another medical Saturday

In anticipation of an upcoming surgery we took John Paul back to the hospital where his palate repair surgery was done.  This hospital did a fantastic job, and the surgeon is top in his field, but it was a hard, tough, arduous time for our little family, and I've been in no hurry to return. 

Surrounded by siblings is definitely one sure-fire way to mitigate fear and apprehension.  These four are part of the original John Paul fan club, and his big sis Julianna is especially tender-hearted, and defensive, and you do not want to cross her path if you have any ill-intent towards John Paul.

There Julianna is again, keeping close watch on his speech therapy eval.  "He did pretty good, especially because it was all in Chinese", was her educated opinion.

[Personally, I think he is doing well, but when he gets tired or lazy he looses some of his harder sounds like /v/ and /f/ and I'm definitely planning to have an eval done in the States.  My dream is that he 'barely' qualifies for therapy - I'd love for a little extra speech support, and insurance will cover it if he qualifies!]

Many hard hours in this hall with my stressed out, traumatized, hurting little boy.

This is the step-down unit, on the far left side is a bank of windows looking at the nurses station.  He left the OR, spent about two hours in ICU, and then met me here.  We were the far bed on the right.  He was heavily sedated, with blood occasionally coming out of his nose and mouth.  Even when he opened his eyes and looked at me I got the distinct feeling I wasn't who he was hoping for (he had only been home about four months).  Oh, and his pulse ox kept slipping and the alarm kept sounding and the two of us were A WRECK!

But we made it!  And if what doesn't kill you makes you stronger... well that might explain part of the iron-clad attachment the two of us currently enjoy.

The attending surgeon looked at his mouth and thinks we are still at least a year away from needing to do his bone graft.  We will get a second opinion at UNC in July.

And now, for John Paul, we are going to take a little break from medical Saturdays (dentist last week, hospital this week is plenty for my guy!)

Children's Day (Luke)

Luke's preschool class did a Children's Day performance, and my little man was pumped.  He's nothing if not confident, and the stage did not intimidate him one bit.

He was pretty proud of this ancient Chinese warrior outfit, and especially the spear that he carried ("it's real, but not for hurting people" was his comment)

Waiting stage left with his adoring fan club in the wings :) This was after his official performance before marching back up on stage for a bow.

I love this picture.  Those soaring high rises are our apartment complex.  You can see the watching crowds, and also the backside of the teacher who dressed up like a life-size warrior (as opposed to a 5 year old sized warrior).  Luke is the blond, obviously.

Yay for you Luke!  What a great show!

throwing them out the window

I hope that one of the ways my kids describe our homeschooling experience is "fun".... so we are fully committed to throwing our completed school books out the window!

Nothing says "last day of school" quite like a good heave of a workbook, or the growing pile on the ground below.

They stand on a chair to get better leverage ;)

I thought about having them come back upstairs and look up the word "cathartic" in the dictionary, but I figured a dictionary might ruin the moment, so we'll save that one for next year :) ha!

And the 2016-17 school year is over.  I have two rising 6th graders, and a rising 3rd grader (and a rising 1st grader, and a rising K)... but it's a bit more complicated than that because Lydia will join a 5th grade class with her age-peers this fall, and eventually I hope to put John Paul and Luke in the same "grade" as well.  But homeschooling allows flexibility, so we are going to work with what we've got :)

F-O-R-T-Y

Can you believe I'm 40? Can I believe I'm 40?!?!  It seems crazy but it's true.  And I'm loving every minute.

I went away for a night with four of my closest friends - we sat in the club lounge at a fancy hotel (thanks credit card points!) and soaked in the hot pools and ate and talked and laughed till our sides hurt.  It feels like lavish blessing to have ladies like this in my life.  I love each of them so dearly and they are better friends than I deserve.  Way better.

And my kids treated me like a superstar and Matt took me on a lunch date and we all celebrated with key lime pie (made by Isaac and Matt) and it was incredible, just all the way around a great birthday.

With very few pictures.  ha!

these little two still shop for me at the convenience store next to the gate of our complex.

