One room down.......

Every year I dread the clutter cleaning that comes with the summer. I try to pick several days during the summer to clean out each room of the house. I'm finding it more difficult as Mattie gets older and seems to destroy one room as fast as I'm working on another. Well today she is actually sitting still watching Elmo and the older girls are out of my hair. I decided to tackle my 14 year old's room. Yes, I know she is 14 and should clean her own room.......which she does.....kind of......for a 14 year old. But every year when she goes to camp, I go in and throw away all the junk she has collected. It's stuff she won't throw away but never misses once it's gone. And I did it in less than an hour! Now off to get ready to have lunch with the hubby this afternoon.

Just for you Mom!

It's been a long time and well my Mom has been on me about my blog. She misses it. So since I'm off for the summer, we are going to give it a try again. I've posted a few updated pictures and an update on the kids.

Mattie
Mattie a.k.a. our little destructor. Who can tell by these sweet pictures that she can cause destruction in 2.5 seconds. She is a sweetheart that loves to take everything out of drawers, off tables, out of pocketbooks.......you name it. She likes to run too......away from you. She also gives the best hugs and biggest smiles! Mattie is doing well. Her kidney reflux is gone. Her hearing, eyes, and all her yearly stuff has come back normal. We are working on potty training which isn't going great but we'll keep working on it. She adjusted well to her new school and is really talking a lot. She repeats a lot of words. Last night, she even said "no no touch" to our kitty cat. We are excited that she is starting to combine words.

Caroline

Caroline just finished up her ball season. She absolutely loves being a catcher. She has worked really hard and our plans are to work more over the summer. She got to play on a 12u travel ball team a couple of weekends ago. She really had a great time. In the picture above, we went to the Lady Pirates softball game. The kids got to go out on the field and stand at their positions with the players. She was beaming from ear to ear. She also had a great school year. She almost had perfect attendance if it wasn't for that dreaded flu that hit everyone in the family except Abby. She ended up having all A's and one B for the school year. She missed having all A's by one point! We are so proud of her!

Abby

Abby is growing up so fast before our eyes. She will be in high school next year! It's hard to believe my baby will be that old. She also did very well in school having all A's and B's. Abby just finished her ball season. She had a great time with school ball and rec. She is away at camp now and I'm sure enjoying her time away from her siblings. It's nice to get a break away from the little ones. The picture above is from her 8th grade dance. She was so pretty!

Frisco Skippito the Great Masked Sword Fighter

Our beloved Frisco passed this past Saturday (3-25-09 to 6-25-11). She was attacked by a neighborhood dog. We will greatly miss her! She was a one of a kind cat and there will never be another one like her. We feel so blessed that she got to be a part of our family. Coming soon.......the 10 best things about Frisco. This is a little something that Caroline and I are going to work on as a tribute to her.

The Next Chapter

Mattie's last day of daycare was yesterday. I wasn't quite sure how I would react. It's one chapter ending and another beginning. It doesn't even seem like it has been three years already. I will miss seeing her smiling face during the day, but I know she is going to learn so much at her new school.

It is amazing how things fall right into place! One of our dilemma's was what we would do with Mattie when she gets out of school and we are still at work. Well, I happened to see my neighbor out playing with her kids. Mattie wanted to go play with them. We really never go over there since we are always on the run. My neighbor is also a teacher and we started talking about school which led to talking about Mattie's new school. I was telling her how we didn't know what to do about after school care. She tells me that her daughter, who is also Mattie's age, goes to a daycare that just so happens to be down the road from Mattie's school. And only 20 minutes away from my work. She loves it there and highly recommended it so I decided to give her a call. I am so glad I did!

We went yesterday to visit and loved it! It is a small country daycare that is run by a retired teacher. I was so impressed with all the little details. She had an imaginative play area, a music area, an art area, a very extensive science area, story time area, indoor rec. area, quiet time area, snack area, and an outdoor area that was like a mini-amusement park. And after all that, she let us know that she would be glad to focus on Mattie's IEP goals as well. Wow! And.....no worries about that peer modeling since she will get that there too. So it looks like everything is falling into place just fine!

Baptized!

I'm a little behind with this but hey better late than never! Abby got baptized on February 6th! We are so very proud of her! Here are some pictures of this wonderful event.

