Graduation!!

Summer has officially begun!

Lindsay graduated from Kindergarten today!

I have to admit, I thought it was a little ridiculous they were

having the kindergarteners wear a cap and gown.

But, doesn't she look CUTE?!?!

Just a side note . . . Word of advise to all of you. Never take Emma, Nathan and Logan to anything that requires sitting quietly for more than 2 minutes at a time. Of course, they held the graduation right at 11:30 -- lunch time and nap time, and we had three VERY grumpy kids on our hands before it was finally over at 12:30. But, honestly it's a kindergarten graduation, I thought it would be fast and informal--I was wrong. Next time we're getting a sitter!!

Lindsay and Mrs. Jones back in the classroom for the last time!!

I am having trouble believing she is already finished with Kindergarten . . .

On to first grade I guess!

Lindsay's trip to the Sacramento Zoo

Here's Lindsay taking a nap on the long, hot bus ride home. She was worn out after a long day!

A few weeks ago Lindsay and I (and the rest of Turtle Bay's Kindergarteners) went on a field trip to the Sacramento Zoo. I personally am not a huge fan of this zoo (kind of small and dirty in my opinion), but Lindsay was dying to have me go as a chaparone. Anyway, we ended up having a blast together (it's not often I get to spend a whole day with just Lindsay and none of her siblings). We left the school at 7:00 am and got back about 5:30pm. Let me just say . . . LONG DAY!! We had a so much fun together though, and really enjoyed wandering around the zoo with her friend Aydan! (I only had to chaparone the two of them, so that's not too bad). I really would have enjoyed it if it weren't for the 3 1/2 hour bus ride home on a 95 degree day without any AC. (Next time I'm driving!!) Anyway, here are a few pics to commemorate the occasion!!

This is the Orangutan, not Lindsay!! Isn't it cool that he's wearing pants on his head and staring straight at us?!




Lindsay and the Pink Flamingos, this was her favorite part of the zoo!

Waiting in the super long line to ride the train around the zoo! All of them are wearing red scarves because that's how Mrs. Jones keeps track of which kids are hers.

Our Baby Logan!

Finally some pictures of our new little guy!!

Isn't he sweet?!?!

He sleeps better when there's lots of noise and commotion around (which is PERFECT since there is ALWAYS lots of noise and commotion at our house), so he takes most of his naps on the floor in the middle of the living room.

Nathan absolutely adores Logan and always wants to help feed him and rock him and see to his every need! (Poor Logan is being loved to death by his new big brother)!

Lindsay is old enough to really help me a lot with Logan and she loves the role of big sister!

Anyway, so that's Logan!! The first thing anyone ever says about him is

"LOOK AT THAT HAIR!!!"

Logan

So, we have a new foster child. The social worker left a message on the machine on Tuesday morning and life has been kind of a whirlwind ever since. I spent all of Tuesday afternoon in a panic trying to get ahold of the social worker since all she said on the message was "We have a possible placement for you." Finally at 4:00 pm she calls back and says they have a one month old baby boy who needs to find a home within the next 24 hours. So, I got busy digging out all the baby stuff and trying to be sure we had everything we needed. Then when Jerry got home I went on a shopping spree for all the things we didn't have . . . like size 2 diapers and an infant car seat. Then I went to pick him up yesterday at 9:00 am.

His name is actually Cameron, but his middle name is Logan, and since no one in our family can manage to remember/correctly pronounce Cameron--Emma was calling him Caitlin all day yesterday, and every time Lindsay wanted to talk about him she would have to ask me "what's that baby's name again?" Even I was having trouble with it and kept wanting to call him Carmen. (ridiculous I know). Anyway, we decided that wisdom was the better part of valour and went for a name we could all pronounce and remember. So, Logan it is!

He had a very difficult first day. He absolutely refused to nap unless I was holding him in my arms, and when he was awake, he refused to be set down at all (so, I basically held him from 9:00 in the morning until he finally crashed about 5:00 at night). I was beginning to wonder what I was getting myself into. And then last night he woke up every 2 1/2 hours to be fed (that's going to take some getting used to), and at 2:00 am he decided he wasn't interested in sleeping anymore. But, after 30 minutes or so of me rocking him to sleep and laying him in his basinet and tiptoeing to bed only to have him wake up 30 seconds later and have do the whole process over again, he actually went to sleep and stayed asleep for a couple hours! And today has been so much better than yesterday was!! He took a nice long nap this morning and then he felt so good he just lay on the floor and kicked his legs and watched the ceiling fan for almost 20 minutes.

