15 years

Of my sweet middle son.....well, in a couple of days.  He's growing up well and most days we're pretty proud of him.  :)

Happy birthday my sweet boy.

character

She's got character.  Every year.  She really is a great kid.  Usually she gets respect, but this year's teacher gave her polite.  Good either way.  Love our girl.

School Daze

Too little time.  I finally cleaned the photos off my phone.  Jaemin really had a great time on his field trip.  He mostly hung out with K who is part Korean....funny how they just clicked. I also cleaned off the picture of Jae and his teacher at the awards banquet we went to with her.  Onto 1st grade in just a few weeks.

 Jaemin and his crew.

 He touched a snake.

 My baby and I after we lunched together.

Best picture Jaemin has ever taken.

Guess I'm behind again!

I really have been SO busy.  There are very few hours in a week that we're home without something that needs done or we're not home at all.  I dread football AND volleyball.  Gymnastics and volleyball have been hard enough...plus weight lifting mornings and track afternoons.  Still less running than we'll have in the fall.  But, the kids can only be young once!

Easter....

And tonight, Chelsi's class did their Spring program to Disney.  They all could either wear dress clothes or Disney costumes.  We still had Pocahontas sitting around.  We got tons of compliments!
She is pretty great.

Happy Birthday!!

I can't believe he's 18 already.  Every older parent always tried to tell me how time flies by and you really never believe it when your first couple are so young.  Then, it happens and you realize how fast it will happen to your other kids.  Now, hopefully, it brings maturity, added respect and responsibility.  Love you Cole.

Living life

Not posting much.  Just trying to enjoy life.  Stopping to take pictures and write either causes me to lose memories or sleep.  I don't like losing either, however, my memory itself is so bad, I get afraid that if I don't write things down I'll forget things.

Jaemin has been great.  I sent to his Valentines party and he really does act like most of the other kids, most of the time.  I love that he will still hug and kiss me goodbye in front of his classmates when I left to go to Chelsi's for a bit.  He's still struggling with writing.  We work hard, at night, to get a handle on this, literally.  I love that he comes to me and tells me that if dad doesn't want to snuggle, he will.  I love how much he loves to take care of me and know it won't last forever, but he's such a sweetheart.  He's getting to be so smart.  He has great comebacks now.  He's beginning to think so fast.

Chelsi is beginning the moody phase of pre-teens.  She's still doing well in school, but for the first time ever she's struggling in science.  Not struggling the way most parents think. I mean she brought her grade right back up to an A, she just had trouble on the state of masses.  She cracks me up at how much she wants everyone to feel loved and never left out.  She had written me a thank you note around Thanksgiving as part of an assignment.   It was a sweet note to thank us for adopting her saying she didn't know where she would be without us.  Last week, she wrote me another letter telling me how great of a mom I am and thanking me again for adopting her.  She said it wasn't an assignment, they just had to write anything and that's what she chose.  I explained to her she never owes us anything for adopting her, but that it was sweet of her to say.  Brian felt left out that she always wrote "I love you mom" for everything.  So when I was at her party, she gave me something she decorated that said "I love dad", but you could see the outlined MO behind it.  She had begun to write "mom" and partially erased it.  I told her her dad would be able to see it, so she grabbed it and erased it the best she could.  It was too funny.  That day, she brought home a construction paper, pink heart, that said the they all loved us both "equally" and we "should never forget it".  She signed everyone's names.  I asked her if she was sure about that and she said "well me and Jaemin anyways".  She's so funny AND sweet.

Kaelin is still on the easily erased side.  Meaning she easily erases the details of what she should do and does some of them, some of the time.  But, if you want someone to take care of the family, it's her..  I got up this morning and she was getting ready to warm up Jaemin's biscuits and gravy.  She would have had him eat, got him down and cleaned up the mess if I never came in.  She's Chase's buddy.  When he went out to clean snow, she was out there with him, working hard, right behind  him.  She struggles in school and math is not her subject, but if I gently remind her as she gets out fo the van to "bring your grades up", she will.  She wanted signed up for parks and rec volleyball again this spring and when I contacted last year's coach she said she could be on the team because she didn't play club, even though it's just parks and rec and she's just a 6th grader.  She said she would just play with kids from other schools.  Secretly, I hope when they try out for 7th grade at school, she kicks some butt, because I think it was a jealous mom thing more than a club thing and it was pretty mean to only exclude 2 girls from our school.

Chase is trying to take football a little more seriously.  He's working out 3-5 times/week.  Whenever the weight room is open anyways.  The bad parents we are, we give him ice cream as an incentive.  Hey, he could use the weight gain, so it's okay right now.  He must be growing.  For the last 3-4 weeks he's been eating a crazy amount of food and is constantly still hungry.  I haven't seen him do this in years.  Jaemin's following big brother in the eating area.  We have a lot of concrete and Chase wants lure materials so bad that he pretty much cleaned 4-5 inches of snow off the whole thing (upper and lower driveway). He's out of money after he cleaned himself out (not his bank savings) to buy the rifle and he just loves to make his lures so much.  We paid him for the driveway by buying some supplies he badly needed.  I don't mind spending a little more than we would have paid in cash for something that's a really good, creative hobby for him.  I think he's trying to go into manhood right now as his voice is finally starting to crack just a little.  Off and on....mostly off, but it has been doing it from time-to-time.  But, heck Cole still cracks on occasion.  Hoping he'll focus a little more on his grades now.  His grades are good, but his potential is better.

Cole is trying to grow up, but at the same time is not ready for the responsibility of a person with no school life.  Meaning if he doesn't go to college, the reality of working fulltime and paying his bills might be hard.  He needs to earn enough for his junk food stomach.  I think he's got more in mind than he lets on.  I think he may be scared, just a little, about real life and doesn't want to talk about it often and I get that.  I just hope come August, he'll either be in the union or going off to college.  He's smart and he can do it all.  He just has to want it.  Whatever it is, I hope he tries hard.

I finally did get my camera out today.  And don't mistake Jaemin and Chase's faces for unhappiness.....it was COLD!

Wrestling

It was Jaemin's first and only wrestling tournament Saturday.  He had fun  but he hasn't asked to do more, so we're not going to overdo it so he can continue to just enjoy it.  Besides, there's still like 6 more weeks of practice.  Still great therapy!