Outings

Ok, when I first drafted this post it was titled "first outing," but since it's taken me 4 or so days to finish it now it's titled "outings"!

If you recall, before we left for Ethiopia we had decided to not take the kids anywhere for 30 days. This was based on the great likelihood of overstimultion, and that our house--beings his life is so different from their previous life--is stimulating enough.

Well, last week (our second week home) was of course, going much better than the first week (for example, Mom no longer felt like she was rode over by a truck). As I've mentioned before, Svanna was having a very hard time with the other kids going places like school and dance. Brandy mentioned that it might be good for her to get out. It seemed she was feeling cooped up.

So, one day last week I took Sierra to dance. I picked her up from school, but there was a little time in between, so we played at the school playground after most of the kids had left. It went well. Svanna ran up, excited to see other kids, and then backed off when she remembered/figured out she couldn't communicate with them. But they enjoyed it.

Then last week Friday, Brandy's mom had hip replacement surgery. We really wanted to make the 50 mile drive to see her in the hospital, but thought it wasn't possible. Or was it?

We decided to give it a try.

So Saturday night we took all 7 kids.

To our delight, it went really well!!! We even took them out to Perkins for supper afterwards. Once we got home, I again had that runoverbyatruck feeling, but all the kids did great. On Sunday, things were a little rougher at home. We could tell we were out and about, but overall, not bad.

Then yesterday we had a big day again. We picked the kids up from school. This time we toured the school after most of the kids were gone. They were quite excited to see it! And meet some of the teachers. Although we really couldn't tell them who would be their new teacher because of the language hindrance (and do we really know what grade Svanna will be in? Not for sure...), but they enjoyed it. The most exciting thing though was probably the water fountain...LOL!!

Then we picked Dad up and headed 50 miles in the other direction. A family we had been to Ethiopia with, Julie and Lou, lives abut 2.5 hours away from us. They were going shopping closer to us and asked if we wanted to meet them for supper. They have 4 kids that our kids lived with for the last 6 weeks or so in Ethiopia. We couldn't miss that!! We went to a buffet place, not my fav but we thought the kids would like it. VERY family friendly, good food, and we all had a great time!! The kids LOVED seeing their friends. I could tell they were much more relaxed.

Again, we suffered a tad today. Everybody was a little weepier; a little more prone to tantrums. But overall...good. In fact, we went out AGAIN today! Tye and Jaden were invited to a reading party given by Shianne's class. The other kids weren't invited, but they could have gone. However it's a big group of people and I didn't think they were ready. So we dropped Tye and Jaden off (Summer cried afterwards..."Jaden...school"...yes, honey, I know it's not fair) and for something fun we went to see Grandma again at home. That helped.

Then back to school to pick up the kids and play at the playground again. I hesitated when we got there because there was a soccer game. That meant more kids on the playground. But...we braved it and the kids did wonderfully. Tonight we suffered a bit again, but not awful. I am glad, however, that we are for the most part (got to make a quick trip to the vet with puppies, which could be interesting) staying home tomorrow, as well as Saturday.

So, this lengthy post to tell you we've rethought our thinking a bit (I thought I thought a thought, but the thought I thought I thought wasn't the thought I thought I thought...sorry...something from when I was a kid!).

We are still determined to keep them out of stores and large crowds for a while. Even small groups of people are overwhelming a tad bit, and I think they'd be very wide-eyed at all the choices at Wal-Mart (Mom's not ready to take them there either, I'd bet! LOL!). So, we won't be going to church yet. Maybe that would be better when we have a better handle on English and can explain why we sit still? We know that they prayed in Ethiopia, and more than likely they were Orthadox Christian (I've seen Svanna do the sign of the cross before). But we have no idea if they've been to a church service. Probably? Maybe? Probably quite different from anything here.

Although we are very much looking forward to introducing them to our church family!! But it will be a little bit.

Just goes to show me once again. Kids are kids. You think you've got it figured out, and then you've got to tweak your parenting a bit. No matter where they are from...kids are kids! God bless 'em!