Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Great weekend

I can't believe it's all ready Tuesday evening. Friday we went to dinner with the Southards and then to the movies to watch Horton Hears A Who. The kids absolutely loved it! And considering that we had 7 kids in all they were all very well behaved. I think my favorite part of the whole movie was the end when they started singing. I was laughing hysterically because the first thought that popped into my mind was Dave and the kids and I playing the American Idol game and singing. We got home at about 8:30 and had their 3 oldest girls spend the night. You know that smell when you walk past a nail salon? That was my living room, you figure 5 girls doing each other's fingernails and toenails, the smell got pretty bad.

Saturday Dave taught diving all day and got home around 4pm. The kids and I did some chores and just hung out the rest of the day. After Dave came home and showered we headed out to the Fischer's house for a get together. Elijah was in all his glory because they had a bounce house, where he literally spent the whole evening, except when we made him come out for dinner. The girls liked jumping a lot too, but they also enjoyed running around the yard with the other kids.

Sunday morning we left the house at 8:30am for church. We stayed after church for a fellowship meal, which was a good by to Lisa's son who is leaving for boot camp this week. After that we went straight to the Kites for Wishes at Asan beach, to benefit Make a Wish society. Elijah's cub scouts met there to make a newspaper kite to fulfill one of their electives. While we were there we saw a bunch of really neat kites, the kids each got to purchase a kite and they also jumped in the bounce houses. I don't know how they could want to bounce more after the night before but they literally begged me. I never realized but the kids had their first sno-cones that day, which they loved.

Monday was pretty uneventful. I watched Mim for Jennetta so she could go to physical therapy. Other than that I did some cleaning.

This morning I spent 2 hours getting my hair colored. I'm not 100% pleased with the final color, hopefully it'll calm down a bit after a few washings. Then we had Junior Girl Scouts this afternoon. Jennetta is teaching the girls about first aid so they can earn that badge. At next weeks meeting we will hand out the badges and patches they've earned since we had the investiture ceremony. Then tonight Kerrie and I scrapped, I finished a cute project that I'll upload when I get it photographed.

Not much going on tomorrow just grocery shopping during the day, then Hannah has Girl Scouts in the evening.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Cubscout Blue & Gold



More Photos



World Thinking Day



I did it!


I said I wanted to make a project this week and I did. Dave was teaching dive class last night so I parked myself in front of the tv and put this together.

More Questions....

Monday's doctor appt. went well. She had a ton more questions for us and needed us to fill out another survey. I dropped that off today and she thinks she's ready to do her write up. I'm figuring we'll hear something in the next 2 weeks or so.

Sunday, March 09, 2008

Me

I've let too much go lately. Between Girl Scouts, Dr. Appts. and School Meetings I haven't done anything I enjoy. It's been months since I've scrapped or taken photos just because. I want to get started on at least one project this week. I don't even have to complete it, just start. I so need the creative outlet, way too much stress lately.

Dr. Day Again

Tomorrow we'll find out the results of Elijah's testing. I really hope by some gift of God that the test was enough and she's ready for a diagnosis, and we don't have to do any more testing. Mostly for him, I just want him to start getting the help he needs.

Interesting Meeting

We had a very interesting meeting at the school on Tuesday concerning Elijah. It all started Friday after school when the Guidance counselor called and spoke to Dave, she said "It's time we sit down and see what we can do to help Elijah." Of course our immediate thought is NOW IT'S TIME? It wasn't time last year, or the year before when we asked for help and were told we were looking for a problem that didn't exist. We were so angry Friday, but we thought about it over the weekend and decided that we need to just bite our tongues. It isn't about us it's about Elijah and rehashing the past isn't going to help him, it'll just put us against them. For a little assurance I decided that we would record the meeting, since noone remembers last years meeting the same way Dave and I do. Of course I had to let them know my intentions and stopped in Monday morning to let them know and also smooth over the angry responses we had on Friday, I really wanted to set us up to succeed in this meeting.

Did I mention over the weekend we tried to buy a mini tape recorder? Uh, it you only need the tapes, no problem the Navy Exchange carries those, but no recorders. We ended up using the girls MP3 player with a desktop microphone attached. I was worried about the quality, since the only microphone I could find was a cheep $5.99 one, but it cam out very crisp.

So Dave and I go there on Tuesday, I was nervous about the outcome of this meeting. It was kind of like entering the twilight zone.It's amazing what a difference having a teacher on your side can make. Suddenly everyone was seeing everything that we've been saying for the last few years. The special ed teacher, who's Elijah's teacher has been getting ideas from this year, tells us that she's been watching Elijah since Kindergarten when she had an encounter with him during an evacuation drill. We even had the Principal in for the meeting. We were told more than once that we're doing the right thing, that we were our son's advocate, blah blah blah. It was a total 180 degrees from last year. Suddenly everyone in the room could see a diagnosis of Aspergers fitting him very well. Although they did have to cover themselves and say that because Elijah is so intelligent and can do his work, just not in the time they provideed or without redirection, that it's not a obvious as some children that he needs help. Of course I didn't bring up that that was why we brought it up the last two years in a row, whatever.

So basically here's waht it all came down to. We're supposed to let them know as soon as we have a diagnosis from the Dr. The Special Ed teacher made them concede to saying that no matter the diagnosis they were sure there was something they could do to help him. They gave me a copy of all kinds of things out of his record, lots of things that I hadn't seen or heard before.

Girl Scout Week

Girl Scout week is the week during which March 12th falls every year because that's when Juliette Gordon Low registered the first Girl Scout Troop in 1912. This year we are celebrating 96 years of Girl Scouting in the USA. We kicked it off this Saturday with a Girl Scout 5K, put together by one of the troops on island, around Paseo Loop at 6am. Nobody in my house was very happy to get up at 5am, but we did it. We didn't complete the entire 5k, but we did 4 of the 6 laps which was 2 miles, not bad for our first 5k.

Today is Girl Scout Sunday, so the Girls wore their uniforms to church this morning. They're the only Girl Scouts at our church so they enjoyed telling everyone why they had on their uniforms.