Martin Luther King, Jr. Lessons

Emma is a Girl Scout this year - well, technically she is a Brownie. It's her first year of scouting and so far it is a huge hit with her! She loves going to the meetings 2x/month. The meetings take place at her school and there are about 20 girls from her grade in her troop. Chris or I always join Emma for the meeting so that we can help her fully participate but often her fellow scouts take over and include Emma without needing (or wanting) our help.

I wasn't sure how scouting would go for Emma. It's at night after a long day at school and she is usually exhausted at night. I wasn't sure how she would participate in the circle time, crafts and activities with her troop but knew we could modify things on the fly. Since she expressed a strong interest to join we decided to give it a go and I'm so glad we did!

Our last meeting's topics of discussion were the upcoming Girl Scout Cookie Sale (if you need a hook up with cookies or want to donate money to send cookies to our deployed troops, let us know!) and Martin Luther King, Jr. When the leader asked the girls what they knew about Martin Luther King, Jr. it was great to hear that they knew so much about him and others involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Our activity that night was to draw on one sheet of paper Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream and then on another sheet of paper the girls were to draw their dream. During the activity a snack of Pirate Booty was served.

As is typical, Emma's friends sat by her side and offered to help her draw but Emma wasn't so interested. When I asked her if she had a dream she said yes. When I asked her if it had to do with school, she said no. Did it have to do with play? No. Etc, etc. Finally I asked her did it have to do with food? Yes. Her dream was to have me feed her more Pirate Booty. So funny - so Emma. Obviously, her dream was easy to make come true and it happened immediately.

While we were at our tables I shared with the girls how thankful I am for Martin Luther King, Jr. not only because I love that it ended segregation, but also that the Civil Rights Movement paved the way for the disability rights movement. Many of the protections passed as part of the Americans with Disabilities Act used the Civil Rights Laws as a framework. Until the ADA was passed on July 26, 1990 public accommodations for those with disabilities was not required. I can't imagine how our life would be impacted if we didn't have access to ramps or handicapped bathrooms at public places. Just 25 years ago these things were not commonplace. Today, we do encounter our fair share of challenges navigating our environment with wheels and that is after the ADA has been around for 25 years.

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream matters. His dream helped shape the America that we live in today and for that I will forever be grateful.

If I was drawing my dream on the Girl Scout sheets last week, it would be that people with physical disabilities would be able to go anywhere - including places not mandated by the ADA - without worrying that they might not have "wheeled" access. That our worries would no longer be that there might not be a ramp, parking or a large enough handicapped bathroom (no, they are not all created equal in size!), but that our biggest worries would be that we might not have packed enough sunscreen or snacks.

Julia is on roller skates pushing Emma, who is also on roller skates and standing in her KidWalk gait trainer, around the roller skating rink at Emma's birthday party.

2014: Thank goodness you arrived!

I've been a bit quiet here lately and it's not for lack of things to write but rather that I've been focusing on other things at the current moment.

This year started off well - we spent New Year's Eve night at a hotel downtown.  Chris and Julia made a pit-stop at the lobby Starbucks to fuel up for the night and we wandered over to Reading Terminal Market to look around and see the Christmas train display.  Then we walked to Franklin Square Park for the family New Year's Eve celebration that started around 4pm with some light shows, a dance party and playground fun and culminated in a 6pm firework spectacular.  We were able to meet up with Julia's friend and her family there and the girls were thrilled to see each other over the "long" Christmas break.  Afterwards we went to the hotel, ate a very underwhelming take out meal and hit the indoor pool (which was colder than I would have liked!).  On the bright side our room was amazing and the beds were super comfy.

