Goodbye in Irish

DH and Irish

This past weekend we said goodbye to our beloved Irish.  At 14 1/2 yrs old, he lived a long life.  He was a precious dog.  He was ALWAYS DH's dog.  He followed him around EVERYWHERE from the minute he walked in the door until he finally stopped and crawled into bed.  In fact, if he went into a room Irish would follow, but then if he would leave the room right away (meeting Irish on the way), Irish would LITERALLY sigh in frustration.  Sometimes, DH would close the door to keep him into a room if he was coming right back.  Irish would stand at the door waiting for him to return.  He was a sweet dog (well, except to other dogs who were not Dakota).  He very much missed Dakota.  The fact that he made it 9 months after Dakota left us was amazing.  But, it was very clear over the past 2 weeks that he was done.  The last few days he wasn't eating which was very out of character for him.  It was very hard to make the decision.  Megan keeps saying "But, we have zero dogs!  That's NONE!"  We are taking a doggie break at least until we move. Both DH & I miss having dogs...we miss Dakota & Irish very much.  Its been very quiet and different around here without a dog to keep track of; its going to take a while to get used to.

We miss you, Irish.  You were a great dog.  I will not miss cleaning up the dog hair everywhere, though...although it is still everywhere (LOL!).

Pre K Performance

Here is Megan's class' performance from last night

Preschool Graduation

 Megan's pre-K graduation was last night.  Here's some of my favorite pictures.

Sisterly love

Ms Debbie, Megan's teacher  

She is AMAZING & we're sad to say goodbye to her

Megan's best friend, Dylan.

They are like 2 peas in a pod.  Seriously.

My precious little almost 5 yr old.

Where has the time gone???

Rachel

Since I'm so far behind on blogs...and I have so much I'd love to post, I figure I'll start with Rachel and some things about my beautiful teen.

She loves to take self-portraits...here are a few!

