The Year of the Kait

This morning marked the end of an era. For the last year, my 14 year old cousin Kait has lived with us. Needless to say there have been a lot of adjustments for everyone involved. Kait is now reunited with her mom and her siblings (twin brother and little sister).
Now comes a new set of adjustments as we have now lost our live-in babysitter (ultra convenient) and get a guest room back (but only for the next 8 months or so).

To Kait:
We are blessed to have had the opportunity to invest into you for the last year. We have learned a lot from you. In a lot of ways, you have inadvertently been a great guinea pig in helping us be better parents for our own children. Now that we already have a year parenting a teenager under our belts, our kids don’t stand a chance of pulling anything over on us (yeah right). We hope you have learned some things from us…but just in case you need a reminder here is what we would leave you with:
Treat others with respect…it’s the best way to get respect in return
Look people in the eye
Your attitude is your choice
School is important. Its 10% IQ, and 90% work ethic (this applies to almost everything)
Compassion and selflessness are virtues to strive for, but they don’t come naturally
Relationships are the only thing we truly leave behind. Take good care of them.

Lastly we hope you never forget “Kait’s Creed” which we had you recite every week hoping that osmosis would eventually kick in.

You are a bright and beautiful girl that deserves, and should be, treated like a princess

It’s true....we promise

We love you
PPO3

Orange you glad it's over?

This may be the only picture of Kait wearing a bright color.
We all went to Kait's 8th grade graduation, which was possibly the longest ceremony in human history. If they are all like this, I might encourage her to drop out next year. On a funny note, one of the awards was for perfect attendance (which was for about 20 students).....only 3 were there. Priceless

The week in recap

Last week, Janelle’s cousin’s husband Jeremy died suddenly. Apparently he had some sort of heart failure while at work. He had a wife and two children (a 3 year old and a 3 month old) who will never remember their father. He was just a few years older than me. This comes just a few months after a coworker of mine (who was younger than me) died of heart failure as well. Both are sobering reminders of the frailty of life.

Janelle and Caden are in Ohio for the week for the funeral so it is a bit quieter at the home front. This has given me a chance to focus more attention on Kait and it has been a great week, which was capped by maybe my most redneck experience to date. Going to a country concert……wait for it…….. in a Wal-Mart parking lot.
No one told me being a parent (guardian) would require such sacrifice.

Hitting the Slopes (hard and head first)

We hit the slopes yesterday. It was mine and Kait's first time, and especially in my case, everyone knew it. The are plenty of John shaped indentions left behind though in the snow.

Trip to Ohio

We made a big trip to Ohio to show off the little runt to Janelle's family. While we were there I told Kait (my cousin) that if she wanted to sleep upstairs she had to do the fire drill, which was climbing out the window onto the ladder to safety. She passed. I was unable to get my fat rear out the window safely, so Jerry made me climb up the highest part of the house on his flimsy ladder to regain my honor.












Later we went to a water park where Kait jumped off a diving board for the first time. I eventually was coaxed to try doing a front flip and as you can imagine, it didn't go so well. I apparently forgot to tuck which caused me take the brunt of the fall on my back. Sorry I don't have a picture of that.





Also, I filled one of my life's goals of milking a cow. It is alot harder than it looks, but I figured if Caden, a baby, can get milk out of Janelle, I certainly could get it out of a cow. We really bonded, the cow tried to follow me home.







After taking a beating one to many times from Jerry at table tennis, I finally hatched a plan to even the scales. I got him a new paddle that is more "aerodynamic". Yeah, he didn't go for it either.