can be listed on a piece of paper. We gave up trying before Hanna decided to blow up.

Anyway thank you to everyone who has served our country in all branches of the military and to those who are there now God be with you.

Every Day Stuff

After spending three long days in a row at appointments I finally got to spend all of yesterday at home. Just being able to stay home to do laundry, clean, and catch up on paperwork is exactly what I needed.

Monday Hanna went to the orthodontist, which means she had to have the brackets that she had torn off put back on for the millionth time.  They are now doing some work in moving her upper teeth from side to side and still moving the lower ones forward.  The teeth are getting straighter, but the process crawls along at a snails pace both because she had a really messed up mouth to begin with and she keeps messing with things to slow it down. We also got lab work done on her for an appointment she has later this month.  Lets just say that lab work with her is one of those things that you do only because it needs to be done and while getting it done you call in LOTS of reinforcements, turn your ears off because it is going to get LOUD, and hope that they can get it all done on the first try because repeats are even worse.

The next 2 days were Lauren appointments.  She is much easier to deal with, however she occasionally has tears and does not cooperate.  (I can`t blame her after all she goes through). 
We spent some time going over the EEG that she had done the week before and in general things are looking better, but not quite good enough to try and take her off her seizure meds so we will leave things as they are for now.  There was a rather lengthy conversation about adjusting her shunt which will likely happen next month. She also had some work done to address the tightness in her hamstrings.  things are going pretty well with Lauren right now.  It has been a long process and many procedures to get to this point and there will be much more coming up.

Since it looks like it is going to be raining and cool this weekend I am going to go get lots of groceries so I can make meals to restock the freezer.  Being gone so much lately has taken a toll on our supply of ready to warm up meals.

I told Lauren that next week she needs to go to school every day and when she asked what I was gong to do, I told her I am going to stay home and do nothing.  I don`t think she believed me though because she was doing her shake her finger at me thing and she told me to make cookies then. 

Lutefisk

I sent the non-norwegian and 2 of his sons to one of the local Scandinavian Lutheran churches for some lutefisk. Coming from a family full of Norwegians I had smelled the stuff and even tasted it, but no matter how much butter or cream sauce you put on it lutefisk is totally gross, awful, and certainly not something humans should consume.

My husband likes fish, all kinds of it and Trevor will be adventurous and try just about anything so they figured it can`t be that bad. they both came home and said that I would never have to make lutefisk for them.  That is a really good thing because the process of preparing that stuff is not something I want to learn.  I will stick to making meatballs, lefse, kringla, and yule bread.  Paul told me they had good pumpkum (pumpkin) stuff and he would like more of that.

Taco Treats

Karre invited us over to her place for pizza last night.  That was an okay deal for me, I bought the treats for the taco treaters (trick-or-treaters) as Paul says it and she got the pizza. After we ate Karre took Paul in his Buzz Light Year costume, out to hunt for some candy in her neighborhood, Lauren took care of handing out candy, and the rest of us were going to play games.  Hanna decided that she did not want to play so she went and hid out in the laundry room and folded clothes.  Both Karre and Trevor tried to explain that you do not go to someone else s house and fold their laundry, that is just a little creepy.  After she got everything folded she finally came out and watched part of a movie with Allen.

We finished October with a sleepless night for Lauren (mom and dad took turns keeping her awake) as she had a sleep deprived EEG this morning.  Looking at the schedule of appointments this month I am thinking that it would be nice to just go back to October for a while longer.

Paul is a pretty slow walker so he got just enough candy for us to share.  It will be gone before the weekend is over.