Distracted by bat houses

The last few days have been all over the map when it comes to behaviour around here and needless to say  I have been very frustrated. I will not even get into all the things that they have been up to because I would rather show what we did instead.

Hang on, I have to see what Fudge is talking, he says a grasshopper is giving birth....

Indeed there is a grasshopper laying eggs in our yard, it was very cool, I took pictures but they are on the other camera and I have to find the cord for that one.

Okay back to my need to distract my kids from their behaviours for awhile. They asked me yesterday if they could make a bat house, I said not right now. Then this morning as Calvin was refusing to eat his breakfast because he was mad at his Dad ( it was so not about the oatmeal) I decided to use the bat house as a motivator after we had finished talking about all the huge feelings he was having so that he would actually eat the said oatmeal and we could move on,


We went to the store and got the supplies, came home and went to work. You can build one, it is easy peasy.

here is all the stuff you need, some 1/4" plywood, some scrap wood, glue, nails, caulking and a piece of plastic mesh. The plastic mesh can be hard to find, we took ours from the back of a roofing vent.

Trace around your mesh screen to make a front and a back. The front needs to be 1 inch shorter than the back.

I made them both the same size to start and then cut an inch off one of them after.

 Then I measured out the 2  long sides on the scraps of wood, you do not want them to be more than about 1/2 inch thick but their width does not matter.  I started the boys off with the cut and then let them use the hand saw.

Then I laid out wood on 3 sides ( some cutting mistakes were made by small people) and then we glued them down on top of the mesh so that mesh would held in place by more than just nails.

Then we put the top on so it looked like this

 Then I started the nails and the boys hammered them in. please ignore Calvin's forehead, it appears he has impetigo and he got from the lake, yes it is gross, it looks way better now than it did earlier this week. I just noticed that both of the pictures are of Calvin working, Fudge did some too, honest.

The next step is to caulk all the seams as you want it to be air tight and waterproof, bats like heat. Then we cut a piece to go across the top to make it more durable and nailed it on. Once the caulking is dry we will paint the whole thing black and hang it in a tree. They say that the bats will climb through the opening and use the mesh to hang from.

While the caulking is drying I came inside to finish dealing with the garden bounty from today, tomatoes, beans, broccoli and kale all destined for the freezer or canning pot.

Now I am going finish writing on my children's clothing and then we are going out for Pho. I will tell you more about the oatmeal, the Chinese water torture and the writing on t-shirts tomorrow along with pictures of that grasshopper because it was pretty cool.


PS Christine or Corey taught me to write on my kids clothing because they are awesome and creative like that, I just can't remember who did it first so they will share the credit unless one of them fills me in.

PPS I can not explain the formatting in this post, stupid add captions options had a mind of it's own today.

because I don't mind if you laugh at me.

I went into the suburbs yesterday to run some errands. I stopped at the mall for some lunch and to use the washroom. I have been to this mall several times and the washrooms are at the end of a long hallway, the mall was quiet and I obsereved a gentelman and his son coming out of the door in  front of me, I walked past them and into the next door, basing my choice on the man and his son and the door they came out. As I was washing my hands I noticed a gentleman coming through the door, then I looked in the mirror and realised I was in the men's room! - I smiled at the man and left. But if I was in the men's room then the man and his son were in ladies room, I guess it was a good thing the mall was not crowded because we all would of had some explaining to do.

well...

sometimes you get what you wish for. That line in my last post about being so profoundly tired that I needed to sleep for the weekend, well I woke up not feeling very well on Friday morning, by mid afternoon just getting out of bed was making me vomit. I ended up at the ER with an IV and then spent all day yesterday sleeping. I am still not all better but am on the med for sure. What a way to start a new year off!

I would love to sit here and type because Lisa gave me an award but we are off to church and I must supervise Calvin who is ramping up his behaviour because there is school tomorrow...

summer 09

(Click on the collage to make bigger)

As you can see it has been a long and boring summer and there was no fun had by anyone big, small, with shells or with wings. There are also a few pictures in there of our summer reno project ( before, during and almost finished) which was a huge task and a strain on the monkeys patience but one that they are excited about none the less. I must now be off to deal with the back to school stress that is cuasing all sorts of interesting moments around here.

so... ummm.... yeah...

