Happy Birthday Sasha

 Happy 4th Birthday my little Sasha.  Mommy loves you very much!!  This was the cupcake cake we took to daycare.  The party there was animals.  Animal masks, animal rings, tattoos, puppets, napkins, plates, ......

 Sasha wanted puppies at home.  So puppy decorations it was.

 The 3 way noise makers were a hit.  They were also pretty noisey.

 Puppy paw print balloons are amust for every puppy birthday party.

 Lots of presents from mom and family.  The pink pile is Sasha's.  The purple is Leeza.  She still gets a few presents.  They got leappads whcih they really liked.  And a car race track from mom and train track from Grandma and Grandpa.  They were also a hit.

 We are getting ready to go to Disney in a week.  You have to have princess dresses to go there!  Complete with crown and wand.  Leeza got Aurora(sleeping beauty/pink).  Sasha got Cinderella's wedding dress.

 The princesses opening their gifts. 

 Sasha has the whole opening presents thing down and is really good at doing it quickly.

 The Princess Leeza in her pink princess dress.

 THe two princesses playing with their race track.  Leeza wore her dress most of the day.

 I took Sasha to Krogers to pick out any birthday cake she wanted.  Once she saw the Batman cake, it was all over.  despite my attempts, she could not be talked into a cute animal cake or anything else.  She had the cute cake at daycare and the BLUE frosting cake at home.  it was really blue.

The paw print balloons were a hit and one of her favorite toys of the day.                                                   



 

The cake was good and the blue frosting made our fingers turn blue.  Yes, that is another crown.  You must have a lot of crowns if you are 4.

Pumpkins

We made this years trip to the pumpkin patch last weekend.  It is in Arthur about 30 miles away. 

 The girls had a good time.  Lots of opportunity to take photos.  And lots of pumpkins.

 Yes, we are getting tall.Leeza is 42 going on43 inches.  Sasha is at 39.5.

 The princess pretending to be Cinderella.

 They had no problems figuring out the smaller mazes this year.  This one is a broom corn maze.

 This one is the sunflower maze.  Do you notice Leeza is always running?  She rarely walks anywhere.

 Then we went out to the fields to pick pumpkins.  these were a little big for us.

 We ended up with 5 pumpkins.  2 for each of the girls and one for mom.  At least I got one.  They hauled them out of the patch themselves,  they like taking the pumpkins right from the vines.

 It took both of them to move the wagon once it was full.  the pumpkins were heavy.

 There goes Leeza running through another maze.  This one I went through the first time and then I was sent to the park bench outside while they did it themselves.  You can see a little of Sasha at the corner.

 Coming out the exit and going around for another turn.

 We decided to brave the haunted house this year.

 When you pushed the button, the witch took her head off.  Sasha had fun pushing the button, but Leeza wasn;t quite sure.

If you look close, there is a werewolf crawling out of a log.

Once we got home, we used Mr potato head parts(large size for pumpkins) for the small ones.  Sasha did the pirate.  Leeza did the witch.  We haven't carved the large pumpkins yet.  Maybe tomorrow.

Full Circle Now

Now that it is almost October, they FINALLY got the girls school straightened out.  Sasha is offically back in the Pershing preschool at her day care.  They finally got all the paperwork done.  It had to go all the way to the capital in Springfield to get approval.  Pretty stupid.  We almost got busted sneaking her in though.  The music teacher who comes one day a week to the daycare preschool was Leeza's substitute teacher for a couple months last year and we see her at swimming every Saturday.  A few weeks ago, she was mentioning how she saw Sasha in the preschool class and asked how Leeza was doing and I mentioned that Leeza was having issues with the bus.  I quickly stopped talking since I didn;t want to bring up why she couldn't ride the bus.  I just found out she had later asked Sasha's preschool teacher what the issue was with Leeza's bus.  Oops.  Good thing is is all worked out now before she says anything to anyone else.
Leeza also started preschool at daycare in the afternoons.  They had told me early in the year that this was not possible.  But now it is.Why?  I don't know.  So she goes to preschool and gets her speech therapy each week.  She does have to skip her afternoon nap which has meant a lot of meltdowns at night, but we will see how that goes.  They do the little kids in the morning and the older in the afternoon so if she switches to morning(she and Sasha would have to trade places) she would not be learning new stuff.  And this is PRESCHOOL.  How complicated is grade school or high school going to be???

