It hasn't been a year yet...

...so these frames are still under warranty!  No, this is NOT how Natalie's glasses are supposed to look.  She bends them so much, and the titanium will take a lot of rough treatment, but eventually they will snap.  But these Flex-on frames handle Natalie's treatment so much better than the last pair of glasses, which also snapped just before the warranty was over.  That last pair (repaired) is what she's wearing now...it's so wonderful to have a back-up!

I was looking forward to getting her new glasses in January, but now with a new frame coming, we probably won't buy new unless her prescription changes (we're praying her eyes are not MORE nearsighted!)

Early Thanksgiving

We got together with Tom's extended family today after church at a private room in a restaurant, and then after the meal everyone came back to our house for dessert.  It was so much fun!  We've gone to a restaurant for the meal and then a home for dessert for several holidays now, and have been very pleased with how it's worked.  But the downfall was that I forgot to take pictures of those in the house, so we only have the pictures Tom took of those who played croquet and pushed our kids on the swing outside.

Yesterday I baked the dessert spread: Jamaican-spiced pumpkin pie, fresh pear pie with dried cherries, molasses cookies, and a family dessert passed down for many generations that's called "Grandma's Cookies" but is really an apple pastry.  Tom took Lukas to a men's prayer breakfast yesterday morning, and "Finding Nemo" kept Natalie and Konrad occupied while I baked.

It was a very fun event!  Everyone lives 1-2 hours away in different directions, so it's wonderful to get together and catch up with everyone.  Thanks for making the trek!

Therapy notes

Here's the note I got yesterday from Christina, Natalie's OT:

This was our conversation today as we practiced making squares:
Christina:  Connect the squares to make a choo-choo train.
Natalie:  Natalie choo-choo train.
C:  Let's draw Mommy.
N:  Daddy, Lukas, Konrad on choo-choo train.
C:  Where are you going?
N:  Disneyland.
C:  What do you do there?
N:  Winnie-the-Pooh

We had a full on conversation and I was so amazed at how well she talks!...

I'll send a note for Christina that when we went to Disneyland last week, we took the train all the way around the park, and then stopped at the Winnie-the-Pooh ride. 

But Natalie already told her that.

Baby talk

In addition to enjoying Natalie's budding language skills, we're also having fun with Konrad as he learns to speak.  As I've mentioned before, Lukas spoke much better, much earlier than Konrad:  we could tell Lukas how to say a word one time and he had it perfectly right away.

Konrad takes a little longer.

Lately he's been working on "pajamas."  Tonight as I dressed him for bed, he proudly proclaimed, "ja-MA-MAS"!  I corrected him with "pa-JA-mas" and he replied with "pa-MA-MAS".  Then it went back to "ja-MA-MAS" and I decided I liked that word best of all so I started encouraging him to say it that way for Tom. 

Ok, bad mommy.  But it's cute.  I'm also proud that he says, "goggy" for "doggy", which is exactly the word I said when I was a kid.

Feasting early

Today Lukas' school (he goes once a week to a homeschool co-op) held its annual Thanksgiving feast during lunch.  Tom came home early for lunch and we went with Konrad (while Natalie was at her school) to observe the fun.  I forgot my camera!  These little pictures are from my phone and the nice picture is with Lukas' Indian costume that they made during class, after we came home.  The kids had a fun time tasting succotash and Indian pudding and other recipes that aren't normally on our Thanksgiving table.  Tom and I liked the succotash...I'll have to find the recipe!

"I Work Hard!"

Today when I picked up Natalie after PT, I asked her how she did, and she said, "I work hard!"  Then she said the same thing after school, so I had to get it on video.  I started the video without her glasses on so you can see her cute face without glasses...she looks so different with and without glasses.



She is a hard worker! But this statement is not something that we use at home, so I'm assuming the therapists have been saying it to her.

Dual Purpose Park Day

Today we drove 30 minutes to go play at the park...not a normal occurrence when there isn't a birthday party involved!  But today's dual purpose park day was so Tom's mom could see the kids AND so the kids could play at the very cool park near Tom's parents' assisted living home.

This is the second time we've done this, and both times it's worked great:  Tom drops off me and the kids at the park, then walks to get his mom from their home and brings her to the park.  We're blessed to have a very nice park within walking distance from their home, since we were spoiled being able to play at their house before they moved into assisted living this summer.  There's a lounge with a few toys at their assisted living home, but a park provides a lot more space for noisy kids.

This park has new and interesting equipment that we haven't seen at other parks, so it's fun for the kids to play on stuff that spins and swooshes differently from the slides and swings their used to.  It was a fun day!

Decorating our home

We only found out Tom would have today off from work for Veterans Day a few weeks ago.  And then we discussed several things to do today as a family, including going to a Veterans Day celebration.  But at the last minute we realized the one we wanted to go to was for real veterans (Tom served in the Navy, but he's not a veteran) so we ended up just staying home and cleaning the house...which really needed it since we were gone on cleaning day last week for our camping trip, and we'll probably be gone on cleaning day this week.

