Life in General...

Joelle is off to take her ACT for hopefully the last time.  Our dear GuineaPig is quite the impressive young lady.  She is really showing herself to be an adult, and we're proud of her!  A young man invited her to homecoming with a pizza last week.  Hope she has fun.

Sabrina grows in beauty and grace every day.  I really just find great delight in hanging out with her.  She makes and keeps great friends, and she is ever proving her wisdom in life skills to us.  She is ever funny, and has such a good head on her shoulders lately.  I am hoping that there are ACT's in the evening though--I'm not sure she'll survive an 8 am ACT!

Fayzeal is growing.  The pants I bought in August don't fit anymore.  Yesterday, he and a couple of boys piled up leaves in the back yard.  Sometimes I struggle to parent a boy--boys just do weird things--like wack eachother with rakes.  Eric assures me this is normal.

Alissa is...Alissa.  She is on a Thumbelina kick.  I am working on 'small choices' with her.  She has been diagnosed with Oppositional Defiance Disorder.  In other words, she is pretty hard to parent.  I'm doing o.k. with it, as long as we don't have to do anything quickly.  Good things she's cute and funny!  I'm sure anyone over 50 would know of some good cures for ODD. ;)  And they wouldn't call it ODD.  But until she has some permanency in her life, we're just going to have to muddle through with theraputic parenting.

Eric and I are just always looking for ways to find some time together.  Kind of a crazy life.  But good.

Fayzeal turns 7!

Our little guy turned 7!
Fayzeal chose to eat :  Robots, (brats) chips, and pop.  A chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and chocolate ice cream.  We had candles with colored flames.  He chose the same 3 foods to 'not eat'--rice, sushi, and watermelon.  Irony: we're adopting a child who hates rice.  His new responsibility is picking up dog poop.  His new privilege is staying up later to walk the dogs with Dad once a week.
Here are pictures!  The first is for Grandma, who made a wonderful blanket for him.  He would wear it to school if I let him.  Thanks Mom!

I think we're up to July now??

Family Hand print project.  It was stressful, but turned out great!

I love this picture.  For a lot of reasons! 

Total of 5 dogs in attendance.  

Mom and Dad are getting quite the grandchild collection!

Finished hand print project.  Wish we had Kev's and TIffs.

Two trouble makers in a pod.

All chiefs, no indians.  No one died in the making of this project.

Our first views of the damage, headed up to Mom and Dads.

Road trip to my Beloved Colorado

4 people, 3 dogs, 1 rooster named George.

Summer 2012, Continued

The chickens finally are put in their new coop!  We started with 6.  In the end, we now have 3 nice laying hens.

Then came camp!  Joelle and Sabrina had a great time!  Joelle was baptized!

Glady begins her all-summer-long removal of warmth layers.  Bleh.

Joelle turned 17 at camp.  We celebrated with cake when she returned!

Dad sent me the best present ever.

We began to realize that two of our chickens are roosters.  Our two favorites, of course!

The High Park fire in Colorado captivated a few weeks, as we waited nervously !  Mom and Dad were evacuated for almost 4 weeks.  I posted about it here. http://millersafari.blogspot.com/2012/06/so-i-think-we-ca-officially-call-it.html

Summer 2012

Summer, 2012, continued!

Mom and Dad came for a visit!  We ate a lot, rested a lot, and Dad and Eric finished up the chicken coop!

It's snowing, continued!

David, Sabrina Motta, and his "35 pound" dog came to visit!

Sabrina turned 15!  She always makes her own cake!

It becomes quickly apparent that the chickens will be needing a coop!