Halloween, 2012

Well, since it's nearly Christmas, as I am not-so-gently reminded every four minutes by my very excited children, I thought I'd better make some sort of attempt at catching up here. 

This year I really wanted to take the kids to this awesome pumpkin patch that is by our old house.  Never happened.  Instead, Huz and BoyOne ran to our local small town market one night right before they closed and bought 6 pumpkins.  The next day Huz told each of the kids which pumpkin was theirs.  They were disappointed to not have picked them out, but we started carving right away and their disappointment was quickly forgotten. 

 Four

 Three

 BoyTwo

 Two

 One

 BoyOne

 Huz

 BoyOne was truly disgusted at the thought of cleaning out his pumpkin and was trying to get a sibling to do this for him, which I nixed.  He's got to learn, especially if he is a dad someday.  What's he going to say to his spouse, 'Wife, come help the kids with their pumpkins, I'm scary (he still says scary instead of scared.  it's cute)'?  Anyhow, it ended up not being so terrible.

 One

 Four had no problem scraping out the insides with her bare fingers

 BoyTwo.  All I said was 'BoyTwo, smile!'  I had wanted was a picture of him holding up the guts and instead he pretends to kiss them?!  Silly boy

 Hard at work

 Ope!  Those neck muscles still aren't quite strong enough to hold up that head of his.  See how his chin is resting on his chest?  It's getting better but is still sooooo hard for him.

 Four

I carved this one.

 Three wanted her pumpkin to look like her.  Remember her top front teeth had just been knocked out? And her bottom ones were only starting to grow in.  I carved this one, too.

 BoyTwo wanted an 'angry' pumpkin.  This was our compromise.  It's 'scary'.  I try to redirect him from anger...  lol 

and this one

 Two

and this one

 One

Huz carved this one.  Curves are much more time consuming than straight lines.

 He's trying not to smile but is also very disappointed and mad.  His pumpkin didn't turn out the way he wanted, even though he designed it.  I think he was expecting a high quality sculpture instead of a we-used-our-crappy-steak-knives-and-did-the-best-we-could-with-your-drawing.  We wanted to have him carve his own but he was too intimidated by it and because I had already made him gut his own pumpkin, I decided it could wait until next year.  Huz did it for him and was VERY patient with his excessive complaining and grumpy attitude.  I would've been far less so.  Lucky BoyOne.

 I kept trying to light them all, but then one or more would blow out, so I finally just took the picture.

The left side of the stairs.

 The right side of the stairs

 BoyTwo with his 'friend' who is actually the brother of Two's BFF.  He is really good with BoyTwo and will come play with him every couple of weeks

 Four and her BFF (our little neighbor boy)

 Three with her BFF

(also our neighbor)

 Two and her BFF

My kids are really short.  Which doesn't make a ton of sense.  Huz is 6'5".  I'm 5'4".  I know I'm not tall, but really, I'm not that short either.  And Huz is quite tall.  So, what happened to the kids???  They are all the shortest, or one of the shortest, in their classes.  Each within the 10-20 percentile for their age.  

 One

This is the first year that she didn't come out with the fam.  It was kind of sad!  She went with friends and had a great time, so it was good.

 This is the kids dressed up before the church Halloween party that Three's tooth was knocked out at.    Obviously, One is in a different costume than what she ended up wearing the night of trick-or-treating.  She had such a difficult time deciding.  I wish she'd put as much thought into a future career...

The crew heading out.  They made out like bandits.  It was great.  I stayed home to pass out candy.  I had 15 trick-or-treaters.  Six of them were my own children.  Sad!  We come from a neighborhood and area that is heavily populated with children (think 200 trick-or-treaters), so this was a bit of a disappointment.  BUT I had a lot of quiet:)  Our first two Halloween's up here, we went back to our old neighborhood so this was our first time here and we didn't know what to expect.

I didn't get a pic of BoyOne.  He dressed up in our neighbors lacrosse uniform.  He was embarrassed to be going out.  He desperately wanted to, but when he found out that none of his school aged friends were going out (he's in 9th grade), he thought that he shouldn't go out either.  He thought he was too old.  It was so sad.  We ended up being able to talk him into still going.  Good grief, this is only his 3rd time trick-or-treating in his LIFE.  We try to get him as many of those missed-out-on moments as we can.  