I am still alive, lots of reasons for not posting but most of them have to do with the chaos that has been being a parent in the summer. We are busy! Here's a quick play by play -


- had the rest of a great westcoast vacation complete with mice in my parents bathroom, bon ton cake and trying to wrangle 7 cousins from 0 to 12 into pictures and make them all smile at the same time


- home to a happy hubby and a few days to get back into the routine - very important around here

- Calvin's 9th birthday, boys, water, fruit, cake balloons - need I say more

- 3 days of running summer camp at the university in the city, (which took 3 days to set up for and 1 day to clean up).

- lots of days hanging out at home, breaking up arguing children, playing at the local splash pad.

- strawberry picking x2, freezing, eating making jam... yummy jam

- My birthday, always a good day.

- the garden, which actually sucks up tons of my free time

Today we are off to the lake because it is actually nice and we friends with cottages, we have other plans to do the same thing next week! I have lots of posts in my head about what has been up with the boys these past few weeks but I have to find time to get them out of my head and into the computer.

Did you know that on Friday the boys will of been here for a year, amazing. It is causing all sorts of stress in their little worlds but we are working on it.

random wed - on wed - how novel.

• I'm tired
• We gave one of the dogs away last week. Bella was a sweet girl but if I has known that we were getting boys I never would of kept her last spring when I was selling the rest of the litter. I miss her but it is better and by all accounts she is doing great and happily chasing her new Papa all over the place.
• The boys are having a really hard time with the fact that she left, they are not saying it but showing us with all sorts of brilliant and exhausting ( for me) behaviour.
• I should be making dinner.
• It is really windy today and I keep having to fix the clothes on the line
• Much of the vegetable garden is in, my room can almost stop being a greenhouse.
• I am going to away ( without my boys) next week to do some training to help provide some much needed post adoption support in my county. I am excited.
• We are leaving for Victoria in 18 days - boys are excited - I get exhausted just thinking about them contained in a plane for 6 hours. There is no amount of coffee that can give me the energy I will need that day.
• I am looking very forward to being near my ocean for awhile, I miss my ocean when we are apart and yes it is my ocean, the rest of you can share it if you like but it is mine.
• There has been some knitting on a Tomten jacket I started last summer but I picked up other needles to knit the sleeves and the gauge is looser, I am trying to decide whether to frog the sleeve or just live with it loose.
• I have also been knitting finger puppets and socks that I have also been knitting since last summer.
• I want to be knitting a shawl or something else just for ME!
• JoVE is dangerously close to actually moving here to my end of the world and I am excited to have her around the corner in country terms
• Other fabulous women are planning on moving this way this fall and that really excites me as well.
• School is almost done which excites and terrifies me at the same time. I am done with lunches and homeowrk and teachers.
• It is my nephews 7th birthday today, when did that happen, isn't he still just a little.
• The boys keep harassing me and calling me so I guess that means I really should move on to making something to feed them. THe fresh air diet doesn't seem to be filling up their tummies.
• I got a fabulous mothers day gift from this etsy shop, it's really cute, I also have some of her earrings that say knit and purl. She's local and that makes it even better.
• I'll be back later when my children have been fed a few meals

PS - I mailed my boys someI love you cards this week, it was reallly cute to see their faces when they figured out that I had sent them mail. It wasn't my idea but I'll take the credit.

an open letter

Dear Blog,

I am sorry that I have neglected you over the last weeks, things have been very busy. I realize that you require my time and energy to run properly but we are at a point where just about everything requires time and energy from me in order to run smoothly. A girl can only do so many things before she falls into bed at the end of the day and although I appreciate all the great people you have introduced me to and all the friends you have helped me to make you are no match for the garden.