This morning Lukas asked again (only the second or third time this week) when we were going to put up Christmas lights, so Tom decided to do it today since the next few weekends we're busy and Natalie and Konrad's birthdays are right after Thanksgiving.  So the lights went up today (yes, you may applaud our earliness) but won't actually be lit until after Thanksgiving.

The big news was that this year Lukas did all of my job of putting the clips on the lights.  We were all so impressed.  Not only are there four different ways to put the clips on (which has been known to cause a slight bit of marital discord in past years when I didn't get the clips on the right direction...and then couldn't figure out how the way Tom wanted them on was different from the way I had just put on 30 clips) but there are a lot of clips!

Anyway, Lukas not only followed Tom's direction in putting the clips on correctly, but he stuck with the job until the end and didn't get distracted (which is a huge issue with him) by other interesting things going on around him.  Go Lukas!

Tom and Lukas snuck out during Konrad's morning nap, and when Konrad woke up, he and Natalie watched through the window for a while before we all went out and played while Tom and Lukas worked.  The "Happy Birthday" balloons are from visiting the party center for birthday supplies...some of their mylar birthday balloons are only $.99.

Death Valley, Part 3

...and then there are the pictures Carla took!

Konrad wants to copy Lukas, but this time Lukas had someone to copy...Christo!  Thanks for being such a good sport, Christo!

Taking a break from hiking on Artists Drive.

Duck, duck, goose, anyone?

Tom with Konrad and Lukas, looking for pup fish.

Thanks for the great pictures, Carla, and the great time with your family.

Death Valley, Part 2

I'll blame it on our camera, whose batteries ran out of juice...or on the spare set of batteries in the camera case, that turned out to be already-spent...

...so we ended up using the video camera to take still photos near the end of the trip.

Then our new computer with Windows 7 has a funny way of downloading pictures.  Each time we download, they go into a new and different file, so when I was writing yesterday's post, I forgot to look at the second file folder from the trip.  Yes, we got a new computer...our old computer was as old as Lukas (no exaggeration)!

That's a long way to get to it:  here are more pictures from our trip that I thought were worthy of posting.

The kids playing on the salt pan at Badwater Basin.  They tasted it, too!

In front of the Bottle House in the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada.

Looking cute!

We made it out alive!

Sorry, I couldn't resist this dramatic title, but it seemed appropriate given where we've been.

We thoroughly enjoyed our three-night camping trip in Death Valley National Park with our friends Carl and Carla and their youngest son, Christo.  For those who don't know, Death Valley is Tom's favorite place on earth.  BC (before Cindy), he camped in DV at least once a year.  BK (before kids) we camped in DV twice.  AK (after kids), we camped in DV with Lukas when he was 13 months.  After Natalie was born, we didn't camp for a long time because of her health issues, and then we chose a closer park (Joshua Tree) for her first camping trip.  Joshua Tree is 2 hours from our home and DV is 6 hours...it's easy to choose the closer site, but almost 5 years later we finally returned to DV.

Tom stressed for several weeks before the trip about whether the weather would be ok for the visit.  In early November, there's still a chance of very hot weather, but there can also be very windy weather.  It turned out that the first day was the hottest at 92 degrees at the temperature peak and there was only a very little breeze at night and in the morning.  The nights were warm: just below 60 degrees, which is WONDERFUL for camping with kids.  The weather could not have been better.

And with Tom's new van, we enjoyed conversation with all of us in the same vehicle.  Packing was a little tighter than it would normally be, but we were still able to get two families' stuff in the van...not bad!

Tom picked a campsite (Texas Spring) that was more centrally located than we've camped in the past, so we could see the main tourist attractions without having to drive as much.  We were surprised when we arrived to learn that we had decided to camp on one of the busiest weeks of the year: but thankfully there were two campsites for us to use (there were only four left when we arrived).

We really enjoyed camping with another family and learning tricks and meals from them.  Carla brought glow-in-the-dark necklaces for the kids.  This is going on our camping trip list for the future: not only did the kids love them, but at night we could see the kids easily.  They also made a great night light when the kids went to bed, and they played quietly with them when they woke in the morning (there was still a little glow left).  A definite winner!

And Carla made great breakfast burritos (Carl is cooking the bacon over the fire) and tacos.  I made pumpkin pancakes (from a box) for a breakfast and tri-tip and baked potatoes for a dinner.  It was so fun to share meals and see how other people do it.  And everything tastes better when you're camping!


If you double-click on the picture above to make it bigger, you can see Lukas climbing the butte right next to our campsite.  Of course anything Lukas does, Konrad wants to do, but he had to be satisfied with only climbing halfway up.

