My Year in Review- 5th and Final Part!

So this brings me to the last few months of the year.

October brought more soccer- in colder and wetter weather.

It also brought the end of the season

which made me feel weird not having to chauffeur kids around almost every day.

The amazing woman, Sonia Todd, finished her struggle here on earth, and went to party in heaven on the 14th.  She left behind a great legacy.  She wrote her own obituary that touched many as it was widely published.  You can read it here.

Kyrie turned 10 and had a glow-in-the-dark birthday party:

Then there was Halloween

Red Angry Bird, Green Helmet Pig and Fairy

Yuki even got in on the fun:

November

Love this time of the year!

What a difference a year makes!

We celebrated Thanksgiving a little later this year as I had to work the Apple Cup(Go Cougs!), and Grandma Rollins came to visit, so we waited to celebrate with her.

December

The month flew by, and Christmas was the biggest happening.

Yuki has grown a lot, too!

So, that's our year in a nutshell.  There's a lot more that I could have included, but I didn't want to bore everyone, and I need to do some last minute things before we go ring in the new year at church tonight.  In two more days, we'll be making the journey to visit my mom again and send Mark to his conference in Vegas.  We're hoping that this journey will be one without incident.  As much as our accident this year has brought us together as a family, I think there are other ways we can grow this year.

Thanks for reading!  May God bless you and yours in the year to come!  Happy New Year!

My year in review Part 4

In July,

We did the usual parades and firework show at the park.  Jayden and Mark stayed at home during the fireworks because neither of them like big crowds, and Jayden isn't fond of loud noises.  But he did enjoy doing sparklers-

The older two had the privilege of being a flower girl and ring bearer in the wedding of their Sunday School teachers.

In August, 

Mark and I celebrated our 14th anniversary.  Can't believe it's been that long.  

Looking forward to many more...

The older two and I went and camped at a nearby park to watch the meteor shower.  A last minute idea, and I was setting up the tent in the dark, but we had a blast!

And my baby started Kindergarten!  

He's full-inclusion in his classroom- and just pulled out for Speech therapy.  He has Occupational therapy, but they come in the classroom to work with him, so he can still continue to be a part of the class.  He has a great aide that helps him and another boy in the class, and she is great about communicating how his day went, so that is a big relief to me.  He is doing well in school, and is in the 1st grade level reading group.

We started school with the older two in September

Age-wise, Kyrie is in 4th grade, and Isaiah is in 3rd.  Kyrie is doing 7th grade pre-Algebra, and Isaiah is doing 5th grade math this year.  They were both a year ahead in Language Arts last year, but after our car accident, I took things a bit slower, so they are finishing up at grade level.  The on-line school is allowing me to do their Science and History together, which makes it much easier on me- not having to teach the same subject twice.  

The kids started getting busy in scouting again

I helped my friend celebrate the last birthday she would celebrate, because she was dying of cancer.

She was so vibrant and full of life at the party.  It was hard to believe that she was dying.

Kyrie and Isaiah started playing soccer.  They loved it!

And the biggest event in September?  We got a new family member!

There was a litter of puppies down the street that Kyrie(and the rest of us) had fallen in love with.  We didn't have plans to get another dog so soon, and all the puppies had homes.  The person taking care of the puppies was going to keep Yuki.  Kyrie continued to go and play with the puppies when they were outside every day, and the owner informed us that he was going to be leaving for boot camp soon, and his wife didn't want to be raising a puppy while he was away.  Would we like to keep Yuki?   Well, it didn't take long for us to make that decision!

This cute little thing joined our family on September 26th.  We're in love- even though we had to go through all the nuances of a puppy.  It was like having a newborn- getting up in the middle of the night, and a toddler- potty training, pulling things out of her mouth and keeping her out of trouble- all over again.  

Well, that's it for tonight.  Hopefully the last installment will be finished tomorrow before we ring in the new year!

My Year in Review- Part 3

Now we are at May.

I got some cute pictures of the kids- thanks to my dear friend, Katheren Gomez

 Jayden rode the bus for the last time to school since he graduated from Headstart, and the school where he attends Kindergarten is too close for bus service.  It's too bad, since he really enjoyed riding the bus.

The kids wrapped up their studies, and we had graduation ceremonies in Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts

Kyrie bridged from Brownies to Juniors

Isaiah moved up to Bears

Kyrie won Jr.Cougar VIP, and got some tickets to the baseball game.  She brought Isaiah and her friend, Alina, along.  She also got her picture on the big screen, but we didn't see it.

June

Cub Scout Day Camp was lots of fun!

And now for another rough patch in our year...

Our first baby wasn't actually Kyrie, it was our Chocolate Lab- Padme.  She had been a faithful and loyal companion to us for 14 years.  In the last year, I had seen her age catch up with her(although, she could still be energetic at times).  Her back legs started giving out on her, and it got to the point where we had to practically carry her up our front steps.  In June, we made the heart-wrenching choice to put her to sleep.  When I watch Marley and Me, I bawl like a baby because it reminds me of Padme and our family.  She was a great dog.