So, hopefully he was just having trouble settling in yesterday. Now all we have to do is get used to having a newborn baby running our lives again. After a couple of years it's easy to forget how time/energy consuming babies are! But they do have their good points too, earlier today I was holding him and talking to him and he was just staring at me with his sweet little baby eyes and he started talking to me and smiling at me!! Very fun!

He's a cutie too!! He has dark skin and thick curly black hair and the chubbiest cheeks ever! I'll try to post a picture soon!

May Newsletter

We are keeping busy as usual. We were all sick (well, the kids and I--not Jerry) for most of last week and so we got to spend lots of quality time hanging out together and skipping school. And now, we are all very excited for summer to come so we can hang out and take it easy for a couple months, not just a couple of days!

Also this month, we passed our foster care home inspection without any problems. And, Jerry is, as I type this, finishing his first aid certification which is our last step for foster care. Monday morning I am going in to drop off copies of our CPR and First Aid cards, and my completed OPTIONS class certificate, and then we should be licensed and placement ready. It’s crazy to think about. We have spent so long getting ready and taking classes, who knew we were ever going to be finished. Now, comes the hard part huh?

And, this month, we have been working on a refinance, which is (of course) turning out to be much harder than it is supposed to be. We thought we were all set, but then our appraisal came back $23,000 less than we needed it to be. So we had to rethink and wait for some of the new stimulus programs to come out. But now we are on track and set to refinance at 5%, so we are pretty excited about that! Hopefully we’ll be able to finish it up sometime in May. It’s been kind of a pain already, but we love the idea of paying $200 less interest per month!

Nathan is growing and changing like crazy. He’s at that age where even a few weeks make a big difference in how he looks. He is such a funny, quirky little guy! His new favorite thing is to yell “Cock-a-doodle-doo” at the top of his lungs at the most inappropriate times (like sacrament meeting for example). VERY EMBARRASSING—but it is so cute too! And he has decided that walking is just too slow for him, and now he runs, or gallops like a horse pretty much everywhere he goes (yes, I think we’re going to have another horse-lover at our house)!

Emma is changing into a new girl. I decided she must really be growing up the day I didn’t have to spend 15 minutes scrubbing down her spot at the table (and her chair and her clothes and everything within a 3 foot radius), after she finished her dinner. She is getting so much neater and learning to focus intently on things (other than horse movies I mean). This afternoon she sat down at the counter and did a Strawberry Shortcake puzzle by herself! I couldn’t believe it, I kept going and asking if she needed help (I was dying to help her out and sure she couldn’t do it by herself). But she kept saying no, I can do it, and she worked and worked until she got all those little tiny pieces in the right places! VERY COOL! Also, she is learning to love poetry and rhyming and the sounds of words (maybe she’ll be an English major like me)! She laughs like crazy when she rhymes people’s names to other words (ie: Tina Shmina). SO FUNNY!!

Lindsay is loving school right now. It seems like they had a field trip once a week this month, she got to go down to the lake, and she walked to the arboretum turtle pond, and she got to go see the birds and butterflies and a T-Rex at the Turtle Bay Museum, and next Friday her class is driving down to Sacramento to the Zoo (I get to go as a chaperone too)!! So, school is very exciting, and she spends all of her recesses on the monkey bars building up her muscles so she can be STRONG! She has spent so much time on the monkey bars that she has blisters over most of the surface of her hands, but she loves them (the monkey bars, not the blisters), so she keeps working at it! Be sure to ask her to see her muscles when you see her, she loves nothing better than showing off the fruits of all that labor!

Jerry has finally found a basketball group to play with here in Redding. So, this month he has been leaving the house at 5:00am on Monday, Wednesday and Friday to go play ball at the Stake Center. It sounds like he has found a great group of guys, and they seem to have a lot of fun! Then he heads straight from there to work, so he not only gets to play B-ball, but he gets some extra time in at work too! It’s a win-win. Although, we do miss having him at home with us in the mornings, and Nathan doesn’t know what to do when he wakes up and there’s only mommy there to take care of him. (He is really a daddy’s boy).

Well, that’s all the news for us, Happy Mother's Day to all you amazing moms!!
Love, The Coleman Clan

Stop to Smell the ROSES!