We are heading into the planting season and what little extra time I have is spent getting my hands and feet filthy. I love that it is warm enough to work the earth, that plants are growing and summer is coming. I would rather be outside than in most days and if I am outside I playing with dirt not typing.

So dear blog I am sorry if you are feeling abandoned, I will do my best to tend to you more closely in the coming weeks, although you have to compete with 2 boys who have very busy schedules and a garden who will demand more from me as the summer progresses rather then less. Perhaps you will be happy with pictures, lots of pictures and not to many words.

Thank you for understanding
J.

PS - there has also been some knitting but I didn't want to make you feel too jealous all at once.
PPS - just to remind you that we have been at this for 5 years this month, can you believe it!

I never do this

I almost never add stuff to my blog from TV or YouTube, it's just not something I do. But I was reading at Woolyheaded this morning and she posted this, I was intrigued

Susan Boyle on Britain Got Talent
by dwarthy

It was amazing, it's always nice to see Simon try to cover his butt. Make sure you have some Kleenex nearby and then show it to your kids - what a lesson!

Spring has Sprung

It has taken awhile but spring is finally here out in the country! We had a great Easter weekend, this is from church on Sunday, Fudge is going through that "can't not make a face stage" - I'll embarrass him with them later in life.

We spent most of Sunday celebrating with friends in the city, it was a great day with tons of great food! Being Ukrainian is always a good thing during the holidays. It was inters ting to watch the boys work out what Easter meant in our house. Fudge had a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that we go church for Easter, a lot of church. He kept talking about the chocolate and the Easter bunny. P and I decided to keep the chocolate to a minimum and filled eggs with lego instead. They each got only as much chocolate as they could eat in a day without getting sick and that was the deal, it all had to be gone or it was mine. It also meant that they had to get really early if
they wanted to look for eggs before church - they did and it went well. They were hyper but it was all good and they had a lot of fun.

Calvin discovered that there is no Easter bunny, which is fine with me. He caught me filling eggs one day and the gig was up. We did have to make him stop teasing Fudge though because Calvin just couldn't not tell Fudge that he was naive to believe in such a thing! He did not want to be reminded that just a few short weeks ago he still did. That being said they enjoyed the treats and now that it is over we are back to no white sugar and no candy - life is better that way.

Now that spring is here we are heading in to the garden season. I have things growing in the window upstairs and am dreaming of days in the garden. There are a few things that are already on their way. This is our asparagus patch, I started it last year from seed so we can't harvest from it till next year but I am excited. We are also going to add some more crowns to it this year so that next year we can really enjoy it! ( I had to put my hand in the pic so that you could actually see the plant) We also have some Egyptian walking onions that came from JoVE's house last year, they are well on their as well.

Oh and I didn't even tell you about the narrow misses on Friday, the boys are working on the theory of nine lives - I am sure of it.

The boys came thumping in to the house on Friday afternoon sobbing. Fudge fell and hurt his ankle. Fudge... how did you hurt your ankle? Jumping out of the barn windows he says calmly. The barn "windows" are the second story doors where one would throw the hay out into the barnyard below, it's about 10 feet up. Let's not talk about the fact that they are not allowed in the barn without an adult. Full of sympathy for the poor child I sent him back outside once I made sure he hadn't broken it. Not 10 minutes later Calvin comes in screaming about how Fudge poked him in the eye with a stick. I know what your thinking, not really in the eye, Calvin is just being dramatic. That's what I thought too, but no it actually did happen. Luckily for everyone Calvin closed his eye and Fudge hit his eyelid.

I think that childhood should be described as series of near misses.

up.

It's early here on the farm, I have been up for some time, someone was snoring... must of been the dogs. Right.

Things around here are okay, busy, exhausting at moments but we are all doing well in the general scheme of things. School seems to be going a little better, there have been some meetings with staff about behaviour and emotional verses chronological age. It seems to of helped. We have an IEP meeting this afternoon, I may feel less positive after that,
but perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised.

