Just A Fun Week

This week has just been one of those fun weeks where I really have just relished the joys and blessings of getting to be the dad of the Fab 5.  I still have to marvel at how well Kayleigh and Michael have blended into our family.  It's only been four months since they arrived in Texas and yet their being here seems so normal and doesn't feel at all like a new thing.  It's been a busy week just being us!

Going oldest to youngest ......

Bekah ~ Got to hang out with her a couple times this week which was nice.  Now that she's 18 and working and playing volleyball and plowing through senior year in high school work towards graduation, we don't always get to see her as much.  She and I drove down to her volleyball match in San Antonio so we had our alone time in the car to get to chat and kid around.  She is a very special young lady!  She had fun playing volleyball, at one point serving like 13 points in a row (she has this wicked underhand serve that barely clears the net and knuckleballs down....).  Afterwards she and I got a bite to eat at McDonalds (yes we still think the Ukranian Mickey D's was better....) and time in the car going home.  We also went to a movie together (Expendables 2....) to get a couple hours of gratuitous explosions out of our system!  Today she is off at a volleyball tournament, sounds like her team is doing very well!

Alyssa ~ She has been helping us drive the fall schedule as we have the chore cards all set up for the kids, including K & M.  She has been such an amazing big sister helping Kayleigh acclimate to our family.  It transcends normal communication between those two, they could pretty much communicate with each other before either knew the others language!  She continues to excel in dance class with an amazing combination of precision and gracefulness!  I took her out driving for the first time as she now has her learners permit, she did well for a first time (ala no crashes....).  Got to just hang out and snuggle with her last night, she is the perfect size where her head fits right under my chin :)  She is at dance class today, she has done so well with it and loves it and her instructor and school.

Kayleigh ~ I got to take her to dance class and watch her for the first time which was a lot of fun.  She is learning very fast and is so strong.  She will play off that she doesn't want you to watch her too much doing it, but every time she saw me looking, she would get that huge smile on her face, or we would make faces at each other.  I had a Snickers bar for a snack after dance, so when she looked I would dangle it or smell it and smile to tease her.  After dance we drove to McDonalds for ice cream and then back to the house.  She and I have a blast spending time together as she definitely has the Tansey family sense of humor, so we are making funnies pretty much nonstop!  Eating ice cream in the car, making jokes and she picks the mexican music station which we crank up as it's got some high speed accordian rock polka song playing (I start yelling yee ha at the top of my lungs when she puts the country station on and calling her Kayleigh Cowgirl....).  We really enjoy hanging out together, she plays it cool sometimes but loves to be pursued and given attention and smiles easily and often.  She is out with the girls today hanging out :)

Dylan ~ I love spending time talking with Dylan.  He has often been described as an "old soul", meaning that his maturity and insight are well beyond his chronological age.  We had the best time talking and joking around.  We both share the same "gifted" sense of humor so will undoubtedly find something funny that no one else seems to share our humor in!  We get to spend a lot of time with each other as we are in martial arts together (along with Michael....) and our journey through the colored belts, black belt candidicy, and now as fellow black belts has only brought us closer to each other.  We sparred together the other night and he has grown so much in skill and confidence, it is really amazing to see what an incredible man he is becoming!  I am so incredibly proud of the brother he has become to Michael, there is none better than he!  Today he ran in a 3 mile cross country race and finished in the 22 minutes area, about 2 minutes faster than his previous best! 

Michael ~ This kid is a blast.  He is warm and funny and easy to love, and at times really stubborn!  Jodi was on him for something this week and she was correcting him and it took some talking to get him to budge.  Such a guy!  He has taken up martial arts with Dylan and I and so far has excelled in the sport.  He is athletic and quick.  We did a mock tournament this week and he and his BFF Gabe were a team, and they rolled to 1st place!  It was so great to see him sparring and having a blast, with a bunch of kids cheering his name as he fought.  In Ukraine at the orphanage he really didnt have friends, no confidence as he spent his days staying out of the way of the older kids, no brother to love him and do all the cool things you do with a brother (they have two older biological brothers back in Ukraine, but they were not in the orphanage system and not much involved if any in their life).   It was one of those moments when you stop to appreciate he has a whole new life now :)

That's all for now :)