the last few months

I'm not sure how I got so far behind on my posts. At the present we do not have much internet service at home, which makes it challenging.
Zarah(gymnastics) and Truman(trampoline) are in the middle of their meet season. Both are doing real well. Zarah qualified to go to state her 1st meet, and has continued to do well. Her meet today she got 1st all around.
Truman got 3rd place at his very first meet. He should feel more comfortable as the season progresses.
Baylie is doing 2 musicals this year. Robin Hood was in the fall, and now she is in Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat. She enjoys her time to herself/with her friends.
Dan and Truman have their 1st loose tooth. we'll see who pulls it out first. Dan went for his neurodevelopmental evaluation this week. He did pretty well. They say he still has a few of his autistic type behaviors that they are going to work on. They expect him to progress quite well.
Addie had her birthday. She is walking and starting to say several words now. How does that happen so fast. It seems like she was just a tiny baby yesterday.
Jack had his 12th birthday. He is getting so big and maturing a bit. He has been into making origami things and things out of duct tape lately. He has also been a big help with our van when difficulties arrive. I am thankful for the talents God has given him.
Charlie and Daniella have been enjoying playing just dance on the wii they got for Christmas. It is funny to watch all of them down there dancing away. With Mario Carts Charlie seems to drive into the walls alot, but he enjoys trying.
I have several photos/videos I would like to download onto my blog, but no way to download them on right now. Hopefully later, i will be able to do that.
I guess that it all for now,
take care,
Vickie

From Dejan to Dan at OneTrueMedia.com

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Summer

oks like I need to update for July and August.

July brought Zarah and my birthdays. Zarah went to a 2 day gymnastics camp in Columbia, Mo and had a great time. Our insurance company forced us to replace our roof (not good for the ole family budget)on our house. Some of the children spent a few days in Joplin, Mo with our old neighbors. Fun was had by all. 2 Royals baseball games were attended by Matt and a few of the children.

August: Baylie and Matt attended a culinary open house in KS. She loved it and stills plans to attend college to become a chef/restaurant owner after high school. After 11 wonderful years of being a stay at home mom, I entered back into the work force. I very much appreciate my wonderful husband for doing such a great job supporting our family this last decade. As the children have gotten older and desire to participate in more extracurrilar activities, the time has come for me to pitch in and bring home a pay check. For the next several months, I am helping a couple hours a day with a lady with beginning stage alzheimers. She is a wonderful lady, and I really enjoy our time spent together. I also am working a couple of hours a day at one of 4 area nursing homes doing data entry for their physical therapy department. All the staff I have met so far are very nice; as long as I tell them I am not a PT competing for their job. I am only there to help things run smoothly. Although the job is a bit more complicated than I originally thought, I am catching on and learning new things about Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, etc.

School is back in session. We are all trying to get our new schedules ironed out to fit everything in. Baylie is a Freshman this year. Yikes!! How did that happen. Except for the horror she felt when opening up her biology book package and finding her lab specimens in there, she is liking high school. Oops, if I would have remembered, I would have warned her.

Dan celebrated his 6th birthday. He had a lot more of an opinion this year about what he wanted for dessert. He has started singing songs now. It is great to hear his little voice making a melody. He has officially been part of our family longer now than he spent in the orphanage. He is a very different boy than we met in 2008. With his big hands, tall stature, deep voice, and continued response/understanding of some Serbian words; he will always carry a part of Serbia with him. We are very thankful to all those involved in caring for Dejan during his first 2 1/2 years of his life. He is a loving boy who enjoys playing outside and driving toy cars. He continues to have a special bond with his sister Daniella and little brother Charlie. Although he comes up with many ways to get himself in trouble, his big smile melts your heart.

Summer

You gotta love boys. There was about a 2 week time period in June where Dan was having an especially great time. Every year we have a couple of weeks where the cicadas swarm, make lots of nice music outside, and then leave their shells behind on the trees. Well, Dan took this opportunity to bring in at least one live cicada every day to show me. He loved them. After there was only their shells left, he took the time to go out with plastic baggies and collect a lot of them.

I guess Dan is allergic to poison sumac. Nasty stuff! He got it all over; even in his mouth. Yikes. Thankfully, after many showers a day with Tecnu soap and mouthwash for his mouth, it is all gone now. Poor thing.

We made it to church camp this year in Oklahoma. Everyone had fun. It was good to see our

friends again from the south. We sang in the talent show...Rockin Robin by the Jackson Five. Some of our activities included crafts, swimming,fishing, kickball, volleyball, etc.

The children were nervous the first night when a storm blew up. Our popup camper was moving around a bit. On our way down we stopped at some friends house in Joplin (where the big tornado destroyed a large area of the town). Well, when the storm came in Oklahoma; the children were afraid it was a tornado. No, just a usual Oklahoma storm. Of course, the swimming clothes are never the same after the red mud, but the water helps when it is 104 degrees outside.

