Poor girl!

It used to be Chase who always got poison ivy outside, now it's Kaelin too.  She had it on her legs and a touch on her face.  Gave her benefit last night, but it was a lot worse this morning.  Went to the doctor to get a steroid dose pack today.  Poor girl.

1st day for Jaemin

It's not the first official day of school, but it's his first day of summer school and being with others outside the family.  Our school does it as enrichment and especially for kindergartners to ease them into this new world. 

I walked him to the library and spoke to the teacher for a moment and let him know I had to go.  His sisters are in the school too, but not with him.  He looked at me, a little scared, and went to sit down on the rug with the others as his backpack stayed tight to his back. I teared up, but he didn't see.  I've never walked any of the other four in.  He's my baby boy and growing up.

It's Only Wednesday

and it's been a long and busy week.  Last week was different.  I think that's the best I can say.  A friend lied to me through email and lied to Brian's face, they said to save feelings, but it really made things so much worse. Just not sure if or when I can forgive. It was the least likely person of anyone we really knew and so hard to accept the lie and it wasn't for a good reason at all.  Too much to go into.  Just know that I made some decisions for my life and some people and on the fence about others.

This week has been go, go, go.  Haven't had time to hardly complete anything.  And now all this rain is driving the ants in.  Thank goodness they seem to be the Terro loving kind right now, so we'll see if I need to pay someone or not.  Last night was good though.  I spent the whole evening with a friend who was home from Florida.  It never takes us long to open up and catch up and that's how friends are supposed to feel and be.  Too bad she's so far away otherwise.  I've spent my time working on laptops.  We have 3 broken laptops in the house.  One is 8 years old (plus) and they've been pretty hard on it the last year.  They can keep using it for games as long as they want.  It keeps them tethered to the wall since the battery is dead and I'm not spending the money on a new one for an old piece of junk.  Cole's Make a Wish laptop died in April.  It had had issues the whole time and Toshiba doesn't just lack in customer service they have zero.  I had told them there were incident reports on it and because it was restorable each time they just allowed it to be bandaided together this whole time so that when it was out of warranty by a week it would crash and they would lose responsibility.  When I googled the "no bootable device" it was giving me it seems the C855 models did this a lot.  Really smart.  They just put a crappy hard drive in (no it's not restorable, I tried) that crashes and loses everything then Toshiba can charge you $39.95 for a USB.  Note that the software is free since you purchases on your laptop in the first place, but they the shipping and handling is $39.95.  What a RACKET Toshiba has going by not backing up their product and putting bad devices out there on purpose.

Make a Wish was AWESOME!  I contacted them hoping they had purchased it with a credit card that had warranty extensions.  I don't know if they did or not.  They just asked for the specs Cole wanted on a laptop and ordered a new one.  He's back up and running and it's NOT a Toshiba. I will never get one again.  I hate waste.  Anyone who knows me knows I hate waste.  So, I ordered a new hard drive and the media restore USB for about $80 total.  The kids could always use a decent laptop and a different, better brand hard drive should do the trick.  I'm going to attempt putting it in myself.  I took the back off and found it, so not really too worried.  In two weeks, they should have a good laptop that will only be used for homework.  Then, Brian informed me last night that Chase had dropped my 3 year old laptop and broke the lcd screen.  I mean killed it!  Great!  I had a spill and drop warranty on it that expired last summer.  I googled replacing the lcd and it's $200 at best.  $300 if I pay someone else.  I only paid $400 for my laptop.  Not happening!  I still had my old Dell monitor in the closet for photography.  I ordered a $6 usb keyboard and a $16 cooling stand for the laptop, found out how to set it to close the lid and stay on.  The laptop will now serve as a processor only and be totally usable.  Fixed it for $22!  In the end, I got 2 laptops fixed and working again for $102.

