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.

Update on Jayden

Jayden has been back in HeadStart for a few weeks now. I try to get the older kids' schoolwork done as much as possible in the morning while he is gone because he really wants our attention in the afternoon.

He's growing more and more each day, it seems. This picture brought tears to my eyes because it's the first time he has drawn more than squiggles, and he actually copied the teacher as she drew the picture next to him.

I got a letter from his doctor about the results from his MRI and bloodwork. Both were normal. The doctor said that kids on the autism spectrum usually got normal results on the MRI scan and blood tests. She wasn't ruling out autism- just ruling out anything else that might have been an issue.

In other good news, Jayden potty trained this summer! For a while I was skeptical that it would happen. He had issues with #2, but he did overcome with bribes of some Cars 2 toys. ;) He does wear a diaper at night, but he's been waking up dry many days, so we might finally be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. My daughter turns 9 this month, so we have been seeing about 9 straight years of diapers without any breaks.

I'm realizing that I haven't done much updates on the rest of my family, so I'll try to do a post later, but it's time to do some schoolwork with the kids!

Quoted from a Facebook Friend...

Being over 6' tall doesn't make you better it just makes you tall. Having an IQ over 120 doesn't make you more superior it just makes you intellectually smart. Autism doesn't make you less worthy it just makes you autistic. The neurosurgeon uses equipment made by a factory worker. We all have a role in this world, no role is more or less important.

I have had a lot of experience with Autism before I had my own child who falls on the Autism spectrum. My cousin has Asperger's. I've worked as a therapy technician with children and adults who had various developmental disabilities- including Autism. I worry how my child will be looked at by others. Even though I know that he's a great kid, and I have other people tell me what a great kid he is, I'm worried about future peers, co-workers, bosses, people in the community who might just see his Autism and not his good characteristics.

The other day at McDonalds, he was running around with a little boy the same age as him. He didn't play the same game that the little boy wanted him to play. The boy kept asking,"Why don't you want to play with me?" I explained to the boy that he was playing with him- just in his own way. But you can't really explain to a 4 year old about Autism. My 7 and 8 year old don't even really know much about Autism- just that they love their little brother even though he acts differently sometimes and annoys them by repeating things over and over again.

I know that we've come a long way in teaching other people about Autism, but there is still a long way to go. It's a lot like racism. A lot less people nowadays treat people differently because of the color of their skin than they did in MLK Jr.'s day, but there are still people today that are stuck in the old way of thinking. Times have certainly changed since the Autism label first came out, but there are still people who don't and won't understand Autism. I pray that knowledge will continue to grow and that people will realize just how much impact our special kids have on this world.

Thanks to my friend, Katheren Gomez, for capturing this great
picture of my guy.

MRI-me oh my

My little Cars fanatic with his two new friends that he earned by
going #2 on the toilet. ;)
It has been a while since I've updated on Jayden. In July, we drove to Spokane to see the Pediatric Neurologist. She did a great job with Jayden, all the more impressive since she is deaf. She confirmed that he is on the spectrum- on the high functioning side. She said that she wanted him to have an MRI and some blood tests to make sure that nothing else was affecting his brain.

Moving forward to this last Monday. We drove up Sunday night to Spokane again. This time we spent the night at a friend's house because our appointment was bright and early at 7 a.m., and I didn't want to have to drive for an hour and a half with a possible cranky kid who could have nothing to eat or drink since he had to be sedated.

We got to the hospital with no issues. Jayden hopped right into a Little Tyke's police car they had out for kids going into surgery. One of the perks of having this done at a children's hospital. We were able to get Jayden onto the scale with little fight- which was a good thing. For some reason, he normally balks at stepping on the scale. He even allowed the nurse to take his temperature and blood pressure- although, he hated it when the cuff got tight(not that I blame him).

He watched t.v. while we reviewed all of his health information. The nurse gave him the medicine to reduce anxiety and give him amnesia(I was secretly hoping for my own dose of the stuff). After he drank the medicine he said, in a deceivingly happy voice,"Yummy!" and then proceeded to make a face like Mr. Yuk. After a while, the stuff started kicking in, and he slumped over in my arms.

Next, they brought in a Child Life specialist to distract him while they did his I.V. and his bloodwork. Even though they put numbing cream in the spot a bit earlier, he did say,"Owie!" He kept trying to look over at what they were doing while the CL specialist held a book up in front of his face and turned on a toy that lit up and spun around. He settled down when she put it on his stomach because he liked the vibration that it made. I'm going to have to get one of those toys for him.

This was taken when the medicine had really kicked in. I thought all would be okay after this. Well, they had me come with him to the MRI room. We had to wait out in the hall for a bit, and he started getting restless and was trying to pull out his i.v. Well, the tears that I had tried to hold in for a while came out again. They got him on the table and started the medicine to knock him out. I watched them hook him up to the monitors and hold his chin up and suction him out so he could breathe okay. It reminded me of when I did child/infant CPR classes, and I started crying more because he looked so lifeless on the table. The anesthesiologist reassured me that he would be okay, and I knew he would. I wanted to say that I was really just emotional because of the reason we were here in the first place, but I just nodded and sniffled.

I went down to the cafeteria and got a coffee slushie and some fruit and a bagel, and headed back up to the waiting room. I saw all the people waiting for their children or waiting with their children for their own surgeries. I wondered if these children had it worse than Jayden. After all, Jayden is healthy. I have to be grateful for that.

They brought me back to the recovery room, and I took this last picture of him before we woke him up. The nurse was really friendly, and she had a cute British accent. We tried to rouse the very tired boy as we talked about our daughters and their experiences getting their tonsils removed, and the fact that the final episode of the Bachelorette was on that night. We finally got Jayden awake enough to eat some crackers and drink some juice. She gave me the discharge instructions, and Jayden and I were wheeled out to the van.

He slept most of the way home- even as we were stuck in traffic on the highway where there was a car accident. We stopped at the rest stop along the way, and he proved that potty training is still going well- even though he was too loopy to be able to walk or stand upright. And yes, Jayden is finally potty trained! Well, during the day at least.

So now, we are waiting to hear back on results. I will probably give them a call tomorrow since they said 3 days for results. I'll update sooner than a couple of months this time. ;)