Our slice of heaven...

This is our backyard. It wasn't like this when we moved here last July. Jim has worked hard putting in a pond complete with fish, a tree house for the kids, rope swings, grass, flowers, mulch, and so much more. It is a nice tranquil place to relax in the morning with breakfast and coffee or in the evening with a glass of wine. Great job honey!

These swings entertain not only our kids, but the kids from the entire neighborhood. It seems they are in constant use and the squeals of delight are music to the ears. The older kids climb the ladder holding the swing, tuck it between their legs and jump! They say it is like flying as they sore through the air and into the leaves on the tree.

Jim's pond. I think he should start a pond business when he retires (I secretly hope that is awhile away). The kids love to feed the fish, turtle and frog. I love sitting and listening to the water trickle and the birds singing as I am enjoying a glass of wine at night, but Jim likes the morning with the quiet of the early morning, the cool air and his breakfast...

Lights on or off at night this little corner is just so tranquil.

Recovery

Ella's 2 front teeth are still a bit wiggly, but the bruising is gone. We are not sure if the teeth will tighten back up, but if they don't the tooth fairy has been notified these teeth are special losses - hopefully, she will be generous.

This is Ella with Izzy, our boxer, who is almost 10 months old. They love each other! I am not sure what the conversation was here, but I bet it had something to do with the bone in Ella's hand. Hard to believe 8 months ago Ella was scared to death of (sobaka) dog.

A new baby...

...Introducing

Thor our new baby boxer who is 6 weeks old!

Pictures

Split lower lip and lower gum line

Injury to upper lip, gum and chipped tooth - both front

teeth are loose.

Ella saw her dentist today. Basically he said yes it looks bad, but after an x-ray he said there is really nothing he can do. She did not break any bones or cause any deeper damage than what we can visually see. The teeth are her baby teeth and they will either tighten back up or not....we just wait. The swelling and bruising will go away and she will be just fine. Her chipped tooth is not a major concern since it is a baby tooth. He could repair it, but again it is a baby tooth.

She is on Motrin & Tylenol and a liquid to soft food diet for awhile in order to give the teeth time to tighten. She is complaining of "Big Ouchies on Ella's eip"

Thank you for all your private emails, calls, prayers, and messages for her and us.

Emergency Room

We made a trip to the ER this evening. Ella Grace was hit full on in the mouth by a swing from a good 'ole fashion iron golf club. Her bottom lip was split open - deep (no stitches since it didn't pass the wet/dry line) and she has damage to her upper gum, frenulum, 2 front teeth, and her lower gum (not nearly as bad as the top). We will be headed out in the morning to see the dentist/oral surgeon for the next step. She is in pain, but resting comfortably now in bed.

Support

Thank you all for your words of encouragement. I have had several personal emails in addition to the postings from parents who are experiencing the same behaviors from their children.

I don't feel so alone now!

We are continuing to move forward with love, support, and encouraging the "right" choices.

On another note, the young men are doing great and are looking forward to summer. We have continued to home school, putting in extra time working on expressive speech, pronunciation, spelling and math skills. We are considering some time at Sylvan Learning Center over the summer.

Thanks for following along and again, thank you for your emails and messages!

80% Wonderful 20%.....

I'd have to say we feel so blessed Ella Grace is healthy and happy, and while 80% of the time life is wonderful there is 20% that makes my head spin! Lately, those moments are the sneaking, disobeying, lying, and shifting blame - particulary to Christian. For example, her bangs are cut....so I asked her, "Ella, how did your hair get cut?" Ella responds with, "Christian did it." hmmmm. I asked Christian, "Did you cut Ella's hair?" and of course, I knew the answer would be no. When I go back and ask Ella again she will say, "Ella cut it." Grrrrr. I have explained to her we don't cut our own hair and we don't tell fibs even if we think we might get into trouble that God, Mommy, and Daddy, prefer honesty.

Now, we will move on to the next example. I had just fed her 2 nice sized pancakes, yogurt, a banana and some juice. I think that is a sufficient sized breakfast for any little girl. It's actually more than what Christian and Carson will eat. Not 15 minutes after I am finished cleaning up the kitchen and I have gone to another room, Ella will come into the kitchen open the pantry and stand there eating dry cereal! She says she is hungry. I think not!

