Father's Day

Ryan awoke to 2 children crawling on him and breakfast in bed (not as elaborate as he does for me!). They were so excited to share the books that they made for him. They spent many hours working on these books. Reggie wrote nice things about dad and then drew pictures. Ainsley was very creative in her art, but needed a little interpretation. Reggie’s book was called, “All about my Dad” and these are the things he wrote:

My dad plays take-out with my sister and me.

My dad cooks good food.

My dad lights the best fireworks.

My dad is special.

My dad plays basketball with me.

My dad plays baseball with me.

I love my dad.

Pretty sweet! We love Ryan for all of the above and many more. He is a great Dad!!!

Reading his Star Wars card that was Darth Vader's voice saying, "I am your father."

First week of summer!

Well, life is never boring here. It seems one child gets better and then another has an issue. We got a little education last week about MRSA :o(. Our foster child had what looked like a pimple on his calf last Sunday and it was pretty sensitive and got a bit bigger on Monday. I have had staff in the past and suspected that is what it might be, so I knew not to wait. His mom called that morning and I mentioned it to her and she told me he had the same thing last year. The doctor agreed it was a skin infection and I told him he had this before and he looked in his chart and saw that it was MRSA. He prescribed antibiotics and sent us on our way. What he didn’t tell me was that it is highly contagious! My sister told me that 2 days later after bathing the kids in the same water, lathering sunscreen over the wound and then on my kids, etc. We didn’t even put a band aid on it! There’s some mixed and really concerning info. out there about MRSA, but I talked to the kids pediatrician and she made me feel a lot better. So far, we are all in the clear and we are being much more cautious now, so hopefully, the kids strong immune systems (after having all the illness this year, they should never get sick again!) will be able to fight it off. They have also spent a lot of time in the pool this week, swim lessons and 2 swim play dates and the chlorine is good for killing bacteria :o).

It has been a bit stressful, but we’ve managed to have some fun on our first week of summer break.

Enjoying the pool at the Williams:
Swinging at the park...fighting over who gets to push:

Who knew I had such balloon skills, with Reggie's help of course!

We've had this strange jet black squirrel that comes by every now and then. It is so weird that I just had to take a picture:

We also have been doing some chores. With everyone home all day, the house gets out of control pretty quickly. We had a HUGE sock pile that needed folding, so we spent one morning folding them. Usually they do the socks all by themselves, but it was a little overwhelming, so I agreed to assist. We divided the socks into piles based on whose they were and Ryan was the winner with 29! We folded 87 socks and our little sock folding became a math lesson. Once we counted everyone's socks, Reggie added them up and then we divided by 3 (to see how much money we were all going to get- $.10 per pair). Reggie was a bit disappointed to get only $2.90. I explained to him that it would have benefitted them more if I were not involved and we divided by 2 and he could see how much more money he would have had. He always folds many more than Ainsley, so we talked through that and he realized he probably would have gotten around $6.00. Hopefully, this math lesson was enough to take me out of the sock equation!!!!

End of the school year for Reggie

What a whirlwind! We had something almost every night of the week last week of school. Reggie had his singing performance on Monday and did fabulous. Boy what a change from a few years ago. He was singing and doing the appropriate movements. He had a great year and came a long way with his reading and math. He was sent home with a science book for the summer and started working on it right away. That is by far his favorite subject.

Wed. was his baseball team party….we were all glad to finish out the year and be done with that. He had pizza for lunch and for dinner and had a bit of a rough night. He woke up on the last day of school and was complaining of a stomach ache…really??!! He didn’t eat breakfast, so I knew something wasn’t right, but I sent him to school anyway because it was Olympic day and the last chance to see all his friends at once. Ainsley and I went to watch the assembly and he looked a little pale. I was so worried he was going to throw up in the middle (I have vivid memories of throwing up on the school bus as a child). He said he was o.k., but we ended up leaving right after the assembly. He got a low grade fever later in the day, but was able to eat and seemed o.k.

Beginning of the day:
Reggie and his best bud Tyler:

Mid afternoon the same day:

We were supposed to go to the rodeo, but he wasn’t quite up for it, so I took Ainsley and we had a girls night out :o).