We are all eagerly awaiting the reappearance of spring, it was spring and then it started snowing the other day, we have had more snow in April then we did in all of March! It makes for wet kids and sad tulip bulbs. The weather is supposed to turn for the weekend and I have all my fingers crossed that it does.

I hear footsteps upstairs, it is almost as if Calvin has an internal alarm that lets him know the mornings that I am up early, he always seems to wake long before the regular time if I am awake. On that I should be off but before I go there are some pictures for ya'll.

Last weekend JoVE and Tigger came of to make pysanka, it was a lot of fun and the kids really enjoyed it. I am hoping that we can make some more before the end of the week.

ohhh, ohhh I almost forgot, if you come here because you are an adoptive parent or are interested in how adoption effects parents or you feel as though you are the only adoptive parent in the world who has wanted to strangle your sweet children you need to go and read this journal article, then you need to pass it on so that others realise that they are not the only ones. It is also available on the JSW website but you need to member or sign up to be a member and it is free from authors site. While you there read up on Beyond Consequences... it's brilliant.

In 10 minutes or less.

I have 10 minutes to post and then I have to get myself out the door because Fudge has play therapy this morning and then Calvin has attachment therapy this afternoon and I am insane for booking them both in the same day - there really wasn't any other choices this week. I wanted to post though so here I am.

• Tara was here from Sudan I drove into the big city for dinner and knitting. It was great fun. I miss knitting with friends but the drive seems like such a long one now that I am busy with small people.
• The sock that I have been knitting since July now has a heel, yes since July. There has been little knitting around here.
• Fudge told us last night that he "purple diarrhea", we were a little taken aback and then realised he meant verbal diarrhea. He also told P. that the violence in the guided imagery on his ipod needed to be changed. P was confused and talked to him about the violence and where it was in the recording - he meant violin.
• I got to go seed shopping with Jo and company this weekend, I love planning the garden, it makes me happy for spring.
• We are going to cub camp this weekend, I am bringing my pillow ( new and very comfy) and buying some earplugs to block out the snoring leaders.
• We had some lovely spring like weather this weekend and I was lulled into a false sense of spring. It snowed yesterday and will be cold again later this week.
• It looks as though (cross your fingers) the adoption will go through at the end of the month, the paperwork has all now been filed and we are just waiting for a time to show up. We keep telling the boys the boys that they will stamp our family name on their foreheads, they don't believe us.
• Calvin earned his badge at cubs this week, if I had known how happy it would make him I would of pushed him a little harder to get it done. Nothing like seeing a little man very proud of his accomplishments.

There's more but time is up, I'll be back but probably not before spending a weekend sleeping on the floor.

ick

Fudge very generously shared last weeks cold with me and the rest of the family. He is on the mend and the rest of us are declining quickly. I am off to bed with a cup of tea, knitting and some chick flicks while to boys are at school. It is days like this that make me happy I am not homeschooling because I really need a nap and it is only 9:20.

still working

The washer is spinning, wrrrr, wrrr, wrrr, making all the sounds it should be making. I am reading blogs and drinking coffee. The wrrr, wrrr, wrrr, stops, then starts, I wonder why that happened then it happened again and again. By the 4th time I started to worry, the last thing we need is to have broken washer. I head upstairs to check it out. Fudge is standing in front of the washer, I ask what he is doing, he says " I was trying to see how it works but every time I opened the lid it stops" The washer isn't broken, Fudge is disappointed, laundry continues.



Fudge is home today, he woke in the night sound like a dying seal, almost croupy (is that a word? ) I gave him his puffer and settled both the boys back to bed, he got up this morning and had a mild fever, still sounded like his lungs wanted to leave his body. I kept him home, he seems fine until he coughs or sneezes... I'll give him to the end of the day and then decided whether he is sick or not.

We had a good weekend, yesterday was Family Day ( a new holiday here) and we went into the city to make snow angels at the hill. The idea was to get kids to make snow angels to represent all the kids in care in Eastern Ontario, it was a good idea, but there was not enough for the kids to do once they finished their angels. We came home and headed to a friends house where the boys ate way to many marshmallows and thought that walking over a hot coals in their winter boots might be a good idea (the boots and boys survived).