I'm grateful to live in a place where they can spend their meager savings and exercise a little independence AND come home with something I'll enjoy. win win win!

Here's to 40 more :)

NO Pencils Week

NO Pencils Week is off to a solid start.  It's an easy win for this homeschooling momma - outlaw pencils, and it's hard for the students to find fault with your plans :)

We are focusing on a deep clean and purge of the school porch.  And it feels so good to my low-clutter loving self! It's one of those "things must get worse before they get better scenarios", so don't be fooled by the photos!

NO Pencils week is headed for a big interruption - my birthday is tomorrow!

figuring out those teeth

So yesterday we made a last minute decision to visit the dentist.  It's just been in recent years that we have had reliable, western-standard medical care in our city, and one of the perks is that this country is a lot more laid back about making appointments :)  Call in the morning, teeth cleaned that afternoon.

Only the little two boys, Matt and I needed cleanings.  But that can still make for a long wait.  Plan ahead for the win.

Also, that precious little smiling face right there in the red shirt... well, on this dental visit we confirmed that his mouth is a wreck.  sigh.

He is starting to loose baby teeth, so we did x-rays and he is indeed missing several adult teeth (of course he is... that section of his gum line never formed in utero so there was nowhere for the teeth buds to develop).  And now that he is loosing teeth he is needing a bone graft surgery, and after the surgery he will need some sort of dental bracing device to provide front teeth while he grows to maturity, and then some permanent false teeth.  In other words, that's a complicated grin you've been admiring in the photo above.

Good news is this boy has a Momma and a Daddy that are going to fight hard to get him what he needs when he needs it!

Also, he finally got his hands on the Bible we ordered as his reward for finishing reading the Beginners Bible.

This Bible had a complicated journey through Eastern Europe and several different hand-offs and just arrived in our city this weekend.  Now it's secure in his hot little hands, and he's feeling pretty good about that!

five days, five pictures

Another week in the record books.

This was a biggie!  Our last "real" week of homeschool for the year!  The girls finished 5th grade and Isaac finished 2nd!  Next week is No Pencils Week and we will clean out our school porch and gather all our important things-to-keep and put them in files and create mini portfolios of our work to take to their teachers for next fall and throw a few books out the window because it's just soooo very satisfying!

Isaac finished much of his school work last week and this week was very light for my little man.  He spent hours working on this lego creation.  and I mean H-O-U-R-S!

Kicking off the spring sports days at local school (I got these two photos from class chat groups).

I'm thinking there was a color-coded pom pom thing?!?

There is always lots to talk about on the playground (for the mamas, and the kiddos)

Home school happens in the ..... HOME!  The boys working on perler bead creations, Lydia with her head in her spelling book.  All three homeschooled kids have desks on the school porch, and they do the majority of their work there, but there is definitely a bit of migrating around the house too.  A change of scenery helps, if you can resist the distractions!

And now it's Friday night and Matt is on a late night flight home and we have NOTHING planned for tomorrow except for enjoying having our Daddy back at home!  yay!

Mothers Day weekend

A little forced family fun on Saturday morning.... bike riding is better with friends!

Wow it was hot.

a traffic-stopping line of bikes crossing the intersection!

Sunday morning I was treated to breakfast in bed, hundreds of kisses (mostly from the little two who are in an exceptionally affectionate stage!) and then off to church.  We picked up sandwiches and enjoyed a sweet afternoon at the park before Matt left for the airport at 4.

Surrounded by my kiddos - and plenty of smiles!

in a picture

A few glimpses of our last few days.

There's no way around it.  We are raising city kids.  sigh.  perks and drawbacks.  pros and cons.

Many hours listening to Daddy read The Fellowship of the Ring, and it's finished!  For history we're reading By the Great Horn Spoon and it is hilarious!  A great read-aloud to finish up our year.

Find My Butterfly.  He's got room to grow in spelling, but I'm feeling good about putting John Paul in 1st grade this fall!

It was a challenging morning for Luke, but there's nothing quite like a little audio book listening to help smooth things over.  (He's deep into many hours of Magic Tree House audio, and I'm hopeful this will be one great way to pass the hours on the airplane!)

