Steve's Car

As promised, here's a picture of Steve's new car.

Just Stuff

I'd like to say that I've been too busy to blog but the reality is that I was afraid to write because I didn't want to sound completely negative and there weren't a lot of positives going on.

However, today is a new day and this is a new blog post!

We had another fun day for 20's Diner last week!

Creamed turkey over rice, green beans,snickers salad, bread and ice cream sundaes

for all the college kids.

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Sophia got a new bike!

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I did find a "new" car for Steve and gave it to him for his birthday. He had already looked at it and test driven it the week before. His mom helped convince me to go ahead and get it for him ;-)
He loves it!
I don't have a picture but I'll take one and post it here tonight when Steve comes home.
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This weekend, we had the equivalent of an old fashioned barn raising. Except we were putting up a swing set instead of a barn. Our friends moved into a new house that had a playground and gave us this one so we invited them and all the grandparents over for a cookout/play set building party! We still have a few things to put together but the basic structure is up.

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 On Saturday morning, Steve went to work at Swiftel for wrestling and I took the kids to the Special Olympics 5K. Don't even think that we were running!!! I was one of the traffic flow people. Basically, I stood in the middle of the street wearing an orange vest and made sure that no vehicles hit any runners/walkers. Turns out I really like telling cars to stop and controlling when they can go! Who knew?! 

No comments mom!!!

The kids cheered on the runners from the corner

and Steve even stopped by for a few minutes before he went to work.

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Zeke got to hand out awards at the end.

This is one of Zeke's friends who was the winner in his age division. 

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Today Anthony is with me. Long story but basically Anthony has official permission to ride the bus again, just in time for his class field trip today. I know you all think that's great but it made me angry. He was supposed to have to sit in school in the office all day since they couldn't take him on the bus. Now that his privileges have been re-instated, he could go on the field trip. The downfall is that it's in Sioux Falls. If he has behavior issues while he's there, guess who would get to drive down and pick him up? You guessed it! Me! I don't have time today and I just don't want to. So instead of letting him go, I'm keeping him home. Plus, there really should be some natural consequences to his behavior on the bus, like missing a field trip. So far, the only one who's really suffered consequences is me.


Did I mention that on Friday, the very day that he submitted his written bus behavior apology (after me asking him to turn it in for the last two weeks) and he was finally allowed back on the bus...........THAT VERY AFTERNOON he was SUPER disrespectful to a teacher and earned himself four checkmarks and detention. So according to me, he hasn't earned the right to go on the field trip. His teachers can thank me later ;-)
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On a more positive note, Sophia has her kindergarten screening today! Brittney wanted to go with us, so why not? My oldest and youngest. I've been waiting a long time to have everyone in school full time. Although I have to admit, I'll actually miss this little one :-)

Early Morning Project

 There is nothing quite like being awakened by a child on a Monday morning at 6 am with the words "I have to make a Bromine atom...........and it's due this morning.

Thanks to a hot glue gun, a few cotton balls, some twist ties and a few jewel things, the atom is now ready for scientific inspection.

Just in case anyone is wondering,

a Bromine atom has 35 protons and 45 neutrons :-/ 

Steve's New Job

It's Steve's birthday today. Happy Birthday Steve!!! I'd love to do something special today but after dishing out $971.36 yesterday so they would turn my phone back on, I think we'll just have the buy one get one free at Qdoba's  :-)


So in honor of Steve, I'll write about him first today. He recently accepted a position with Dakota Abstract here in Brookings and is no longer with the bank. Right now he's enjoying his new office and doing lots of training but eventually he'll be a closer. That means that whenever someone is buying property, he goes in to the closing and reviews the contract, explains the closing costs of loans, titles and appraisals and clarifies fees added to property sales. The short version is that when you buy a house or property, he's the other guy in the room at closing besides the banker and real estate agent.


I always told him that I don't care what he does as long as he doesn't come home crabby every day and the bills get paid. He's been there three weeks and so far, he's loving it!!! It's a lot to learn but he has a banking background and a bit of an insurance background, plus he loves working with people.


The insurance mess that I was dealing with a few weeks ago came about because of Steve's new job. We met with his new company and their insurance liaison prior to his job switch, just to make sure that the insurance would work for our families needs. Everything looked good. Fast forward to a week before he started, when I had him verify that we would be covered. Turned out that no one had mentioned that the new insurance wouldn't start for 60 days after the start of employment!!! No worries, they said, just use COBRA for that time period. When we looked into it, COBRA would cost us $3000 just for the two months. Yikes!!! But it's all good now. We have 60 days to determine if we want to utilize COBRA or not and we're already almost halfway through that time period. If something would happen in the next few weeks, we could retro-actively pay for the insurance and still be covered. Until then, we'll just wait it out. And because four of our children were adopted through foster care, they were covered under our insurance first and then secondarily covered by Medicaid. So if they have anything, Medicaid will pick it up for the next month. Whew!!!


Oh, and have I mentioned that the car Steve was borrowing until we could buy him another one was making funny noises on the way to Sioux Falls the other day. He ended up leaving it at my folks and taking my dad's pickup to Sioux Falls. Brittney's car is still in the shop and it looks like it's a head gasket issue. $$$$$$$. I can't wait to see what that might cost :-( 


So life has been a little hectic around here lately and I haven't even mentioned the kid issues that we're dealing with. So if anyone wants to take me out for coffee, feel free! If you don't see me, you can find me buried under my covers until April. Just kidding. It's been sunny so I'll probably go do some hard manual labor outside.


If you see Steve around, be sure to tell him Happy Birthday!!!

:-(

I really wish I would've had a working phone yesterday. After a million other things, I had a call from the school transportation director. Anthony's been kicked off the bus for the remainder of the school year, including field trips. :-(

On a positive note, I've discovered people can call me & I can answer, I just can't call out or receive texts.

On another positive note, my phone should be working again this afternoon!!!

Daylight Savings