P solved my laptop issues by getting me a new one for valentines day, I got him a mug, he got me a laptop - alas it is a very nice new toy and all the keys work. Now comes the huge job of transferring the files from the old computer, which has all the files and pictures from the computer before that one as well. I also needed to get a new Internet card. We use Rogers wireless to have internet at home, to make a very long story short. I spent 105 minutes on the phone with customer service on Saturday, that is almost 2 hours standing in a Rogers store with my 2 children to get a new piece of hardware so that I can get online. I did get what I wanted and boys were amazingly well behaved but the 50 or so silly pictures of them on the model iphone will be amusing to someone at some point.

I am off to do laundry... good times.

My weekend, in pictures

Left to Right

• P thought burning the house down might be a fun way to start off the weekend, thank God for smoke detectors, we need a new frying pan
• peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, need I say more
• We got a new bed this weekend, it was supposed to be a king but the stairs didn't want to play that game so we had to go down a size, it was going to take another 10 days but i came close to tears at the store and all of a sudden there was one for us. Now we have a queen with a king size quilt which is something we had been talking about for awhile anyway.
• The delivery guys scratched up the stairs, i had to fix the paint, not really their fault it is crappy paint.
• Calvin went to a cub thing on Saturday, he didn't put on his snow pants and came home with boots so wet they were dripping - I am not sure exactly how this happened, that he got that wet but he did.
• Wine, Naked Grape in a box = happy
• It warmed up here yesterday, this fell off our house, that is my foot, a size 8 to give you a sense of how big it is.
• Clay is good for my monkeys
• Knitting is good for me, no matter how small the project.
• more clay, the other boy did that one
• Board games, also good fun on a Saturday afternoon.

look at this

I'm here again, I think I have my groove back (even if I still don't really have a working K on my keyboard), it just took a awhile to find it and decided where on earth I was taking my blog.

So this morning I rolled myself out of bed at 7:05 ready to go make cookies for P to take to work with him ( he feeds kids cookies every Tuesday) and I walk down the stairs in house where everyone is still sleeping, I love it here in those moments, and the cold hits me like a wall. WTF, it should not be this cold in here. I wander over to the thermostat and it is a whopping 9.5 degrees in my house - lucky us since it is -25 or so outside 9.5 is almost balmy, right. So I start trouble shooting in an attempt to make the heat go on, even though what I really want is a cup of coffee. I changed the batteries, reprogrammed the time after changing the batteries, fiddled with the settings and still no luck! Grrr I really need coffee and I must make cookies. So I paused - breathed and decided there was nothing to do at 7:10, except, perhaps make coffee.

So coffee was brewing, cookies were baking and I came back upstairs to rouse the boys and fill P in on the status of the very cold house. We decided the furnace was indeed broken and that someone would have to be called, so I got the boys going, got the dogs out and started looking for a furnace guy. I like to do business with people we know and so I called last family that the boys lived with because he is a furnace guy, but he doesn't do oil... he knows someone though, can't find his number, he'll call back. It is now almost 8, boys are making a nuisance of themselves because the broken furnace has meant a change in our morning routine, after a change in our evening last night because P had to work late, and thus behaviour is not quite up to the norm, there was much silliness and arguing going on because I left them alone in the kitchen for 4 minutes while I tried to find someone to fix the furnace.

Buddy calls me back with the other Buddies number and I call him, we are a little far for him but given that he doesn't have any other calls today he'll come now. Great except that today is Family Literacy Day and Fudge's teacher asked me to come in and read to his class, so I had to call and reschedule that so I could be home for the furnace guy. Meanwhile the boys are continuing to drive me insane because I dared to do something other then give them my undivided attention. Calvin needs his Zoobat mask from Halloween so he can be his favourite book character for school and it can't be found anywhere. Do children ever learn that telling mom you need something 5 minutes before you need it is not a good plan? And that it most likely will not be found in the time provided.