Jerry and I are the worst gardeners in the world (don't tell Jerry I said that, he is still under the delusion that this year's garden will be amazing). It doesn't matter how much time/effort/money we put into it. Every year we buy a whole bunch of beautiful little plants to put into our "garden" and we lovingly plant and cultivate and water them. And at the end of every year we end up with a big section of crusty brown dirt and a whole lot of little tiny scraggly brown plants. Tomatoes are our old standbye. We always plant tomatoes because they are the only things we have ever been able to grow. Last year we planted 3 or 4 healthy little green tomato plants and we ate MAYBE eight teeny tiny tomatoes off of them. We got nothing from all of our strawberries and corn. But, I do have to give Jerry this, his Jalepeno pepper plant grew several peppers and actually came back for more abuse this year (it is the most anorexic miserable little plant you've ever seen, but it's still alive, so we are thrilled)! We are in the process of starting our garden this year, so please pray for all those poor little newly planted plants that will undoubtedly not survive the next month!

Anyway, the exciting news is that I am having amazing luck with my 5 rose bushes. I am one of those women who loves roses (well, really any flowers) more than anything else in the world. And my rosebushes this year are giving the most beautiful, enormous, fragrant roses you could imagine! I have yellow, pink, red, and deep maroon so far (still waiting to see how number five turns out), and they are absolutely gorgeous! Hopefully they will hang in there and keep up the good work. So, anyway, I had to show off a couple of my first roses of the season! Aren't they cool?!?! I am absurdly proud of myself for not having killed them off yet!

Miss Debbie

We had something very sad happen in our preschool this year. One of the preschool teachers, Miss Debbie, was convicted of vehicular manslaughter and given the maximum sentence of 6 years in prison. She was texting while driving and ran right into the back of a car. That car exploded and the woman driving was killed before anyone could get her out of the car. It is such a sad situation from all aspects. I have to feel for the family of the woman who was killed--what a horrible way for someone to die. But on the other hand, I know and love Miss Debbie and both Lindsay and Emma have had her as a teacher and love her too. So we, of course, don't want her to have to go to jail for what was essentially a really horrible mistake. Anyway, this all happened a couple of months ago and since Miss Debbie is now serving six years in prison, she is (obviously) unable to be at preschool. I kept thinking that Emma would stop asking where Miss Debbie was, so I kept evading her questions. But, Emma, being the tenacious, loving little munchkin she is, just continues to ask about or mention Miss Debbie on an almost daily basis. "Where is she? Is she very sick? Did she have to go to the hospital? Miss Debbie still isn't in my preschool, did she move?" Finally, I decided that she wasn't going to just forget about Miss Debbie, so, this morning I decided to tell her what happened (I wasn't going to keep lying to her forever about it).

So, we were driving home from dropping Lindsay off at kindergarten when Emma starts talking again about Miss Debbie and why she has been gone for so long. I respond, as gently as possible that Miss Debbie isn't going to be able to come back to Emma's preschool.

"Not EVER?" she asks with big innocent eyes. (They don't let convicted felons work with preschool children, soooo . . . . )

"No, honey, Miss Debbie isn't going to ever be able to come back to your preschool."

"Why not?" So, I proceed to explain that Miss Debbie made a very big mistake and she was looking at her cell phone when she was driving and got in an accident and had to go to people jail, just like Dumbo's mommy had to go to Elephant jail when she threw the little boy across the circus tent. This is the only reference she has to jail, but she seems to grasp the concept of Miss Debbie having to go to jail. But, this information releases a FLOOD of questions.

"After she get's out of the people jail will she be able to come back to my preschool?"--No.
"Where is the people jail at?" --I don't know.
"Mommy haven't you been in an accident before?--Yes, twice
"Did you go to people jail?" -- No
"Why did Miss Debbie have to go to people jail and you didn't?" -- Because Miss Debbie got in an accident with another car and the person in the other car died and went to heaven.
"What color was the car that she got in an accident with?" -- I really don't know.

And the questions went on and on. For about an hour she was completely fixated on it and just fired off one question after another trying to understand what had happened. Then, it was like it finally hit her--none of those questions mattered. And she looks up at me with big sad eyes and says very slowly . . . "Miss Debbie isn't ever going to be able to come back to my preschool because she has to go to people jail."

"Yes, honey, she made a big mistake, and she won't be able to come back to your preschool."

Those big eyes start to tear up, then she snuggles up against me and says, "That makes me feel very sad."

And I just have to tell you, it makes me feel very sad too!