Jalapenos! HOTTTTT!

Chase absolutely LOVES jalapenos on everything.  The ones we had tonight, Chase says, were not hot.  However, Jaemin grabbed one off the plate and by the time we all looked at him, his whole face was bright red!  He took it out of his mouth and threw it at Brian like he was the reason his mouth was burnin'  It was SO funny!  Everyone at the table was laughing so hard.  We had to borrow his friend, Sawyer's, milk to calm down the burn in his poor little mouth.

This is from the shop next to the restaurant.  Jaemin wanted in on it too, so after the older 4 did a picture he got his pirate picture taken too.

ARGHHH Meearties!

YUM! Ice CREAM!!!

They really liked this evening's treat.

Flips n Flops

Chelsi had her last night of gymnastics last night.  She gets to progress onto the next class.  So, I guess later this year or next Spring she'll start working more on her cartwheels and eventually learn how to do back handsprings like she wants.  She's just so darn cute in her leo.

Cole had his 8th grade promotion today.  They don't make a huge deal out of it because the gym isn't big enough for all the students to bring more than 1 or 2 family members, at best, so I took off work to go and one of his grandmas was there.  I was glad to see him promote.  Even if he's not at the top of his class, it's just nice seeing him succeed in life, onto the next step.  They had a ton of awards that probably took the first 45 minutes.  It was, um, a little hard on this mommy heart.  Tons of PE awards for things Cole has no chance of earning.  Him not getting an award for good grades is totally his own doing, so while I was a little disappointed he never tried harder, it's okay.  I guess, I too have some getting over to do about his heart and the setbacks of ideals you have in life it may prohibit.  Needless to say, another year down and for that I'm happy.  I love you Cole...even when you think I'm being a mean mom who won't let you do anything, when in reality I'm taking the harder way out to keep you in this world with me as best I can.

My guitar star

If you turn the channel to CMT and the video has a guitar in it, it's a sure thing for Jaemin to run to his room to get his guitar and play.  He looks so natural and it's so darn cute!

Wonderful evening

It was a little cold for this time of year, but it was a nice evening for our adoption picnic.  Many international adoptive families came together and one of the homes.  Brian and the boys got to fish, while the little kids just did whatever they wanted.  They were on the slide, in the bounce house, riding all the riding toys, you name it.  Jaemin touched one of the fish Brian caught and then was ready to catch his own.  He's been wanting to go fishing so bad.  Chelsi got to play with her friend Cale, so she was happy.  It was a fun, get dirty outside kinda evening.

Breath, just breath

I wouldn't be me if I didn't go through spells of freaking out over finances.  I've spent today rearranging my schedule because summer school (the fun kind) is going to happen afterall.  The school wasn't sure until today.  So, I quickly got the girls signed up.  It's great for a new kindergartner to go through a piece of how the real school year will be before it really happens.  But, this meant refiguring out where the kids will be on my days off and rescheduling their dentist visit.  Then, of course, the boys will need their sports physicals so Chase can play football in July and IF Cole makes the basketball team he'll be able to play (I SO hope he makes it this year). I think this helped encourage my little spas.

We made the decision for me to go part time because of my $250/month paycut with health insurance premiums and costs that went up in January (penalizing families with more than 1 child...up to 5 go figure).  If I didn't have daycare costs, our take home pay was virtually going to be the same after I took the cut, so it made sense.  Still does.  It's just so hard to stay within the new budget though.  Some months, like last month needing new tires and alignment on Brian's car hurts.  Some of it was my doing, I admit.  I wanted some things for our vacation...but $20 or $30 adds up SO quickly.  Luckily, I have vacation totally budgeted out, but the past couple of months I've had to take money out of savings to pay our bills and it's killing me!  I know that's what savings is for, but all I can think in my head is that it's cutting into whether we get to go to Korea or not.  It's too hard to get the money there in the first place and we're no longer actively able to do that for awhile.  I'm so afraid of losing the opportunity with all 7 of us.  You know, before we start having adults children that move out.  That's only a few years away before we have an (gulp!) adult child.  I know those outside our family and especially outside Korean adoption don't understand my 'need' to go to Korea as a family, but I truly feel extremely strong about this for us to encounter and experience together FOR our family.  Korea was and is a HUGE part of our family.  This place needs to be experienced by everyone in it to understand where 3 of us come from and the roots to some of their heart.

So, I flipped out and sat down with my calculator, calendar and checkbook and refigured things. Nothing will go as I always planned.  We won't pay the house off in 20 years...it will be 30.  We won't save much for retirement, we'll just do what we must.  But, it's time, after vacation, to buckle down again on the budget.  I guess I just needed that reality check again so I could buckle down.  Before my paycut this year if we had unexpecteds I left monthly $ in the budget for it, but the paycut took all of that away.  No saving and no extras!

You would think that after living in this house for 15 years now we'd be A LOT closer than 30 years away from paying it off, but it was used to have a couple of kiddos.  NEVER will regret that.  We know.  Just, sometimes, I'm disappointed in myself for not finding a way to pay it down like we should have.  You know 30 years total would have been nice.  We should only have 15 years left and we have 29.  I don't dwell on that though.  That's too sobering of a thought.  In the end, it's really difficult to live on our income with 7.  We'll do it.  We always do. In reality refinancing has been our family blessing!  I mean, in reality, what would we have done without the ability to refinance?  Which kid would we NOT have?  I wouldn't want to choose.  That's what brings me out of my funks always; MY KIDS.

Okay, I'm back!