• She loves all things princesses...especially Cinderella.  She's OBSESSED with princesses.  I am SO SICK of princesses and princess movies.  Sigh.
• Her English has improved like you would NOT believe!!!  You can even understand her on the telephone now (something I was not able to do for a while).  She really is doing marvelously at English.  We're waiting to get the results from a test she took in early April that measured her English skills to determine her eligibility for ESL services.  They tested her in reading, writing, speaking and listening.
• She LOVES science.  In fact, she is doing so well in science that she is doing the same work that every other 8th grader is doing and she's doing well!  She's getting As & Bs.  In fact, she's doing well in math as well.  They do make some accommodations on word problems, but they have reduced the number of accommodations (at my request) in there and she's still doing well.  She's still struggling in Reading/Language Arts (duh!) and social studies as is to be expected.  However, she's very, very, very smart.  It can work in her favor in that she can do really well...but it can also work against (me!) in that she works the system when she doesn't want to do the work.  And sometimes she doesn't want to do the work.
• She loves dresses/skirts/girly-girly things.  She would love to wear make up, but I say no way. I do allow mascara and lip gloss, but nothing else.  She really does not need it...and she already looks so grown up, she really doesn't need it (besides its sometimes difficult enough to get out the door to school as it is!!!).
• Boys...she is NOT interested in boys at all.  And is the exact reason and argument I make for her not wearing any more makeup.  I'm very grateful she's not interested in boys...however, they don't feel the same way (and it drives her crazy that they are interested in her!).
• She loves to fix her hair.  Its not uncommon for her to fix her hair in at least 2 (or more) different styles (that I see!) before school.  On the weekends...there's no telling what her hair will look like after spending some time in her room! :-)  I suspect a potential future in cosmetology.
• We've figured out that she needs a lot of sleep.  So, bedtime for her is typically around 7:30pm.  We figured out that the amount of work her brain does to translate everything is tremendous.  When she doesn't get to bed as early, she will say that when she's in school the teachers just say "blah, blah, blah" and she doesn't know what they are saying.  However, when she has had enough sleep, she can understand what they are saying.
• She's loves mom time, but has really started loving time with dad, which is great.  In fact, we've moved to a period where she prefers to talk to dad about things over mom.  Kind of surprising, but I see this as a good thing.
• Rachel loves food.  In fact, there are no foods that she does not like.  Literally every meal she says "this is my favorite!"  Seriously.  Everything is her favorite.  We've had for the longest time problems with her overeating, which has lead to her gaining nearly 10lbs in the past year.  No, she's not overweight and we're not worried about that right now.  In fact, her having gained a little weight (while a pain that none of her clothes now fit!) makes it easier to find pants that do!  What we do want her to learn, however, is good eating habits.  We want her to know what are proper portion sizes as well as knowing that even though something tastes really good it does not mean that she should keep eating it.  I think--knock on wood--she's figured it out.  She's asking less and less for 2nd helpings.  And when she dishes up her own food, she's actually dishing up a reasonable portion.  I'm very proud of her progress in this area in the last few weeks.
• She also really, really, really loves sweets.  In fact, we don't typically have many sweets/candy/ice cream and this has been an issue for her.  So, we created "mom & dad's candy shop".  Since we have lots of candy from an Easter egg hunt at Megan's school and Megan's valentine's party, she can use her money to buy candy.  They are small, single serving helpings and she's learning how to decide how to manage her money as well. So, its a double positive here!!!
• I'm so not ready for her to be in high school next year.  And honestly, I'm not sure she is either.  But, she will be.  We hope that next year we will have moved because if we stay in this school she may just have to learn YET ANOTHER LANGUAGE.  I did not specifically ask, but to graduate from our high school students have to take either French or Spanish.  I would sure hope that ELL students would be exempt from that requirement...but common sense does not always rule here.  So, there is no telling.  Also, if we move to the district we want to, she may be able to take Chinese to improve her reading/writing of Chinese.  She's started becoming concerned with not remembering how to read/write Chinese.  I'm thinking the problem is more like there were a lot of words she NEVER knew how to read because her school was so horrible, but she's not at the point yet where I could say anything bad about the orphanage or about China. Yet.  One day she will, but its not yet.
• It depends on the day you talk to her, but she says she would like to go back to China as a translator.  Other days she wants to say in the US and do something else.  So, it's hard to say.
• Friends...this is one area she has really struggled with.  I think in China she was highly popular.  In America, she's "odd" and is not.  Its been a rough transition for her.  We had a very rough patch about Feb/Mar, but she seems to be handling it better when she realized she is not the only kid who doesn't have 100+ friends.  After we told her a million times--and she polled many, many people--she realized that people can be fine with only having a few people as friends in 8th grade.  Life has been better.

Okay, that's the most I can think of right now...I know there's many more things I can write about our teen...she's blossoming and overall doing fantastic.

Bluebonnet Pictures

As promised....here are the pics....

Ladybug on a bluebonnet

My teen beauty

My preschool beauty

My girls

(who didn't really want to take pictures together)

End of March?? WHAT????

Yes, I am whoa fully behind on blog posts...I have a whole list of things (in my head) that I need to post, but I never have the time (or the energy) do so. The girls are growing like crazy. I have some cute pics that I want to post, maybe I can get that done in the next few days. Besides, the bluebonnets are really beautiful right now, I'm hoping we can get our first ones with both girls in the bluebonnets in this weekend. I will post those--in a timely fashion, I PROMISE!

At any rate, we are selling the house...or attempting to, anyways. Long story...for another post. We hope to move closer to DH's work, to a larger school district where Rachel can see more kids "like her" in her classes and in the halls. So, because people apparently do not like the wallpaper in the kitchen, we decided it had to go if we really wanted to move the house for the price we wanted. We worked on that over Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday and finished up Friday. We have NEVER done anything like this...so we were really branching out here! The finished project is far from perfect. And we both say there are thing we would have done differently, but overall, we feel like it turned out pretty well. Here are a few pics from the progress:

Beginning the progress

What a disaster!!!

HUGE MESS!!!

Progress at the end of Tuesday night

Progress at the end of Wednesday night

Window are after paper removed and been textured

Paint morning...everything has been textured

Finished project

Its going to have to grow on us...and hopefully it won't take long to sell, but none of us really LOVE it. It does make the kitchen look HUGE (which it is), but its not near as homey as it was. And we all seem to think it looks awfully plain and boring.

In other news today marks FOUR YEARS since we got Megan! Its hard to believe that 4 years ago today we were handed this tiny, scared little baby girl. Man has time flown by. We hope to celebrate with some ice cream today!

