Another Busy Day

Started with Sunday school for the kids. I then went to 9am mass by myself as I opted to stay home with Bekah and Kearsyn last night...after being in the car the majority of the day yesterday, I knew there was no way they would be able to make it through mass quietly last night. By the time I got home, Andy had breakfast ready. Alex then headed off to school to help with the open house. While he was there, Andy went shopping for the twins birthday presents. I headed to the fields...first stop was to drop of Connor, Kenzie and Taylor for select soccer tryouts...second was to take Tyler to his last football game. Boy was it chilly by the time we left the field. They ended up losing but Ty had a good time. It was then time to head back to the other field to collect the rest of the kiddos. Now I'm home and tired and not at all ready to start the work week. Blech!

This week is going to be all out of sync cause Bekah's speech class is moved to Wednesday again due to her teacher being at a conference Thursday & Friday. Bekah then has a hearing test in the middle of the day Thursday. Then I'm meeting Alex's math teacher Friday afternoon to discuss what we can do to help improve his math test grades. Guess I'll get some work done in there sometime.

And then the following week is Thanksgiving. How in the world did that happen?

Evaluation Report

I forgot to update about the meeting we had last week to go over Bekah's evaluation. The report said what we already knew...that her developmental levels other than speech were where they should be or above level. She was 26 months when she was evaluated and all her scores came in 28 months - 33 months. This was for cognitive, social/emotional, adaptive/self help, gross motor and fine motor skills. Her speech evaluation showed her at a 20 month level (instead of 26) which just barely qualifies her for their program. They're going to come to house twice a month to work with her and also to show us things we can do with her during the times they aren't here. I'm still totally impressed with how quickly she can pick up sign language and she now has quite few that she uses regularly like more, please, thank you, mess, shoes, coat, milk and drink.

We went to my parents yesterday to celebrate my dad's and Kathy's birthday. It was a nice visit although the boys/guys spent most of time in front of the tv watching the Ravens game. LOL Afterwards, mom took Connor to go see Eragon. Alex had seen it with his youth group on Saturday and really enjoyed it. Kenzie was so upset that Connor got to go to the movies with mom. Never mind that Saturday afternoon, she'd gone to birthday sleepover party that also included going to Build a Bear workshop, getting smoothies and pizza and then going out to Fisherman's Restaurant for dinner.

I tried doing some work today but it didn't go very well as Kearsyn was a complete grump today. I'm not sure what was up with her but she sure wasn't happy. It was also a very late night last so that didn't help things any. It was beautiful outside today so we took outside for a little while. Andy swung with her on the swing while I jumped on on the trampoline. I'm going to be so sore tomorrow...as Andy so kindly said, I'm no spring chicken anymore. LOL Oh and speaking of the trampoline, the younger kids have been banned from it after Tyler tried to hang himself on the top of the enclosure net. He got two huge scrapes on the underside of his chin around his neck where he flew up and got his neck on the top of the netting that is supposed to keep him in the trampoline. Guess that only works if you aren't trying to jump higher than the netting which is what Kenzie and Tyler were trying to do.

Tonight we went to the Christmas party for Alex's youth group which was at the youth group leaders house. What a gorgeous house it was too. He made half the house from trees that he'd cut down from his own property. How cool is that? The walls, flooring and ceiling were left the natural wood that had been made into planks (no bark on it) and he had a loft area with a cool spiral staircase. I know Andy and Alex are hoping to get invited over when the weather gets warmer (that sounds funny since it was 68 degrees today) to shoot paintballs since the guy owns 15 acres of wooded land. How fun! The kids did a huge Yankee Trader game and it was such a hoot watching them pick a present and them steal presents from each other. The biggest kid there ended up with a girls bag with lotion in it. It was hilarious! The gift Alex unwrapped was a great hot chocolate set but someone eventually stole that from him. He ended up having to go back to the pile and unwrapped a big box of bubblegum which he was just as happy with and no one tried to steal. The hot gifts of the night were a lava lamp and the hot chocolate set. The kids got really into it. Bekah made a new friend and it was fun watching them "playing" cards and putting out poker chips. They sure start young. LOL

Busy Day

Andy took Alex to the Gunston Open House. Alex really liked it...they both said the place was beautiful. Too bad it costs $18,000 to go there for a year. Yikes! I don't see that happening but we are going to go ahead and fill out the financial aid form just to see what we might get. Can't hurt any.

Bekah had her speech evaluation appt today. I was very impressed with how the ladies did the evaluation. They even taught Bekah how to sign "more" which she still remembers. That's so amazing to me that she can be shown the sign a couple of times and she is still retaining it. Makes me want to learn more signs that can be taught to her. They were totally impressed with her motor skills...she's actually doing a number of things above age level. She is delayed in her speech area so she does qualify for the program. The next steps are for them to write up their report to figure out exactly where she falls, then we'll get together to discuss the findings. During that meeting, we'll decide on how best to proceed with getting her additional speech help. The good news is...actually there are two...1) it's free and 2) they'll come to the house to everything so that will make things easier on us.

Kenzie's softball practices have started back up again. They are only optional at this point but do you think my girl would miss any kind of practice?? No way! LOL So Andy and she made the trek to Trappe to the indoor facility for the practice tonight.

