swimming....

Jasmine is upset because she has to wait a couple of minutes for her swimming lesson.....

First swimming lesson.....

Tonight we had our first swimming lesson. I can't take any photos because I have to be in the water with Jazz. So far we just did kicks on the kick board and floated on our backs. The teacher ... who I think is 14 years old or so.... said that usually she doesn't see kids put their face in the water like Jasmine does until they are 5 or so. Jazz even jumps from the side of the pool into my arms in the water. Pretty good for first time. We signed up for 12 weeks, 4 nights a week. It's only a 1/2 hour, but it seems like forever in the water. 35 minutes to drive there, 30 minutes to swim, 35 minutes to drive home and the night is shot. That's ok... we don't have anything else to do. The pool has only been open a few days and just looks really gross to me. All the kids have green snot hanging from their noses and most are wearing diapers. As a courtesy, I had Jasmine wear the expensive waterproof swim diaper.... which really doesn't seem to be waterproof from what I can tell. None of the other kids had on waterproof diapers, so when I run out of those, I don't think I will bother. I also... as a courtesy to other people... take a shower before going in the pool, but I noticed that no one else looked like they took a shower. I'm just going to have to close my eyes to all of that. We just rushed home and jumped in the warm shower... partly because we were cold, but partly to get the chlorine and disgusting junk off us. Same thing again tomorrow night. Maybe I will be able to eventually take pictures of her in the shallow end. The "lesson" is in about 4 feet of water.

Our first overnight trip.......

After having new tires put on my car so we wouldn't get stuck out in the middle of nowhere with a flat tire, we left Saturday morning for 2 1/2 days at the Tucson YMCA Camp with Arizona Adoptive Families. It sprinkled a bit off and on during the weekend and the weather was perfect. 85 degrees, light breeze, partly cloudy, 4000 ft elevation so it was much cooler than at our house. I felt like I was in Camp Fire Girls all over again, however we paid a bit extra to have our own private bathroom and shower. I am not really into group showers. There were many non-adoptive families there too, about 150 or so campers in all.

All of the 75 or so camp counselors had just graduated from high school and were from all over the world. I didn't meet all of them, but there were at least 4 from England, 2 from Bolivia, 1 from Italy who took a special liking to Jasmine, a few from South Africa, Korea, China, Mexico and many many more. I asked one of the camp executives why they didn't have Americans and apparently, due to our laws, it would be cost prohibitive to have American kids because they are on duty 24 hours for 5 days in a row and would have to be paid time and a half. The non-Americans can be paid a salary, so I guess it is cheaper for the camp to do it that way. It's a win-win situation for everyone... unless you are an American kid wanting to be a counselor.

There were so many activities, some that we could participate in, and others not. We did crafts, beading- yes, Jasmine really likes to make necklaces with the bigger beads, print making... we drew a picture of Spirit- since we missed her- and put her name on it, made a rain stick out of a paper towel roll with pins stuck in it and rice inside. We went on many hikes, hung around with the "ponies"... which were really small to moderately sized horses..... went swimming, and made alot of new friends. We also made a little tie dyed shirt that looked like someone just splatted paint on it since mommy didn't know what she was doing. I will paint her name on the front of it.
Jasmine has ridden smaller Shetland ponies before, but she was too scared to ride the bigger horses, but we spent about 1/2 a day just brushing and petting the horses and watching the bigger kids ride. We also watched the big kids do the ropes courses and archery.

Jasmine sure likes junk food. The food there was of course the SAD (Standared American Diet).. bacon and eggs, pancakes, sloppy joes, hot dogs, etc and of course Jazzy gets a cold every time she eats that junk... especially when it is followed by making smores by the fire. It will take both of us a few days to recover. Everyone was mentioning how unhealthy the food was and the counselors will all have some type of chronic disease when they go home caused by the bad American food.

We will definitely be doing this every year. They have camps for all ages. Starting at age 4, they have "Pony Pre-School" which is 3 days/2 nights of pre-school with the ponies... which are really horses.

YMCA
Jasmine with the horses
Always eating
waiting for mommy to get ready
swimming with the Korean swim instructor
games with friends
tie dyed shirt
beading
hayride on Saturday night
waiting to get on the hayride
Jasmine with her stuffed horse and camp necklace
Rainmaker stick

Today....

I am experimenting with making my own bread/flour/ and lots of other things. It is a "raw" flatbread. I made 4 pieces. The first one was too oily, second one was too thick, third one was still too thick, and the 4th one was just right. I didn't put enough rosemary and garlic in it because it is very bland. Oh well, next time I will try cinnamon and raisins. It's still edible and much much more healthy than the regular junk bread from the store that Jasmine likes. Jasmine likes my bread as long as it has organic butter or jelly on it. That's all that counts. I also make our own kefir- something like yogurt.... it was not great, just ok. I also made some extremely yummy dessert balls from almonds, almond butter, Canadian organic honey, blueberry preserves, whey protein, lecithin, colostrum and tocotrienes (Vitamin E). Now I am working on banana ice cream made from Chia seed gel and bananas. Nothing to do when we have had 8 days now over 100 degrees. Here's Jasmine eating my homemade soup and bread.

Mother's Day....

Today we celebrated Mother's Day by going to New Vision, then to a Vietnamese restaurant, Pho 68, in Chandler. I am quickly learning which Vietnamese restaurants are good and which are not.

Birth Mother Day....

It has been one year since I received the call from the now defunct Commonwealth Adoption Agency that a little girl named Nguyen Thi Tam, born 8/10/06, was referred to me from the Hoi An orphanage.
Today, in celebration of that event, as well as Birth Mother's Day, we went to see a movie.... just to get out of the house and be in the AC. There were only two G rated movies.... Hannah Montana.. which I despise, and Earth... which I swear I have seen previously on the Discovery Channel. I also didn't realize that a Saturday matinee was $6.50! Jasmine was mesmerized for about 10 minutes. I guess it was the big screen and surround sound. Then for the next 1.5 hours, it was fidget, fidget, fidget the whole time. I felt a little better when the kids who were older than her were even worse behaved.

Most adoptive families celebrate Birth Mother's day and Birth Father's day on the Mother's Day and Father's Day eve. They usually perform some type of candle lighting ceremony or something like that, but Jasmine is a bit too young for that. Maybe next year.


Jasmine having a tea party this morning with Spirit.

One year ago today.....

It was one year ago today that Jasmine's referral photo was taken at the orphanage. If you compare the photo to the left with the one taken today, there is a bit of a difference.