Summer Update

I have had several children ask me to update the blog. I'm not sure why. I don't think they actually read it.

Maybe they want me to update the blog so they can feel as if they have a life. It's not like they actually do. They all just live in their little caves and refuse to come out unless it is to sit comatose in front of a computer screen.

Maybe Sara will see it. She lives most of her life in Facebook world. So if there is a link between this and Facebook, she'll see it for sure. Or maybe I'll tell her next time we go driving. Yes she has her learners permit (finally!) and she is working on her 40 hours.

Megan is the writer of the family. I really should have her write for the family blog. Except that she only writes in code and can only be seen while the sun is down.

Jeffrey is no longer with us. He was sucked into a computer game. We see his body sitting in a chair staring at a monitor, but no signs of life yet.

Julia has a had a fun summer. She and Mandy, Stephanie, and Lisa seem to be having a perpetual party. Every time I see them they are in constant motion. I don't know if any of them have actually slept in their own bed since the summer started.

Today I saw them passing through the kitchen while I was cooking dinner. They were talking on pretend phones and pretending to drive cars. Can't wait. In a few years they will be talking on the phone and driving!

Either I had more children without knowing it, or friends were over because the herd seemed larger this evening.

Lisa is working on potty training. The kids get suckers if they help her, so she has a group of girls constantly attending her. I don't know how well the potty training is actually going seeing as I work during the day. But I hear she's making progress. The only problem is she doesn't know that she can actually go potty in the bathroom by herself. I think she believes it is a team event.

Brittney is our amazing foster daughter that we have been pleased to have with us since last December. Yes it's been that long since I've written. But since I've been negligent in my duties as a blogger, it makes it easy to tell you her story! She came, tried to go back home, and that didn't work. Now she'll probably go with her aunt permanently. She's hanging out here while waiting to hear if everything goes through with the aunt. Hopefully we'll know before school starts.

She has been an absolute delight and a wonderful help. Her bubbly personality and amazing-ness (if that's a word) have really added to our family while she has been with us.

Micheala is still here as well. She graduated from high school and is working on finding a job. She needs more care than we can give her, so we are looking into DCFS and community resources. In the mean time the adoption has not been finalized as that would have shut a lot of doors to funding and programs.

At this moment, I have 9 children living in the house: 8 girls and 1 boy. I have four teenage girls here: a 17-year-old, a 16-year-old, a 15 year-old, and a 14 year-old. As of August 11th that will change, so I just had to post it as I thought that was pretty cool.

Well my head is foggy, my memory shot, and I barely know my own name any more. So that's all of an update you're going to get at present.

Vacation without the kids!

For the first time in 17 years I left the kids and went on vacation without them. I've never even left them overnight! My sister Liz and I took off and went to the Pacific Northwest.

It was heaven! It was cloudy and misty and warm (sometimes) and beautiful! I've never been somewhere so beautiful before.

I actually wanted to move there. We joked (half hardheartedly) that we would just stay there, buy a house, and have Peter pack up the kids, sell the house and move!

 I stopped by Sothebys to check out the real estate market up there. Problem was everything affordable were tiny cottages and everything big enough was $1.5 million or more! So there goes that plan.

New plan: Get the kids out of the house, sell the house and move to a two bedroom cottage on the beach! Now, how to fast forward the baby. She thinks she's a big kid. Do you think I can put her in high school this year?

All joking aside, it was a wonderful trip. A lot of people thought Liz and I wouldn't make it spending that much time together. But we did fine!

We drove straight both ways. It was a 15 and a half hour trip each time. After that much driving you go pretty loopy! And you totally lose your ability to walk! If I had been pulled over I wouldn't have been able to pass a sobriety test.

But it was a ton of fun! We camped on a beach (well, behind the sea wall). We enjoyed long walks on the beach, shopping in local sea side shops, seeing amazing scenery, and eating delicious food. We also spent two days with an aunt and uncle that live up there. It was great being able to spend real time with them.

Everything worked out amazing. The weather was perfect. We found tour guides to take us to Portland, Seattle, and Tacoma, places we wanted to see but didn't know if we would be able to get around. It was just perfect.

Adapting to the climate there was easy enough. Within a day we could breathe fine and didn't notice. Coming back is more of a challenge though. Same with adapting to being on vacation! It was very easy to go there, and very difficult to come back.

I still feel like my head isn't in the game two days after being back. I don't know what end is up, what's going on, what food is in the fridge, and I'm still moving at a very slow pace. Maybe I'll acclimate at some point.

In the mean time, I don't know if I'll be able to do it again. My little girls keep coming up and hugging and kissing me and sometimes crying about having missed me. They're telling me to never leave them again. Maybe in a year they'll get over it and forget and I can do it again!