Now I remember

....why I took such a long break from our webpage. One little quote mark was missing out of my code on Elena's page and it totally screwed up the entire thing. I sat there for 20 minutes trying to figure out why all of a sudden the thing was going wacky on me. I finally had to get Silas to look at it and after another 10 minutes or so, he finally spotted my missing quotes. Lovely. Lesson learned. Elena's page is somewhat updated now. I didn't bother with the thumbnails that link to the larger pictures as I have done on the older kids pages previously. It's a pain in the tush to do and I am running out of space on the free site. So I think may change the others as well now.

Our family webpage

Wow! I had not realized that it had been so long since I updated our family webpage. Silas happened to go looking at it the other night and when I glanced over and saw that the pictures on the front page were from last October, I was actually upset with myself for letting it slip like it has. What a slacker I have been! So, I have started getting it updated today. The front page now has some new and updated pictures (from the last month or two tops). I will get the names repaired soon, but for now it will do (they look icky right now!). :) I also need a link to this blog added.

Next on my list is Elena's page. Poor baby, the last pictures of her posted there were from when she was only about 2 months old. How awful am I? So, her page is first on my "to update" list.

After that will be Cassidy, Joshua, and Jacob's pages. And if I find any photos of Jacob's art, that page could use a major update as well.

Anyway, for anyone who is interested, slowly but surely the page will have some new photos up in the coming weeks, and hopefully I will have it more or less done by the time 2006 arrives so that all I have to do is add photos occasionally.

Thanksgiving weekend

Well, our Thanksgiving holiday started with a "bang". Silas was on his way to Walmart to grab a few things we needed on his way home Wednesday. Long story short, somehow he didn't see the car in front of him stopped due to some glare hitting the brake lights just right and he slammed into the vehicle...this was all directly in front of a Highway Patrol station.

The car was towed and other than knowing it is now about a mile down the road waiting for someone to inspect and estimate the damage, we know nothing. I personally think they may total the car, but I guess time will tell. It is going to really stink having only one vehicle for a while, but hopefully it won't be too bad.

Yesterday, Thanksgiving day, was nice. I'm pretty tired. All went well and we even played Scene It - Disney version. That was a lot of fun. 14 people in my little house - it still amazes me. LOL

And finally today, Black Friday. It has become a tradition the past few years that my mother, MIL, and I all head out to the Black Friday sales. We always start with JoAnn's. LOL Unbelievably, I found nothing that really jumped out at me. No material was sitting there saying "buy me" even with the fact that by combining coupons and sales we could have gottne Christmas fabrics at 90% off. How nutty am I? I did manage to spend a whopping $3.44 total there though. I bought some items for a Christmas card I am making and then bought 5 pieces of Disney Princess scrapbook paper. Cassidy is extremely into the princess stage right now, so I plan on cutting the princesses out of the paper and making them into paper dolls for her.

We went to tons of stores, but the $3.44 is all I spent. I was proud of myself. Of course, I didn't really think I would spend even that much considering that I didn't see any really outstanding deals this year.

While I was gone the boys got up earlier than Silas. Joshua was playing with a table cloth and Jacob got mad about it so he stepped on it. Joshua in turn pulled and Jacob decided to be cute and let go. When he did, Joshua fell into our table and he now has a black eye. Poor baby.

And just think - we're only halfway through the weekend!

Falling into place

Slowly all of the pieces are starting to come together in regards to Silas' new job. He will start on December 2nd. The info we were given stating the premium for the health insurance was incorrect, so it is looking like we have a good chance of having all of us covered after all. Whew! And we also will be able to keep Medicaid for Joshua, thank goodness!

Other than that we are preparing for Thanksgiving. We rearranged the living room in a way that makes it appear to have more room than it actually has. That's always nice! We are expecting 15 people including ourselves, so we have to figure some way of squeezing everyone in. Our next house will have more room for doing the family entertaining, that's for sure. I certainly have learned what we need to look for once we are finally able to be in a position to move in the future.

I am once again trying to get all of this homeschooling stuff organized. I can not believe how much we have accumulated lately. We have a two drawer file cabinet for the paperwork (past, present, and future) and it is quite a bit fuller than I anticipated. I guess that is a good thing, right?

Ok, enough rambling from me. I need to get back to organizing and cleaning.

Mommy knows best

This is the lesson that we learned yesterday. :)

I mentioned how much trouble we have been having with the OT and speech therpaies lately. It's really been bad and I leave feeling as if we just need to stop wasting the time, money, and energy by continuing.

OT was about typical yesterday. I'm not real sure what Mindy was thinking yesterday during the second half when she took Josh into a small room for less distractions, and yet there was a disco ball turning in the corner. Umm, yeah, less distraction for sure. LOL But we made it through and Josh demonstrated his tracing skills for her with much hesitation. At the end we talked for a while. She thinks he is doing pretty well, but is stubborn and said that she knows it must get frustrating sometimes dealing with him. Yep, some days more than others, and some days he does great. But from what I can tell all kids are like that, right?

