Halloween 2009

Since I am not the biggest fan of Halloween it was decided that we wouldn't do a whole bunch of trick or treating and instead would let the kids get their fill at the trunk or treat. Now, typically when we do bi-ward activities only the younger couples with kids show up and even then there aren't a whole lot of people. Tonight however the gym was PACKED, which of course made the kids more hyper than normal (when sugar is involved).

I thought that we wouldn't get a ton of candy at the trunk or treat portion of the activity...I was wrong. The kids made out GOOD!

Phillip woke up this morning THRILLED that it was Halloween and couldn't WAIT for the trunk or treat. And the only reason KatieJo and Samuel did any chores today was because they were told if they didn't do them we wouldn't go. WOW they move with that kind of incentive!

Now for the pictures:This is one of 2 pictures we have of Maija in her costume. She had a cute tail and everything, but wouldn't let us put it back on. So, she wore her "Little Devil" shirt. It was cute, but not as cute as the costume!

KatieJo (the unicorn) and Samuel (Peter Pan). KatieJo's costume was too small. It was too small when we got it at a garage sale....but she HAD to HAVE it! Phillip (the Crab)...He LOVES this hat! Originally he had a completely red outfit...unfortunately we couldn't find the red pants tonight so we put his "Little Devil" shirt on under his "surf" shirt and made him a "Cool Crab". He didn't care, he was just so darn excited for the candy!My four cRaZy kids! I love Samuel's pose in this picture. He looks so...gallant!

Their HAUL!
As we were looking at all of the candy and the older kids were picking out their piece of candy for the night (yes you read that correct...they only got 1 piece. For my defense however I'll state the fact that they did have cookies and dessert at the Halloween party tonight) Maija decided she needed a sucker. She is VERY good at letting us know what she wants, and she wanted that sucker! You may not be able to competely see it in this picture, but tonight is the first time I put her hair in a little ponytail. Not all of her hair fits, but she has long hair on the sides of her head so I pulled it back and then stuck a korker bow in it. I'm a little bit excited about that....it's one of the reasons I LOVE having girls!

After the kids were in bed I was looking for a piece of candy and Phillip walked out of his room and says: "What are you doing Mommy? Eating my candy?" I had to laugh. He wasn't upset as I would have thought...it was just so matter of fact. Truthfully it wasn't just his candy as after they look at their candy we combine all of it.

Here's to another Halloween...now we'll move on to CHRISTMAS!!!! Of course we couldn't bypass Thanksgiving...but YAY Christmas!

Really?

Stuart and I are in the process of renewing our Temple Reccomends and so were supposed to have a meeting with our Bishop and the Stake President tonight. However, because of the weather the Stake President couldn't make it to town. We decided to go ahead with the meeting with the Bishop so that when the Stake President reschedules we already have part of the process complete.

I'm quite a bit upset after my interview with the Bishop. At first everything went fine. He asked the normal questions...no surprises. That is until after he was done and he looked at Maija and asked how she was fitting in. I thought it was a little strange and said that everyone loves her. He proceeded to go on and say "It must be hard." I wasn't sure what he was talking about and asked him to clarify. He then told me it must be hard to adopt and to love the kids and asked if I felt I treated them any different than Phillip. SERIOUSLY?!?!?

He asked several other questions along that line and then let me leave and went to get Stuart. I was BLOWN away. I've been having a hard time lately and one of the things I've been struggling with is feeling like I'm a bad mom. Not for anything specific necessarily, and not to just one or two of my kids but to all of them.

It took us a long time to get to be parents. We were married 3 years when we got KatieJo & Samuel and I was so grateful to finally get to be a mom. It took almost 3 more years to have Phillip and just when we were thinking about trying for another baby I started having problems again and then we found out about Maija who has been a HUGE blessing to us.

There is a reason we got our kids the way we did. Heavenly Father has such a bigger plan that we could ever have! I wanted to be a mom, and I am a mom....does it matter how they came to be part of our family?