We were not thrilled with 2013 - it was a sad year for us with losing my Dad and Finnegan and were more than happy to say good riddance to 2013 and ring in 2014.  Speaking of New Year's Eve:  In true 2013 fashion it had to go out with a thud.  Our room was on the 19th floor of the hotel.  I stayed with the girls to try and get them to sleep because Emma is NOT a fan of sleeping in hotel rooms and Chris was hanging out at the lobby bar for a drink.  I finally got the girls off to sleep and started to doze off myself when the fire alarm sounded.  It kept going off for about 20 minutes.  Thankfully (?), both girls slept through it.  Chris was in the lobby and they wouldn't let him up to the room - obviously - considering every elevator has a sign posted on it not to be used in case of fire.  I was a bit panicked about the thought of carrying Emma down 19 flights of stairs in the middle of the frigid night with a scared Julia in tow.  I stayed in the room hoping it was a false alarm since it occurred too close to midnight for me to believe it wasn't a drunk partier pulling the alarm.  The talking, flashing hotel fire alarm said to stay put they were checking it out and then about 45 minutes later they said it was a false alarm.  Chris was keeping me posted (via text) of the fire department activity in the lobby and after everything was cleared Chris came back to the room just in case anything happened again he would be there to help.  Thankfully it all ended well and we had a good sleep after that.

On New Year's day we could see some of the Mummer's Parade outside our hotel room window so we decided to go and watch a bit before we left.  It was fun to be a part of the parade and Emma loved every minute of it while Julia was ready to go home almost immediately.   These two girls crack me up and couldn't be more opposites.  They balance each other out so well and make life so fun.  How blessed we are!

Here's to a Happy 2014!

Christmas Cheer

Our holiday season has been moving at a nice pace this year.  We have little planned on the calendar and that is leaving us plenty of free time to slow down.  I'm not sure how that happened this year but it's a welcome feeling!

Julia had her winter concert (1st and 2nd graders) at school last week.  The music director does such a fantastic job with the children and it is a highlight of the season for me.  It's so fun to see the children on stage - wiggly ones, smiley ones, shy ones, waving to the family ones, finger in the mouth ones, full of expressions ones.  This year there was a song Rose, Up She Rises and there is a little Irish music in it so Julia did an Irish dance to it for a set of 8 beats and then her classmates joined in with their own version of Irish dancing for the next 8 beats.  It was adorable!  And the children had so much fun with it!  For as shy as Julia is she sure loves a stage.  And she loves to Irish dance so the match up of dancing on the stage was a great fit for her.

We also attended a holiday party with the family outreach program that we had swim lessons with in the Fall.  It was our first holiday party there and we are so glad we attended.  Another local family we met through this blog was there and it was nice to catch up with them.  We also met some new families and enjoyed the crafts, music, cheer and a super special visit from Santa!  My girls love Santa and we hadn't visited him yet this year so it was nice to see him and we were shocked to receive a gift from Santa.  Emma wasn't so interested in helping to open the gift because she couldn't take her eyes off of Santa.  She sat there the entire time he was giving out presents to the children and started and smiled and giggled and I can safely say that her love affair with the jolly old man is still going strong this year.  Julia was more than ready to tear into the gift and was overjoyed to see it was an Elf on the Shelf - which Julia has wanted for a while.  Her name is Makenzie and she seems to get into mischief rather than just sitting on a shelf and that is the source for a lot of amusement in our house each morning.

There were a lot of crafts, too.  Julia loves crafting and had so much fun going to the various stations and creating masterpieces.  We moved Emma from station to station and tried to get her to participate but she was more interested in just looking at everything going on around her instead of looking at us and the craft we were trying to help her complete.  So, basically, both girls behaved true to form :-)

Halloween and some new gear

I'm behind on just about everything lately (including sending out thank you notes for Emma's birthday  so if you're wondering where they are know I'm working...or at least thinking of working on them), so it's no surprise that I'm behind in posting Halloween photos.

This year Julia decided she wanted to be an Angel and Emma was agreeable to wear the bunny rabbit costume Julia wore when she was in Kindergarten.  They looked so cute together - my Angel and Bunny.  I love how they are still into innocent costumes and I'm hoping they stay that way for another year or two.  

Julia brought her Trick or Treat for Unicef box again this year.  People must have remembered from last year because many people had some change ready to share.  She did much better this year than last year and was so proud that she could help other children by collecting spare change.

We used Emma's iPad to help her navigate Trick or Treating again.  I set up the Yes/No Answers app with two options for Emma:   Trick or Treat and Thank You.  She loved hitting the buttons and our neighbors all seemed thrilled to have her use it.  Julia helped Emma a lot by asking for her candy at the houses where steps were a barrier.  This year Emma kept good tabs on her Trick or Treat bag and was happy when she saw/heard the candy plop in it.

