We made it

It's a long drive to TX and the big cities here are a lot different than just driving in St. Louis.  It doesn't compare to the chaos.  The Texans don't think so, though.  ;)  San Antonio is a nice city though.  We hope to see more soon.  Mom, here's the condo.  Very, very nice and Chase cannot wait to check out the waterslide tomorrow.

a picture says it all

 This was where we ate tonight.  Read carefully.

Got nothin' done

I don't feel like I made any progress at work.  I mean, sure I got some things done, but my intense reports I was working on I was never in long enough to concentrate and make any headway on.  I took the boys with me to work since Cole had to go to the Dr at 10:50 and then they both had orthodontist appointments at 1:45.  I wasn't about to spend 3 hours of my day driving them back and forth and the other 1/2 day at appointments.  That made no sense.  So they came to work and went to the pet store nearby, ran an errand at the bank for me and I sent them for some ice cream after lunch.  They were only in my cubicle for about an hour total.  Chase got a stronger wire on his brackets and it now spans all the way to the back, though the brackets do not.  He doesn't need that.  It's amazing how much his teeth have moved since January 3rd, when he got them on.  His cross-bite is almost gone and his teeth that were ectopic have really moved down.  It looks really great!  Cole got brackets on almost every tooth on the bottom.  He had to go to one tooth past the cross-bite.  He'll probably get the top brackets next month.  And he managed to already knock the bumps off at wrestling camp tonight....one of them anyways.  I told him to use the mouth guard he gave us, but Cole assured me they were just drilling and not live wrestling.   Yeah right.  Last time I buy that one.  Looks like we'll be heading back to the ortho this week to get a bump back on.  Thank goodness that only takes the Dr. minutes to do.

Here's Chase's improvements (and neither of these are full treatments, but enough to treat the real problems-the cross-bites for both boys).

 And here's Cole's first picture.

This was Cole driving his car....he's so proud to have it.

Awards for the Girls

Only the elementary school does awards (the older boys can only get state test awards).  It was sort of chaotic, to say the least.  And it's still kinda, well, dumb, but they got awards.  I'm not saying the awards they give our are dumb, just that they give these great door prizes that only the kids who don't get academic awards can get.  So, yeah, they incentives for not trying as hard.  Kaelin got the Presidential Fitness award as usual.  I told her to strive for top sit ups or fastest mile next year.  She can do that.  She's very strong and athletic.  Chelsi got a Music award and Reading award.  That's a whole other topic I won't go into.  I know my child is tops and that's all that's important.  Chelsi was the only one of the girls I could catch out on the floor that morning, so I took their pictures with their awards tonight.  She's admiring her first, of many, medals.

What a day!

And I don't mean in a good way.  Stressful and tiring.  First of all, I have a sore on my mouth from all the stress of the cost of the vehicles last week.  Makes eating really painful and just moving my mouth painful.  Then, I go to UPS to pick up the triangular colored pencils I bought Jaemin, for Korea, and they shipped them back to the store.  UGH!  Walmart, was, well......Walmart.  Enough said.  I went to get gas and wasn't sure what side the tank was on for Cole's car......and I got it wrong.  Got home and decided I was never going to have time to cut the boys' hair before vacation and it was getting LONG!  So, I started with Cole, then Chase, then thought what the heck I may as well get Jaemin's hair cut.  Thank God he's a sensory seeker and LOVES getting his hair cut with the trimmers.  He's a really great customer that Jaemin.  Then, Kaelin decided it was her turn.  She just couldn't stand it anymore, so it's short now.  Still had to eat and clean up and go through all the school supplies they sent home today.  The septic guy decided he was going to work on our lines this week, the roofer decided he was going to roof this weekend, which means I had to call the gutter guy to let him know it will be his turn.  Then, next week we have to get our screens out and rescreened.  Our home repair will be all done after that and I will breath.  Then, we go on VACATION!  I'll be needing it, by the way.

Oh...and one funny thing for the night.  Got our phone bill to top it off...it was $10 higher.  I called to find out why and they inform me there was a late charge on it.  UUUhhhhh....we have auto pay.  they put it on our credit card automatically every month....ummm...so we can't be late.  She explains there must have been a glitch.  You think so?  I did ask her to put a note on our account about what happened so they'd believe me if it ever happened again.  I never thought I'd get a late charge for that.

You could literally hear it

going out of our account, I swear.  :)

We sold our old truck Monday, bought our new truck (older) Tuesday.  By Wednesday we had it in for new tires, which it badly needed as the others were bald and unbalanced, and an inspection.  That's when we got the news.  It needed ball joints, idler arm, lugnuts, replaced side mirror glass and an alignment.  We kinda figured by the condition of the current tires it would need an alignment, but all of this was to the tune of $1300.  Didn't make the buying price seem quite as good.  But, what can you do?  Just deal with it.  By Thursday I drove Cole's car into work so he could have practice driving it to school.  It lost power on my way to work and I could barely make it up the hill.  Time for a new catalytic converter.  $200  Brian says his truck's rotors need turned, but since we don't drive it much we'll wait for now.  I'm worn out on car repairs.  We are very thankful that's all it was for Cole's car after Brian's truck repairs...yikes!

I did get really good news though.  The oddest thing I think I've ever heard of as far as specials and discounts go, but I called the hospital to pay for Cole's last cardiology bill, which is normally around $1,000, but this one didn't have an MRI or stress test on it, and they told me as soon as I called that if I paid it off that day they would knock 50% off for a special they were having for the month of May.  Holy cow!  Of course I paid it off, I was going to anyways, but now it's that much more I can keep in my HSA to put towards Cole's braces or his cardiology in December which will come to about $300 for my 20% out-of-pocket, now that I've met my high deductible.

I'll take any break we get!

Fun for all

We had 3 things going on in one day, so we just had Chase decide what he wanted to do since it was ON his birthday.  The family thing, we didn't realize was today until after the first two things came up and Chase had already decided we'd go to the adoption picnic.  This is a place we can go where none of our families are stared at or talked about.  This is a time when we can be with families that look like us.  There were only a few families there, but it was still great food and great company.  The boys did some fishing and Jaemin finally got to use his fishing pole for the first time and fish.  He really did enjoy it, but doesn't quite have the patience for it...yet.  I think he actually could though.  The boys weren't really catching much, but did some frog hunting for fun.  I brought a birthday cake so we could go ahead and celebrate there.  It was fun and Jaemin was pretty well behaved.  I think they all had fun and Chase caught himself a nice bullfrog.