Christmas

Christmas was so HUGE that we had to open presents in 3 different "sessions". First, Megan is horribly slow. Second, it was just too much for Rachel to take in the way it was, so we wanted to break it up for her as well. Here are some of the highlights:

Megan with her 2 pillow pets

Megan with one of her watches

Rachel with one of the picture frames she got

She also got a lot of clothes...you can kind of see her pile next to her

Megan reading one of her many books...she's such a book worm

The favorite gifts...the pillow pets!

Santa brought Megan a "tie bow" as she calls it...just like the Cat in the Hat

While Rachel got an apron to help cook, something she really enjoys doing!

Megan's Preschool Program

Megan's Thanksgiving Program was last night. Here is her class' performance of "Feather bed". They did an AWESOME job. And she LOVES her teacher, Ms. Debbie
Her classmates lined up are Abi, Megan, Mia, Ethan, Jaidyn, Saelah, Dylan

Her bestest friend in her class is Dylan (and he is a cutie!)

Happy Halloween

The church where Megan's school is had a Trunk or Treat so we took the girls up there last night...

our sweet innocent "witch"

Haha! Fool you...

Our sweet prom princess

who has sass...

And the two together!

Pumpkin Patch Pics

A local church has a pumpkin patch that we stopped at last weekend...

Oh my girls....

Dad & Rachel

Megan & Mom

The whole family

SD Trip

The trip to SD went well. The girls did FANTASTIC in the car--which is 100% a miracle considering the day after we got back they couldn't even make it the 5 minute drive home from Rachel's school without a tiff. Ah, back to "real life".

Glow sticks made the last hour of the trip just FLY by. It was the best $1 investment I made for the ENTIRE trip!

Rachel & Ashley had a fashion show for us

More fashions...
And "where was Megan while the "big" girls had the fashion show?" you may be asking.

Well, outside playing football with Uncle Keith & Brady, of course!!!
My little football player girl...

And the fashion show continues...

A cousin picture: Brady, Megan, Rachel, Ashley
We were unable to get ALL the SD cousins together on this trip with the short notice.

Papaw and Grandma drove to come see us at Nana's as well.

The "girls"
Megan, Rachel, Brooklyn & Baby Brea (the newest cousin)

The return trip went well. We did have a HUGE miracle (besides the girls not fighting the entire way home, that is). I ended up with a flat 2 days after we got back. Come to find out I needed all new tires. It was only by God's grace and protection it didn't happen on the trip. I thank and praise God it did not!!!

Quick trip

Well...I'm crazy. We decided to pull Rachel out of school for 2 days this week and drive up to South Dakota to introduce her to the family. I'm driving with the girls by myself (I am a glutton for punishment). If we come to mind on Thursday or on Monday, PLEASE say a prayer for us as we will be driving....and driving...and driving. Rachel is really not very good in the car (God help me!), but Megan is a trooper. I've got a HUGE pile of movies so I guess they will get to veg out on movies. I also got some different prizes for them to open at various points on the drive. But no matter how you cut it...this is NOT going to be fun. Prayers are VERY needed.

I'll post pics as soon as we get back!!!

Rachel is 14!!!

Rachel's birthday was Sunday. So she & I met her friend Hope (and her mom, Elissa) for an overnight birthday bash. Here are a few pictures...

My little model...we went into a little shop...she had to try on several masks. I see a trip to New Orleans in our future!

We surprised the girls with some "Qu-ah" dresses (as Rachel calls them). Both girls love to dress up, they were really excited and surprised with the dresses.

This one looks like they are waiting for their rides to pick them up.

What a princess.

Such precious BFFs

This was a favorite of both girls!

Rachel also got her ears pierced, something she's wanted to get done since shortly after she got home. In fact, the girls got them done together (although I think Hope wished she didn't because it hurt so badly!).

My little missy...

...has gotten glasses! The day she's been looking forward to for a very LONG time! She technically only needs to wear them when she is reading and only for about an hour a day at this point in the game, but she has them! They are purple (of course!)...and she LOVES THEM!

She's VERY INTO making funny faces for the camera..
like this...

And this...

and then this adorable one...
what a beauty!