Catching Up

You wouldn't believe how I've spent my morning. This afternoon is the Pinewood Derby, and I'd said I'd bring treats for the kids. I ended up buying those Nilla Cakesters (like the soft Oreo Cakesters except yellow with white filling). Then I used sparkle gel frosting in a tube to draw a big red circle on the top, and blue to write a #1 in the middle of the circle. They actually turned out ok, except the first four, which I kind of messed up. So I'll save them for Scott and Ethan.

Poor Scott and Ethan, by the way, they're spending their day at the Klondike Derby. It started at 8:30 (they left the house at 7) and the scouts spend the whole time outdoors doing knots, fire-building, first aid, etc. Sounds a little like torture to me. It's only 26 degrees out right now, and it was much colder this morning. But my boys were well bundled up, and Ethan was pretty excited about it. It's a big area event and lots of different troops are involved. Makes my involvement in the Pinewood Derby seem extremely mild by comparison!

Noah is in watching a movie and singing along. Musicals are his all-time favorites. He just loves to sing and dance. Once I found him watching Mary Poppins, the scene where she tucks the kids into bed and sings to them. He'd tucked all of his little stuffed animals under a blanket and was singing to them. Too cute!

He's doing better with the behavior as well. We made a "Disney Chart." Disneyland (or world) is his favorite place in the world and he talks about it a lot. So every day that he gets a good report from school (all smiley faces on his daily schedule) he gets a sticker on the Disney Chart. It's a great motivation! When he fills the chart in he gets a trip to Disneyland. It's a pretty big chart, hopefully it will be full by the summertime!

Last weekend Ethan had a guitar recital. It was his teacher's idea, to get Ethan motivated to pass off "Minuet in G," which he'd been working on for too long. Well it worked, or should I say Ethan worked. He did great on the song, I'll try to post it here if I can, but it's on our gallery.mac.com/scottegarner site. I'm so proud of him! Now he's finished his first guitar book, after less than a year, and he's really excited to learn "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," which is in the second book. I'm also so glad he likes classical music and didn't want to learn the electric guitar!!!!!

I've been busy with stuff for my church calling as secretary of the Young Women's organization. I spent much of last Saturday at a volleyball tournament. I really love working with these great girls and seeing them get along so well together. Now I'm going to be teaching the 14-15 year olds. I'm still doing the secretary thing until they get someone to replace me. I'm also helping with teaching crocheting to the women's group, and I'm in charge of the "Lunch Bunch," a monthly get together (I'm going to be making it a service group as well, he he he). And don't even get me started about the Down syndrome group stuff, because it is drowning me. So a nice Saturday like this is a great time to try to do a little catching up, in more ways than one!

New Year, New Post

I can't believe half of January is over and I haven't posted a darn thing. Not that much has been going on, just getting back into the swing of school and work. Scott has been doing some traveling, to New York and London. He also has been playing a whole lot of tennis at the gym, which he loves. He's such a good example for me, and I so need to get my lazy self back into exercise mode. One of the many resolutions . . .

We have had one of the coldest winters ever. The kids had no school last Thursday or Friday because temps with the windchill were 40 below zero. So we hung out in the house and Ethan played with his buddies. Of all the Christmas presents the biggest hit has turned out to be the nerf blasters and nerf bow/arrow. The entire basement has become a war zone, and I'm always a little bit on my guard.

We recently had Noah's IEP meeting (almost 2 hours with all his teachers/therapists during which we discussed his progress to date and plans for the future.) How thankful we are for devoted teachers, people who felt called to work with kids with special needs. Noah is so blessed to be alive at a time when there are so many opportunites for kids like him. And he just loves school and his school friends.

Hope everyone out there is doing well!