Speaking of candy - we have lots!  The chocolate was the first to go since we all pick at it.  Julia seems to love the lollipops, starburst and skittles the best and with the amount we have she currently has about a year supply so if you are in our neck of the woods and need  a sugar fix come on over!

Halloween was also the day that we picked up Emma's brand new power wheelchair!!!!!!!!  If you've been following along with our story you know we have been in appeals with our insurance company over this chair for about a year.  It was a frustrating process but that's all behind us now because IT'S HERE!!!!  and it was SOOO WORTH THE FIGHT!!!!!  Emma has taken to it wonderfully and is now navigating about our driveway on her own.  We do have a kill switch to keep her from danger but we are using it less and less as she is learning the ropes of safe driving.  I can't believe how quickly she is learning.  She is also going to school in it most days and learning how to navigate it inside school.  She is still very much a beginner but I'm excited about the opportunity for independence this will give Emma.  Already she has found power in her new mobility - using it to follow after her friends and to drive in the wrong direction on purpose when I tell her it's time to go inside the house.

Her chair is an Invacare TDX Spree and the color she chose is Bubble Gum.  She controls it with her head array that is made by ASL.  I think her head array is the curved.  The team wanted to get her a smaller one but I wanted this one because I found it kept her CIs on her head the best.  Trust me, keeping the CI magnet on Emma's head is a full time job some days so when you find something that doesn't knock them off you stick with it!  There are proximity switches in the head array and it's set up to go forward when she leans her head back on the switch, go right when she leans her head on the right switch and left when she leans on the left switch.  There are areas in the headrest that don't have a switch, too, and Emma quickly figured out where she can rest her head when she wants to relax and not move.  It's so amazing and humbling to see how quickly she is learning to navigate in her new chair.

The TDX Spree has the ability to tilt back in space which is how Emma prefers to sit so she can better control the head array.  The seat can also be raised ~5" so she can reach sinks and other places that are at a higher height.  We call her new chair "THE BEAST" because it truly is a beast sitting at about 400 lbs.  It has 4 programs - one is slow for indoor use, and the other 3 are increasingly faster speeds.  Emma LOVES the faster speeds so I usually put her on program 3 which is set at 40% of maximum speed.  I think it equates to almost 3 mph which doesn't sound fast until you realize she isn't the best at controlling herself in it yet.  We are thankful that it has a kill switch for us to remotely stop her from getting into a bad situation (can you believe insurance gave us a lot of hassle over adding this????  I mean, she was 5 years old when we ordered it for crying out loud!!!).

Emma's favorite thing to do in the chair right now is to drive over to people to give them a "High 5".  She really is a very social girl!  I can't believe she has only had this chair for about 3 weeks considering how good she is with it now.  We have to work on her stamina to drive long distances and to stop being such a busybody and resting every-single-time she sees something (which is pretty much everything!) that interests her otherwise it will take us a week to walk around the block!!!  But, I believe that everything will come together in time.

I am so very, very thankful that Emma has her new wheels.  I'm also very thankful that she has already left her mark on it through scrapes, which means to me that she is starting to spread her wings because she is READY!  

Happy Birthday, America!

Julia had a sleep over at a friend's house last night so this morning Emma had me and Chris all to herself and loved it!  I took a few photos of our patriotic gal and had to post this.

We met up with Julia at our traditional 4th of July bar-b-q with friends and I was able to take our traditional photos of the girls and all the children and I'll share some of them soon.

Today would have been Finnegan's 11th birthday.  I missed her more than usual today.  Hope you enjoyed the Fireworks from your new view, Finney!!!!!  We love you and miss you!

Earth Day

Happy Earth Day!  I have my B.S. in Environmental Science and it is very important to me that we try and tread lightly on our planet.  Our family likely has a large carbon footprint but we are working to bring it down. We recycle almost everything we can, buy items with minimal packaging, reuse bags and are trying to adopt new habits that are more environmentally friendly such as: buying from farmer's markets, walking/biking more instead of driving to local places, and hanging our clothes to dry in nice weather.