Other issues...when I am home she closes the door to sleep, but when Jim is home she screams until he leaves it open - this is called getting over on papa or having papa wrapped around your little finger! She will not stay in time out which is sitting on her bed without toys. No, she finds her way quietly into my bathroom and goes through all the lotions, perfumes, and my expensive make-up until they are destroyed. I have tried moving her to a time out some where closer to me but then she wants and tries to carry on a conversation. Then there is the if I have said no r not to do something she will go seek out papa or Patrick....or the reverse.

Overall, she has adjusted beautifully and had bonded and blended right into her family and to the United States. She has picked up the English language wonderfully and is now picking up Spanish all while retaining her Russian (understanding but not speaking). I am sure these things I have mentioned are minor in comparison to other issues other adoptive families are experience, but they are big for us.

Why I Can't Have Another Baby...

...according to one of our smaller boys, the reason I can't have babies is because I don't have anymore milk! See once you nurse 3 boys your milk is all gone - they drank it all, and therefore I can no longer become pregnant. Really, if you don't have milk how can you feed your baby?

I have to say I cherish this naive innocence.

Ballet Recital...

Ella Grace will have her 1st ballet recital tomorrow. She was a bit behind when she began ballet, but she has practiced hard and Mrs. Amanda has worked with her a few extra times to help her catch up. In the video below we arrived at 1130 and it was cloudy and cool. By the time of the recital at 1230 it was COLD, WINDY and beginning to RAIN. Ella was freezing!

Enjoy the show.

Cooking 1, 2, 3...

I really enjoy cooking and making new things to keep the meals exciting, and my family...they like to eat... and Ella LOVES to watch me cook. She has "her" chair in the kitchen and watches me as she asks about a thousand questions (which is great cause she is absorbing it all)! While I like to cook, I really don't like to go to the grocery store (I think that is handed down from my mom) to shop - you would understand if you were feeding 3 growing boys, a husband, and LaLa who eats like a growing boy! My bill for 2 weeks usually hovers around $450.00 -OUCH!

On this particular day I had leafy spinach greens to use and a couple of apples so I thought I would create a salad using them, and toss in some walnuts - sounds good, right? Once I had the salad prepared I realized I didn't have a good dressing to go with it - no problem, we will just "whip one up" as Carson likes to say. We did and LaLa is shaken it up!

We had tortilla crusted tilapia, saffron yellow rice with almond slivers, pine nuts, and pecan pieces, spinach/apple salad with walnuts and our special dressing. Yummy!

We had a busy week!

Sunday night, we took our "old" van to the dealership and lined it up behind 9 other vehicles for some diagnostic test on Monday. After Bernie ran the car through the test we found out that "hiccup" in shifting was a result of a valve issue in the transmission. Yes, anytime one hears "transmission" you know it comes with a hefty price tag - just under $900.00. After hearing the prognosis we decided it was best to have it repaired now versus doing more damage and ultimately a much more costly job later.


Monday was filled with another visit from Buck to sign more insurance papers, rugby practice, and soccer practice.

Tuesday began with the neighborhood breakfast. We have one every month. It's nice to venture out (especially now that I home school) and catch up with the ladies on the block. I missed the last 2 gatherings, but this month I will be hosting - guess I won't miss it! After the breakfast, it was off to the west side of town to walk through our home (rental property) with a contractor to begin some much needed repairs. I will say is difficult to walk through 'your home' and see damages. I could go on and on here, but since it is a sensitive subject I will just move on to lunch. The kids and I met with Auntie Zenia and her daughter Astryd for lunch at Applebees in the T.V. room. The kids love it there. We had a nice lunch then scurried home for piano lessons. Ella Grace went first so I could dress her for ballet and scurry out for one more errand to El Paso City Lights to attempt to find replacement crystal "drip dishes" for the broken ones on the chandelier in our home - the one we won't discuss because it is a sensitive subject. Of course, the original dishes are no longer available so we had to search for the most comparative both in size, similarity, and cost. Ana was a huge help and she successfully found some which are compatible. Now we are running behind for ballet, so we zoomed back over to base and were just about to get out of the car when Amanda called to cancel ballet. Whew....that came in handy for today as I have bunco and I need to rush home to make a dish to share or as Carson calls it 'whip something up' Momma. No winning tonight at bunco, but we had a blast!


