Fall Party!!!

Landon had a fall party at school today.   He had a lot of fun.  They made pumpkin or skull necklaces, played "pin the nose on the pumpkin", pumpkin bowling, and a cauldron bean bag toss.   I went to help set up and I took some pictures while I was there.

Landon making his pumpkin necklace

Cute little spider hats that all the kids made...Landon only had his on for this picture.  He didn't like it very much.

Happy with his prize he won

Pumpkin bowling.  Landon isn't very good a rolling things so they just had him walk up and drop the pumpkin on the "pins".  He got really excited when they all fell down. :)

Waiting patiently for his cookie snack

Yummm....cookies and Capri Sun

Landon passing out his treats to his friends.  They each had a cute "trick or treat" bag with their pictures on them.

Checkin out the treats

Landon with his classmates.

Ok mom, can we go home now??

We're going to carve pumpkins tonight and get festive for Halloween.  I hope everyone has a fun Halloween!!!

Me and my belly

My wonderful friend Megan is starting up her own photography business.  She took the pictures of us in an earlier post and also the ones from our first visit to the pumpkin patch.  Her pictures are beautiful and I was excited when she wanted to take some pregnancy pictures of me.  I didn't get any done when I was pregnant with Landon and wished that I would've.  This fell into my lap and I decided to take advantage of the experience.

Megan and I had a lot of fun taking pictures all over the house.  She told me that she planned on taking more another day since she just bought a backdrop and she wants to try it out on someone.  I'll be happy to be her guinea pig! :)

Here's a few of the 60-something pictures that she took in our first session:

I'm so thankful to Megan for taking my picture to capture me and my little girl.  She deserves a round of applause! :)  THANK YOU MEGAN!!!!

Back to the pumpkin patch...

On Saturday, Braydon and I took Landon back to Bellevue Berry and Pumpkin Patch to have a little more fun with our friends, Chuck and Pyper.  We wanted to go and get another pumpkin to carve for Halloween.  This time Landon was a big boy and wanted to hold Daddy's hand and walk.  He walked the majority of the time until he wanted to eat a snack while waiting for the hayride.  He had a good time riding on the hayride and looking around with Daddy.

For some reason Landon really enjoys jack-o-lanterns.  I think that's what he is trying to tell us here...

 Such a cute picture of Daddy and his little man

Fighting Daddy with some foam axes and thinking it's really funny! :)

On the hayride...

Landon, our big pumpkin to carve, and a bag of popcorn. :)

Braydon and I also celebrated 5 years of marriage on Saturday. :)  I can't believe it's been five years!  ....although some days it feels like 20! ;)  No, seriously, Theresa was nice enough to come and watch Landon for us on Friday night so that we could go out to eat.  We went way out of our comfort zone and went to a tapas bar called Espana.  It was actually really yummy!!!!  We definitely plan on going back!  Sometimes it pays off to try something new. :)  We sat at dinner and thought about how different our lives have become in five years and how much both of us have grown up and changed.  It's really hard to believe that we've only been married for five years because we've been through so much!!!  I'm so thankful for my husband.  He is definitely my rock and I don't know what I would do without him!  I love you dear!!!

I'm getting pregnant

Today I was reminded of how pregnant I am getting.  After running errands all morning, I went to pick up Landon from preschool.  As I was waiting for him to be released, I started to feel light-headed and dizzy.  I had to have Theresa drive home because I didn't want to drive feeling that way.  When I got home I laid down on the couch for about an hour before I felt okay enough to get up again.  Thank goodness for Theresa!!  I'm not sure what caused those feelings, but I'm going to be sure to tell Dr. NewMyer at my appointment next week.  For now I guess it's just a reminder to slow down.  I guess I'm gonna have to start taking it easy soon.  It's just so hard when you have 500 million things to do and a toddler in the house. :)

My favorite analogy...

I've seen this analogy in some handouts that teachers have given me over the past three years.  I thought I would share it cause it pretty much sums up the emotional experience that any parent feels when having a child with a disability.

Welcome to Holland

by:  Emily Perl Kingsley (1987)

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel.  It's like this.....

