What Makes a Family?

I know there are all sorts of things that make a family, and there are probably many articles out there about family.
This is my observation- when you add a family member that has lived a substantial amount of time outside of your family be it an older child adoption or even a daughter-in-law it takes time for them to feel like part of the family.
One thing I noticed with one of our additions is that families have a lot of inside jokes. We have punchlines, quotes, and routines.
For example, in our house if someone says (British accent) "with bare knees!?"  Another member will surely intone solemnly "with bare knees."
If someone starts in a whiney voice " a crust of bread, a piece of cheese". Most of us know that comes from a Hank the Cowdog audio.
Whole passages of Adventures in Odyssey will be quoted.

Anyway, you get the picture. One night after a wild supper-table exchange, Joe said, "It's weird mom, Zeke just finished your sentence, it's almost like he reads your mind."

We needed some memories, but it is hard to explain old sayings and somehow listening to old Odyssey CD's didn't quite do it for some of them.  We applied for SWAN (state-wide-adoption-network) input. Yeah, it feels a bit like adding another outsider because we have a social worker again. So far it has been good, she has input and experience from talking with other families in our situation. We also have a monthly dollar amount to spend on activities for our family. We went to the zoo in December and saw the apes actually running around their cage. (you know- memories)
We went bowling on Saturday night and made more memories. I never knew a bowling ball could roll so slowly and still knock over most of the pins!  We also found a cooking show contest online that we started watching as a family. It is British, so the accents catch their attention. It involves food that's good too. We cheer for our favorites and groan when their bakes flop.

It inspired Shekinah to lift her McD's chicken nugget on Saturday night and say...with accent in place..."I think this needs a little more spice."  Immediately the others picked up fries and said "this needs a little more bake time, it should be crisp."  We all got the punch lines. If someone ever says, "I've learned not to put my bakes in the bin."  We will all remember the contestant with red beard who got so frustrated and angry that he dumped his entry in the trash can and stalked out of the tent.

We need to keep it up...I have a cooking class scheduled for me and the girls . Any ideas are welcome.

some other memories...failed taffy

Big brother coaching push-ups

Zoombini-like valentines...they were fun.

Internet, Digital Games and Security

Touchy topic
At our house the subscription to a popular filtering program expired. I chose not to renew because we discovered the time limits did not function properly and a few of our children need the time limits because mom has a terrible memory.
One day when the children were in school I installed some trial internet filters. Wowza! they worked and we had some fallout.
Some children decided that it would be better not to have the device at all than to use an device that worked like that.
Surprise! we had a wonderful weekend enjoyable actually. Children played games that did not involve electronics and actually had fun. We watched a cooking show--- together and actually discussed which contestants we liked and who was cool. It was a British Bake-Off so plenty of great accents as well.

But then I was puzzled, if my children were using computer time to separate themselves from us/me why were they being so happy?

Hubby and I discussed it while on a date (three hours stolen in the middle of the day while the paid staff was on duty- otherwise known as school). He had great insight. Certain games that our progeny engage in are very competitive and involve throwing a ball harder, or racing around curves faster than the computer. Guess who normally wins and guess who always gives you a higher level to compete in? Hubby reasoned that those driving forces don't magically shut off when the time limit is reached and thus the reaction to firm time limits. (There is actually research out there that agrees with him.)

So for now we will enjoy the reprieve and anticipate the end of the month when there will be a 16th birthday in this house.


Since we are on the subject of limits and things....I almost had a conniption this week when one of my searches for an article/video on empathy vs sympathy also turned up images that I'd rather not see. I realized that our favorite search engine thought that since my 20-ish year old son was looking at basketball and football stuff he possibly is a young male interested in such things and I  was searching using his G*ogle ID.  Because when I put my g*ogle ID in and switched accounts the same images did not show.  I realized that we had not engaged "safe search" on our g*ogle search pages.  Go to Google.com and scroll down to search settings at the bottom of the page and choose "on". No it is not a way to KEEP  people off objectionable sites,but it definitely keeps the craziness to a minimum.  You Tube has a similar feature, scroll to the bottom of the page on you tube and select "restricted mode". It is super sensitive and sometimes blocks videos that would be OK...you can easily click "off" and watch that video, and usually the restricted setting kicks back in again.   Neither of these is enough to PREVENT someone from accessing gross sites you need a password and accountability for that.