Jia's 1st day of school.

Oh my.  Our little dear.  I'm used  to our Jia and her 'ways ' so I'm not totally humiliated. 

First she was so excited that even though I had her in bed by 8:30 she was awake until midnight.  Sigh.  So we're both tired today.  Then this morning she decided she wasn't eating.  Period.  It wasn't pretty.  I was up earlier than usual we had an extra hour built in and I still didn't get time for a shower. 

It's Luk's 3rd Birthday so he had a bath and got gussied up for his hip hop class.  Plus Eric made cup cakes to share and they were on a Superman plate.  Exciting times. 

Eric left with Luk to hip hop and I left with Jia to meet her teacher.  By the time we got there at 9:30 she had been talking and arguing with me for three straight hours.  Then she flat out refused to talk to her teacher.  She wouldn't stay seated and was whirling twirling around the library and danced over to us, interrupted us to say "my sister Fei calls me a poo poo head and I don't like to be called a poo poo head!".  Yup.  Not kidding.  Not exaggerating.   Such a proud parenting moment.  I said "hey, those are potty words and we don't use those at school".  Not sure what her teacher said, my ears were buzzing. 

At least Missy looked adorable.  You can hardly see the giant kitten scratch running down her whole face.  Yay Eugene.

Eric took Luk to see Gramma and they had cupcakes together.  I took Jia to work and she was drawing me a surprise picture.  She used permanent lumber marker that soaked through her paper and got all over my desk and then put $4 worth of stamps on it.  Then folded it and used the official return envelope from Citizenship Canada, she colored on it, used glue to close it up and stapled it for good measure.  Arg.  So the good news is that we got a letter yesterday asking for Luk's permanent resident card, which means Citizenship is immenent.   I was able to remove the staple, open the envelope and use it by taping it shut.  It was a great relief to have Eric take her home today!

We are still supposed to have a horse coming over this evening but it's pouring rain so none of us are looking forward to Goldy's visit.  Next post will be about Luk's Birthday.

Lili and Fei back to school.

Lili to grade 7 and Fei to grade 6.

Half day today.  The teachers haven't even seen their class lists so the kids are off to their last class for today.  New classes tomorrow.   Mostly everyone seemed happy-ish this morning.  I was surprised to see a lot of older kids I didn’t recognize. 

Updates

Life is crazy.  We've been thrown a couple loops to deal with.  Eric's Mom was diagnosed stage 4 lung cancer three weeks ago.  Already spread to her liver and spine.  She was home and managing on her own but suddenly needed the hospital last week.  She is still there.  It's not good.  Eric is managing one day at a time.  She isn't eating and so we try to send food every day that might entice her.  Eric isn't comfortable in hospitals.  I'm trying to kept things as normal as possible at home. 

To add to the mess, Scott, Eric's best friend who lives here with us in our suite, had a massive stroke.  Eric thought he was acting odd on Sunday.  He didn't see him Monday and checked on him Tuesday.  He wasn't speaking words.  Just garbled.   So he helped him to the car and got him to the emergency room. 

Both his Mom and friend were across the hall from each other.   Scott seemed to be improving by little bits but then he was moved to Victoria for emergency surgery.   He was at risk of another stroke so they replaced the calcified veins in his neck with veins from his legs yesterday.   Five hour surgery.   He's recovering now.  His son and wife have come.  They haven’t seen him in three years. 

We are hoping he'll go to a rehab. place here.  I'm hoping he'll be able to recover enough to come home.  Not a lot of answers yet.  He seems to have memory.  He seems to know Eric and Adam. 

On the day that both of them went to the hospital, the kids had some critter issues at home.  Eugene had a litter box fecal issue so the kids locked him in the bathroom.   Eric had to come home to bath the kitten.  Then the girls called me later in the day to report that they went to clean the rat cage and little Charlotte was missing.  I told them to remove cats and dogs and look for little poos.   I went home at that point. 

Thankfully Lili is old enough to babysit because we've really needed her help this past week. 
Miss Charlotte was found the next morning.   Honestly I really didn’t believe we'd ever find her.  We had found little poops in the utility room and the door had been open during the day.  We searched for hours and hours but we all thought she was likely outside and gone.  Fei put a bowl of food outside of the cage and in the morning we could see that she had eaten so we started another search and found her right away!  Such a relief.   She was happy to go back in the cage and we enjoyed watching the littles run around and play.

Luk started a hip hop dance class last week.  Cute video but no pictures.   He loved it.

We had Eric's Mom's dog Jeeter here for the week but he is a rotti cross and he was showing some aggression towards the cats and Isabel so Eric's sister took him. 

My parents left on a cruise so we have their little dogs here.

Eugene is super cute and really busy.  He's keeping us entertained and busy.

Back to school tomorrow.   Not excited.  Seriously going to miss the girls.  Not looking forward to the extra work.  Jia meets her teacher on Tuesday and part days Thursday and Friday.   She won't start full days until the next week.  She goes back and forth between looking forward to school and dreading it.

Tuesday is Luk's 3rd Birthday.  His first with us.  We're doing a family party. 

I wanted the back to school and Birthday blogs to be seperate from the heaviness of this post.