I was happy to hear that Julia is learning about Earth Day in school and she was very surprised to find out that she did not have off from school for this holiday.  That gave me a bit of a chuckle.  I know her school marked the day with Earth Day friendly activities and think Emma's class unit on spring will cover Earth Day topics like growing gardens.  I'm thinking it would be a good time to ask Emma about her school activities and see what activities Julia and Emma had in common.  Fun idea, right?  Let's see how much Emma wants to tell us...she is the nosy, silent type.

I'm not the best green thumb but can usually manage to grow some vegetables in the summer.  I already have some lettuce and hope to plant a bit of cucumber, tomato and peppers.  Maybe a few other veggies, too, depending on when I get around to the planting.  I've asked Chris to make us a raised vegetable garden container that is height adjusted so we can roll Emma's wheelchair under it and she can help with the garden.  I think getting her hands dirty and helping to pull off the fruit will appeal to her.  It also addresses my desire to use clean soil for the garden and having it as a raised bed will eliminate any ground contamination that might occur.

The past year I've been working hard to minimize the amount of packaged food we purchase, opting  instead to use most of the food budget for whole foods and organic food when possible.  This has resulted in slightly more cooking and food preparation time but overall more satisfaction with our meals and snacks.  I believe this change will make a difference in our family's health long term and think that eating mostly whole, fresh foods makes me feel less guilty when we do indulge in the packaged food variety.  Don't get me wrong - we still use packaged food, especially crackers and some snacks.  We just use less of it and are trying to cut out even more and our garden will help with that effort.  If you are trying to do the same, a good site for ideas on how to achieve this is 100 Days of Real Food.

We are members of our local zoo and they have an ongoing conservation effort to educate the public on the environmental impact of some food ingredients.  Long story short, we learned that Emma's beloved Nutella uses palm oil and the way it is harvested is endangering the orangutan habitat and the species.  For more information on this you can visit:  www.rspo.org.   Since we love the orangutan we ceased all purchased of Nutella after that and started looking at the list of ingredients we buy to determine what includes palm oil.  Turns out a lot of items contain it!  Yikes!  So, we are trying to patronize companies that use sustainable palm oil.  Today I purchased Justin's Chocolate Hazelnut Butter and it is a nice alternative to Nutella.  It's more expensive but we don't use much and since it is a food that motivates Emma to eat on days when eating just seems like too much effort for her it was a good purchase for our family.

These are a few things we are doing everyday to try and minimize our impact on Earth.  If you have some actions you are taking please consider putting them in the comments section as we are open to more ideas.

Spring Break Recap

Spring Break.  The weather hasn't really felt too much like spring but we are getting there.  The girl's school had break scheduled so that a week overlapped this year and we took advantage of the time by heading to Washington D.C. for a couple of nights, some fun around the house and catching up on some doctor appointments.

Here is a bit of our break captured in photos:

While in D.C. the girls rated the hotel pool and family movie presentation in the lobby as highlights.  Yes, my girls love vacation for the hotel!  We visited a couple of museum's and walked along the National Mall where we visited the White House visitor center (our tour of the White House was cancelled along with many other's tours due to the sequestration!), the Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Memorial and World War II memorials.

The memorials are always so moving, but the Vietnam Memorial had my eyes watering.  It's so moving, so solemn and we knew at least one name on the wall.  We saw the many flowers visitors left, a Father/Son that were looking at a name and making impressions of it on a piece of paper by rubbing a pencil over it, and a group of Veteran's visiting the Memorial.  Julia asked a lot of questions about the memorial and I answered appropriately for her age.  Emma didn't ask questions but she did seem to be effected by the experience - she wasn't squealing with delight at the obvious sadness some people were demonstrating which is unusual since she usually loves to laugh at other's misery...I can't explain it so don't ask!

Of the museums we toured, Julia said the President's exhibit at the American History museum and the video at the White House visitor center were her favorites.  We've been teaching her a bit about our government and our elected officials and I think she is absorbing enough of the information to ask good questions.  I told her perhaps she could be President some day and she said to me, "Mommy, do they even let girls be President?"  I replied that maybe by the time she grows up there will already have been a woman President and pointed out that President Obama is the first black President so she should believe that everything is possible.