Taken the day before we took her to the vet.

We left home for a couple of weeks to spend some time in Seattle with Grandma Rollins, and we got to hang out with Auntie Kim 

and Uncle Manny

as well as other friends.  The kids took their first trip(and also mine) to Chuck E. Cheese's.

After our visit in Seattle, we then made our way down to Oregon to visit my Auntie Patty.  She's not blood related, but she has been friends-close enough to be sisters with my mom since they were young.  My Aunt Pat has blessed us incredibly with letting us use her time share credits to various places, and we decided that we should spend some time with her.  We had a fun time going on hikes on Upper and Lower Table Rock in Central Point.  We enjoyed playing with her dogs, and the dogs she cares for at her kennel.  They helped take away the pain of losing our own pet.

Mark and Jayden saying goodbye to Dozi.

We decided that our trip back home would go up through the center of Oregon- with a stop at Crater Lake.  

It was so beautiful there- even if it was cold and snow was still on the ground and blocking half of the rim at the end of June. The lake really is THAT blue!  I wish we had more time there.  Hopefully we will go back someday.

My Year in Review Part 2

In February, Isaiah turned 8

My great friend, Katheren Gomez helped me throw him an Angry Birds birthday party and took pictures and was basically all-around-awesome to us while we were recovering.  She let us use her vehicle while she was away(and wouldn't you know it, someone rear-ended my husband and daughter while in that vehicle?  Fortunately, everyone was okay, and the person who crashed into them had insurance that covered the damage).

March brought lots of snow and sleet and rain and flooding.  It also brought lice to the heads of myself and Kyrie- not a fun experience.  It brought lots of drawings from Kyrie, who started getting into anime drawing.

Kyrie also did lots of selling of Girl Scout cookies

April was Easter...

Mark's book came out-

I went back to work for the first time after our accident.  I work for Crowd Management Services at sporting events, concerts and other events held at the two universities here.  The event that I worked at was the Kelly Clarkson concert.  Love her!

We got a new vehicle- 2007 Dodge Grand Caravan with sun roof and automatic sliding doors and trunk.  It was so nice not having to rely on others to drive us around anymore, and felt like a big step in our healing since the accident.

And the last big event of April was that Jayden turned 5.

My baby is growing up.

More to come in the next installment!

My Year in Review part 1

    I haven't done a very good job keeping up my blog, and I haven't been good about sending out Christmas cards or Christmas letters, so everyone can consider this my one big Christmas card/year-end update.    A lot of things happened this year, so I'm going to break it up into parts for easy reading/easy composing.

Our year started off with a bang- literally.  We made the trek down to SE Idaho to see my family and to send Mark off to his Vegas CES conference  in January.  On the 15th of January, we were making the voyage back home.  We were originally going to start off early in the morning since it takes 10 or 11 hours for us to drive from there to here.   Our plans were delayed a bit since Jayden and I had been sick- throwing up during the night. By the afternoon, the vomiting had stopped, so we decided to chance it.  I hunkered down in the middle row of our van with Jayden and some bags in case we experienced aftershocks.  Jayden and I fell asleep quickly after we started off.  The next thing I knew, I woke up to the sound of a bang, and saw the road coming up at us.

I'm not sure how many times we rolled, but I know it was several.  Thankfully, we didn't crash into any other vehicles.  Mark and I were Life Flighted to Boise, and the kids were taken by ambulance to a county hospital before they were reunited with us in Boise- thanks to my mom and sister coming up to get them and our stuff out of our now heap of scrap metal.  The kids ended up with bruises and lacerations.  Kyrie needed staples in her scalp.  Jayden broke his humerus-  thankfully it was not bad enough to need surgery or a cast.  They gave him a splint and a sling, but it didn't hold him back.  The worst injuries were sustained by Mark and me.  Mark had a small brain bleed that healed on its own, but he was sedated in the ICU for a day.  He received a cut on the back of his head that they superglued.  I broke a few ribs and my ankle- along with a laceration on my face requiring stitches, and bruises and other lacerations.  I was in the hospital a couple of days, and Mark was in for a day longer.  My mom took the kids back to her house and cared for them while we were recovering in Boise.  I'm grateful to friends in Boise who brought us into their home and took us back to Pocatello to be reunited with our children. We had more nice people who drove from Boise down to Pocatello to pick us up and drove us back up to Pullman.

Over the past year, we have all recovered from our injuries, although we still have some physical scars and the emotions still well up when thinking back on it.  I was just looking back at pictures and reading all the comments left on my Facebook wall, and my eyes start to well up all over again.  I definitely felt loved and supported through the whole thing.  We had very generous friends who saw that we were well taken care of,  and I'm so grateful for them!

The tire that started it all...

Our poor Honda Odyssey

Looking at these pictures really makes me glad that our whole family survived, and with injuries not as severe as they could have been.

So that was the beginning of our year of 2012.  I'll be adding more to our family's year soon, so check back!  And treasure your loved ones, and the time you have with them.   I've treasured our family moments even more this year since we went through this experience.