So many reasons to be thankful!

For starters, I am thankful that as a nation, we have one day of the year dedicated to what we are thankful for. I'm not aware of anywhere else in the world.  With that I have created a list.

1. I am so thankful for the tender mercies of the Lord Jesus Christ.  I'm not perfect, but I understand how great his love is for us.  Like the song says, "Loves like a hurricane.  I am a tree bending beneath his wind and mercy...  If His grace is ocean, we are all sinking...I don't have time to maintain these regrets, Oh how he loves us."  When nothing is going right or even when it is, I am reminded of his presence and how vast and amazing he is.

2. An amazing husband and children.  We are dysfunctional on most days, but we do great together no matter what every day.

3. My extended family. We may not always be close, but when we get together its like we have never been apart. This year I reconnected with my dad, step mom and sisters that live in Texas. Its been 21 years, but God brought them back into my life in this season.

4. The basics. The past year has been extremely trying in our finances and in our living situation.  Through it all, God continues to point us in the direction that is different than what we expect.  It brings new meaning to the verse of scripture that says, "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven." We are where we need to be right now in this season.

There are so many more reasons, but I'm now thankful that I am tired enough to go to sleep now.  Have a happy  Thanksgiving!

Why didn't I think of that sooner?

Imagine my excitement at each of our son's parent-teacher conference today, to find out they are doing an amazing job.  I don't always think I'm doing a good job with them.  Then I am reminded by each teacher that they are thankful for all we do to help them at home.

You may wonder why I am so hard on myself. Well, back when my oldest was three, we had moved back to the big city and I had researched various kinds of preschool formats that would work for our son.  He seemed like a self motivated person who tried to figure things out himself.  So we choose a public Montessori school.  The teacher was very nice and seemed genuinely interested in helping him to learn new things.  The first year at school proved to be a bust because our son did not talk clearly would not communicate verbally any of his needs.  I volunteered often and found him to watch everyone and not participate.  I brushed it off to the fact that he was observing and learning.  I was working a very stressful job 60 to 80 hours a week so I also didn't spend much time reading to him either.  Once I lost the job I was in the classroom 1 to 2 times a week.  By then, Spring was fast approaching and he was still progressing.  His teacher suggested a formal evaluation at that time. It took all school year for an IEP to be put in place to get him on the right track.

We moved back to my hometown after I got laid off in 2009.  In the process of getting his IEP sent to our new school district, I found out the district has an amazing 3 year old program that I never had heard of before. I wish  our oldest could have been in it.  I think his learning experiences would have gone differently.  Thankfully, in the first 2 months of the 4K program, he made more progress than he did all the year before.  I really liked the use of themed lessons.  Both our older sons had similar themes going on at the same time.

As a result of our 3 and 4 year old being in the program, that doors were opened for so many activities, home visits with the Parent liaison (Jean Bohnker is an absolute angel!), parenting classes and take home kits.  It was through Jean, I learned about the "Birth to 3" program.  She really helped me resolve within my self that getting help for our almost 2 year old was okay.  And help he got.  He had regular weekly speech therapy.  By the time he was evaluated by the district, he was more open to answering questions when asked (by pointing of course), but still not expressive.  He recently took the expressive test and scored above average.  Again, so thankful for all these amazing people placed in our path to help us.

It was when our 2 older sons were enrolled in 4K and 3K that we really began to read books.  We logged the names of each book and would turn them  in for a surprise for our each from their teachers.  So why did I never think of it before.   I've been checking out mountains of books from the library for years for the boys and have always had to write down the title and author to what they were reading.  So when you are checking out 20 to 30 books a week, it gets to be quite a bit to keep writing down.  I finally figured I could copy the list from our library account online, paste it in Excel, clean it up, perform a text to columns to separate the title from author and....whalla! I have a running list.  I even keep track of how many times we read it and how long in total we read that book.  I've started a list of those our oldest reads by himself.  Why didn't I think of this sooner?

"Wuv you Mom"

For those of you who know my 3 year old, you know about all his speech issues.  He didn't say much at 18 months and I didn't think anything of it.  He was always smiles.  He is such a momma's boy.  And, you would think I would be concerned with my eldest own speech issues.

Thankfully, we moved back to a city where there is a wonderful 3 year old program and we became connected with an amazing parent liaison named Jean.  Jean really put all my parenting concerns at ease and was always available to pass some of her parenting wisdom on to me.  She noticed he was not talking that much either.  She gave me the number of our county's "Birth to Three" program.  If you live in the state of Wisconsin and have a child under 3 years of age who has developmental delays, an agency who contacts to administer the "Birth to Three" program will come out to your home and perform an evaluation on your child to determine the extent of the delay.  Once its determined, you are setup with home visits with a therapist or you come to their office location.  In our case, the speech therapist came out to us.  He made some real progress in the year in was in the program.

When he was almost 3, a referral was made to our school district and he goes through an evaluation process again.  Then you meet with the school district staff to develop the IEP (Individual Educational Plan).  At this meeting it was determined he would ease into  a speech and language class.  Since his birthday was so late in the year, he started the class a couple of days a week.  Then the next school year, we would go the four days a week.