We also celebrated a few birthday's over the break, hosted our annual Easter Egg hunt with good friends, dyed eggs, played house and entered into the busy world of Softball.  Julia joined a team this year and is having a lot of fun with it even though she is "a little scared of the ball."  She is making a lot of progress in her skills and is gaining in confidence.  We think that by next season she won't be so afraid of the ball but are glad that her fear is not stopping her from having a lot of fun!  She seems to really enjoy softball and the team aspect of a sport which is quite different from her dancing where she competes as an individual.  I think dance and softball complement each other nicely.

Julia returned to school last week and Emma returns tomorrow.  It was about 3.5 weeks that I had one of my little girls home with me everyday and I think the girls like returning back to their routine.  I can just imagine the happy dance Emma will do when her bus comes in the morning - I think she missed school a lot!  As for me, I'll keep busy this week by touring a couple of programs suggested for Emma's kindergarten placement, following up on insurance appeals (where the denials were upheld and we have to appeal again!) and various other things.

Spring Break is over and I guess next up will be the countdown to summer but that can wait a while.  I'd like to enjoy a bit of Spring first!

Happy Easter

Happy Easter!  

Today we celebrated with a visit to church, some time together at home and dinner with our families.

It was a day that we celebrated our blessings.

We wish everyone a blessed Easter season!

After mass we posted for a family photo

Emma was tired most of today.  She cried when we put her in her crawler for the egg hung and, instead, opted to watch Julia hunt for the eggs from her comfy position on the couch.  All the while laughing - stinker!  Julia shared the eggs with Emma without being asked.  I love the bond between these two sisters!

She informed me that I can only take 1 photo of her then finally gave in to a few more. 

This child loves to have her photo taken!  She let me take as many as I wanted without a limit.  

A special shout out to Aunt Jane - it was wonderful visiting with you!!!!!

Valentine's Flub

Today was a bit of a Valentine's flub.  It started out fine, but went awry somewhere along the way.  Here is a bit of the recap:

• I drove Julia into school today and all was fine
• Emma woke up as usual and was all smiles.  She even said an approximation of "hi" to the bus drivers when they picked her up.  They also were surprised to hear her say a pretty clear "hi" so it wasn't just me.  All seemed fine.
• I headed off to a meeting in the office and after I was there about 15 min. and just starting to get into the topic my phone rang.  It was the nurse at Emma's school telling me she vomited during PT and was running a low grade fever of 99.1.  And everyone thought it was strange that she was crying when she got off the bus at school.  She never cries when it comes to the bus....unless it's that I'm picking her up instead of letting her take the bus home.  Off I went to pick her up at school - which is about a 45 min. drive from the office I was at.
• When I arrived at school Emma all smiles.  She wanted to eat when she arrived home and was pretty upset I didn't have more than one brownie to give her from her party at school.  I was beginning to think she was faking it!  However, she did need lots of cuddles and so we watched a couple of Disney movies until Chris and Julia came home.
•  Julia arrived home complaining of an ear ache and she decided she wasn't up to going to dance class.  We suspected an ear infection and planned to take her to the urgent care center after I got home from Finnegan's vet appointment.  Julia apparently cried a lot over the pain in her ear while I was at the vet so Chris decided to take her to the urgent care center.  When they were piling into the minivan, Julia said it didn't hurt anymore.  When I arrived home she was in great spirits and said her ear was only clogged.  We are waiting it out and see how she feels in the morning.  Both girls are off so if Julia's ear still hurts we'll either go to her dr. or to the urgent care center.  I have a feeling a good night's sleep with no set wake-up time might cure the ear problem.
• Finnegan had a vet appointment because we are worried about her.  She lost 10 lbs. in the last couple of months and is not eating her food.  Most labs do have problems with weight but it's usually they weigh too much not too little!  We are worried it could be something serious since she does have a growth on her neck that is suspect.  The labs on it came back inconclusive in the Fall so we are worried her weight loss could be a bigger problem.  The vet didn't find anything definitive tonight.  He did take blood work and we should have the results tomorrow.  The X-ray looked good so it doesn't look like there is any cancer there (thank goodness!) and that gave me some peace of mind.  I'm hoping there isn't much of a problem with the blood work, either, in which case it would turn out to be a very expensive cost for finding out essentially nothing.  We're going to start feeding her some boiled chicken, rice and eggs and see if we can get some weight back on Finnegan.  It just isn't the same petting and cuddling her when you can feel every bone in her body ;-(  Poor Finnegan.  The good news is she is just as spunky and overall great dog as ever.