I should have told the Bishop that of course I treat them different, each of my children is so vastly different from the next that I cannot possibly parent them all in the same way. I wouldn't be an effective parent if I disciplined Phillip by giving him extra chores or by taking his books away like I do KatieJo and Samuel. But then again it doesn't work to discipline KatieJo or Samuel to take away their favorite car or train like it does for Phillip.

I guess I don't understand why someone would ask a question like that. He doesn't know why we adopted, and truthfully he doesn't really know us that well.

It has amazed me over the past 5 years how people, including some family members feel about adoption. My family, who we assumed would not be as welcoming of adopting kids have been nothing but supportive. On the other hand the people we expected to be the most understanding and supportive have been the exact opposite.

My children are blessed and we are blessed to get to raise them. Adoption is such a wonderful option. They are so many kids in this world who need someone to love them, and there are so many moms and dads that just need kids to love them. And I'm tired of the cynics in the world who think that just because I didn't give birth to all of my children that I can't possibly love them as much as a child that comes from my body.

I love my children and I am grateful EVERYDAY for the opportunity I have to be their mom!

Peter Pan

Because Samuel's birthday was in August before school started we decided to have a birthday party after school started. Somehow I didn't get my act together sooner, so Samuel and I decided on a Halloween/birthday party. We combined a party with Samuel's friend Mattias since his birthday was right after Samuel's. It worked out really well as I did the cooking/baking and Mattias's mom Shonda did the games.

The boys had a blast! We had "Worms on a bun" a.k.a. hot dogs cut into strips to look like worms (see below) with "blood" and "diarrhea" a.k.a ketchup and mustard (disclaimer...the boys came up with the "diarrhea" as we didn't have a gross name for it) chips and apple juice mixed with sprite. Then they played a game outside where they made a "spider web" by throwing a ball of yarn around a circle. They also played "Trick or Treat" where they had to do a trick..like spelling a word or do some kind of physical task to get a piece of candy. Instead of decorating a cake we decided to let the boys decorate their own "monsters". They each got a cupcake and we let them have free artistic discretion with their frosting and "eyes" a.k.a. chocolate chips. I'm glad they all went home not too long after having the frosting! You'll see why below.

Mattias the Mummy and Phillip the Crab"Worms"YUM!
Samuel aka Peter Pan!
Look at that Frosting piled high! They all ate the frosting and then were too "sweeted" out for the cupcakes.

A rose by any other name

My name. It's not the most usual name. In fact I've only ever heard it 2 other times. The first being the ex-Vice President Dick Cheney and a girl that graduated from high school with my sister who is 2 years my junior. I have to admit when I heard them call the other girl onto the stage I thought they were referring to me. A little silly, but my name isn't exactly common.

Chaney

It's pronounced Ch-a-knee. I get a lot of Chancey, Shaney and Jamie's. It was a lot easier to tell people how to pronounce my name when Vice President Cheney was in office because people heard his name a lot. Now, I'm back to fending on my own.

My mom claims that because she carried me for 9 months she left the naming up to my dad....who claims he got it out of a baby book. And, they added Marie as a middle name because I was a girl (I guess I was supposed to be a boy...I didn't get that message!). I'm not so sure it really came from a baby book, I've yet to see it in one as I have named my children. My dad used to talk about Lon Chaney (the Dracula actor). He used to joke that I was named after him. I don't have any doubt that that's really where it came from. You see, my parents were planning on my being a boy (my younger sister was supposed to be a boy as well), and as far as I can tell from the various tellings of the story I was named long before I was born.

I never liked my name growing up. No one could ever pronounce it and it was so unusual! I wanted a name like Elizabeth or Jessica (from the Sweet Valley High Series). I wanted a "normal" name. However, I've grown into my name. I love that it's unique. I love that not everyone is Chaney. I never liked however that my mother claimed that it should be pronounced as Sha-nay. And still occasionally refers to me as such. I wouldn't have minded it so much except once someone heard that all I heard from that point on was "Shanaynay". I hated that!

