I've become a slacker.

Lots of things going on in our lives right now. Anna is chugging along in her new position that she entered in the 4th quarter of last year. I am hopefully applying to our leadership program to become a supervisor at the end of this year. The boys are struggling at doing homework...not exactly fun. It makes me think what my mom went through with Michael and sometimes Craig...ugly. We don't exactly expect the world from them, but no F's is a reasonable goal considering our challenges. Gabe has decided to do track after a little encouragement. He has always been a great runner and we're excited to see how he does with a little coaching.

The girls are trying their best to deal with two teenage boys who like to exercise their freedoms a little too often for their own good...We struggle in keeping the girls progressing while the boys have their own issues with us. We love them and hope the best, but in the end they have to decide what they want out of their lives. We hope their lives include a lot of hope and hard work but at times we wonder how much we are really helping them. In the end we will continue to press forward.

Anna and I have our ups and downs. We are continuing to learn and develop our relationship through unique trials. We have been extremely blessed in a lot of ways, just sometimes not in the ways we hope. Bekah had a really rough time last night and was screaming/throwing things for awhile. It was physically and mentally exhausting combined with another incident from yesterday. But this morning I decided that Bekah could stay home with me since work was a little light today. I asked her if she wanted to go on a lunch date with me. She answered, "yes daddy, that would make me very happy." We ended up changing some plans and having a pizza buffet that she loved...

I sometimes struggle to see the positives moreso than the negatives, but in this instance I felt Rebekah's love and I can say I am glad the kids are a part of our family. It breaks my heart to know what the kids have been through and we continue to try and help each of them progress to be the best human being they can be.