April/May

Well, I'll have to pull out the calendar to see what's been going on these last 2 months.

Birthday time. Daniella, Matt, Baylie, and Charlie have had their birthday.

We visited CocoKeys indoor water park and all had a blast. Daniella went down her first water slide and loved it. That's amazing in itself because usually everything new scares her to death. Charlie and Truman went down the slides for the first time too. Wish I would have remembered my camera.

B, J, and Z went to work with Matt for "Take your child to work day." Truman had to sit out this year, he didn't do so well last year........as in hitting a recruit in the head with a night stick.....not a proud parent moment. Now, mind you, many of the children were messing around/wrestling/competing with the recruits, but T. had his own idea. Well, hopefully T. can go next year. I think our point was made by keeping him out this year.

Now, this year. Matt's(my husband) boss decided to show off his skills. He competed with Zarah at hand stands and flips....the boss landed flat on his back on one of his flips. hehehe The boss allowed all the kids to "punch me in the stomach as hard as you can". Baylie and Zarah took it easy on him, but Jack thought this was an open invitation. Well, after Jack's punch (remember he was in boxing for awhile) the boss kind of doubled over a little bit and got one of those "that really hurt" looks on his face, but tried not show it. He laughed it off. Matt, of course, felt compelled to say "now Jack, not so hard" , while in his head was saying "yeah, good job!"
The girls got to ride on the police horses. Of course, Zarah loved that. She has decided Matt needs to join the mounted patrol division before he retires. :) I think most of her reasoning is so she can go ride the horse.

Daniella, at her neurodevelopmental evaluation this time, went up 7 months in her reading comprehension part. Yeah!

After the big tornado wiped out 75% of Joplin, Mo. We got our turn the next week. Our tornado was smaller and didn't touch down by us, but 2 of them came over our area. We
were a little more concerned about it then usual; since the week before was when Joplin got hit.

Matt got a new to us suburban in Denver. We really like it, but a week after buying it the transmission went out. Uugghh!! That same week our "german shepherd puppy" jumped on the sliding door and knocked it in the house right onto Truman's bike that was upside down with the front wheel off (since we were changing his tire tube). You know how that turned out. Yes, a bazillion pieces of broken glass. That took about an hour to clean up. When it rains it pours.

I think that's about it for the last 2 months.
talk to you later,
Vickie

February/March

I have learned several things these last few weeks:
--it is possible for a friend's puppy to pull a laptop off the table requiring the computer to be in the repair shop for a month
--an entire family with varying degrees of RSV can result in a couple of trips to urgent care
--just when you think things might settle down, leave it to a certain accident prone almost 6 year old to go and get a laceration on his arm that requires 7 stitches
--as demonstrated by a small brother, one can always sit on a baby sisters rapidly moving legs to help him get her diaper on :)
--be thankful for good neighbors and enjoy your time together because the time comes too quickly when they have to move away :(

Hope you all are doing well.
until next time,
Vickie

December/January

Guess I should tell about our December/January events. For Christmas ,the children searched around the house for the perfect gift to give their siblings. Jack decided to make everyone something out of duct tape. Yes, a gun, backpack, cell phone holder, $20 bill, purse,wallet, etc. can all be successsfully made out of duct tape. He mentioned next he wants to make a suit out of duct tape to wear to church. That would be interesting and give people there something to talk about on the way home. hmmmmmm What do you say to that? Umm, "I don't think your suit will be warm enough in this winter weather." By spring he will surely forget about his master plan. :)



Let's see, other actitivities going on:

-- sledding, building cool igloos, making a fort out of mom's kitchen cabinets, playing fooz ball/ bopit, and building with blocks.

-- Baylie along with many other children put on a great musical, "Singin in the Rain". We all really enjoyed it. There are still days where someone bursts out in one of the songs.

--2 people injured their arm (a hyperextension and sprain) All are mended now.

--various winter illnesses:a few strains of the flu and some colds

--We enjoyed 3 great Christmas's with different family members. Always fun to get together, provided we don't over stay our visit. If we go past the alotted time there is crying, whining, fighting and other various activities that do not ehibit our parenting skills/ weekly character training/and regular child training in general. You can tell when our time is up.
-- New Years Eve was fun. Matt had to work, but the rest of us played various games and had several competitions......sit ups, push ups, splits, stand on one leg, etc. We'll just say mom's body is not quite back into tip top shape after her delivery in Sept. uuhhmmm. Needless to say, mom didn't win many of the contests. Then the annual drinking of the sparking grape juice.
That about sums up our last couple of months. Hope you all are doing well and staying warm. Until next time.....