Houston, we have a problem...

our girls are getting two busy! We can't keep up!

Let it Snow!!!

Today, we started up the car after church and the temperature read a boiling 88 degrees. We thought the tempurature reader on the car was broken and so we checked it again after driving for a while and the temp was still 87 degrees! I still prefer this temp to that suffered by those who live to the North.

So cool to be NORMAL

Andrew's MRI results are in and they are NORMAL!! We are so grateful to have the results. We are now having to accept that we will never know what has caused the random grab-bag of symptoms. Who cares? We can live with that. He may outgrow (if we can get him to grow at all) many of these issues. His physical therapist is hoping he will be at an acceptable strength level by summer and not need any more PT. We are keeping our fingers crossed.

Holiday Weekend

Here is our Florida Thanksgiving in a nutshell. It has been a great weekend.

Josh & Andrew making brownies for "Black Friday"

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'Snot sunset with Tasha Bear

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girls posing at the beach

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.Taking a nice walk at sunset

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Black Friday is probably my favorite holiday. I love to shop the great deals and get my bargain shoppers high. But I also love that it is the day that we set up the tree. The kids get so excited and it is so much fun. Man, Santa has his job cut out for him here with all these stockings!

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Abigail was just dying to go outside, but soon discovered that she hates grass!

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Abigail ready to go outside!

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Passing out the oranaments (above)

Our pathetic little "Dad's in law school" tree (below)

Andrew's creative rendition of holiday spirit. (below)

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Thanksgiving was a lot of fun because we had a little family and a lot of friends to share it with. We loved hanging out with everyone and especially the fact that the men clean it all up. Then we put on "UP" for the kids. It was so simple & relaxing. A perfect holiday for the non-fancy us.

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Abigail is starting to pull up on things so I had to put this in. Every little milestone is such a thrill for us all. We are able to play a part in organizing a local Down Syndrome support group here. It has been a good experience. Slow, but good. The next national convention is in Orlando this June so we hope to get organized before then. Crazy fun weekend for us. (Like any weekend is ever dull here!)

911

Last night we ended up with a whole different FHE from the one we had planned. Natasha choked on some unidenifiable object and we started to panic. She was still breathing at times so I ran next door first to see if our firefighter neighbor was home. He wasn't so his sweet wife called 911. It only took about 5 min. for the firefighters & ambulance to arrive. Tasha & I got in, got strapped and headed to the hospital. Part way there she sputtered, gagged and was fine. So....I got a good 10-15 min of chit chat in with some nice paramedics.

My kids were fascinated at the firefighters in their front yard and disappointed at missing the inside of the ambulance. The firefighters gave them some awesome little plastic hats and I am sure we gave our neighbors an eventful evening. Josh's brother lives about 10 min. away and made it here in miracle time so that Josh could come to the hospital. He was able to kneel with our other kids first and offer a prayer for little Tasha.

At the hospital her lungs were clear, so we have no explanation as to what happened. The Dr. said it might have been a vocal chord spasm that causes kids to feel like they can't breath. I don't think we will ever know. Today we are going on a house-wide manhunt for any small items and they will be trash. Including loose books & paper because that is their favorite meal. We feel very blessed that things turned out to be fine. At least until we see the bill...

18 Months!

Today our little twinies are officially 18 months old! Time flies so quickly when you are so busy. They had their first day of nursery today. It was almost strange to just drop them off and go. Both girls are just growing up so fast that it seems they are doing something new everyday.

Abigail (always in pigtails) is our aggressive dominant girl. She is anxious to wrestle anyone--especially an unwilling Natasha. She seems to think it's funny to make her sister cry. She loves to scream and clap. She will go all day with a smile even when she hasn't had a nap. She loves to think she is independant and big trying to pull herself onto her knees and foraging for food under the kitchen table. Today when daddy was putting her to bed he brought her to me to give her kisses. She reached for me and once I had her, she deliberately turned to her dad and waved bye-bye with a sinister little smile. She knew what she wanted.

Natasha (always with one pony tail or a barrette) is our cuddle bug. She just needs more love and attention. If she were to be held all day she would be perfectly content. She is also our drama queen. Abigail jumps on her and pulls hair, clothes, etc. all day long and she hates it. Lately we have had some great laughs watching her sneaky ways. If she wants held when everyone is busy she crawls toward Abigail or Andrew and just touches one of them briefly and starts to wail. She gives herself away though, because when we get her she starts to grin & giggle. She has long since understood how the camera works and she is always the first to pose with a cheesy grin for us. She seems to be the observer of the two. The last few weeks she will crawl over to any article of clothing and try to put in around her neck or on her head, indicating that she knows it is for wearing.

