Cap’n Jack had a party

I found this post that I wrote (clearly) right after Jack’s birthday (at the end of Oct.) and never hit “publish”.  I contains some of the cutest pics of my baby!

Of course I didn’t plan anything ahead of time but at the very last minute we decided to invite a few nearby family members over for cake and ice cream.  We had (of course) delicious cake from Costco and balloons.  I had gotten him a few gifts so we kept those for party day and I think he was pretty happy.

Jack was good at ripping the paper off this year :)

Here Grandpa, hold my trash.

There’s one more?  Waiting……  SpongeBob!!!  Yay!

Jack blew out the candles before we finished singing so Grandma Rita sped up the song – it was the fastest version of “Happy Birthday” ever!

Precious!  Love, love, love him!  Hope this is an awesome year for you my big boy!

Horrific.

This is what all parents of children with special needs fear. This is what keeps us up at night. This is what causes our hearts to beat a little faster every time we take our kid to the Dr. We fight so hard for our children to be accepted in this world. We rejoice when we find each other because here are other parents who “get it”. They “get” that the love our kids inspire is more fierce, more pure, more protective. Not that any new momma with her baby won’t take your head off if you look at her baby cross-eyed, but we know we may have to defend our cubs way past the 18 yr old mark.

Please read this blog post written by a devastated mother. And then pray.

Almost Wordless Wednesday

Capes!!

(They were running back and forth in the kitchen watching them billow out behind them – so fun!)

What is clogging the toilet – revealed!

Ready???

Yep, it’s Scooby and the gang in the Mystery Machine!  Somebody decided it should solve the mystery of where everything goes when the potty is flushed!  (Can you see how Scooby is covering his eyes?  Cracks me up!)

Hopefully tomorrow our commode will be re-installed into the bathroom where it belongs and I can selfishly ban all potty-users from my master bath!  Tonight, it still looks like this:

 

(Andrew had friends over tonight and apparently forgot to tell them to use my bathroom instead of the hall bath.  One of the guys came up and I heard him yell from the hallway “there’s no toilet in here!!!”.  OMgosh I was rolling!  Probably not near as funny in the retelling but maybe you have to know the source.  Love ya Tony!)

What is clogging the toilet???

Okay, actually, at this point I know what is clogging the toilet but for about a week we did not!  Every night Allan would plunge the thing out and every morning we couldn’t use it because it would start to overflow.  Not a lotta fun I must say.  And being down to one crapper in a house with 5 people who use the thing on a regular basis plus 2 littles that I was trying to get to use the thing on a regular basis, well it was just crappy (yep, pun intended!).

So Allan finally decided to take it apart and find out what the problem was.  He got the potty off the plumbing and determined there was no clog in the pipes.  It must be in the throne itself.  Let’s check.

 

Turns out, this is an interesting project so Daddy got some “helpers”.

And then, the source of the clog was discovered!  (And will be revealed in the next post, hee hee.)  It would NOT come out.  One of the helpers was even called in to, well, help.

The helper was less than excited but bless her heart, she did it.  Hopefully, the next post will also show a newly re-installed family can :).

It’s a New Year

And I’m a bad blogger.  I’d like to resolve to blog more often and maybe I will be able to do that.  To be realistic, I’m shooting for once a week, sometime between Sun and Sat.  I’d also like to try doing Wordless Wednesday this year too.

And one more thing.  I love looking at my Jackson.  I could stare at his amazing, beautiful face all day.  I think all of my kids are exceptionally beautiful (of course!) but I love looking at Jack’s face.  There’s a little guy on Reece's Rainbow that I cannot stop looking at.  I love his face too.  He’s going to be 5 this year.  He needs a family to save him from hopelessness.  When we adopted Dasha, I promised my family I wouldn’t beg again, to save another child, but oh, I would go get him in a heartbeat if I could.  His name is Daniel on RR.  I don’t know what his real name is, or where, specifically he is.  But I’ll be talking about him, trying to raise money for him, trying to get his picture out there, so his family can find him.  I pray it is soon.

Happy New Year friends.

Christmas Day!

(I’m putting up a post on Dasha's blog also!)

Ah, it was a good day.  I got a Dashlyn charm for my necklace with charms on it of the other kids.  (I had hoped to get it last year after coming home with our Ukrainian princess but this year isn’t too late I think ;). )Allan got his new planner pages and a couple of pizza baking stones (he asked for them, I swear!).

Jack started out the morning finding a package of oreo cookies.  They were minding their own business sitting meekly on the counter.  He insisted on having one then ran over to stand in front of the cabinets and said “camera”.  Of course, I ran to find the camera faster than the speed of light and took this photo.  (Catch that??  He SAID camera!  Woo hoo!!)

Soon after that, it was present time!

Andrew opened a gift that he then shared with his siblings:

 

Everyone got something they liked.  Dasha decided she likes opening presents :). 

 

Daddy got a new phone (with a teeny little short cord).  Okay maybe he was just borrowing Dasha’s!

After present time, we ate brunch, played with our new stuff, took naps, went out after dark to see pretty lights, ate late dinner pizza (remember the stones??), and watched the entire season 4 of Big Bang Theory (another gift)!  We stayed in our jammies ALL DAY!  It was a great day!

Hope you all had a terrific day too!  Happy Birthday Jesus!