The boys finally got ready, without the mask, and in Calvin's case almost without a lunch as they are responsible for packing their bags in the morning. I shoved them out the door with P, only to hear later that in the 10 minutes in takes to get to school Fudge hit Calvin and pitched a bit of a fit about not getting to listen to the CD he wanted because it is in my car, not Dad's.

Then I sat down with that coffee I had made earlier and waited for the very nice furnace man. He came, he cleaned an electrode, he charged me 160 bucks and he left. He was a very nice man but it took him 10 minutes and it cost me 160 bucks, all he used was screwdriver and a rag.

Amazing. I think I made the wrong career choice

me again

DSCF0232
Originally uploaded by bagknitter

Two things – this is a porcupine in our front yard and the K is not really working on my keyboard so you may notice it missing on occasion!

Things around here have settled into the organized chaos that I think is my life with children. We are getting back into routines after the chaos was that 6 weeks of Christmas (we celebrate twice). My parents came for Christmas 2.0 in January and then stayed for the boys baptism. It was a good visit and Fudge and Calvin really enjoyed having grandparents to spoil them and take them places that I would not normally go.

The rest of our life is busy but good and as I settle into routines, again this is one of the routines that I need to get back into. I was motivated to blog today because I heard some news yesterday from a dear friend and I was thrilled. Nevertheless, since she has not blogged about it yet and it is not my news to share I can’t really say anything. I was hoping perhaps she may have posted about but she hasn’t so I’ll keep my mouth shut for now (I do have a great post in my head about it when I can share it).

There is some knitting going on, a little (very little bit of spinning) some dreaming about the garden, some moving of furniture and reorganizing some spaces and a lot of laundry. It amazes me the amount of laundry that 2 small boys produce!

I’ll take some pictures of the knitting soon and be back.

PS - the boys have been here for 6 months today - amazing huh

newkrainians

So we were all in the car the other day coming back from church, for some reason we were talking about being Ukrainian, - now lets be clear, I am 1/2 Ukrainian but it is the piece of my family heritage that I identify with most strongly and I am Ukrainian catholic. P is also Ukrainian catholic and so by because we are a family we keep telling the boys that they are Ukrainian to! - okay so back to the story - the youngest, who will now be referred to as Fudge ( from Judy Blumes amazing Fudge books because he is a little bit to much like that curious young lad) pipes into the conversation "well I am not newkrainian!" and we start to tease him a bit, "yes you are, your stuck with it" and he is adamant that he is not, so fine we drop it with him but still continue the conversation, after a little while he come up with "okay I guess that I could be newkrainian" to which P responds" yep just for the first year and then after that you get to Ukrainian like the rest of us. Fudge was a bit lost but we thought it was pretty funny


Smiling boys, now the other boys, who we are going to refer to here as Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes because boy oh boy is he rather Calvin like) decided that it would be appropriate to give himself a hair cut at school on Friday - after I got over the - you did what moment! - I calmly responded with, "I 'll have to take a picture of that for my blog!" I wonder how obvious it will be by picture day in 2 weeks.

The lost wallet has appeared, given the shape that it is in I imagine that it ended up in a dumpster some where and then was found and dropped in a mail box. All of the cards that are easy to steal were gone but the thief wasn't to smart - they left my birth cert. and SIN card in the wallet along with the movie tickets certificate and all my teaching cards. So although it has been a tad inconvenient I do have my wallet back, although it is rather bruised but I will happily use it again until it actually falls apart and now I have less things to replace, I am left wondering why they left the cards that they did and not my aeroplan card or the boys health cards... I think it was just a lack of higher brain capacity, a smart thief would of stolen the things they could steal my idenity with.

And finally I got a great new toy this week, I was recently genrously rewarded for some volunteer time that I spent working a camp earlier this summer and so with the gift card and some of our hard earned pennies I bought this, and it took the pictures in this post, I am loving it!