It is a funny thing where they have their own developmental pace. We are never quite sure what age to treat them at, so we just do our best and figure the Lord will fill in for any mistakes. It seems strange that they are developing so slowly for their age compared to most children, but we feel like they are just growing up way too fast.



1st photo: 2 weeks
2nd & 3rd photos: today
Last photo: last week

Employed!!!

We feel so blessed that Josh was able to finally find a job. It was one of those situations that you can just chock up to perfect timing. He was hired on at a firm that does both tax accounting and tax law so it is really custom made for him. He will work part-time from now until he graduates and then as a full time accountant there until he passes the bar & CPA exam. When that happens (next fall sometime) he will be employed as an attorney for their firm. He will be the only CPA/JD except for the founder. Needless to stay we will be staying in town-- hopefully in the same house. Personally, I am really glad. We have come to love the intimate feel of the branch and the excitement of a temple being built close by. I have found some wonderful friends that I am excited to stay close to. We are sad to be so far away from some of our family & friends but we know that this is the place where the Lord needs us now. It's nice to finally be able to say that we know where home will be. We sure hope we get visitors..

busy, busy, busy

I would love to update this more but we just have been running around like mad. Between lessons, extra curricular stuff, church things and just having 6 small kids we are just really busy. I figure that since a picture was worth a thousand words, I would make up for it today.

We had a steak dinner on the back porch last Sunday and it was so nice. I love it when the weather drops to the 70's.

Andrew is constantly a victim of Gabby's mothering tendencies.

Here is a photo of the girls playing in their new braces. They don't like them but they have to get used to them. At $1000 each, they have to wear them anyway.

Last Sunday I sat the girls down after church and took some fun photos of them in their dresses. Their facial expressions are so funny. Tasha is in pink and Abigail in green.

Gabby signed up for cheerleading and Nate for flag football this fall. We managed to get her on the team that cheers for him. What a blessing! They both had fun and are sad that the last game is Saturday. Then we get a "sports" break until January when all 3 of my older kids will have something.

Last Friday we went to the last home game of our local high school. It was standing room only and had sold out. This school is HUGE! It is about 4 times the size of my high school and we were overwhelmed! But...since we went to see our good friends in the marching band we were able to leave after the half time show.

With the twins mobile, I have been very grateful for homeschooling because I have some help. The older kids just love the "twinies" and play with them a lot without any prompting. It frees me up to deal with Andrew and his issues.

Hopefully things will calm down enough for me to post regularly, but the truth is that it is highly unlikely...

CassieS visit

So, I tried to cut the moving photos out of my slide show 3 times but I failed. Sorry for the repeats. I really loved having my sister for almost 2 weeks. It was a sad day when she left because I don't know when I will see her again. The worst part was that I realized we don't have any photos of us together. How dumb were we? She was a great sport putting up with my life for the time she was here. She watched the kids when I took Abigail to the ER for falling out of her high chair (her eyes rolled back in her head like she was passing out). She helped me cart all of the kids to a specialist 45 min away. Of course, it was a new office not on mapquest or GPS so we had to stop and actually follow someone over from another office (so embarassing). She got the kids lunch and then brought them back and ate it outside the bldg because food wasn't allowed inside. She let us plan everything around the many therapies and was a good sport about the heat wave that came & left with her. The beach was a logistic nightmare with 3 adults, 8 kids (5 of them were 3 and under) and a multitude of sand. I am not sure if she will ever have more kids, but it was really fun for us!

Our Crazy Week

I decided that life is going to be really busy for a while so I am just quickly posting the highlights. Gabby turned 7 this week the day after one of her best friends in our branch. So we had all the little girls from the branch over for a celebratory dinner for the 2 girls. They wanted something "fancy". 3 of our amazing Young Women also came over to help out.

Abigail has been "army crawling" for some time and is now up on all fours for about 4 feet at a time. Natasha is finally army crawling. However, Natasha can wave and Abigail has no idea what that is yet. Their personalities are just so different!

The highlight of our week was our friend Savannah's 8th grade band concert where the kids got to dress up to watch. I was surprised at how much they loved the concert. I was afraid they would be bored.

We have been told that Andrew's cognitive skills are actually excellent so all we are dealing with is physical and behavioral. A trip to the allergiest revealed that he has some pretty strong allergies--no pets for us. He is getting strong fast, but he loves the massages the best. We love our PT and she is so good with him. He still is hungry constantly and starting to get fat in spite of or best efforts so the endocrinologist is our next step. Hopefully we will get some answers.

That's all I've got, but Cassie is waiting for us at DisneyWorld so I am sure we will have more later!