But, now I am exhausted.  All the reading I've done and learning how to do all this stuff, making sure I have all my ducks in a row.  I'm tired and I just wanted to spend some time with Jaemin because tomorrow's his  first day of summer school and I'm nervous.  I told him I'll walk him in and be home when he gets off the bus.  I know he's pretty excited, but I just want my baby to have a great day!  Tomorrow night my friend is stopping back by one last time before she goes home and then I will have breathing time Friday.

Cole's working 40 hours this week in 2 jobs.  They seem to like him in the one he started last week quite a bit.  They've all told us how hard of a worker he is and he'll probably get a raise.  The other job has just been orientation so far, so I don't think he quite knows what to think.  One is just a summer job.  The other could last into the school year, which will be great!

Out for dinner

Grabbed some Little Caesars pizza, a cooler of sodas, life jackets, swimsuits, graham crackers, chocolate chips and marshmallows and headed down to the.river.  About 80 degrees on the river is perfect.  Kids swam, ate pizza and roasted marshmallows for s'mores.

Moms of Special Needs Children

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maria-lin/special-needs-parenting_b_1314348.html

This is such a great article. I realize that a lot of my kids' needs (the ones that have them) are probably not to the degree of this mom, but I have so felt all the things she listed.....almost weekly at least. You do feel alone. You feel like most don't understand or wouldn't. You feel happy and sad all in the same day. You feel overwhelmed and content all at the same time. You can feel truly blessed and jealous within minutes of each other. It's really, really exhausting and really, really difficult.

Ultimately, I know I am so blessed by the things my kids have accomplished and though they're not the top at anything they are the top for themselves. A lot of special needs are invisible to others. You don't know why that kid can't play football because you can't see the scar under their shirt. You don't know why that 5 year old is small and doesn't talk like other 5 year olds.....you just think they're not bright. They are special!

This specifically really resonated with me as a mom to my kids. I love the things Jaemin does that are so typical for a 3 year old and he is almost 6. Because it's progress and it's great! I love watching Cole wrestle because we never thought he could....but he did. He's not the best, but as long as he tries and he's proving that kids with determination can do it.

"Raising a child with any disorder, condition or special need, is both a blessing and a challenge. A challenge for the obvious reasons, and a blessing because you don't know the depths of victory and joy until you see your child overcoming some of those challenges (sometimes while smiling like a goofy bear)."

More Grant's Farm and Magic House

I think they had a good time.  They fed llamas, birds and goats.  The girls road the camels.  The boys went into a cage thing to hold parakeets and feed them.  They saw the Clydesdales.  I think Jaemin was a little surprised at how large they were.  Jaemin got to see his favorite turtles, but was mesmerized by the elephants for some reason.

We thought about the zoo, but thought Grant's Farm may be less crowded, plus it's cheaper.  At least it was cool outside.  Cole's too 'big' for family outings, so he stayed home.  The Magic House is always fun.  Us adults were getting tired.  Otherwise, I think they could have stayed for awhile.  

 I took this of Chase, so he swiped my camera and took one of me.

 The goats ate everything including trying to eat our shorts, shirts and Chelsi's shirt ties.

 I was too slow, but Jaemin and Chelsi touched the snake too.  It was pretty big!

 Chelsi didn't want to do it by herself and Kaelin was supposed to.  Our theory is Kaelin just didn't get on so that Chelsi would have to do it by herself.  She liked it though.

 The boys didn't want to ride the camels, but did want to go into the bird cage.  Jaemin did hold one and did feed a few, but didn't love it.  They loved Chase.  One crawled from his finger, up his arm, around his neck and onto his hat.

 And there he decided that hat was junk just like we keep telling Chase.

 Magic House!

 The girls get static.  They were told to shake it out first....that's what they're doing.

 Jaemin's hair did not go up, but I'm shocked Chase's did.  The boys shaking.

 Results.

 Jaemin liked the 3 story slide.

 I told Chelsi she looked like a natural in scrubs with a stethoscope.  Her and Jaemin would make great medical partners.

 She's laughing because too little girls next to Chase cracked the safe, but Chase couldn't.

Grants Farm

Some guy was nice enough to take a picture after he saw us trying the group selfie.