We’re ok.  There isn't anything anyone can do to help.  There isn't much we can do either.  Feels awful to be so helpless. 

Trains.

Little Mister likes trains.  I think all little kids do.  The admission rates are down at our local museum so we went yesterday.  Beautiful sunny day.  Luk was thrilled playing with a train set.  Our train ride was fun.  Lili and Jia were good sports about being dragged along.  They've been there a lot.  We had a picnic in the center and the big girls took the littles to the playground so Eric and I could sit and visit. 

Jia and Mama go camping.

Just the two of us.  She doesn't have an off button.  Her body is in constant motion.   I'm not even sure she realizes it.  So she spent Friday with Gramma and then we took off.   She was on hyper drive while we packed up.  Then we let her sit up front (no air bags) and I thought she'd be thrilled to be co-pilot but she was asleep in seconds ;)  Then we had a bit of an adventure when we arrived, the campsite was full.  They stop the reservation system beginning of Sept.  So we went to overflow but we were parked on an angle so we moved again.  Then they offered us the host site for the night but we were eating our snack and in our jammies so we declined but then they came again and said they were opening the gate for another section so we moved again.  I'm not really that comfortable with parking the unit, I ended up with lots of practice and in the dark too!

I woke up at 9 and Jia was still sound asleep weird because she usually wakes up at 7.  Next thing I know the park ranger is calling to the camp.  He wanted us to move into the first loop.  I thought he was being so rude asking us to move so early until I got back in the motorhome and realized it was 11!!  Jia was still sleeping!!  We hopped in our seats in jammies again and moved sites again.  Too funny.  The rest of our weekend was as restful as Jia could manage.  She wanted face paint and a fancy dinner of macaroni.  Some wishes are easy to manage. 

New babies again.

The weekend went by in a blur.  Date on this post should be Tues. Sept. 9.  

Eric had a busy day Friday with his Mom.  We had her dog Jetter over for a play and he did great here.  We took him home Friday evening and then carried onto Sooke to pick up Lili and Fei's new wee baby rats.  Sat. Eric finally got a ride in, it's been too dry in the bush all summer. The kid's and I stayed home and did critter care.  Helping the new babies (Charlotte and Taylor) and Lea adjust to each other while dogsitting Mom and Dad's dogs.  It was a fun day with so many animals here.  Lea has been really sad since Lola died and she was so noticably happy to have babies.  They are beyond adorable together.  She flipped them over and cleaned their butts immediatly.  She's a fabulous adoptive Mom.  The three of them are in the big cage together already. Jia and Luk went and got their toy rats and played all day with their babies.  So cute.

On Sunday Mom and I took the girls to the fair so they could dance.  We had a hard time with the wheelchair in the gravel and the staff just would NOT let us drop Mom off.  We didn't see much but it was nice to see the girls perform and it was a great sunny day and we enjoyed being together.  Eric and I took the littles shopping Sunday evening.  Squeaked in a hair cut for Luk and the lady cutting his hair has a grandson with a shunt so she was great about cutting to hide it :)  Then we let him pick out all the party supplies for his 3rd Birthday party.  He picked a pirate theme.  

Lili went to her first Chalkboard theater class.   She really liked it.  It was clear that she and Rosa had a good time.  Lots of happy chatter about it.

Monday was Autumn Moon Festival.  We met with friends for a walk and some lantern fun.  Luk was beyond delighted to have a lantern.  Jia was thrilled to see Emily.  All of the kids loved letting the floating lanterns into the sky.  Compliments of Nicole and Steve.  Some of the kid's complain about us taking group pictures so this time we let the kids take pictures of the adults.  Too funny.  I wish the night photos turned out better.  Should have brought my real camera.  The phone is handy but not the best quality for sure.

Today when I got home Jia was napping so Luk and I took the time to fill his goodie bags.  All candy so he was pretty thrilled.  Now we have to hope he doesn't find them before his birthday ;)

Life is super busy and full of ups and downs.

Summers last hurrah.

The yearly trip to Rathtrevor before school starts.  Except that this year we don't really know when school starts.  No clue how long the teachers strike will continue.  It doesn't really affect us because we don't need day care.  $120 a day for every day they aren't in school sounds good to me ;)  Kids aren't going to mind more time off at all.

James came with us camping this time.  I think he had a nice time.  Got to feel what it would be like to have five kids.  We just dropped him at the ferry this afternoon.

Kid's all had a great time.  We were all super busy the whole time.  Jia finally went to her first Jerry's Rangers.  She loved it, a lot.  Fei took her for four days.  On the first day they went to the ocean and tried eating sea asperagus and on the last day they were taught that if you lick an ants butt your tongue will go numb.  ?  Both Fei and Jia resisted trying the ant butt licking.  

Eugene did fabulously in the trailer.   He wouldn't walk on a leash.  He and Lacie are getting along great and they have started cuddling!  Lea is out of sorts without her sister.  Sad to watch her searching.  The girls both want to keep going with ratties so they're looking for babies again.

I spent a lot of time dealing with food.   Snacks, meals and dishes for 7.  Plus critter care.  Phew.  I'm trying to nap now that we're home.  Just going to load a few pictures here first.