So, today if feels like we've had Emma, Julia and Finnegan all pulling the wool over our eyes.  And I don't have the fun Valentine's photos I planned to take today and we're ok with that.

Here's to good health for all!  Happy Valentine's Day!

Julia writing her Valentine's cards this week, Emma this morning before leaving the house, Finnegan at the vet

'Twas the Night Before Christmas

It's my favorite night of the year.  Mass followed by family gathering.  Arrive home and set out cookies for Santa.  Tuck children into bed and wait for Santa's visit.  After it is all done, sit and soak in the glow of the tree and enjoy the peace and tranquility.  Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve Eve

I love that Christmas Eve and Christmas fall on a Monday and Tuesday this year because it gives us the entire weekend to relax a bit and spend time together as a family.  The girls have been feeling under the weather so we've been pretty low key lately and have mostly been watching the Christmas shows in the glow of the tree lights.  Today we were ready for more action so we baked some cookies in the morning and this was the first year Chris and Emma joined me and Julia in the kitchen.  Both really added a bit of excitement to our standard cookie baking activities.  Let's just say Emma kept inching the cookie sheet away from Julia until she finally had it in front of her and then....well, let's just say she was so excited that she decided to see if the cookie sheet could land facing up if she pushed it onto the floor.  As for Chris, he was a bit overzealous in making a sugar cookie snowman and it turned out looking more like the State Puff Marshmallow Man.  We named that batch of cookies (yes, it was the same one Emma tossed on the ground!) the batch of misfit cookies.

After the kitchen adventure we hit the road to take on the city Christmas attractions.  We visited the Comcast center for the show, walked through Christmas Village and enjoyed Dickens Village in Macy's.  We were shocked that Santa was at the end of Dickens Village and that gave the girls a last chance to adjust their Christmas wish lists when they sat on his lap.  I want to give a special shout out to the amazing Macy's employee who saw us gape at the at least two hour long line to get into Dickens Village knowing full well Emma would never make the wait.  This amazing man took us aside, brought us through the employee entrance and dumped us right inside the start of Dickens Village!  It all happened so quickly we didn't get a chance to thank him, but he really did put the magic in our day today!  Thanks so much!!!!!!!

Here are a few photos I took to capture our day in the city.  Enjoy!

Neighborhood Santa Visit

There was a lot of excitement around here this morning as Santa paid our little street a visit.  The children were all giggly and excited waiting for his truck and I just love the sound of that - it's like heaven on Earth!  Thanks for the visit Santa!  The children are more excited than ever for Christmas, now.

(Note:  Emma was whisked out of bed, dressed quickly and outside waiting for Santa before she barely woke up!  My little night owl who loves sleeping in just cracks me up ;-) so I had to have a bit of fun with her in the photos.)

Lights and Lists

Some of our Fall favorite activities are having a bonfire, roasting marshmallows and drinking hot chocolate - preferably all at the same time!  We had a bonfire the other night and some of our neighbors were able to join in the fun.  One family brought fancy night glow sticks that the children loved and really created a festive mood so I tried to get a few photos.  It was really dark, so the photos are a bit blurry but I still love them.

The girls are excited about Christmas this year.  Julia already started to work on her letter to Santa.  She had to bring out her pamphlets from the Barbie DVDs to really decide what she wanted to include on her list.  This year she was all business on the list.  Please bring me: Lego friends, Barbie play set and iPod.  She wanted the Barbie vanity but I convinced her it is too small for her and better suited to littler children so she changed her choice to an iPod!!!!  When I asked her if she even knew what an iPod was she had to think about it and said it's what our neighbor has and she was right, only the neighbor is 4 years older than Julia.  She knows that Santa brings 3 presents for each of them and only asks for 3 regardless of how many times I suggest she adds a few more so Santa and his elves have choices in case the elves can't make enough of one of her items.  I love this time of year!