"The" Post and "The" Some Pictures

BoyTwo's newest word is 'the'. Every time he gets hooked on a new word, we hear it all. the. time. Now, the word 'the' is not really new to him, I think he has been receiving some instruction in his ELL class on how to use it, which in turn is transferring into ALWAYS using it.

During prayer: "thank you for the mom. thank you for the dad. thank you for the BoyOne. thank you for the One. thank you for the Two. thank you for the BoyTwo. thank you for the Three. Thank you for the Four. thank you for the teacher. thank you for the Vwheelbur (wilbur our rabbit). thank you for the Lady (dog). thank you for the _______. You fill in the blank. Just make sure you say 'the' before it.

or how about:

'Mom, I see the BoyTwo!' translation, Mom, watch me!

'Mom, I say you me the good day?' translation, Mom, ask me if I had a good day.

'Mom, where is the pop?' translation, where is Dad?

Oh, isn't it so cute?! I'm liking this 'the' thing a whole lot better than the 'who is this?'

I'm pretty excited to have figured out that I can email myself pictures from my cell phone and then down load them to the blog. Here are a few that I pulled from the past few months. I'll keep adding some as I find them:)

this is what BoyOne does during his English Lit class. Notice how the board says 'please don't touch or write on this board.' This is one reason why I have had the pleasure of attending junior high recently with my son.

One, Four, my sister Shalyce, Three, Two during our recent visit to her neck of the woods. She curled everybody's hair for them and they looked so cute! We hope to visit again soon.

This is Four wearing vampire teeth. The funny part of this picture is that she used dry erase marker to draw on her head and face, it is days after Halloween, and those are someone else's vampire teeth. ew. But, she is cute, so I guess it's ok.

This is Four, Two, Three, One posing as lionesses on the red rock of southern Utah.

And this one? Well, it's clear back from Halloween evening!

BoyOne (robot), Two (girl pirate), One (Hermione), Three (green witch), Four (copycat, I mean green witch), BoyOne (who knows what I'm supposed to call this but he LOVED his costume until the fake blood broke and stopped spewing)

Halloween

Happy Halloween!!

Today started with a soccer game. Two's last one 'til spring. I must say, as much as I love soccer, I am glad for this season to be over. Here in the mountains it is c.o.l.d. And honestly, at this age these kids were ready to be done about three games ago. Still fun though.

After soccer we began to get ready to go trick or treating. We had decided to go to our old neighborhood. We know everyone in every house there and felt that it would be safer (as in if some Ukrainian child happened to get lost) and easier (as in the houses are all occupied and closer together). Also, this neighborhood has a fabulous tradition of gathering beforehand for dinner. Each year a picture of the kids is taken and it is fun to compare the size of the group and the height. Thanks so much to the same neighbor for hosting year, after year, after year...

I have learned these past few days that if we want to be anywhere at a reasonable time I have to start prepping the boys about 3 hours before. So at like noon we started getting costumes ready. Go me! BoyOne decided, after everyone was already in the car, he wanted his face painted like a skeleton to go along with his pirate costume. Fine, I thought. Like Pirates of the Caribbean which I'm guessing he has never seen. There was even a picture of how he wanted it done on the package the paints came in. So, about halfway through, and 10 minutes into it, he changes his mind. AUGH!! He just wants dark eyes. Whatever. Just wipe it off and get in the car. This is seriously way more girly than I ever imagined a boy would be. Good grief. In his defense, this is probably going to be his one and only Halloween ever and I'm sure he wants it to be perfect.

We finally get back to the old hood. He changes his mind even more and wants ALL the paint off. So, instead of eating, I'm inside wiping paint off that I just painted. Whatever...

It is now time to trick or treat. It is raining and cold. Know what? They didn't even care. We were supposed to have split up, me with the littles and huz with the bigs. Somehow, we kept overlapping and I felt like I was struggling to keep track of everyone instead. So, at the end of our street I took Four and BoyTwo and Huz took the older four kids. That lasted about 15 houses and then we all were together. At the end, I took the youngest four to my neighbor's house with her kids (who we were trick or treating with) and huz, One and BoyOne kept going.