Wednesday, thankfully, was a light 'to do' list today and the kids and I focused on school and quiet time. We did not study yesterday (the beauty of home schooling) so today we made up for lost time. The boys' knocked out several math lessons, literature, history, spelling, and science. Ella Grace did a beautiful job working on the letter "E" in both capital and lower case and worked on her colors. It was great to have all of them jump right in without any belly aching!


Thursday was another packed day starting off early with Ella Grace's trip to the speech/language pathologist. I have to say the appointment was insightful. She noticed almost immediately Ella has some fine motor issues and some balance issues - both correctable. She was impressed with Ella's sentence structure capabilities and knowledge/comprehension of the English language. We are ALWAYS working on her vocabulary/word usage/knowledge/sentence structures/vowel sounds/etc., she is doing remarkably well. She will work with Ella using a couple of different programs to assist her in progressing forward. After her appointment, we headed home to check in on the boys' and their classwork status, pick Patrick up from school and head back out for his oral surgery consult. I must say I didn't know wisdom teeth extraction could be so expensive! It's a good thing those teeth don't fall out for the tooth fairy at at $1000.00 per tooth! Patrick does need his lower 2 wisdom teeth extracted, however we will not be doing this through the oral surgeon we saw....creepy guy. We headed back home since Patrick has piano lessons in the late afternoon and I needed to get dinner going before we headed out to soccer. As life would have it, there was no time to cook dinner and just enough time to ready up for soccer and head over to the field - we won! Ben, our neighbor is an awesome soccer player and he scored BIG for our team. Way to to to all the Longhorns!


Friday was a nice slow day all the way around. We typically only work on language, reading and spelling in the morning and in the afternoon the boys' have art and gym class. We wrapped class up at noon then headed over to meet daddy for lunch before I dropped them off for their afternoon classes. Ella and I use this time to run a few errands...groceries, bank, gas for the car, etc., or sometimes (like today) we sneak off for some girl time and a little ice cream. After we picked the boys' up from class we had to head over to the vet to have Izzy's leg looked at. She is limping terribly and has been for about 4 days. The vet feels it is most likely a soft tissue injury (perhaps wrestling with Oreo - her buddy from next door) and she cannot play for a week. She is on some dogie Motrin and should be good by Friday of next week. Jim attended West Point Founder's Day here at Fort Bliss - I stayed back with the kids. Patrick had some friends over, we ordered pizza, and the little people and I disappeared upstairs.


Saturday, the kids had riding lessons and afterwards we came home worked in the yard picking up trash/dogie poo/sticks/planting flowers/and planted Jim's beloved garden.

The weather is warming up here, and the trees/flowers are blooming beautifully. Have a great week!

Our Uncle....Uncle Sam....

This was posted on another adoptive family's blog, and it is something we all need to respond to in order to have this credit renewed.

We are using our credit this year since our adoption was finalized in 2008 - it is a huge help to our family, and I am sure to many others who have monies invested in adoption.

If you need more information if you can take this credit click http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc607.html

Spring break is over and we are back to the daily routine. I love routine and those days when everything just seems to fall into place.

Tomorrow we are having our 6 month post placement visit. Hard to believe it has been a little over six months since our Ella Grace came home. She has accomplished so much and has seen and done so much in her first six months home - we are so proud of her.

Thank you to all of you who have been our support (knowingly or not) with your comments, suggestions, thoughts, and sometimes just listening to me (Family, Tammy H., Christine, Heather, Dee, Adriana, Michelle, Antonio y Amparo, Mamaporuski, Conethia & Jim Bob, Kathleen, Kristina, Lori, Tammy, Sue, Tracy, Julie, Beth, Melissa, Sabrina, Rachel, Schrie...the list goes on and on. Thank you all!

Happy Spring!

Today was the first day of SPRING!

I love the season. It's a season of starting over....a rebirth

Nature wakes up with the chirping of birds, green grass, blossoming flowers and trees, the sky is blue and the rain smells different. It's time to clean and pack away the winter wear and bring out the shorts and dresses; it's a time to enjoy the warmth of the sun and the cool evening breeze.

What does spring mean to you?