2 feet

I'm a jump in with 2 feet kinda girl and I always hope that the whatever I'm jumping into is going to work out in the end. It may not be the best way but it is my way.

We have been "with boys" for 2 days and we are all still here. Things are going well - I am not going to say it's easy but it's good. In this case jumping in with both feet was a good thing, I could not imagine separating the boys, they are far to close to even imagine what that would be like. Jumping in with 2 feet has also proved successful in another case, a time when I took a big step but good one and the other part of that big step is celebrating his birthday today.

So Happy Birthday to my favourite pirate P. - hope it's the best one yet.

what's in a name

Earlier this week one of the social workers came over to talk about the boys and to have us sign some paper work. One of the things that she asked us about was names - what would be changing their last names to and did we want to change any of their other names ( they each have 3). I was sort of shocked because the boys are 6 and 8 - old enough to know all of their names and know that their birth mom named them. I hadn't ever even considered changing anything about their names unless the children wanted to. One of the boys has the same middle name as P and that is kinda neat but I really would ever think of changing anything else - I even feel a little odd about changing their last names but a family with all those different last names would be a challenge

As a result I have been thinking about what a name means and our attachment or lack of attachment to a name. I have 2 names that I love but I know lots of people who could take or leave the name that their parents gave them - some people do. But I can't imagine if my name were any different, I didn't change my last name when I got married either and I do wonder how the boys will feel when they are older about their names? How does a name effect your self of identity or belonging? These boys have had a rough couple of years but does their name still provide a sense of belonging to their birthmom?

Of course I don't have any answers but lots of questions! But to move on...

So it happened, we met the boys and it was great. They are fabulous small people, things where tense at first with the adults ( us, foster mom and social worker doing all the talking) but then P pulled out his cell phone to add a birthday in and that was it, they were won over by the technology and the rest of the visit went pretty well. We left on a good note with a request for us to bring a game next time and we will see them again tomorrow and then every other day this week. Transitioning is an interesting process - I would of assumed that it there was a bit of a standard procedure but there isn't so the foster mom and I worked out what we thought looked reasonable and now that they know we aren't monsters with 4 heads (no comments from the peanut gallery) I think that things will go well. I know how nervous and stressed I am about the whole thing I can't even begin to imagine how they feel - especially since they have moves so many times already.


So my world revolves around the boys at the moment but in between the moments there are other things, like gardening and knitting - yes knitting! But I don't have any pictures of my knitting, although I am almost finished Jeanie - like about an hour from being finished. Instead I offer you a HUGE potato from the garden, My hands are not very big but the potato was tough to hold, as you can see and I was impressed. Jove and I have picked a some already and I was forced to pick a few more last night because the puppy decided that she should have a nap in a nice shady spot, on the onions and under the potato plants - luckily for the puppy it was only one plant.

Done - now with pictures

Done it is all done! The homestudy was signed off on Friday, they think that we are sane enough to be parents ( tee hee, us sane!) and we met with the boys foster parents to set up a transition schedule, they will be moving in at the end of July - very exciting. In order to get the home study finished I have been running around getting things done and they are all done! Yippee for us.

Pillows have been made, every house needs yarn themed pillow cases.

The boys room is finished - it was a lot of work
Quilt covers are sewn
A TV room was created
The carpet has been removed and the stairs painted

The yarn storage facility is finally all organised - some of the grey drawers have been replaced with bins with lids though - no moths are welcome here.
The front flower bed has all these great plants that attract butterflies, this one lingered for quite awhile yesterday
This is Bella, looking like an old man, she does it well. She is so the 4th - there are almost no pictures of her
Oh and the garden is finally all in, most of it has been in for awhile but yesterday and today I got the last 2 beds planted. I love eating from our garden, we have lettuce and spinach at the moment with lots of other great things just around the corner.

Okay that's all I have for you today, no knitting around here at all for quite some time although I am hoping to get Jeanie finished sooner rather then later and there are some socks that are on the go and some that are finished and waiting for fall to arrive. I'll save that for another post though