And for the afternoon, boys and their dogs, ready to read.  I managed to squeeze in there and we got in some great stories.  The boys recent favorites are Junk Day on Juniper Street and A Sick Day for Amos McGee (both recent library selections).

ridiculous-ness

You just never know what the 5-6pm hour is going to bring ;)

Yesterday four of the kids were pretending to be dogs, with Julianna as the owner.  They did all kinds of tricks (roll over, fetch, play dead).  And then, apparently, everyone got thirsty.

What?!?!  I was busy cooking and not paying much attention but this little scene did grab my attention.

These guys can be pretty ridiculous, but they are having fun together, so I'm just going to roll with it!

Matt's triathlon (proud wife alert!)

So this spring Matt started training for a triathlon.  And while there were days that I thought training plus a bit of crazy work pace might be a bit too much, his big grins when he returned home after work outs and most everything about his demeanor while he was training convinced me that this was a perfect fit for him, and for our family.

In February he swam in Thailand, in March he ran in Africa, in April he changed too many bike flats (and finally discovered the problem just a few weeks ago) and then yesterday afternoon, he competed!

1.5 km in the lake.

We couldn't see anything but lots of splashing - ha!  And because of the way barriers were erected to protect the athletes and keep spectators out (the race was super well run - way beyond my expectations!) We opted to miss his swim-to-bike transition and catch him entering the first lap of the bike.

There he is!  Our daddy!  We camped here for a while and watched competitors fly past.  We were with a few other foreign families and it was a fun picnic/cheering/kids run and play on the grass kind of set up where the time flew by (at least for those of us not biking - ha!)

Matt passed this spot several times, and they had cameras set up on the back side of the bike loop, and I managed to figure out when Matt would be on the big screen....

He passed people on that hill :)

After 40 km on the bike it was straight to transition.  We were so close to his spot we could holler at him the entire time!  It was so cool!

The transition area was always busy, and we knew Matt had a long 10km run ahead of him, so we just watched and watched.

Then we managed to scoot over right next to the finish line and (white kid privileges) even cross a barrier that other people (including white moms!) were not allowed to cross so the kids could get right up close to the finishers!

He was in the sixth wave of starters so his official time was 2:45:55.  Better than he hoped!  and top 1/3 of his age group :)

With his fan club minis

Still standing on two feet!

Team K.  We are trying to talk the big kids into trying a "starter" length tri next year.  maybe.... maybe....

little brother duty

Wednesday May 3rd.  

Isaac has a late afternoon soccer game at school, the girls have an evening finale for GEMS (their Bible club).  

Little brothers?  They will be tagging along, cheering and clapping and (mostly) waiting for the cookies on the rear table at GEMS.  ha!

Isaac is not a huge fan of local school.  But he does love to play soccer, and he gets to do a lot of it at school.  Whew.  otherwise I think we'd get a lot of going-to-school resistance from this guy.  

The game was a disappointing loss, but those blue skies didn't disappoint anyone!  

then home for a quick dinner and we re-connected with Matt and off to GEMS.

Lydia's class.

Julianna's class. 

I'm really thankful for GEMS and the teachers and the girls classmates.  Next fall we will be in AWANA in the States!  But the girls plan to re-join GEMS as soon as we return to Asia. 

and two more pictures from today: 

Even though our writing class is over we three mamas are still committed to spending late Friday morning and lunch together.  I love having "light" Fridays and I am so thankful for the fellowship and companionship (for me, and my kids!)

These sweethearts are my two favorite 2 year olds!  We love big smile selfies :)

And then late afternoon I ditched my previously planned dinner and decided to "just do pancakes" because I wasn't sure when Matt would be home and I had 6 kids to feed and isn't pancakes supposed to be quick and easy?!?  But why oh why is it such a mess-making activity?  Hmmmm.  I might have to take pancakes off my Easy list.  But we ate til our bellies were full and Matt was earlier than expected (!!) and now it's game night.

Julianna and Kayleigh unintentionally striking the same pose! ha!