Happy Birthday Riley! (plus some random stuff)

Yesterday Steve took the kids to an SDSU football game. It was pretty cold so I stayed home with Zeke and Sophia. The tickets were thanks to DSS, who received tickets to the game from a sponsor and then gave some to our family. The kids loved it!

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Although yesterday was Riley's birthday, it was also homecoming for our local college team so there was a parade and football game. Because of all the other activities, we're celebrating Riley's birthday next weekend so he can have some friends over.

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I'm hoping today to post Riley's pictures in honor of his birthday, like I have for the other kids. It's fun to do but very time consuming because not all the pictures are in the same location.

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And for anyone who thinks I'm a good mom, sorry but here comes another story to prove otherwise. Remember when I said I would post pictures of the kids in their halloween costumes? Apparently I only took one of Brittney and her friends and some of the little one, which I can't post anyway. All the kids in the middle didn't get in a picture! I almost made the kids put their costumes back on yesterday just so I could take a picture. I might still do that.

Here's the one of Brittney and some friends.

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The other day Brittney saw my wedding dress in the closet and wanted to try it on.

It fit!

I was a little sad remembering that I was skinny once too.

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I have the cutest picture of our little one in her costume and it's killing me not to post it! I was telling someone the other day that my entire life seems to be confidential.

I have a foster child, whose life is confidential.

I review foster case files, which are confidential.

I work at headstart with kids whose files are confidential.

And now there are some things going on with Headstart that are confidential.

Not only do I not have time for my friends, I feel like I couldn't tell them anything even if I did have time. So a big thank you to all my friends who accept that I have to be vague a lot of the time.

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Training

Last Friday the 25th, Steve and I attended an all day training in Sioux Falls at a counseling center. The information was based on Beyond Consequences, which focuses on developing and maintaining relationships with children who have behavior issues. We've taken other courses from Children's Home which centered around the same material but I've found that 1)it's good to have the information as a couple to make sure we're parenting on the same page, 2) it takes a lot of repeating to make sure the information sticks in our heads, and 3)it's good to network with other parents who have challenging children. The best part of the day was that we splurged and went out for supper at Olive Garden - by ourselves- before we went home!
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This Friday, I attended an all-day training in Madison. We started with information on tax preperation, which might have been informative, but within the first five minutes, the speaker informed us that it applied to every area except Minnehaha and Brookings counties. So it didn't apply to me or the families in our area at all!
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The next session was about autism, which again could have been interesting because the presenter was a good speaker from Parent Connection, but the information presented was very general and I didn't feel like I was learning anything new. I was really hoping for some new information or some new techniques for intervention.
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The third session was about internet security. The presenter was awesome! He's originally from the middle east and looked like some kind of long-bearded terrorist but he spoke English without even an accent. He was trained in computer security and not only did he know a lot, he was able to pass the information along to us in a way we were able to understand. And his sense of humor made the presentation go really quickly. I would highly recommend him for anyone who would like to ensure their employees are aware of all aspects of computer security, which is pretty much anyone who uses a computer or phone. He also brought along a detective from the FBI who spoke to us for a few minutes.
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The fourth session was about conflict resolution with children, based on material from Conscious Discipline. This was the one that most specifically applied to me and my ability to work with children. Plus I love the presenter - she's my boss! Someday when I have a bit more time, I'd love to share some of the information that I've been learning over the past few years. It works in the classroom and it works at home. For all you Love and Logic parents out there, that works too if you have a child who is logical and comes from a place where their needs have been met in the past. Lots, if not most of the kids I work with haven't had that advantage. If I ever get to the place in life where I have time again, I'd love to help present some of these strategies to parents and teachers. 
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I think I'm done with trainings for a while :)
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Blah Blah Blah

As always, when there is much to blog about, I don't have the time to be on the computer. In a busy world, there are only so many hours in a day and I am making a conscious decision to try to use the hours I have wisely. I've been getting up early (as always) but instead of getting on the computer while it's fairly quiet, I've been studying in my echo room. I really needed to get back to my bible study and hadn't been making time for it lately. I'm also trying to be much more intentional about being with my kids when they are here. That's impossible when I'm trying type on the computer. But it really came down to the fact that if I had an extra half hour to spend on the computer, that meant that in reality, I had an extra half hour to spend on my family, if I would choose them over the computer. So I did. Which means it's even harder to find time to blog. I think instead of blogging every day I'll try to blog on Saturday's and Sunday's (and maybe a little bit in between :) Unfortunately, it may mean I miss some things but that's the way it needs to be for now.
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So here's a bit of what's kept us busy:

• Zeke is still doing awesome. No pain and loves his wheelchair! His school friends take turns pushing him around and reading to him. The cast is scheduled to be removed on Nov 30 so we'll be taking another trip to St Paul.
• We had conferences for all the kids and everyone is doing great academically. All A's or B's. Anthony still has some issues we need to help him with - see other Anthony posts - but his grades are high because he's such a smart kid. The other day he and Riley were fighting over a school library book because they each though it was theirs. Turns out that they had both checked out the same book. The book was at Riley's 4th grade reading level, so I had Anthony read me a page just to show him that it would be too hard for him to read and he should pick a book that was at his level instead. I'll be darned if that kid didn't read me an entire page of a 4th grade book! My mistake Anthony - pick any book you want.
• The little one is still with us and will be until the next court date the end of December. We'll see what happens after that.
• My husband decided that with the great low interest rate, it would be a good idea to refinance our house. So we are.  Then he decided it would be a good idea to add on to our house, since we already had the plans drawn up last year and it won't cost us any more than what we're already set for a mortgage payment, since we had built up so much equity in our house already. Apparently we close on the 18th of Oct for the refinancing and then construction will probably start shortly after that.
• I could go on and on but I have to leave for a meeting in Madison this morning and now I'm 20 minutes behind my own schedule :)

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Halloween

We're going trick-or-treating tonight and Brittney has tryouts for the high school gymnastics team. Pictures later :)
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Rambling

Why do I wake up at 4am everyday? No wonder I'm tired by 8pm. Expect a rambling-type post due to lack of sleep.
I really want to go downstairs and organize the storage room before we leave town this morning. Steve and I are going to Sioux Falls to attend a seminar and need to leave town by 7:30am because the class starts at 8:30am and goes until 3:30pm. The class has to do with parenting children with challenging behaviors. I know both of the presenters so I already know it'll be worth our time. The other benefit will be the hour down and hour back that Steve and I can use to discuss things we haven't had time to talk about lately. I'm hoping we even have time for supper together in Sioux Falls. All the kids are taken care of all day and evening except for Zeke, who needs to be picked up by 6pm, which won't leave us much time after the seminar. On the drive down, I'm going to try to figure out something for him so we don't have to come back right away. It's complicated because of his wheelchair. Although I just remembered that Steve said it only costs $2 for the BATA bus for one way so maybe I can get someone to watch him if get him delivered to them. Told you this would be a rambling post.
I'd love to tell you why Anthony was in deep trouble with me yesterday afternoon but I'd rather go organize. It makes me feel like I have control over something and my life is in order. Very calming! So I'll write later about Anthony. Plus, I need to think through the whole confidentiality thing before I type about it because it involves someone besides just Anthony. Don't worry, I'll post about it - just not sure how detailed and when :)
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I'm Tired and Crabby

I'm tired and probably crabby this morning so it's not really a good blogging day. Then I noticed I haven't posted since Monday and thought I should update.
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Zeke is still doing well. I had a bit of a glitch yesterday because of his wheelchair. I'm not done at work until 3:45pm and on Wednesdays, my kids get out of school at 2:15pm. I've already arranged for Zeke to ride the bus with the wheelchair lift to the Club after school but because of logistics with paperwork, that won't start until Monday. With some help from Zeke's teacher at school, I made some phone calls and he was temporarily accepted into GAP (Great After School Place) although technically it should be called GASP. Thankfully, the staff was excited to work with Zeke since they knew of him already from school so the only problem was that Zeke didn't want to leave when I finally picked him up.
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I was so frustrated last night with a situation involving one of our kids (not the kid's fault at all - but involved poor decision-making by an adult who was in charge of said child) that after Steve and I put all the kids to bed, we watched two episodes of "I Love Lucy" just so we could laugh for a little while. I think I need to laugh more often. And sleep more often. I really just need 3 more hours in each day and maybe I could get caught up.
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Anthony Says

The following is from an email my mom sent while I was gone:

On the way back to Brookings today after we dropped Grandpa off at home, Anthony was telling me I needed to get a really cool pickup.  Then he said, “Grandma, when I get older, I am going to buy you a really hot pickup, would that be ok?  Of course, by then, you’ll probably be dead!” 
I just laughed on the inside because it was so sweet and innocent.  Then he said, “In fact Grandma, a week after the 19th, you’ll probably be a goner”. 
Let’s hope he doesn’t have the gift of prophecy!!!  What a cute kid!
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