Speech went much better. I reminded Jessica that we were going to try the weighted vest and she brought him to get it. From there Josh led us to the ST room and she finally managed to get his attention to show him the picture schedule that she had made for him. It had 6 pictures - chair, book, questions, snack, play, and sticker - all attached nicely to a file folder. Other than one little part where she wanted him to use a marker to circle the answers and he refused very angrily, it went great! And the only reason that was so horrible is because he just spent the last half of OT doing the markers and you can't do that much of the same activity that close together. She seemed happy that it actually did work and she is planning to use it with him from now on in hopes that it will continue to help.

Of course, socialization class went horrible to make up for the good therapy. LOL I talked to the psych afterwards, and she told me if I ever want her to walk over and talk to the therapists she would be happy to do so. I love how much she cares and is always going the extra mile for Josh. :) She totally backed me on his needing the schedule. Joshua needs to know what to expect, and it isn't exactly easy for me to prepare him when I haven't a clue what to expect myself each week!

So, we have next week off from everything. It feels like Christmas vacation is coming since we have a three day school week. Geez, I can't believe how fast this school year is flying!

Jacob is doing so well with his reading and I am so proud of him. We are a little behind in math but have been concentrating on it a lot the past two weeks to try and catch up. Our thankful tree is going well. We also have a poem we read each day about Thanksgiving where they can change some of the words each day, and all of the kids think that is fun.

Cassidy is on and off potty training. I'm not pushing her, but on days that she wants to skip diapers I try and encourage her as much as possible.

Elena is running lately...and talking up a storm. We have no idea what she is saying the majority of the time now, but there are some definite things that we have deciphered. Here are some of the things she is saying now:

Jacob - "Jay-jaw"
Joshua - "jaw-jaw" - soooo close to Jacob..you have to really look at who she is talking to at the time
Peek-a-boo - "pee-boo"
Bye-Bye
Cookie - something similar LOL
Daddy - she has never said dada - she has always said daddy...so odd!
Mama
cup
Hey there!
Thank you

...along with a host of other things that I'm not thinking of right now. She tries saying the blessing with the other kids at mealtime, which is too sweet! She also gives us five or ten when she does something good. Oh! And can this child dance! The slightest hint of music and those hips of hers start going from side to side. She cracks me up! Sometimes they go so far from side to side that she knocks herself over. It always makes me smile. :)

New job for Silas

Silas had an interview yesterday and was offered the job on the spot. Great news for him, as he will be getting a great opportunity and advance quite a bit in his field. This will give him lots of experience to hopefully one day move on to bigger things. In the meantime things will be tighter around here than they already are, which is not something we were counting on with a higher paying job. The insurance plan they offer is an HMO and the current employees are extremely happy with compared to what they had last year. However, it stinks for those of us with a special needs child. Because it is an HMO, we will lose Medicaid for Joshua, so we are back to square one as far as getting his therapies covered unless I can reasearch all of the options again with new coverage and find some sort of program that can help with those costs. This insurance will cover only 60 visits combined of speech and OT...we will meet that by July. I could go on and on about the pros and cons to this offer, but I will spare you. :)

Regardless, Silas is taking the job. We are trusting that God is leading us and that we are making the right decision. He hasn't let us down so far, and we are trusting that He won't start now.

One of those weeks - Yeeeeehaw

The week started with my mother calling on Sunday night to tell me that the family dog, Flower, had passed on. She loved the kids and would watch them as they played. If one of them fell, she would always get up and check to be sure they were ok. She was just a beautiful and loving dog, and she is sorely missed already.

Wednesday was therapy overload day. We started with OT. Joshua told me in the waiting area that he was wanting to do the spinning circle. I mentioned it to Mindy and that I was unsure what he was talking about. After a few minutes she was able to get his attention long enough to ask him if he felt he needed to spin and in true Joshua fashion he answered yes. Now, Joshua is not a spinner by nature. It just isn't one of the things he craves or even cares for really. But, I kept my mouth shut because she is the professional.

So, we head over to a different area of the large therapy area, and she has him lay on the scooter board. She wanted him to hold a plastic stretchy rope while she pulled him around the room in circles. Joshua had no interest in it. He was already higly distracted (hence why he said yes to her questioning his need for spinning), and this seemed to make it even worse.

So, after trying to do this for a good 5 minutes, Mindy finally gets out a giant therapy ball and has him lay on his tummy on top of it. She has him do this directly in front of a mirror. While he is lying on the ball he was to take a marker, take off the lid, then draw a picture on the mirror. If it were Jacob or Cassie, they would have been extremely happy to write on something new. Joshua hesitantly scribbled a bit, but he refused to cooperate with her. After scribbling about 3 things, he looked at her and said he was done. She made him get back on the ball and sit up on top of it and mentioned . I asked if this was one of those days where he would benefit from using a weighted vest and she nodded yes, but did not get it.

Anyway, his feet were nowhere near the floor when he was sitting on top of the giant ball, so she was able to roll it back and forth to test his ability to stay balanced. After several minutes of this she had him bounce up and down, and then he was allowed to choose a toy to play with. Mindy mentioned his body awareness has improved a lot and she was happy to see progress in this area.

