Past 2 Weeks in Pictures

Photos

Here are a couple of pics from Zachary's Preschool graduation. He was playing the air guitar while singing "Rock and Roll Body Parts". He's waaaayyy cool!!!

CRAZY!!

Wow! What a crazy week it's been! Katie had her 3 year old well-child doctor's appt., got Katie's hearing tested, had Zachary's IEP meeting (his speech goals for Kindergarten), we met with the realtor twice about listing our house, met with the builder about building a house, had Zachary's Pre-School Graduation ceremony and I pulled off our 2-day subdivision garage sale this week. We had over 30 houses participate in the sale and a bunch of those houses were actually multi-family sales. It ended up being over 50 families that participated. I am completely and utterly exhausted - and yet ecstatic over the turnout of buyers! We must've ended up with a thousand people or more that came. It took Mike 20 minutes to drive from the entry of our subdivision to our house due to the mass of humanity. That mass of humanity also dropped over $750 at our house alone. Our next door neighbor ended up with nearly $1600 in the 2 days! Everyone made in the hundreds of dollars and they are all talking about next year's sale already. Great - next year some of them can help! LOL!

Katie is still HUGE! She's now 39.75" tall (96 percentile for height) and 39.5 lbs. (95 percentile for weight) and still in a massive growth spurt. She's wearing a girl's clothes size 4/5 as well as a size 11-wide shoe. Luckily she's pretty dog-gone cute so the boys don't give her grief yet about being taller than them! She's definitely in her 3's now with all the attitude of a red-head - can't imagine where she gets that from! Her new speech therapist (by law we had to change to the school district since she turned 3) did some informal testing this week and was shocked that she's testing intellectually at close to a 5 year old in many areas - must've gotten that from her mother too! LOLOL! Her hearing test went exceptionally well and the pathologist was also shocked at how quickly she was able to do the test. They said they rarely get a 5 year old who can pick up how to do the test and get it done that quickly and easily - it was less than 2 minutes. She's a smart cookie - looks like Mike's going to be helping with all the homework! LOL!

Zachary's Pre-school graduation was adorable! It actually made most of us cry and they even handed out diplomas to the kids! We, of course, caught it on video and on the digital camera. Haven't had time to download any photos this week though - so maybe this next week I can post some. Zachary's trying to read already and is more than ready to start writing sentences. He loves to memorize the words to his books and "read" them to us. He can read some words and he's learning to sound them out. Guess those Leap Frog videos really are terrific!!!

The meeting with the builder went well and we talked about building the same house we had in Little Rock - only with a basement. We loved that house and we've really missed it - so he's getting with his architect to try and work something out on that while making it handicap accessible. Unfortunately, that's something we are really having to think about and are going to go and look at a friend's house that was just finished that is fully equipped since her husband is in a wheelchair due to polio related complications from his youth. The builder was very knowledgeable about a number of things that would need to be done to change the house so there wouldn't be any steps for me to deal with either on the interior or exterior. It's actually kind of fun to get design your house and do things that you've thought about for years.

The meeting with the realtor also went well. The house is worth more than we paid for it, and should allow us to have a bit of pocket change as well, though not much - but it's better than the prospect of not making anything and the house having devalued as has happened in part of the country. We're going to stay in our subdivision. It's getting to be a really fun place to live and the social aspect has picked up with all the neighbors - so we're really having a great time living here.

Bummer

Ok - this will be my "what a bummer" post. Went to the muscular dystrophy doctor this past Friday with the full knowledge that the lower-leg braces I got in October were clearly not what my physical condition needed and I would either need to have some sort of "adjustment" made to them or to get the traditional ones. The doctor took one look at my legs and the divot, that's between the size of an apple and a baseball, on the front of each of my shins (caused by the braces) and said the braces have GOT to go. I'm glad. They have been nothing but a pain in the fanny. When I walk, the calf strap slides down my calf, or it pulls the sock down so I've got the lovely velcro backing loufaing my calves. Bright side is - I don't have to shave my legs so often since it's constantly ripping the hairs out ................ 1 hair at a time. OUCH! He's (the doc that is)determined that the sensation in my legs have taken a pretty severe beating. Figured that out when he was poking my feet and legs with a needle and it felt like he was barely doing it until.....he hit my knee and I got the full pressure of someone trying to cram a needle into my knee cap! My leg jumped a mile and the needle flew across the room - making us all laugh........well, except for Katie and Zach-whose eyes got big as saucers. He apologized to the kids and let them know he wasn't trying to hurt me, just to find out where mommy could feel and not feel. He was shocked at my level of deterioration in the 5 1/2 months since I'd been there. Of course, we couldn't get through the visit without the routine question as to what I'm doing about my weight. This time he was a little more forceful - he suggested he send in the Nutrionist so she could help me work out a plan. With it being Friday at 4:30 before Mother's Day - she was gone - darn it all!!! LOL! They did make sure to let me know that she will be calling me this week to schedule a time though..............great. "So, I'm fat - anything else you need to tell me doc?" Yep, you need to meet with the Physical Therapist to get some contraptions ordered to help me "cope" with my rapidly advancing condition with my hands. Apparently they are expecting me to lose the ability to dress myself as they have suggested zipper pulls, button-helpers (which I've needed for a while) and several other things. Great - well, at least I'll be able to zip my pants and button my shirts so the neighbors won't be frightened by my pot belly and saggy boobs! LOL! "Uh, I can see it in your eyes - you aren't done right?" I said to the doc. Of course not! The next question had to deal with my home and lifestyle. After talking about the various things I do and the number of trips up/down the stairs chasing a 3 and 5 year old, he told me that it's time to move out of the 2-story and get in a 1-story........before the end of the year. Oh fun - time to move again - oh yippee. On the bright side, at least I've never gotten around to unpacking the china and crystal! Oh well, a 1-story would be nice and Mike and I sure have hated going up and down those stairs 40 times a day. And if this wasn't fun enough, I get to go every 3 months now so they can track what's going on - guess that's not such a bad thing come to think of it! So to recap, my disease is progressing rapidly, I have to lose 35 pounds, I get to have some fun gadgets to play with (keep the mind out of the gutter here), I get to have my legs put into molding clay to make new braces (guess I'd better make sure I shave REALLY well prior to that) and figure it won't be sexy like Demi Moore and Patrick Swazey in the movie "Ghost", and I get to go buy a new house. No problem............LOL