Emma hasn't made her list for Santa yet.  I'm going to program a page on Evie so she can self-select the items she wants for Christmas.  I'm excited to see if/what she will choose!

This week we are thankful for:

• Fun.  Plain old-fashioned fun.  And hot cocoa!
• A bit of time off to enjoy as a family
• The anticipation of the Christmas season
• The beautiful warmer weather we had

Talker update and Vacation Preview

We just arrived home from vacation.  It was fabulous!  Great to get away, relax, spend more time together as a family.  I LOVE vacation.

This year we went to spend time with an old friend of mine.  It was really wonderful to reconnect with her and meet her family and have her meet mine.  We found out that while our lives have changed - we added husbands, children and dogs to our lives - we pretty much are still the same people we were when we last saw each other something like 15 years ago.  Which is both Wild and Wonderful.   And it makes me wish we didn't live 6.5 hours apart so we could get together more often - if you're reading this Caroline, pick a date real soon to come down and visit us!  You know you have a really good friend when so many years can go by and then when you get together you just pick up where you left off like no time at all went by.  The fact that families got along great, too, made our reunion even sweeter.

I'll write a bit more about our fabulous vacation soon but I did want to update on something we found out before vacation.  Emma's primary insurance came through and pre-approved her eye gaze talker and mount.  All $17,000 of it!  When I got the letter I was on cloud 9 and jumped around grinning from ear to ear.  I cried some happy tears, too, because I just was not up for another battle with the insurance company to fund Emma's equipment.  They are long, exhausting battles and I usually get a few scars from each one.  I'm so thankful that I have one less battle right now because we are updating Emma's IEP and any parent that goes through IEPs for a child with similar needs as Emma knows that takes all your energy...and then some.  It also came at a time where I was having it all out with God on how come He couldn't just let one thing come easy to my Emma.  So maybe He threw us a bone.  And reminded me that He has our back.  And now I'm hoping that my writing about this good news here doesn't jinx us.  Fingers crossed we see her new talker in the next week or two!

Motherhood and sleep

I am not a morning person by nature.  I like to stay in bed past 8am (or 9am if I really can have my way!).  If I wake early I enjoy staying in bed and watching some TV or reading a book while I ease into my day.  During the winter months - when the sun is not usually shining when my alarm goes off and when it's cold coming out from under my blankets - I prefer to hold off on a lot of conversation until I consume a warm glass of coffee.  During the summer months I tend to wake up easier and get going earlier since the sun is up and gives me energy.

I used to think that becoming a Mother would make me more of a morning person.  Most mothers that I know get up really early and have most of their to do list accomplished before the children are up and out of bed.  I figured it was just something that magically happens when you have little people around.  Plus, I thought children like to wake up early and drag their parent's out of bed!

Then I had my children and learned that you don't really get much sleep at all in the beginning.  Sleeping whenever the baby sleeps sounds like a great idea and I managed to do just that on occasion with baby Julia.  It didn't work as well with Emma since by then I was keeping up with a toddler.  As for the nights, Emma was never a great sleeper.  Julia started sleeping through the night at 10 weeks, but Emma was 3.5 years old before she started to sleep through the night a couple of times a week.  I would walk around in a haze a lot of mornings since I has so few consecutive hours of sleep.  It seemed that Emma's preferred sleeping time happened between 4 am and 11 am, but those weren't really the best hours for us to keep!  Julia has always slept great and it seems her preferred sleep hours are from 8pm - 8am.

I have a huge smile when I say that we've recently settled into a nice sleep pattern.  Usually it only requires one trip into Emma's room at night to flip her from her back to her belly when she cries.  We even have quite a few nights where there are no trips.  I'm crossing my fingers as I type this because I sure don't hope to jinx it!