St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

St. Patrick's Day is celebrated on March 17, his religious feast day and the anniversary of his death in the fifth century. The Irish have observed this day as a religious holiday for over a thousand years.

On St. Patrick's Day, which falls during the Christian season of Lent, Irish families would traditionally attend church in the morning and celebrate in the afternoon. Lenten prohibitions against the consumption of meat were waived and people would dance, drink, and feast—on the traditional meal of Irish bacon and cabbage.

No words, just pictures...

Daddy's Home...

Daddy arrive home earlier than expected from his business trip (TDY) in Hawaii.

Welcome home DADDY we missed you!

T.G.I.F.

I had Christian, Carson & Ella ready to go out the door at 0820 (10 minutes ahead of my estimated time) and into the car. We drove to the other side of town and traffic wasn't too bad; we actually arrived at our tenant's house 10 minutes early (we were there to meet the carpet installers) and waited until 0910 before I called the company with a cheerful, "I'm here where are they?" As it turns out, the time was not 0900 but "sometime" between 0900 and 1000. Okay, I think I have lived outside of the country too long....since when do you get an estimated appointment time instead of an actual appointment time? Why does any company think a consumer has that kind of flexibility in their schedule to sit and wait for them to show up? Crazy!

With the "window of opportunity" before me I took it to grab the kids a really healthy breakfast at the local Diamond Shamrock - coke and chips! Please don't leave me notes about what a bad parent I am. I am a faithful hot breakfast cooker Monday through Saturday. We then extended our window with a trip to the post for stamps and drop some letters off (long overdue "change my address" letters). Just as we arrived back (0945) the carpenters arrived.

They quickly moved about the house moving what was necessary to install the carpet and were finished by 1130!

I promised the kids lunch out today so we headed over to Olive Garden for some soup and salad - yummy! We finished with lunch and headed back home so the boys' could make gym class and Ella had a play date today. I dropped the boys' off and hurried home so Ella could make her play date. Then, I was kid-less What do I do now? I haven't been kid-less since (I'm thinking here.....) Adriana and I went to Africa! Has it really been that long?

I promptly scanned my "to do list" and found SEVERAL things I could knock off while the house was quiet - phone calls! I called the life insurance company, the appointment line, the TriWest office, & Verizon wireless - talk about productive! I did have to ask the Verizon guy to call me back since it was time to pick up Christian and Carson and soon Ella.

With everyone back home we readied ourselves for soccer and headed back out the door....

.....later back in the door and snuggling in for the night.

These are the latest treasures from the Antoshka Child House of Ella Grace

Ella pretending to be a stylist

Ella is in the lime green dress eating a cookie

Ella is far left in the white dress with red trim and white bow

One of THOSE Days...

Have you ever had ONE OF THOSE DAYS?

It began early...

The dog (Izzy) puked in Christan's bed...

Christian & Izzy ended up in my bed...

I woke up late...

No early morning walk...

No "me time" with coffee and news...

Late getting started on our home schooling...

The boys' took FOREVER to teach today....

Their test didn't go so well...

Ella was defiant today (again)...

I had a MOUNTAIN of laundry (again)

Chores were a struggle for the boys'...

Ella busted her chin open (again)...

Since we were struggling with school today, Ella was late to ballet...

I ordered take out thinking I would end it all easily tonight, but they were out of chicken and I had to wait for it to be dropped...

AND

I realized it is 8:00 P.M. and I didn't get a shower today!

I think I am going to bed and try this tomorrow (after I shower).

One last question...how was your day?

Feeling Better

Finally we are all feeling better and back on our feet and into our routine.

Ella had her eye appointment yesterday and she was/is on the edge of not needing glasses. The opthamologist would not have prescribed them for her IF she didn't have stigmatism in her right eye. Today, we went to pick out her frames and she will wear her new glasses for 6 weeks. She will then revisit the opthamologist for a reevaluation.

We are back into a full day of school with much success! The boys jumped right in and didn't complain one bit.

Ella still doesn't like to sit and trace her name, letter, numbers or colors. She cries as if I am punishing her. I have tried to give her a treat if she completes it and I have tried multiple ways of helping her learn to write without much success. She does well with repeat learning but writing/tracing is a struggle.

I hope to post some pictures in the next couple of days.