Another Weekend- Another FacePainting

 It seems like every weekend is some festival/carnival lately.  This weekend was Family Safety Day at work.  The girls had a blast.  We started the day by going to swimming lessons.  We then went to the picnic at noon and didn't leave until 5:30.

 The girls had a good time in the big plastic balls.  I didn't think they could get them to move, but they did great.  The guy running it let them go until they got tired and couldn't push much anymore.

 We had to get our faces painted again.  Leeza wants butterflies each time.  You can see they match her shirt.

 Sasha went for a tiger this time.  It looked cute(for a while).

 They had lots of kid activities, but Sasha spied the rock climbing wall and wanted to do that.  She did pretty good for someone so short.  I didn't think they would let her on it, but they just asked me if she weighed 40 lbs and I said yes.  Well, with all the food she ate and her shoes and clothes on, she MIGHT weigh 40 lbs!  She got about 6-8 feet off the ground which is pretty good, but the grips were just too far apart for her short little legs.

 Skinny Leeza doesn't weigh 40 lbs no matter how many layers of clothes she wears, but they didn't ask about her.  She did good and got maybe 10 ft up.  Her long legs help her and she has the strongest arm muscles I have ever seen in a kid her size.

 Leeza would get to the point I couldn't reach her and then call for Mommy to help! 

 They had a lot of bounce houses and slides and obstacles courses. 

 Up the stairs and down the slide- over and over again.

 We also had to get air brushed tattoos.  Leeza got(surprisingly) a butterfly.

 Sasha wanted a pirate ship, but they didn't have one so she got a purple hippo.  We had to be very careful at bathtime to NOT get them wet as they wanted to keep them for the next day.

 My little butterfly girl

 Along with the other activites, they had a food tent and a building with strawberry smoothies, cotton candy, popcorn and icecream.  We had to try each.  So after an hour of running around, eating a little of everything, Sasha's face looked a little less like a tiger.  They had a great time and even Sasha was tired that night.

 I've started letting Leeza play with my computer.  She is very intense on it.  Computers are serious business.

Sasha helps and occassionally, Leeza lets her drive the computer, but mainly Leeza uses the mouse and Sasha points to the screen.  They are in their gymnastics outfits.  They wear them every night after school.  Every night!  They are in them now.  I guess that means they like them.

I hate School Busses

So far at the start of each school year, I have had to write a post about school busses and how they messed up.  It is the 4th week of school this year and I am finally ready to write this year's post.  They decided to not mess up this year by just not showing up- Ever!  The bus company decided that they would no longer transport the kids from out of the school district due to budget cuts.  The funny thing was that we PAID the bus company each month to transport the kids so how can getting paid less help your budget?  the bus that Leeza needed to take comes to her daycare anyway to pick up another boy from the "right " school district and then takes him and the SINGLE other child in the bus to the school.  That is right the bus comes to the daycare and goes to the school and carries 2 kids.  How could transporting Leeza cost them anything?  Plus since I was paying them, they should have been coming out ahead moneywise.  

So I tried to find a plan B. Pershing school has an Early Learning Center which is where Leeza went and a location at the YMCA and at the girls daycare.  Last year, at Leeza year end review, they wanted me to switch Leeza to the class at the daycare, but I liked the facilities at the school so she continued to go to the Early Learning Center.  So I thought we could just switch Leeza to the class at her daycare.  Sasha was already in the class.  When I asked about it, suddenly they said that the daycare class was only for Decatur district kids(the school is for all county districts) and poor Sasha and 5 other little kids got expelled from class.  Expelled at age 3- good going Sasha : ) .  After 2 days of her crying when the teacher came to get the other kids in her daycare room for class, Sasha's teacher "snuck" her back into class unofficially- so now she was a law breaking 3 year old!  That's my girl! 

