Warp Speed

Where to start???  Maybe I should update the header to reflect the scorching temperatures we are seeing now rather than the blizzards we had in the winter?  Not tonight...

This spring flew by at warp speed.  Here are some highlights:

Julia made her First Holy Communion and we had a gathering of friends and family at our house afterwards to celebrate the big day.

Julia's softball season and Emma's baseball season ended on high notes.  Both girls loved playing with their team and enjoyed all the action associated with it.  They also enjoyed the snack bar at the field, as did nearly all the other children that attended games from what I could see!

Julia completed 2nd grade and is now officially a 3rd grader.  That time sure is going by fast!  So fast, in fact, that I didn't get an individual last day of school photo - gasp :-)  I did manage to capture a last day of school with one of her best buddies while they were all smiles.  Her buddy is moving to a different school next year and the day turned to tears since they will miss each other.  We assured the girls that we will continue to plan play dates and have had a couple including a sleepover already.  

Julia started making her "special desserts" after dinners.  One night she made strawberry shortcakes and it quickly turned into some fun with our food.  I love silly second - oops, third! - graders!

Emma graduated from Kindergarten.  She will start 1st grade at our {more} local school in a mainstream classroom and will have her language arts and math classes with the children in the learning specialist classrooms.  It covers the same curriculum as the classroom but goes at a slower pace which will allow more time for Emma to hear and process the information through her CIs and then respond at her slower pace due to her slower motor control.  We are praying that her 1:1 aide will be hired by the district to work with Emma again, but that is very much a prayer at this point in time.  Emma did a tour of the school and met the learning specialist teacher and told us that she is "excited" about her new school.  Emma is doing well with telling us her feelings on her talker - and that has me excited!

We found out that the tenants that were renting our old house bought a new one.  We decided to list the house for sale again in the hope that are hoping for a quick and uneventful road to a sale and settlement.  So far, it's not as quick as we hoped but we are still optimistic.

I ran a 5K!  Chris loves running and has been asking me for a couple of years to start running so he could cheer me on at the finish line.  This year I have been focusing on my physical health and decided to go ahead and put aside my hate of running and surprise him by running a 5K race as a Father's Day present.  I used the Ease into 5K program that is an app for my iPhone and only told him about it a week before the race.  He didn't believe me at first and was really excited when he realized it wasn't a joke.  After running for about a month I joined up with my neighbor and we try and run together since we run at a similar pace.  We entered and ran the race together and probably had the biggest cheering section as our families came out to cheer us on!  The girls joined in the fun by participating in the children's race that went off before the 5K.  It's was a lot of fun and I'll probably enter another race in the Fall when the weather is a bit cooler.

We had the opportunity to go to a Phillies game with our support group from the hospital.  We were able to spend some time on the field and meet a few players and talk with our host, Ryne Sandberg and his wife Margaret.  They were so nice and easy to talk to and it was an amazing opportunity and fun night out!  The Phillies won in extra innings - 5 extra innings to be exact.  Needless to say we didn't stay for the entire game but were happy to hear we won when we checked in the morning.

We have also been busy checking out a couple new exhibits at the local science museum, attending summer parties, a fundraising event for a local charity, a family wedding and a couple wedding showers, along with spending long nights outside listening to the neighborhood children play and giggle and ask if they can stay out just a little bit longer.

Yes, our life is full.  No wonder I haven't sat down and updated this blog!  We are hoping you are having a similarly fun summer!

Family Walk

Last week I saw the first tree in the area start to flower, so that means Spring is finally here! With the nicer weather we've been able to take the girls out for a routine walk again. I took my camera along one night to capture some photos of this routine - because I'm sure there will come a time when the girls won't want to join us for our walks after dinner and I'll want to remember when they were younger and always were ready for a jaunt.

When we set out for the walk, Julia wanted me to take her photo and she was all smiles. Shortly after that, though, she didn't really want me to bother her by taking her photo. Apparently, her baby really needed a walk and I was crimping her style!

Emma loves our walks and is usually bouncing out of her stroller with excitement. The side effect of this is she often kicks off her shoes. I think she might be doing this on purpose, though, just to see us put it back on for her. What do you think?

And, no walk would be complete without Finnegan making a pit stop (or three!) and that's when I'm the most happy that it's a family walk and the pick-up duty falls to Chris. He seems to be much more thrilled with that job than I am - take a look.

New Adventures

I'm taking the leap and created a blog on Google.  I have received so much valuable advice from other parent's blogs and am just starting to become comfortable enough with our crazy, hectic lives to share it with others.  So, here goes......

Welcome to our blog!  Spring is here, but the weather sure still feels like winter.  We're anxious to start spending more time outside with the girls.  Chris did manage to get a single coat of stain onto the outside deck and hopes to get the second coat on within the next week as long as the rain stays away.  Our hope is to have everything ready for us to enjoy the good weather when it arrives!  

Julia received her costumes for her dance recital and loved trying them on and is looking forward to the recital in June.  Emma is making a lot of progress with her vocalizations and desire to interact with the world with her hands and we see that her hands are open much more, she reaches for objects more readily and is making movements that suggest she is ready to roll from her back to her belly.  She is making more consonant sounds, such as -m-, -g-, and -b- and I hope that it turns into a consonant vowel combination (ma, ga, da, ba) soon.  

We are planning on starting Emma in therapeutic riding/hippotherapy and are looking at a few different locations in the next couple of weeks.  I am really excited about this and think Emma will just love this, and I'm sure we'll have to find out if there is any option to include Julia in this as she keeps talking about the pony ride she had in the fall and when can she do it again. In addition to hippotherapy, I am starting to think about craniosacral therapy and nutrition options for Emma.  I have talked to a few parents who have seen great results with their children after starting these alternative therapies and I am doing research to consider if we should implement them  with Emma.  We are being careful that we do not overextend Emma as her schedule is already so busy and we want to make sure we keep enough time for fun.