It was a successful night. The kids made out like bandits, and so did we. One does not like caramel, nuts or most chocolate. WHO'S KID IS SHE??? So we score all the unwanteds from her. The boys had a great time and were well mannered, saying thank you at each house. In the beginning BoyTwo was trying to eat each piece of candy between houses but quickly figured out that this was going to be an all night thing. He still ate a ton of candy.

It's all good, everybody had a great time, we were so glad to see old friends and we all got lots of candy and went home with tired kids. Great day.

Friday

Wow. Friday was busy.

We started by getting everyone bathed and ready for the day. Preparations included packing everyone's Halloween costumes. It went fairly smoothly until BoyOne's fake bloody sword was broken. He and BoyTwo had been sword fighting and it was just too much action for that fake bloody sword. BoyOne was, to put it mildly, devastated. These are the times when their emotional age shines through and is very easily several years younger than their actual age. I really did feel bad for him. I mean it's his first Halloween ever and he was so excited.

We had to haul into SLC for dentist appointments at donated dental. BoyOne has some chipped teeth but I hadn't looked in his mouth to see if there were any obvious cavities. BoyTwo, however had at least 4 that I could easily see. By the time we got to donated dental for our 11 o'clock appointment, they were very behind schedule. I had all 6 kids with me. I had hoped to drop off the girls with a sitter but I was worried about time frame for the rest of the day so I ended up taking them with me. We were supposed to have an appointment with a Facilitator to get specific information about the boys entrance into the orphanage. This meeting was to be at 1. Fortunately Facilitator was held up in another appointment. We didn't even get into the dentist until 1. Yes ma'am. That is 2 HOURS later than our scheduled time!!!!!!! With 6 kids!!!!!!!

By the time we had our appointments the dentists were done giving fillings as they had already done so many and were so far behind schedule. This was very sad for me. BoyTwo has 6 cavities. They are all in baby teeth but 4 of them are really bad and are in molars that won't come out for a long time. I know that they hurt him:( And, as you all know, dental work without insurance is kinda pricey. BoyOne was scared to death. I held one of his hands and Three held his other hand. In the end, we were told that his teeth were great. Good news. BoyTwo was not at all nervous. He really is quite the character. Always making us laugh.

After we were finished at the dentist, we headed back to huz's parents house. They live in between our house and where we needed to be for the night so they let us come crash at their house for our Facilitator appointment. This helped us a ton. We couldn't have driven back and forth three times-it would've been way too crazy.

Facilitator ended up coming to the appointment a little after 3. This was just fine. She is a native Ukrainian and speaks fluent English. It was wonderful to meet with her and find out a few details about the boys. We already had found out most of the information she gave us but it was nice to be able to confirm it. She visited with each of the boys, asked how they were enjoying their trip. She works a lot with orphaned children and knows what questions to ask and the kids seemed to be comfortable with her. We did find out that as of Friday the boys had not been cleared for international adoption. They are legally orphans but the government must have paperwork submitted for a period of one year after filing them as legal orphans and prior to legalizing them for adoption. We are hoping to find out in the next couple of days if they have been cleared and if not, when their year mark is.

After Facilitator left we hustled to get into our Halloween costumes to go to the SAC party. We got there late, as our appointment with Facilitator had been pushed back so far. Upon arrival BoyOne decided that he no longer liked his costume. He saw that most of his friends were wearing only a mask or a mask with a trench coat. BoyOne is VERY self-conscious and insecure so when he saw this he immediately wanted to go home. He told one translator that we had made him buy the costume he was wearing but that he didn't like it. That made me mad. I called him on it and that made him mad. As soon as it was time to leave BoyOne was finally starting to have a good time. This seems to be the trend with him. BoyTwo, fortunately, is more easy going in these social situations (I'm sure age has a lot to do with it) and had a great evening, as did our girls.

We grabbed some food on our way home and by the time we arrived home everyone was ready for bed! All in all I would say that it was a mostly successful night. On the down side, I am getting sick. I've been fighting it since Monday and each day I feel it getting a little bit worse. Nothing too terrible, bad head cold. Hopefully it doesn't go to my chest...