I'm 3!

Little Miss Katie is now 3! On Thursday she had a wonderful birthday and was princess for a day. She wore a birthday princess tiara that said "Birthday Girl" and a pink sash with the same phrase, as well as carrying her birthday princess magic wand. She was stylin'!!! We took her out to eat dinner at TGI Fridays where they sang her a VERY loud Happy Birthday and she got ice cream, which she actually shared with her brother. TGI's balloon system was out of commission and she was so disappointed that we stopped at the grocery store on the way home and picked her up 5 balloons - one of which was an absolutely huge colorful dragonfly. She also got a dozen long-stemmed pink roses. Her eyes about bugged out of her head and she was so excited she could hardly contain herself! It was well worth the couple of bucks to see the expression on her face! She's already figured out how many fingers 3 is and is very happy to show anyone who will ask her how old she is! She's still quite the shopper and said for her birthday she would like..........."shoes, nail polish and a Care Bear". We all have our priorities! LOL! While she has had some "3 year old moments" already - she is lots of fun and such a sweet little girl. As we celebrate her birthday, we are so thankful to God for Him truly blessing us with such a wonderful daughter.

Bunny Success!

Last weekend we caught 2 bunnies! The bunnies were given the "royal" treatment by getting the illustrious priviledge of riding in the bed of Mike's pickup truck 14 miles to the southeast side of town; which just so happened to be across 2 major freeways and a number of busy thoroughfares. Yippee, my plants are safe for a few days ......... at least until new bunnies move in and take over the "territory". The kids were having a ball "releasing" the bunnies into a park where they could find more bunny "friends". I'm sure before long 2 bunnies will be 10 and then 100 and so on and so on...........!

Trap

Well, last night about 10:30 I watched a bunny walk up to the trap and eat the carrots leading up to it; however, everytime the rabbit tried to enter the trap he bopped his head on the door. So, he saw that big carrot on the inside and hopped up next to the trap and tried using his teeth and front paws to pry that carrot free. It just rolled around until it finally ended up rolling under the trap door plate. When it did, you could almost see the bunny snap his fingers with a "dog-gone it!" and shake his head. He looked at it one more minute and then hopped off. On the bright side, I guess he was full from the smorgasbord and didn't eat any of our plants ...... or he was too depressed to eat.

Mike took that trap back today and bought the one I told him to buy to begin with. It's been baited and is ready to go.............should be interesting to see if we catch a bunny tonight or if we're just feeding him some more!

Growing Up

Katie is starting to grow up and next week she will turn 3. Mike and I are having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that our baby isn't going to be a baby too much longer. In the past couple of weeks, she has really started to blossom. The cord has finally been cut and Sunday she went to Sunday School all by herself. She walked right into the classroom and was ready to go. Mike and I were left in the hallway picking our jaws up off the floor. She only said "see ya" when we said "Katie, see ya later!" - she gave us a half-hearted wave and was like ok - quit bugging me. Heck, she may as well have given us one of those head nods men use to say hi! While one side of us was sad to see the old Katie leave, the other side of us was jumping for joy and mentally started looking for a babysitter...........finally!!!!!!!

Today I had to go to the University of Illinois to sign Katie up for a summer speech camp. As we were driving through "campus town" (as they call it here), there were a bunch of good-looking babes in miniskirts and shorts walking to class. Zachary's eyeballs were about to pop out of his head and his head may as well have been on a swivel as he was trying to take them all in.....at the ripe young age of 5. Just to tease him a little I said "boy, there sure are a lot of kids going to class". He quickly informed me that he had decided he wanted to go to school there when he grew up because there sure were a lot of girls who looked like they could be his girlfriends!!

Mike has had it with the rabbits in our neighborhood and has decided to take action. Last Friday I bought a live trap. Mike returned it as it was decided our bunnies are a little over-fed to fit into that trap. We bought a larger one with the hopes of catching the were-rabbits. Well, after 4 days and 3 carrots the only thing Mike's caught is the laughter of the neighbors. So today, he took back that trap and bought a "better one". We'll see in the morning whether it is better or if the bunnies are just appreciating the free carrot buffet they've been receiving nightly!