Next was speech. Joshua does not cooperate for Jessica 3 out of 5 sessions. I don't know why this is. However, I have noticed that the past two weeks, she let him choose a large truck and he was willing to cooperate and do his "work" because of it. This week she skipped the extra step and went straight to the room, and he was far from willing to do anything. Eventually she asked me if I have thought about giving him fish oil supplements in order to help increase his concentration levels. She is supposed to give me more info next week on this. I asked her about the weighted vest and she said she thought it would probably work well for him but she would need to use it at the beginning of the session and not try it halfway through. {sigh} I also mentioned that he is in socialization classes and that the psych has him for 45 minutes plus and never has a problem with him because he knows what to expect when he goes to her. I mentioned that she uses the color coding chart and it seems to work well at home, so maybe that is all he'd need there too. She said we could try it.

Sometimes I really think I am either talking to myself or they think I am in denial or something about Joshua. I'm not. I know what seems to be working for him though, and they aren't using it. The psych uses cars and trucks to help teach Joshua what she wants to teach...I do the same at home...AND IT WORKS!!! It stinks that the "pros", people who went through training and supposedly deal with many children "just like Josh", don't seem to get what Josh needs. And it is frustrating and disappointing to deal with every week.

Socialization class the same day went extremely well. Mrs. G. had nothing but good things to say, so I was happy. :) And guess what? She had them for 45 minutes. Interesting that the same child on the same day could do "great", isn't it? grrr

Needless to say, since we don't have socialization class the week of Thanksgiving, I decided to cancel his other therapy appointments that week as well. I need a break and I think he does too.

Today, Friday, is Veteran's Day. Silas was off and so I decided to use the opportunity to take a little field trip. I was originally going to drive out to the beach and have the kids pick up shells for a project this week, but it was chilly compared to earlier this week, so I tried coming up with something new. Lucky for me, about a month ago our local news mentioned a website that has local events for kids listed. I bookmarked it and have often refered to it. So, in hopes of finding something to do, I headed to the site and found out there was a free barrel racing event in town all weekend. So that is where we went.

We missed the horse that held the day's fastest time. I was a little disappointed, but it was ok. There were tractors that were used between each set of horses and Joshua was extremely thrilled. He could have cared less about the horses. We just so happened to sit right by the parking area for them as well. :)

In the middle of everything, they called over the loud speaker that any child under the age of 10 that wanted to be a part of the corn run could enter the arena. Josh and Jacob both got very excited. Turns out Josh thought he was going to get a ride on the tractor. LOL Jacob had no clue what to expect. We handed them over the rail to one of the cowboys, and I left to find where to pick them up when they were done. I missed the entire thing, but Silas saw it. They were to run from one end of the arena, pick up a toy, and then run back. Jacob started out running and I guess he didn't hear the instructions so he stopped in the middle of the arena, and eventually figured out what was going on and finished the task. joshua never made it into the arena from the sounds of it, but they were nice and gave him a prize too. LOL He was just happy to walk out there and kick up dirt.

We watched until the end of the morning session was over. The boys said they wanted to go back to the evening set, so I took them and Cassie while Silas stayed home with the baby. One of the guys running the tractors remembered us from the morning and was talking to us when he'd park near us. He got a kick out of talking to Josh and had several conversations with him. Joshua even asked him what his name is. He replied, "My name is Vince. What's your name?". Joshua never gave his name, but he continued his conversation about how cool his tractor is. Silly boy.

Jacob enjoyed the horses. Vince and I were talking about the horses to him and we finally got to see someone beat the morning's fastest time, so that was really cool. Cassie was in awe of the horses and never took her eyes off of them while they were making their runs. The kids want to go back tomorrow...guess we will see what happens. :)

First day with the Thankful tree and Halloween recap

Well, today was our first day with our thankful tree. I sat down and thoroughly described what it means to be thankful for something. Afterwards, the kids each chose a leaf. Jacob wrote that he was thankful for his rabbit. Cassidy told me she was thankful for mommy and daddy. (awwww) And dear little Joshua, always silly, thought for a minute and said he was thankful for chocolate. LOL All three are very excited about this little project. We also have a Thanksgiving day countdown poem that they will be reciting each day. Each day they will get to change the countdown, and then they will choose a new food to stick in the poem.

Halloween went well. We went over to my mom and dad's house for "trick-or-treat" and so dad could take some photos. We then headed over to Mrs. Howard's house for her to also see the kids. After that, we drove over to my grandfather's apartment so that he and my mom could see them in costume as well. Gramps had eye surgery last week so he can't be around crowds yet. With the time change this weekend it was enough for the kids, especially the girls, so we headed home.

My sewing for Cassie's costume didn't work out, so we had to improvise. So, she was a Hawaiian hula girl - of course, she had to still be called a princess, so we told her she was a Hawaiian princess. Eventually she decided she was a Hawaiian Cinderella princess. LOL

Here are some pictures of the kids in costume: