Swine Flu

Emma has swine flu. The poor girl is so sick. Hopefully she will be better soon. The doctor said to plan on her missing the whole week of school though. Please keep her in your prayers for a speedy recovery.

Thank you,

Sue

Yearly Gotcha Day Celebration

Last Saturday we celebrated our 6th Gotcha Day with our adoption group. Sadly, two of the families were missing this year but we still had a great time. It is so much fun to see how much the girls have changed over the year. Emma is the only one in her group that hasn't lost any teeth yet. They all played so well together and had fun with the many activities that Mrs. Hurst had planned.

Pumpkin Painting

Face and Arm Painting

Yummy Gotcha Day Cake

Evan's favorite part!

Every year we have a professional photographer come to take pictures. He takes group pictures of the girls and then will take individual family pictures. He prints them out and gives them to you on the same day. He is just great. You can truly see how much the girls have changed having the pictures every year. What a blessing they all are to us.

My two cuties! Evan would look everywhere but at the camera.

Ba Ba, Jie Jie, Ma Ma and Di Di

A Stitch of my time...

As you know, once you have kids your previous hobbies usually get pushed to the back burner. Well mine certainly did. Last fall I started a quilt for a very special person to me, Cheryl Denz. She is a social worker that I started seeing with Evan while he was in early intervention. She specializes in behavior therapy and working through issues that come up when you are raising special needs children. The state pays for the therapy services and charges you a fee on a scale based on your income every month. Way less than the typical therapy costs for sure.

When Evan aged out of early intervention at the age of three Cheryl offered to continue seeing me at no charge until the end of the year. Remember, his birthday is in the middle of March so this was a huge burden taken away from me since paying for speech and OT weekly was going to be a huge burden for Doug and I. I was going to have to put my needs aside again with out her help. What a blessing she has been to me it's difficult to put into words. Adopting Evan and raising him has been the most difficult thing that I have ever done in my life. Cheryl has helped to make daily life a lot easier for me with her helpful suggestions and wisdom but mostly just listening to me express my feelings and telling me that they are normal and excepting them.

In March when I got laid off, I did have to quit seeing Cheryl. I am still at her office twice a week for Evan's music therapy and his music and play group. I also know that she is only a phone call a way. That is just the kind of person that she is and I am so lucky to know her.

So, back to last fall. I started a quilt for her to try to express my gratitude for her kindness. My sewing machine broke and needed several hundred dollars to repair it. Which we did. Then time got away from me and needless to say my free time evaporated when we added four additional therapies a week for Evan. Cheryl's quilt was not finished in time for Christmas, or in March when I had to stop seeing her. Finally last month, when Doug was on vacation, I took a vacation from driving Evan to school, picking him up from school, driving him to therapy appointments and driving Emma to gymnastics. You cannot believe how much time I had on my hands! I was able to spend hours each day working on the quilt. Below you will see the finished project. I actually had to quilt it as well since paying for someone else to do that is very expensive. This this date I have only quilted table runners. It was quite a challenge but I am so happy with the final product.

Cheryl liked it too. I am so glad. I hope that it show her just how much her kindness has meant to me and my family. Thank you Cheryl. We love you!!!

Sue

Happy Birthday Mom!

Happy Birthday Mom! I hope that you have a great day and many more birthdays to come. We love you.

Gotcha! 6 Years Later.

Six years ago Doug and I met this shy, sad yet beautiful little girl of 15 months. It was the happiest day of our lives. It has truly been a blessing getting to know this little girl who is no longer shy or sad but full of life. I can't wait to see what the future brings. Thank you God for the most precious of gifts!

Evan's first playdate

This is Evan and Lilly. They have become friends at their Music and Play group. So we thought that we would see how they would play outside of the group. Since both of them have some social play issues they mostly parallel played or played separately. I think that they both had fun though. Evan was kind enough to share his drink with Lilly. She is patiently waiting for her turn before us mommies put a kabash on their sharing.

Lilly, Brett and Emma eating their fun snack that Chrissy designed for them to create and eat.

The fun halloween snack. 1 oreo cookie. 4 pretzel sticks broken in half and two chocolate chips for eyes. Yum!

Evan was amazing at playing with the drum set. Enough to get a set at home? I am not sure, do they come with earplugs? His music therapist recommended a drum set to me a few weeks ago and he really did have fun. I will have to think about it some more.

Meeting an Idol

Today Emma and I spent several hours in the cool rain waiting to meet one of her idols. It was well worth it. She was so excited. See for yourself.