I fought to get the bus company to reverse their decision, but it came down to the one manager who just didn't want to.  he said that maybe the busses would fill up later in the year with district kids and he had to save space.  The bus held 20 kids and there were 2 on it- must be expecting a huge rush!  So after 3 weeks of fighting, I finally withdrew Leeza from the Learning Center.  A school dropout at 4- Poor Leeza really liked going to the school and was being stressed out about the whole situation since she knew something weas up as she wasn't riding the bus and mama was coming to drive her around each day.  I was able to get her speech therapy relocated to her daycare so she still has her speech therapy each week.

Now after all of this, they tell me that they are working to change the daycare to a county instead of district class(since both the Learning Center and the YMCA were already county schools, but someone didn't fill out paperwork for the daycare).  So Leeza might end up in the class at daycare which is what I asked for 4 weeks ago.  Sasha may be able to attend class officially, but who knows.  The lady, Ms Tracey, who is Leeza's daycare caregiver is a really good teacher.  So even if Leeza isn't offically in preK, she will be getting the same info - just in a little less formal setup.
I think somewhere someone forgot that we are talking about little 4 year old kids here.  I sometimes wonder where common sense goes, but in this case bureaucracy and ego won the day and beat the little kids.

2 Years ago today

Two years ago today late in the afternoon, a judge approved the adoption of my 2 girls.  Due to paperwork issues, the doctor at the baby house and the ministry of education official both had to testifiy that even though there were paperwork issues that the judge should approve the adoption.  All testimony was translated for me except for this part.  I knew what they were discussing, but they did not want me to know what they were discussing even though Everyone knew that Everyone knew.  Just stand there smiling and pretend not to notice anything was going on.  I got very lucky and got the nice doctor at the baby house assigned to my case(there were 3 doctors there).  She really wanted the girls to find a home and knew that I was their chance.  I owe her a lot.  Sadly, that night her husband passed away suddenly so I never got to say thank you to her.  I do remember her whenever I read of other families having a rough time at court and realize how lucky we were to have someone who was kind and truely cared about the children there.  I do not even know her name which is really sad.  So this is my way of saying Thank You even though she will never see this. 

The doctor with me after court outside the courthouse.

Ditched at the Carnival

We went to the Pony Express Days today.  It is about a mile down the road from the house.  I forgot to take my camera so no pictures. The girls had a good time.  WE went on all the kiddie carnival rides several times.  Leeza still wants to go on the Big rides, but she is just too short.  At the end of the day, the girls got their faces painted.  Leeza was a purple cat.

 I took pictures when we got home.  Sadly, Sasha sweated before then and then rubbed her face.

 Rubbing a sweaty face makes a real mess of face painting!  She was a pink cat before the rubbing.

The girls were in a goofy mood and wouldn't hold still for pictures.  After we got our faces painted, the girls got to ride ponies.  Actually, Leeza was either on a really big pony or a very hairy horse.  Sasha finally stayed on the pony and didn't jump off. 

At the carnival, the girls got wristbands so they could go on rides as much as they wanted.  Leeza loved the big slide and the alligator roller coaster.  Leeza went on the slide so many times that she was starting to have a problem climbing the stairs to the top as she was getting so tired.  Sasha was a little afraid of the slide at first, but then she had a good time on it also.  We went around the carnival hitting all the kids rides a few times.  When we got to the carousel, I helped the girls on their horses and then they told me that they didn;t want me there.  I was not to touch their horses as they were big girls.  I had to stand back and not touch even the horses tail!  As we were getting off the carousel, Sasha saw her friend Allison getting on it so she went back to ride again, but told me I didn;t need to come.  Leeza in the mean time had run off and was already back on the alligator rollercoaster.  So mom stood there wainting for them.  I thought it was pretty funny as they had already dumped me to go on the rides by themselves and they are only 3 and 4.  Leeza probably rode the little roller coaster 10 or 12 times. 

As we left, we walked past the mud drag races so the girls got to see a few races.  Lots of mud.  Leeza really wanted to get into the mud.