Group shot :-)

We get Mattie's placement on Thursday. Hoping and praying for the best! We also will be taking her to the eye doctors soon. They noticed what could be a vision problem. They aren't sure how accurate it is so we are checking that out at the end of the month. More time off.........

Evaluation

I took Mattie for her evaluation on Thursday. She had a blast! Who wouldn't love a room filled with books, toys, stairs, paper, crayons, markers, a slide with a ball pit, and so much more! Mattie especially loved the stairs and slide. The OT was very impressed with how well Mattie did with her motor skills. As far as speech went, she didn't really use a lot of words or signs. She tends to use more words and signs at home with us then with other people. That being said, she still has a long ways to go. She is starting to imitate more and more single words but not really stringing two word phrases together. I'm not too great at keeping up with signs for everything she is trying to say either. I find her pointing at things and babbling a whole strand of sounds. Then I try and figure out what in the world she is trying to say. We've gotten down our basic needs and wants but need to work on expanding our vocabulary.

Now we just have to wait 2 weeks for the results and see what her placement will be. That is the part that makes me the most nervous. Just not knowing where she will be. I guess I need to clarify from my last post too. Mattie won't be 40 minutes from our house for school. I will be 40 minutes away from her. I teach in another county and my commute is 40 minutes. Right now, Mattie travels with me to the daycare we have set up at my school. Once she is placed in the county we live in, then she will be much farther away from me. My husband will be near by so really it is me just being selfish and knowing I will miss having her with me. What is most important to me is that she gets placed in a class that will have the services and resources to help her grow and learn.

I did it again!

I can't believe how little time I have for blogging! Here it is 11:15pm and I'm making myself stay up to do this. It is time to update. We have so much going on. We are in the middle of Mattie's transitioning from Early Intervention to the public school system. I'm really not looking forward to this next step. I love having Mattie with me at my school daycare. She will be 45 minutes from me and I'm really going to miss her! Of course, she technically hasn't qualified yet. She goes Thursday for her evaluation. We'll wait 2 weeks and then find out placement. I'm a little concerned about where she will end up. I would rather have her in a daycare type setting then in a different school setting. And to top it all off, our county has decided to place all the preschool children in the worst part of our town beginning in the fall. I am not happy about this at all and I've been told by others that my only choice is to go private. We'll have to see what happens. In the meantime, I'm trying to keep an open mind.

Closing Remarks

Well I didn't really get a chance to post some closing remarks for the year 2010. It was a pretty uneventful year with some ups and downs. The biggest downs for us this year were vehicle problems. My husband has been through 3 vehicles this year. His trusty old Chevrolet broke down on him. We had just payed off our cars and really wanted to keep it that way. So the hunt for another vehicle started. We found the perfect mode of transportation for our family and we bought it. Well, that lasted about 6 or 7 months and the transmission went out. We are still looking for another one to replace that but in the meantime, he needed something to get and back forth to work. So we have just gotten another vehicle. Here's hoping that this will last us a little longer. Now that the not so good stuff is out of the way, I can focus on the great things. I really feel that I have so much to be thankful for.

Our health. We have been blessed with a healthy year. No hospital visits or any other major health issues. Mattie does still have Kidney Reflux and yes it got a little worse but it is still in a very manageable. We will continue to give her a nightly dose of medicine and monitor it throughout the New Year.

Our Faith. How awesome that we have the freedom to worship our God! Other countries aren't that lucky. I am also so thankful for my church family. I was able to go to a Women's retreat to the beach, Girlfriend's Unlimited Nights, Bible Study, and Joyful stitchers. Joyful stitcher's worked on sewing pillowcases for our local children's hospital. We were able to hand deliver them just a couple of weeks ago. It was very touching. I even got to meet a little baby with Down syndrome. She was in PICU recovering from her heart surgery. Her foster mom was grinning from ear to ear and you could just see the love she had for this little blessing from God.

Our Family. Being able to just spend time together. We were very thankful for our summer vacation to the beach, visiting the NC Aquarium, going to the ball field to watch our girls play softball, the Buddy Walk, Trunk or treat, Tailgating and ECU football games.

Our Friends. I can't say enough about our friends. They are always there for us no matter what!

And finally but not least having a very white Christmas Break! It was beautiful!!

Looking forward to a great year in 2011!