Our day trips consisted of hiking up Mosaic Canyon and seeing the dunes and the pup fish, and driving to Dante's View and Badwater Basin.  We also saw the beautiful colors on Artist's Drive and visited the ghost town of Rhyolite, just outside of DV (Lukas was very excited to go to Nevada for Rhyolite...he keeps saying he's been to three states now: California, Texas and Nevada).  Natalie and Konrad loved camping too.  It's still a chore to keep them from wandering off, but it's getting easier as they get older, and of course having three more people on the trip helped a lot.

I hope it's not another 5 years before we go back!

Carl and Tom with Konrad and Natalie, ready to hike up Mosaic Canyon.  Konrad was eating a banana.

Natalie waving hi during a hiking break.  She got adventurous in her climbing and thought she could do more than she could. 

 

Konrad says "I did it!" every time he climbs something.

 Lukas and Konrad coloring while waiting for dinner, with the sunset in the background.

Kids entertaining themselves while waiting for breakfast.

Lukas with a piece of salt, at Devil's Golfcourse.

Carl, Carla, Christo and Konrad, at Devil's Golfcourse.

Pioneer re-enacters, one reason this was a busy week.

Our family at Dante's View.

Candid snapshot at our campsite: Lukas reading to Natalie, Konrad playing with trucks, Cindy coming out of the tent, Christo, Carl and Carla chatting.

What a difference a year makes

This year's IEP meeting for Natalie was SO much different from last year's meeting, which resulted in a second IEP meeting to resolve her speech therapy questions.

First of all, Tom and I knew more what to expect, so that made it easier.  Last year, I did so much research and preparation, attended a seminar to prepare for it...you name it, I did it!  This year, I spent about 30 minutes preparing for the meeting.  Not that I should have spent so little time, but we didn't really have many concerns...and everything worked out great.

With Natalie's improvement in speech, I suspected that they might cut her individualized speech therapy in half, or at least try to put her with a small group during therapy instead of one-on-one.  But the speech therapist recommended keeping the same amount of one-on-one therapy as last year!  And the OT and PT also recommended the same as last year, and the school district approved it!  With the recent budget cuts, I was sure they were going to try to cut some part of her therapy, but it didn't happen.

It was also a joy to have her teacher and therapists talk about how much fun Natalie is to have in class and to work with, and how everyone likes her.  They mentioned (and we agree!) that her social skills make her a winner.  I've thought over the last several months that her cooperative nature and pleasant disposition makes it easier for her to focus and learn what's being taught, and also makes people want to help her more.

Then we broached the subject of her preschool class for next year (her 5th birthday is 3 days after the cut off for Kindergarten, so she'll have another year of preschool next year).  Tom and I have always wanted her to attend a blended preschool where 12 of the kids have IEPs and 12 of the kids are typical.  I asked when we could start talking about whether she qualified for that program, and the program director said we should schedule a transition IEP next spring to see where Natalie is and see if it would be the best program for her.  While he was talking, Natalie's SLP said to Natalie's teacher, "I think she would be great for that class!"

I asked what qualifications Natalie needed to be considered for the class (since there is limited space in this program), and it comes down to Natalie needing to stay on task and keep attention to the task she's working on when others might be working on something more interesting.  She does fine in a group when everyone is doing the same thing, but when they split into three groups and she's bored with what she's doing, she leaves the table and goes to another table.  So this staying on task is one of her goals for next year, and Tom and I are going to be more aware at home to try to train her in this skill.

Even though the IEP meeting went well, it was still 2.5 hours!  That's longer than I thought it would go, but maybe they think we would be disappointed if it went short?  Anyway, it's a relief to have it over...and we won't have to wait a whole year to do it again...joy!

New heights of bravery

Lately Lukas has been exhibiting new signs of bravery, like this:



In the interest of full disclosure, he licked his fingers right before I turned the video on.  He can deal with fire, but he still runs from the room when the tornado on Elmo's World comes on.  Should I be afraid?

Help yourself!

I was planning to have leftovers for dinner the other night when Lukas asked if we could have fondue.  Why not?

I had purchased several fondue kits from Trader Joe's (why mess with an easy solution?  I've had trouble getting the cheese to melt properly with a fondue recipe) and pulled one out to warm up.  Then I used the leftover sausage and meat, apples, pears and plums, and a loaf of bread Tom ran to the store for and...voilá, dinner with salad on the side!



In addition to being excited to have the first fondue meal of the season, Lukas was also pleased to see me use the lazy Susan that Tom's mom gave us when they moved into their apartment.  And I have to say that this is the perfect meal for the lazy Susan...much better than 9 little bowls of things.

But after all that preparation (which only took about 15 minutes) I admit that the combo I like best is bread dipped in the cheese.  The other meat and fruit doesn't hold a candle to bread and cheese.