Friday he woke up with a stomach ache, but it went away after breakfast and we rode bikes to the park and had a great day. Reggie wanted to picnic, so I put them in charge of making the sandwiches and that went really well. Might happen more often! That evening we decorated the Cub Scout float for the Rodeo parade and ate way too much junk. That seemed to be what did him in. We cleansed and he didn’t eat much, but we stayed within the brat diet. That night he threw up so much Gatorade right at bedtime. He slept with us which is always a treat, such a treat that Ryan slept on the couch. Starting at about 1, he threw up every couple hours, until morning and was moaning and making noise all night. We were all tired the next day, but his stomach seemed to settle and he was soooo hungry. Every time he ate, he felt sick, so we gave him one of Ainsley’s leftover anti-nausea. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to do much. We dosed him with Motrin and that seemed to help him turn the corner. He was much better the next day, but we laid low anyway. This has been such a bad year for illness in the Wade household. Let’s hope this is it! At least we made it through the week!!!

Dance recital

Ainsley has been anticipating her dance recital for several weeks. They handed out there outfits back in March and she's tried it on a couple times and has been anxious to wear it. We didn't really know what to expect from her since she is very anti-attention and gave us her Agnus face at her Christmas performance. She had a Mother's Day program at school and finally said a few lines of the last song, so I guess there was a little progress.

She did great on Sat. and we were very proud of her!!! Ainsley did the things she was supposed to do and seemed to be enjoying it :o). Afterward, Reggie said, "Mom I was surprised she didn't just stand there with her hands under her chin." We celebrated by going out to lunch wherever she wanted to go....she picked Sweet Tomatoes. Here's some pictures and video:

Afterward with her good friend Naomi:

Go Reggie Go!

Last week, Reggie told me that they had a race in class to see which 2 boys/girls ran the fastest mile and then the students from the other classes would all race off at some point. He likes to run with his friends and that means they chat and don't run too fast. The girls always beat them and that is what he thought was normal. During the race, the girls ran an 8 minute mile and he and his friend Tyler ran a 10 minute mile. I explained to him that genetically boys were supposed to run faster than girls. It was an interesting thought that he hadn't considered. The next time they ran, he told me he was right behind the girls. I encouraged him to move ahead of them :o).

Well, today was the race and it was sure interesting. The Kindergarteners, 1st and 2nd graders all ran together. They took off sprinting and all of us parents were shaking our heads, knowing they were going to gas out. And, they're off:

The interesting thing with Reggie is that he all of the sudden became competitive and ran the entire way, not jogging, but really running. I was very suprised he didn't stop because they don't usually run like that and as we all know, when you run fast, your legs, lungs and everything else hurts. One of his classmates stopped and was crying to her mom that her chest hurt....it made me smile. He finished in the top 10, with a time of 7:24. I'm not sure I could have kept up! I think he was a bit surprised by his ability as he was sharing with a friend all the people he beat. It was definitely good for his confidence :o).

Lap 3-looks like he was pretty tired, but he kept going :o):

Washer/Dryer:

So, we’ve been wanting a new washer/dryer since we moved here, but never got around to buying one. The washer has been smelling like sewer a lot more frequently and bleach didn’t seem to do the trick, so I had been looking on craigslist for a used set. I found one right here in Livermore, but the people weren’t moving for about 3 weeks, so he held it for us and I have been counting down the days. It is sad when you get so excited about a washer and dryer.

Ryan went and picked it up last week and it was going great until they went to load up the dryer and the guy gave him the gas attachment. This was not in his ad and we have an electric dryer, so Ryan told him that it wasn’t going to work. Unfortunately, he had already paid him and the guy was moving the next day. Unkind words were exchanged, but he ended up taking the set because we didn’t really have any other option. He told me what happened when he got home and I was trying to figure out what we could do. We could use the washer and sell the dryer, but it was a nice front-loading set and they really should stay together, so I was thinking, “great, now we have to start over”. Anyway, it was very disappointing.

Ryan got a bright idea of checking to see if there might be a gas line there and God is good because there was!!! We just had to get the connectors and shut off valve and we were good to go. Several hours later and a couple trips to the hardware store and bingo, we fired it up last night. It seems like any house related project we do has more challenges than it should, so it is nice that this is the first one we have had to do here!