Almost My Last Hope

I stumbled upon S's pink Bible today.  It was a bit of a heartbreak for me since I was holding onto the hope that she had brought this with her amongst the limited belongings that seem to be missing from her room.  But no.

One Week To Go

One week from today, we will be graduating our daughter, S, from high school.  I am still in shock over this.

There's a lot to do this week, too.  The house needs to be readied for the celebration, we'll be picking up my mom at the airport Thursday, making lists and schedules to be sure it all comes together as well as possible.  We definitely don't want to be late to the ceremony!

It's all very challenging.  I'm also on a last minute cram to finish up transcripts for her and my, oh my, what will we give her as a graduation gift?!

Some Writing First

I was kind of sick over the weekend and still don't have my usual voice back (don't think the kids aren't celebrating my inability to yell for them up the stairs), so I did not get my entire lesson plan down on paper as I'd hoped.  While we made it through yesterday -- which I'll post about separately -- today has been more difficult.

My dear, sweet, loving husband could hear in my voice how frazzled I was this afternoon when he called to tell me he was on his way home, so he offered to take the kids out for the evening (dinner and a movie?) so I could finish up my lesson planning and just refocus a little.

You know it's been a great day when your husband says, "Hey, I'm on my way home ... how are things?" and my response is unintelligible because all the words are spoken through blubbering and tears.

Yes, it's been one of those days.

So anyway, I decided to use my "write down the lesson plan" time to blog first.  How wise am I?!  (Please hear my sarcasm in that question.)

But I think if I clear my head first, I'll better be able to do the job at hand in this nice quiet house.

Why?  Why was today so tough?  Are you ready for a long-ish story?  Here it goes (if not, you'll probably just want to skip this post)...

Nova is TEN!

Exactly one year after S moved into our home and care, on November 13, 2004, our family adopted Nova from foster care -- both because we wanted a pet to help teach the kids about responsibility and because we thought it was a great way to teach them about what might be in store for them down the road (adoption).  The three kids we had were young and not clear what adoption meant, so for us, welcoming Nova in as part of our family made things a little more clear for them.  She even got a name change, like our kids would (their last name, her first and last).

What we knew about Nova (Cila, as called by her foster mom -- and it was a random name, nothing sentimental, so she didn't mind if we changed it), was that she was living on the streets in South Carolina and captured by a dog catcher.  Before she could be euthanized, she was rescued by pet foster care in New England and sent on a train to live up there till she could be adopted.

Free

Lately, the kids have all been "daddy's kids" more than usual.  I think, because of that, C must have said something to the kids because I've been hearing a lot of justifications to their positive comments about Daddy to me so I don't feel bad or something.

For example, this morning, Z was saying he was glad it was Friday because then he gets to go with Daddy and S to bring her to her teen group. 

I said, "I was thinking tonight you could stay with Kool and the Gang so you can do a fun thing I have planned for us, also because I think S needs some one-on-one time with Daddy tonight."

There was silence.

Celebration!

I may not have any good pregnancy or birth stories, but besides kids' birthdays, we get to celebrate their adoptions each year.  Most years, we just go out to eat or make ice cream sundaes; but this year -- also because we owed them anyway -- we went to Cliff's Amusement Park for the day.

Thankfully, we had a half-off ticket deal -- Cliff's is no Disneyland and only worth about half of the ticket price.  It's more like a permanently affixed carnival.  However, it's closer than Disneyland and with our coupon, it was like a quarter of the cost (or less? I forget what Mickey sells tickets for these days).

Sixth Adoptaversary

"Wow," you might be saying, "two adoption anniversaries in a row?" 

Yes, it was an amazing thing to happen to us when they gave us the court date for J on August 2, 2007, when just the year before, we'd finalized adoption on S, H and Z on August 3, 2006.  Apparently, the courts in our state only do adoptions on Thursdays, so once we knew it was going to happen around the same time frame, we tried to get the same date, but it didn't work.  Still, it makes celebrating adoptaversaries in our family kind of easy because we can clump them together on the weekend closest.  Poor O, though; his adoption happened in December, but we celebrate him with the rest of the kids since December is already busy with Christmas and O's birthday.

Anyway, today is the sixth anniversary of gaining S, H and Z as official members of our family.  H and Z were placed in our care in June 2003, while S came to us in November 2003.  So at nearly four years, our wait for them was our longest of all our kids.  I guess if we divide that number by three, the average works out to be pretty on par with our waits for the other two ... and they are worth the wait, so it all worked out in the end.

Fifth Adoptaversary

It was this day in 2007 that we officially adopted J!  She was first placed in our care on January 5, 2005, so it was a long wait to make it official, but still faster than our first three kids.