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy.  You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans.  The Coliseum.  Michelangelo's David.  The gondolas in Venice.  You may learn some handy phrases in Italian.  It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives.  You pack your bags and off you go.  Several hours later, the plane lands.  The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland!"

"Holland?!?" you say.  "What do you mean Holland??  I signed up for Italy!  I'm supposed to be in Italy.  All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan.  They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease.  It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books.  And you must learn a whole new language.  And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. 

It's just a different place.  It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy.  But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around....and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills, and Holland has tulips.  Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy...and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there.  And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go.  That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away...because the loss of that dream is a very, very significant loss.

But...if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things....about Holland.

Landon's learning his ABCs!

Landon is doing so well in school!  We're so proud of how far he has come!  In his class, his teacher goes through an alphabet book and says the sounds of each letter everyday.  Landon sits quietly in class and listens to Mrs. Sanders and his classmates say the sounds, but when he gets home he likes to show off his skills. :)  Here is a video I took today at lunch that shows some of what he has learned from the alphabet book:

As you can tell, not all of the sounds are what they should be, but I think Ashley is going to be pretty impressed with the progress he's made in the past couple of weeks. (We haven't seen Ashley for 2 weeks now due to a schedule change.)  We get to go see her next week and show her what Landon is doing.  She's gonna love it!!

We will also get to see Penny next week for our once a month appointment.  I think she's gonna be pretty impressed with Landon's climbing up the stairs.  Our nurse, Aggie, said that today Landon spent some time walking around on the wood chips on the playground all by himself!  I was impressed with that cause normally on uneven surfaces Landon will cling to anything that is stable.  I'm glad he's doing these things on his own and is wanting to explore more on his own.  :)

Also, we got to go see Chelli for the first time in a while.  She was very impressed with Landon.  We did a little bit of everything.  She had him color vertical and horizontal lines, make circles and even circle an object on the paper.  He exceeded her expectations!!  We did a little bit of cutting with scissors and matching some cookie shapes.  We played a ice cream color game and picked up bean bag pigs with these big scissor-looking things...they have the neatest toys there. :)

We also did a little bit of eating for Chelli.  She wanted to see how he was doing with biting and pulling things off of a spoon or fork.  Of course I had to fill her in with the hospital visit we had.  She was glad that everything is fine now and that Landon wasn't traumatized by it.  She did a little bit of applesauce on a spoon, and we had some graham crackers.  He also loved showing Chelli how well he was doing with drinking from a straw (especially since she gave him chocolate milk ;)...what can I say, he knows the good stuff ).  She said that the next time we have a break in school to give her a call and we could get fit in to see her again, otherwise he was looking really good.  I think a lot of the things they work on in school help him a lot!  Plus, the added incentive to do what your classmates are doing can't hurt either, huh?

Fall pictures

We were invited to go over our friends, the Roberts', house on Saturday.  My friend, Megan, is just getting into starting a photography business and invited all of her military friends to come over with their kids to take some pictures.  The kids would dress up in their Halloween costumes and have cupcakes.

With some bad luck with Kmart.com, I didn't get Landon's costume in time for him to wear it to Megan's. :(  But Megan urged us to come anyways, so I put Landon in a pumpkin shirt to be festive. :)  We had a lot of fun hanging out with all the kids (and the adults).  Megan took some pictures of us and I wanted to share some of these awesome pictures with everyone!

We also had some pictures taken with our friends Chuck and Pyper's little girl, Roslyn.  Chuck has been friends with Braydon ever since he's been in Nebraska.  He was in our wedding and our families have been close ever since then.  Here are a couple of pictures that Megan took of Landon and Roslyn.

After that, the kids got together for a group picture.  It turned out really cute.  Some of the kids had their costumes on, and some didn't, so it worked out that Landon didn't have his on.

 From Left to Right:  Landon, (in the wagon) Kalei, Tavin, Marcus, Emma, Caleb
On the ground:  Baby Makai, Khloe, and Roslyn

We had a lot of fun and want to give a big thank you to Megan for taking the time to take these pictures!!! :)