Catch Up

Nothing incredibly exciting - just our normal fun life.

Our social worker called last Thursday and came for her visit on Monday. Yea! We're glad it's over. I'm just thankful that she agreed that we only needed one home visit since we're updating a home study that was completed only three months ago. She said it would take about a week to update. Then it needs to go to our adoption agency for review. Then we can send it to USCIS. Waiting for immigration approval from USCIS is what is most time consuming. Hopefully the home study will get squared away ASAP. It's amazing how 95% of adoption is just waiting on other people to do their jobs. :-)

We recently discovered Qubo. Well, we knew it existed, but Damien finally set it up to record a few things. Since we don't watch much TV it's hard to get them to actually watch a new show. But now Orin is in love with The Zula Patrol. Well, he's only seen it a couple of times but it's all about outer space. Since Orin is all about the planets and space right now it's perfect for him.

Speaking of space, we also recently discovered the UT Arlington Planetarium. They have this great show called, "The Secret of the Cardboard Rocket." It was about two little boys whose imaginary rocket takes off and goes into space. They explore the sun and planets. Now Orin is quoting facts about planets like, "We can't go to Neptune because the there are bad storms and it's not safe," or "Don't go to the sun mom because it is so hot it will give you gas." Ok, well, the movie said that the sun is so hot that it would TURN you into gas. But he's learning a little and having fun. Now they are playing older movies for $2 in the planetarium. It's going to be fun watching "Cars" and "Wall-E" on that big round screen.

Orin wants to change his name to James. I asked him why and he just said he liked that name. I told him that Pops (my dad) would be excited because that's his name.

So it's pretty obvious that our kids are growing up in the age of technology. When we're reading books and they want us to stop for a minute (so they get get water or something), the say "Press pause mom." Then when they come back they say, "Ok, play!" It's so funny. Another strange thing they like to do is when you give them choices they chose one by pointing to it and saying "Click." It's from Diego. The funny thing is that it's not like they've watched much Diego. We don't even get cable. But they do love the books.

Here is a picture of the kids having "reading time". Sometimes if they are having trouble playing together without arguing or if they just needs a little break or time to calm down I have them take about a 15-20 brake for reading time. It's sort of like hitting a "reset" button. We read a ton to them each day and once we've gone through a library book once or twice they are fine "reading" it themselves. I signed them up for the summer reading program at the library. There are a lot of great prizes. Of course, when I explained all of them to the kids Orin was most excited about the free soda from Sonic. :-) Can you tell they don't get much soda?

Finally some random craft days. I haven't been as good about taking pictures of our time.

Caiah making an 'O' octopus.
I love his fake smiles. It's sweet that he tries!Caiah's Caterpillar.