On weekends it's usually me and the girls in the morning while Chris gets up at the crack of dawn to run.  The girls inherited my sleep gene and so we sleep a bit late.  Julia is often the first out of bed and comes running into my room (around 8am) where we talk and watch some tv.  Emma usually joins us a bit later when she calls me into her room to go and get her.  We sometimes read books and always fall into fits of giggles.  It's a great way to start the morning and really feeds my soul.

My version of Motherhood is a bit different than I expected.  I didn't magically turn into a morning person after the birth of my children.  I still seize the afternoon and evening much better than I seize the morning!  My mornings and so much else in my version of Motherhood is different than I expected.  But, different works for our family.  And I'm so proud Julia and Emma call me Mommy!

Thanks so much to my Mom for demonstrating what it means to be an amazing Mother!  You have always loved and supported me no matter what....even during my challenging years ;-)  Now that I'm a Mother I can more fully appreciate you.  I never knew it was so hard because you always made it look so easy.


Thanks to my Mother-in-law, too, for accepting me into your family and son's life with grace and love.  It truly is a pleasure to have you as my Mom-in-law!

Happy {belated} Mother's Day to all the Mothers reading this!

Happy Easter!

Easter is one of my favorite holidays.  And it's not because of the candy - although everyone in our house does enjoy the treats the Easter Bunny leaves us each year.

We've been celebrating Easter the traditional way - Church, dyeing eggs, having egg hunts, eating candy.  Wishing everyone a wonderful Easter Season!

St. Patrick's Day Parade

Today we kicked off our week long St. Patrick's Day celebrations.

It started with breakfast when I sprinkled some shamrock mix onto Julia's cream cheese bagel and applesauce.  And, although she turned down my green smoothie offer, she was so happy to see the sprinkles on her food and dug right in!

After breakfast we got ready for the St. Patrick's Day parade.  Julia participated in the parade with her Irish dance class whose colors are red and black, so she was all decked out in those colors.  The rest of us wore green and us girls used the face paint to add a shamrock to our cheek.  It turned out to be lots of fun and the atmosphere was really festive!  Unfortunately Julia's dance school was #185 in line of about 190 and the parade seemed to run late....which meant we were waiting at our line-up area for about 2.5 hours until we finally started to move.  The girls were amazingly patient waiting their turn and the parents were well prepared with snacks but I sure do hope that next year we are earlier in the parade or waiting in a sunny, warm spot!

Michael and Brianna came down to watch the parade and Chris and Emma joined them on the Parkway.  Emma loved the parade and their seats were great since most of the dance groups performed right in front of them.  When everything was over we went to dinner at TGI Friday's since all the Irish restaurants in town were standing room only.

It sure was a great kick-off to this year's St. Patrick's celebrations!  Let the party continue!

Valentine's Wishes

Wishing everyone a bit of love today and every day!

Valentine's Day Thoughts

We've started to decorate for Valentine's Day around here and it's making everything a bit more fun.

• Last week I decorated the tin mailboxes from the $1 bin at Target for the girls.  Each has their own mailbox and I plan to use them to stash daily treats or love notes.  I think I'll start this on Feb. 1st and continue until Feb. 14th. 
• I printed out some little Valentine's cards to give to the girls.  Julia has one already (and is sleeping with it!) and is asking to see the rest of them.  She was told she will get them over time - not all at once and she immediately started giving me ideas on when I should give them to her.  I think this idea is going to become a tradition based on how much she loves it right now!
• We have a heart wreath on our door and Valentine's Day gel clings on our front window to put us in the mood. 
• I've added some pretty pink ribbons to items on our mantle and I'm hoping to add a Valentine's Day banner if we make one during our craft nights.

I know it's not Thanksgiving, but Valentine's Day always makes me think of the things I am thankful for in my life.  Right now I'm thankful for:

• My parents.  They are wonderful all the time!  But recently they have made some car troubles a lot less troublesome for us.  Thank you!
• My children's laughter.
• Our nice home.
• The opportunity to take an online photography class that is giving me a lot of information to take better photos but is also a ton of fun!
• My hot cup of tea that is warming me up a bit.  And our electric blanket to keep me toasty and warm at night!  

Top Ten of 2011

Our Top Ten of 2011 (with a couple of details blocked out for privacy):