It doesn't particularly matter to me that I may have been named after a Dracula actor (or a man for that matter). I love my name and it's me.

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Chocolate on my Cranium.

Wordfull Wednesday

Chocolate on My Cranium's Wordful Wednesday asked for 6 words to describe my life.
Since I am normally described by my children or more technically the role I play in their lives "Mom", today I describe my life differently:


CrAzY in Love with My Husband!

Frugal Living

Maija is tiny, and when I say tiny I mean she is almost 11 months old and is still pretty solidly in her 3-6 month clothing. Not that I'm complaining (besides most 3-6 month clothes are not meant for a crawling little girl), however I haven't been able to find a coat small enough to fit her. Most of the coats for her size are snowsuits, and although that's okay they are a pain in the rear end to get a baby in and out of who is as wiggle as she is when we aren't going to be outside very long. I have an 18 month coat I bought this summer thinking it would work for all winter (of course I assumed she'd be bigger by now), but it's HUGE! So, I finally found this coat at the Children's Place. Now, I like their clothing etc. but I don't like their prices. However, the coat which was normally $30 was on sale for $20. I also found these two dresses, normally $12.50 each on sale for $4.89 (and yes, I know the dress is the same style...I got the dresses in different sizes so it won't matter).

Yesterday however I got a coupon in the mail for 15% off my purchase and free shipping. I was excited, because I got her coat for $17.55 and each dress for $4.16. And, I saved $5 bucks on shipping. Seems a little silly, but I rarely buy things brand new and when I do I like to save as much of our money as I can.

I think since her birthday is coming up I'll add the dresses to her presents...they won't fit for a while, but I've hesitated buying her too many clothes in the next size because I don't want to have a bunch of the wrong season clothing when she gets up to the next size clothing.

Okay, enough of my gushing.

The winds of change

I love change...don't you love change? Okay, I jest. I don't particularly care for change, but once again my life has been thrown for a loop. Not only have we been fighting illness since before school started, I am now Home Schooling Samuel. Well technically we are using the K12 Wyoming Virtual Academy, but I am his "learning coach" aka teacher... although, he does have a licensed teacher who oversees everything but I do the teaching.

After a year long fight and IQ and other assessments that said Samuel should be in 2nd grade (although quite a few of his results placed above the 2nd grade level) the school district decided not to do what Samuel needed. Samuel got to the point where we were fighting to get him to go to school and was VERY depressed. I didn't know a 6 year-old could get like that! So, we pulled him out. It's been almost 2 weeks and he is doing FANTASTIC! He is learning so much more than the schools here in Rawlins offer. He gets to take Art, History and Science. They do a little bit of History and Science here in the schools. But absolutely no Art. He has already learned a little bit about Van Gogh, Da Vinci, Nomads, Mummies, The Fertile Crescent, The Nile River Valley, Amun Ra, Osiris, Isis etc. He thinks the Nomads and Mummies (because their insides are taken out before they are made into Mummies...quite a good reason to like them. Don't you think?) are the coolest ever.

It's been a pretty big change for me as I'm not used to spending a big chunk of my day working on school work with him and planning for what we need for the next day. However, I think it's been positive for Samuel & Phillip. Phillip is learning quite a bit along with Samuel and was "measuring" things during Science the other day with Samuel, and at the very least it has helped Phillip sit at the table and do some "school work".

Having Samuel home means we don't get to run out and do whatever we want, but with a little planning we can still do quite a bit. It's been so great to have our son back again! It's a little scarry to have your son so depressed. And I'm grateful for options that allow us to get him what he needs.

A lot of people have asked how KatieJo feels about all of this. Well, we offered her the option of staying home to do school as well. But, she was very adamant about wanting to stay at Mountain View. She is a social butterfly by nature and needs the social interactions. Samuel on the other hand enjoys being at home. It perplexes me about how different my children are! However, I am SO very glad they are who they are!!!