He is in a 3 year old kindergarten with a teacher who really is the "speech whisperer".  He is much easier to understand and more verbal now than ever. His teacher assessed is expressive skills.  His expressive skilled tested well above average.  He interacts with all the boys and girls in his class.  He looked forward to going to school everyday.

So today we hit a milestone.  He came up to me and said, "wuv you Mom." To my surprise, I responded, "Did you say you love me?" He responded, "Yes, wuv you Mom." :)  My heart is overflowing with amazing love for him and each of our sons.  It so made my day.

Attempt at a fun and interesting weekend

Its been a while since my first post, but no excuse can be said except to watch what exactly consumes my time. I've been a full-time stay at home mom for two and a half years.  Its had many ups and downs.  When I worked, I still came home, took care of the kids, did the laundry, fed the kids, cleaned up their rooms and found fun things for them to do.

My hubby went back to work a couple of months prior to my job elimination that led to me staying at home.  I do everything with our boys and for our boys.  Getting "me" time is only when the boys are either asleep or all at school.  So weekends come and while I enjoy doing things as a family, I have came to accept that my hubby is just mentally exhausted from a grueling work week and really doesn't want to do anything but veg.  So our boys and I spend many of our adventures without him coming with us.  Am I still bothered by it?  Most definitely.  Do I still put up a stink about it?  I choose my battles wisely (this would require a whole other blog on the challenges of marriage and making things work).

So our adventure without my hubby was our local holiday parade (you know the one they don't call a Christmas parade any more).  We managed to arrive early enough to get within 2 blocks and get good parking.  All we had to do is walk across the Main Street bridge and, Wallah, we were there.  Great spot right were it began. There must have been at least 50 Harley riding veterans starting off the parade.  The rest of the parade consisted of at least 5 floats, 15 dance tropes all playing "All I want for Christmas" as their first song, and at least 50 dogs dressed up as reindeer from various kennels, groomers and pet rescuers.  In fact, I have never seen so many dogs walking that distance.  I was pretty impressed.  So what was one of the first things our oldest son asks, "Mom, are you getting enough pictures so we can show Daddy?"  My only response was, "No, because Daddy doesn't really care about the parade." Its true, he doesn't. I probably should have said that I'm doing the best I can, but truth is I wasn't.

So, to make a long story short, we had a good time together and got out to enjoy ourselves.  I've committed this to prayer and now I wonder, should I play "cats in the cradle" to drop some hints?  Don't get me wrong, I love my husband and our marriage is solid.  We differ solely on how to be involved with out kids.  I just don't want the boys to grow up and resent him for not coming with them.

My first post

I read so many blogs and have always wondered if I had it in me to document significant events that have happened in mine and my family's life.  Then again, I do post these events on my Facebook status.

Yesterday was Father's Day and also our 7th Anniversary.  Our boys were so excited they woke up that ran downstairs and handed opened cards to my husband.  Oh, I wish I could keep them small.  They were so cute with showering Daddy with gifts and affection.  It was so beautiful and pure the way they unconditionally love and show excitement.  To top it all off, I whipped up some amazing french toast, scrambled eggs with cheese and sausage links.

As if they day could not get more interesting, we did some driving around to view some rentals we saw in the newspaper.  My husband and I are completely dumbfounded at the price of rentals during this recession for houses that look like complete dumps.  Our search for a new place continues until we find something that suits us (I would explain now, but it really is a  long and kind of boring story).

With the day coming to a close, we decided to hit up Greek Fest in our town.  I had my eye on the Saganaki, my husband had his eye on a gyro, and our sons only had their eyes on the carnival rides (which were few in number).  The first ride we hit up was this ginormous slide.  The boys entered the gate and walked up the very steep stairs.  I was nervous for my youngest that he might slip and fall.  He did fine.  The first to come down was my Elliott.  As he made the long ride down scared out of his mind, he started to turn on his side and got slide burn.  Poor guy!  Stephan and Nathan rode together and had this complete look of glee. Where was my camera?  How could I forget it.  Well, I guess that is now real memories are made.  You don't have a physical picture, just a mental note.

So the next ride was the fun house.  No sooner were the tickets handed to the operator, that they were inside  trying to figure out how to get through each of the obstacles.  Stephan, our oldest, was the first one to reach the rotating tumbler at the end.  Instead of stepping across, he stepped in and laid down.  I think at this point, he thought he had to continue to roll across.  Now he is moving with the drum and enjoying it.  He kept letting out a slow "whoa" like the aliens on Toy Story.  Next steps in our Elliott and starts to do the same thing.  By this point I am laughing so hard I had to turn around.  Finally the ride operator stops the tumbler and my husband rescues them.  It doesn't stop there because now all the kids in there have to try it.  Again, I wish had my camera!

We ended out little trip with one more ride on the giant slide and a slice of Saganaki.  Opa!  Best Saganaki I have ever had!  So, that is a day in the lives in our little family.  I hope everyone had an enjoyable day.