Reid and Stefani Adopt

 Isaac was accepted for the school of Science, which I believe I have already posted about.  If not, he now goes to the West Melbourne School for Science, where sciencey things are known to happen.  This year, Isaac is required to participate in the science fair, and he came up with one of the most difficult projects to tackle.  He wanted to see how different colored lights affect the hatching of chicken eggs. So, we first hatched chicks normally to set a control.  We had 9 eggs hatch, with one that started to hatch and then gave up the ghost before it got out of the eggs.  Two of our hatchlings died within the first week of life.  These were in a group that hatched a day or two later than the first brood.  One of them had a gimp legs and the other got trampled trying to feed.  So now we have 7 chicks that I am passing off to a friend today.  But no worries, we have 48 more eggs from Amazon of all places incubating in our experimental in...

Happy 6th Birthday Jaydon!  Now that he's been with us just over 2 years and is officially an Archibald, I have no shame posting these pictures.  Jaydon loves cars, so he had a Lightning McQueen birthday, complete with all kinds of car themed presents.  He went from owning 1 Lightning McQueen car to owning 5.  Even after that, he begged his Grammy to give him another one, because it was yellow.  Who knew there was a yellow Lightning McQueen?  For Jaydon's party, we took his brother and sister and 3 friends of his choosing to Defy, a trampoline park. I chose not to post pictures of his friends, but I got one of him and his siblings.  When we got done jumping, we came home to presents, ice cream, and cake.  It was fun, and still about wore me out.  who knew four 6 year old boys could wear you out so fast?  Jaydon's cake, now totally eaten.  I may or may not have let them have the last of it for breakfast this morning. It took this kid...

 So my husband Reid bought an app called SimplyPiano.  Because Isaac is so into video games, he thought this might be right up Isaac's ally.  It is.  Isaac begs at times to use our phones to go play the piano, and he is now even starting to read sheet music without the phone.  This is a video I took of him sight-reading a new song, which is a little rough, granted, but great for where he came from, which was no musical experience at all.  Even Esther is starting to read music, and Jaydon pounds on the piano occasionally before we run out of patience and get him off.  

This has been long overdue.  My kids got into this "A+" charter school called West Melbourne School for Science.  My husband has been trying to convince me for a while that this would be a great place for them to go, but I was reluctant to give up the easy walk across the street to the public school.  But I put them in the lottery and all 3 of them got waitlisted.  I truly didn't think we would be going to this school this year, but then I got word that Isaac got a spot, then Jaydon.  Esther was in waitlist spot #1 when the deadline happened, so I thought for sure she wouldn't go to WMSS.  But then I got a call, AFTER THE DEADLINE, and they had gotten special permission to let her in!  Miracles do happen after all.  I guess there were a lot of people pulling their kids out of the school at the last moment due to COVID cases increasing.  I forgot to take off Jaydon's eyepatch for this picture.  That is the front of the school. We had to s...

 This year for Isaac's birthday, we may have gone a little overboard.  What started as Isaac and I throwing ideas for his birthday back and forth became a waterslide in the rain in our backyard.  Isaac originally wanted to do laser tag, but after looking into the expense for that, Reid decided it would be more economical to just rent a waterslide.  I'm not sure that ended up being true after the cake, pizza, and food we ordered.  Not to mention that it rained, but none of that spoiled the party.  All the kids had fun, and since they were already wet, the rain didn't bother them at all.     The waterslide. Isaac got a hover board for his birthday.  I think he'll soon forget how to walk. The waterslide company threw in a cotton candy machine for free. His birthday loot and cake.

 Happy belated Mother's Day from the Archibald children!  Here are their cute mugs down below! Isaac was wondering this year if he had any biological brothers or sisters.  He has been playing competitive soccer all year.  The year just ended with his team finally breaking their losing streak and winning their last few games!  We just discovered he has ADHD, and we are working toward getting him the help he needs to concentrate in school.  His grades did dip a bit this year, but he has been fixing his mistakes on worksheets at home after school and turning them back in for a better grade, and he made the A honor roll!  Isaac still loves to make people laugh, and he loves to play with friends.  One day Isaac came home from school with a water bottle with his name printed on the side.  He told me his friend's mom makes them and he had one made for Isaac.  People seem to just gravitate to him.  At home, he instigates lots of mischief an...

This year for Easter we were able to do our egg hunt crunched in-between two sessions of General Conference.  I have come up with this checklist for the kids' egg hunt.  This helps prevent them from taking too many eggs or fighting over eggs as they hunt for them.  Each kid can only find the specified eggs on their list, and that way it stays fair and hopefully, fun.  The only tragic thing about this awesome idea of mine is that the neighbor kids showed up just as we were going to do our egg hunt and I didn't have an extra list or eggs for them to find. Isaac ended up giving one of his eggs to his friend who came to help, but Esther's friend went home empty handed.  Next year I will have to plan for uninvited, but wanted, guests.   We saw this gator on our walk on the Turkey creek trail on Easter afternoon. We had been a little cooped up watching all the sessions of General Conference for 2 days in a row, so we went on a walk.  This gator was big enoug...

 We were able to adopt our Foster son, Jaydon, yesterday. It was very unconventional—we took the oath to swear the truth from our couch. After the 5 minute video conference call from the court, we went to celebrate!  We jumped at a trampoline park until we were hungry and then went to the burger place for lunch. The kids totally missed school, but it’s not every day a kid joins your family!  Welcome to the Archibald family, Jaydon!  You’ve been with us for awhile already, but now we get to keep you!  

    One of Reid’s goals for this year was to take each family member on a “date” once a month. Last Friday he took Isaac biking at Santos. Apparently, it was a good time. 

 Happy Valentine's Day!  Despite the look on Isaac's face in his picture, we ALL had fun.  Since we were still in quarantine, I had the kids decide each on one activity we could do to celebrate it at home to ease the blow of missing out at school.  We played did one activity a day starting on Friday, the day they would all miss their valentine's parties at school.   Isaac chose Conversation Heart Bingo, which was really fun, but it turns out that eating 24 SweeTarts candy hearts in one sitting is too much even for my kids.    Esther chose I Spy Hearts.  She and I made hearts with pictures and sayings and decorations on them and put them up all over the house.  Then I created a list with a whole bunch of these hearts listed.  Then I told them if they found everything on their list they could have their little bag of candy that BFP (Brevard Family Partnership) handed out to us this week for Foster Care Appreciation week.   J...

This year for adoption day, we got to stay home. Yeah!  We usually try and go do something fun as a family, read adoption books, look at the kids' baby books, and have a special treat or dinner.  This year a monkey wrench was thrown into our plans because I tested positive for COVID-19 via a rapid test.  Even though I got a PCR test done an hour later that same day that was negative, the health department insisted my family quarantine.  So here we are enjoying a mini snow cone for adoption day in lieu of our more normal celebration.  We also got Chick-fil-a take out.  Isaac hid some of the adoption important things around the house so we could play "hot/cold" and find them.  Then we were going to talk about them.  None of that happened, so I'm still randomly finding adoption things Isaac hid that we never got to talk about.  I figure that we'll have a bigger celebration soon enough when we add Jaydon officially to our family.  Can't wait...

 Martin Luther King Jr. Day was a fun day for our family.  We went biking at Alafia State Park.  They have a system of trails, a playground, and something we didn't expect--awesome branches/vines that grew in such a way that the kids could actually swing on them.  This is the stuff kids' dreams are made of.  We'll just skip the part where I crashed at the very end and tore my shoulder.   Kids ready to go at the trail head map. L-R: Jaydon, Isaac, Esther. Kids hanging out at the playground waiting for us to get our picnic lunch out. Nature's swing set.  I totally would have tried it out myself if I wasn't positive my weight would have ended the fun immediately.

 This Christmas my kids had presents given to them by the following list of agencies and people: 1. Reid and I  2. Each other 3. Esther’s birth mom  4. Jaydon’s birth family  5. The guardian ad litem program  6. Foster care case management  7. Grandparents  8. Aunt and Uncles-one from my side and one from Reid’s side   We were so overwhelmed with gifts that we sent some to a needy family in our congregation.  I don’t think my kids will ever be able to say they weren’t loved.