Connor is impatiently waiting for the Ravens game to start. This child loves football!

I've seen so many beautiful pictures of sunrises and sunsets lately...Velda's and Andy's...I thought I would post one that I took tonight as I went out to turn on our outside Christmas lights. I realize now after looking at the picture that I should have walked out farther on the deck so our rain spout and satellite wires weren't in it. Oops! LOL

Too Good to be True

I knew it was too good to be true. Kearsyn was back to her normal nonsleeping pattern last night. At least I know she can sleep when she wants to. ;)

What beautiful weather we have been having here the past couple of days. You sure wouldn't know that it's the last week in November by being outside. Now if we could just get our yard to dry out after all that rain we had last week. It's still extremely soggy out there.

I did some Christmas shopping yesterday and actually went to a store to do it. That's a rarity for me. LOL I usually do most shopping online cause I hate having to hunt for things in the store and they rarely have want I want anyway. I was pleasantly surprised because I actually found most of what I wanted to get for my sister and her DH so they are pretty much done at this point. Yay! The kids presents have all been ordered and are starting to arrive. The only ones left to buy for now are our parents. I also still need to get a birthday present for my dad whose b'day is 12/20. We're going to try and get the family together on the 17th to celebrate. It's always hard with Dad's b'day being so close to Christmas especially now that my sister alternates the holidays with her inlaws.

Thusday is going to be a busy day. We're going to look at a private school that is having an open house in the morning. Not sure that we can actually avoid it, even though they do offer some financial aid to go there, but it can't hurt to check it out. In the afternoon, there is a Homeschoolers Open House at the college. Alex is going to be taking a Composition class there which will be good for him plus it will help lighted the load a little for Andy in the spring since he won't have to cover that subject. Also Thursday afternoon, Bekah has her speech evaluation appointment so we'll see how that goes. She's been in a terrible two's mood here lately. Hope she gets out of it soon cause she's driving me crazy. She thinks she can make up for it by flashing me her cute grin and giving me a kiss...which of course works. LOL

Haven't done any stitching lately although I really need to get a move on finishing up my Christmas ornament. I've had it stitched up for weeks...just can't figure out how to finish it. I wanted to do something different but I can't figure out what so I haven't done anything. :(

It's Halloween

The kids have been looking forward to today for days. They've been looking forward to dressing up as soccer zombies...I'll see if I can snag a pic that Andy took of them (I stole this pic from Andy's blog as it seems to be the only one we have)...and going to a friends house for a Halloween party. There's always lots of good food to eat and tons of kids. They do a hayride through the neighborhood making periodic stops to hop off and swarm the houses for treats. I wasn't going to go because of Kearsyn but Andy talked me into going which I'm glad he did as I had a good time. Once the kids left to go trick or treating, it was me, Andy and Mary (whose house the party was at). We sat outside chatting while waiting for trick or treaters to come by. It was a beautiful evening although it did start to get a little bit chilly although Mary had built a nice fire in their fire pit. I was a little nervous about Bekah going trick or treating...one of the other moms kept an eye on her while on the hayride as their wasn't room for Andy to go since the trailer was so packed with kids...as Andy scared her half to death when he put on his scary mask at home. He came walking out of the hallway with it on and she about fell over herself trying to climb behind me to get away him all the while screaming her head off...poor thing. There was no need to worry, though, as she was apparantly really into trick or treating and didn't mind going up to the houses to get the candy.

I made another attempt at making the peanut butter chocolate chip cake today...at the request of Andy to take to the Halloween party. I guess the last one wasn't too bad but I did remember to add the butter this time. LOL It was definitely better than the first time although it was still a little dry. I think I add too much flour...will have to try less next time.

Stitchingwise, I've been working on the mini rr I have. I only have one more color to stitch and then it will be done. Hopefully I'll get it finished up by the weekend although I'm not pushing myself. Then I'm going to stitch on the next release of the Halloween Gameboard Mystery Sampler.

I finally finished reading the Visitation which prompted another trip to the library for more books. That's always a frustrating adventure since our library never has what I want to read. I was able to find a couple of books which will hopefully be pretty good and am about halfway through the first one, Stitches in Time.

We met with the lady from the Infants and Toddlers program today. She just does the paperwork and went over general information for Bekah. She said that two other people from their staff should be getting in contact with us in the next week or so to do a more thorough evaluation...one will just focus on Bekah's speak and the other will look at all areas of Bekah's development.

Infants and Toddlers Program

This is the program that works with developmentally delayed children agges Birth thru age 2 in our area. Child Find (which I posted about the other day) starts at age 3. These guys are quick. I called Monday after getting back from the drs and left a message for the person in charge. She called me back yesterday, asked a few preliminary questions, and set up a meeting for Tuesday, 10/31 for an initial evaluation. This is to go over all aspects of Bekah, not just her speech...that will be done by a speech therapist in a separate appt. Today I get a big package of paperwork in the mail that needs to be filled out prior to the visit on Tuesday. They sure do ask a lot of questions....anything from when did your child first roll over to does your child like being cuddled. Will be interesting to see the outcome of this first meeting.