School is officially out!

Okay, so it has been out for almost a week now but I am barely getting around to blogging about it (but then, I haven't blogged about anything for awhile).

Funny how I thought that once end-of-school activities were over I would have all this down time and things would slow down. We are not slow at all! It has been non-stop go all month and shows no signs of letting up. We have lots of fun Summer plans (lots of memories to be made!), and mingled with CPS plans (family visits, home visits, counseling appointments, etc) we are going to be busy, busy, busy!

This week we took a visit to spend some time with Hubby while he was working. He works out of town, so is only home off and on (roughly half the month), so a couple months ago we finally got him an apartment near his work. We (the kids and I) hadn't had the chance to visit and see the new place so we took a few days and went and stayed with him. It was nice because this would have been time we normally wouldn't have seen him for about a week. We swam, climbed a rock wall (so much scarier than I thought it would be!), and just hung out. It was good fun family bonding time. In the evenings Hubby came home and was equally delighted and overwhelmed by having the whole brood in his personal space (did I mention the new apartment is only a two-bedroom? NO ESCAPE!). Craziness and good times. A few drama moments. Some teen moments. But a pretty good time.

Then home again and we began/continued the process of getting Bee ready for the pioneer trek. Our church does a handcart pioneer trek for the youth that lasts four days and as soon as Bee heard about it she was enthusiastic about participating (Bella isn't old enough and Sunshine was not interested). We had to get the Dr. to sign off on her going due to medical issues and for a while we were doubtful about if it was going to happen. She was upset and angry. It is hard to be 14 with medical restrictions on your physical activities. I was happy we got the go ahead in the end, as this could give her the opportunity to show that she can do more than she has been allowed to do. Other than the Dr approval we had to gather all the necessary clothing and gear, as well as complete a four mile walk in under an hour (All participants were required to complete the walk to show they were fit enough for the physical demands of pushing a handcart up to 16 miles a day). Thursday we drive 45 minutes to counseling appointments for Bella and Bee, then Bee leaves for the Trek Friday and she is excited as can be.

I have also spent the last couple days cleaning a few neglected areas of the house (my bedroom and bathroom, the little girls bedroom oh, my!, mounds of laundry, etc.) so that we will be ready to go on our family vacation to a cabin in Colorado for five days. Everyone is excited about going! Hanging out, hiking, swimming, biking, maybe even fishing. We'll see what happens.

We will leave two days after Bee gets back from the trek.

This will also be two days after bio#2 starts summer school. She will miss a couple of days, and hopefully this will not cause too much of a fuss. She needs the Summer school, but she is already a mess about how "not fair" it is that she has to go to school when everyone else doesn't. If we were to postpone or cancel the trip due to school it will go very hard on all of us. The whole family is looking forward to this trip and so this is where we have a balancing act of what needs to happen with what may cause more problems. We already had a full on multiple melt down when we had to cancel one family get away with extended family due to extended family insensitivities to CPS regulations and refusal to acknowledge our foster girls as actual family members (still too miffed myself to write a post on that one, although it is very pertinent to foster care...its on my to do list...FYI, No, we can't won't "just get respite for them" because finding room for them is inconvenient).

When we get back we have a couple days before our scheduled CFT, then a home visit from the girl's caseworker as well as a visit with bio dad for the girls.

Then some sports clinics for Bee and Bella, and a couple pic-nics with our licensing agency to wrap up June.

We have a few things scheduled from there, but I just can't think that far ahead yet. We also have to fit a camping trip in somewhere this Summer (who was the crazy person who promised the kids camping!? Oh...me...sigh).

Getting back to "normal"

So, the lice are mostly eradicated. Four out of six heads were completely clear of lice as of last night. The other two only had a couple eggs, which is far less than on previous nightly head checks and easy to remove. Hopefully this means we will be completely lice free within a few days. Nightly head checks will continue for the next week or so, then if everyone stays clear we will move to every few days, and eventually weekly. For the forseeable future that is our new normal. Never again will I take a lice free head of hair for granted!

In all this head checking (time consuming!!) and other crazy the house got away from us, so now it is time to bring all the chaos back under control. The girls are all back to school today so I will be working to reduce the mess in each "chore area" today, then the kids will be able to finish up when they do their regular chores this afternoon. They each have one daily chore which rotates. Over this past week chore completion got very spotty while I was distracted by other things and everyone took advantage of that. I have to say I am sick to death of getting dirty looks when I bring up chores! Before the lice we were in a pretty good routine and griping was kept to a minimum, but you know what they say about giving inches and taking miles. Now its time to jump back into a routine and keep on it. I will not be popular over the next few days! lol

Getting back into routine is going to be challenging but essential because tomorrow starts our "normal" crazy type week with appointments, field trips, a concert, and a luncheon. Friday Sunshine, Bee, and Bella have a visit with their family and will be gone all day. Then we will do it again the next week. May is a crazy month for any family with end of school activities, but mix it up with all the complicated mess of CPS and it becomes ridiculous! If we can survive this month summer should bring some much needed down time.

Guess what I have been doing all day...

(Do not ask me why the picture is sideways...I rotated it, I cropped it, I edited...and yet here it sits in its original form...sideways. and I am too tired to care any more)

This morning I discovered a nightmare in my little girl's hair. Turns out that nightmare inhabited ALL SIX heads of girl hair in our home. Uhhhgg!! (Little Mr. escaped with only one little live louse which was quickly taken care of by shaving off all his hair)

So we all spent the day at home delousing and nit picking. NOT MY IDEA OF FUN. Although we did manage to work in a lot of laughter and good family time. Can you bond over vermin?? Apparently you can. hahaha!

Thankfully Sunshine, Bee, and Bella were amazingly helpful. They did all three of the younger girls' hair on their own (they volunteered as they have experience with lice, and up til now I did not!). Meanwhile I ran around gathering bedding to be washed, running to the store for one product and another, and trying to make sense of the chaos that had befallen. Munchkins #1 and #3 were relatively quick and easy (about 45 minutes each), but munchkin #2 has thicker hair and a far worse infestation. She was in the combing chair for 2 HOURS. She was a trooper. 

The older girls hair wasn't too bad except for poor Bella. The worst case by far, and it took about 2 hours with two to three of us working at a time. She felt so bad, and I was sad for her! This was not her fault. We believe it likely started with her, probably picked up at the group home they were at before coming here, but we can never really know for sure where they came from, and she isn't to blame. No one is. Lice happens everywhere. It happens to clean people as well as dirty people, rich, poor, in between. No one is immune...especially if you have children who attend public school or headstart, or if you do foster care. It is actually surprising that we never had to deal with lice when we did foster care in the past. It is a common problem and we were told to be prepared and look out for it. It still snuck in!

The bad thing is that there IS a STIGMA, and I just hope the kids at school don't make an issue of it  for any of our kids if they hear about it (and it is a small town).

Lice is not nice...it is terrible and exhausting. I am still washing load after load of bedding while my kids sleep in their super clean sanitized beds with their super clean, (hopefully) lice free hair. My brain has shut down, so this post may not make a lot of sense. Thankfully, tomorrow Hubby gets home and will jump in with helping on daily comb outs and inspections for a few days. 

We will be hypervigilant for the the next month to make sure nothing survives to re-infest the house!

One bright spot: We treated my hair as well (school nurse and pharmacist said to treat everyone in the house), but I did not have a single nit nor louse! Little miracle there as I am not sure how it is even possible. Thanking the Man Upstairs for that small blessing!