Gifts From a Friend

I love it when the boys get matching outfits, but often I am not the ones who find the best ones.  When our friend visited from Minnesota, she brought the boys Minnesota twins shirts.  And another friend was at the store and saw these PJs with diggers on them and thought of Travis.  And then I got the best picture with Travis being the casual big brother throwing his arm around Justin.  Love my cute boys!

Last Chemo!

Another highlight of the week before last was my mom's last chemo treatment.  So we planned a nice dinner complete with cake as a treat.  Please don't mock the cake.  I...had...help...

Fence Building

One of the things that happened during my reading hiatus was building our neighbor's fence.  The same neighbors whose yard we cleaned up during Be the Church Day.  It was actually this project that started the plan to clean up the yard too.  That's usually how it starts!  One thought leads to even more and then it's beyond what we could ever possibly do!  Thankfully we have a very service-minded church and we had a fabulous crew of dedicated workers to help us complete this project.

I started the day pounding over the nails from the posts that we removed so we could put them out for the garbage men since it was trash day and they come early in the morning.  I was able to get all the old posts ready for disposal, plus a few other parts of the fence before the garbage trucks came.  Justin helped a bit too!

Travis helped put the new posts in.  He wore his hard hat again all day long.  We had great weather for fence building.  And our neighbor's yard is very shaded so that was helpful too!

The process was very methodical.  These guys have done this before!  They laid out the line for the posts and then started in with the auger, and then the post crew came through.

This is Rick.  He's one of the elders at our church.  He's Travis' new best friend.  And he's my friend too because he let me use power tools.  Cordless circular saw... so...much...fun!

We worked in crews around the yard when in came time for pickets.  We each did one side and two crews worked the long side in towards the middle.  It actually worked surprisingly well!  And we were able to move fairly quickly.

Except for when we needed several supervisors.  When the supervisor needs a supervisor, we're in for trouble!  Getting started was the hardest part, I will give you that.  The side that Rick is leaning on was the side that I worked on and Jimmy (the first supervisor) worked with me.  It was a hard because we put the pickets on the far side, the side with all the bushes.  Not good planning on our part!

This is the only proof I have that I actually helped.  Rick took my picture since he didn't like that I took the last one.  I did a lot of clean up.  Boys are very messy you know!  The leftover pieces became Travis' play things.  He built himself a wall in our yard.

This is the side that Jimmy and I did when it was finished.  I amazed myself.  And wouldn't you know it, it's still standing!

We finished in the early afternoon and so here's the guys being entertained by Travis.  And those large piles of leftover supplies?  That's for OUR fence!  That's coming next week.  The guys are coming back for round #2!  Everyone survived with only a couple of bruised hips from a runaway auger.

The day was an awesome testament to the way the Lord works.  He used us to do great things for our neighbors.  I am really glad that we did it, even though it was a lot of work.  Somehow I just know our fence isn't going to go near as fast.  (I might already know something you don't, trust me on this...)

Good Times

I love the library.  I am pretty sure most people know that.  I believe all my tax dollars go to libraries.  That, and roads to get to libraries. :)  There are so many things that make libraries great: all the free books I could ever want to read, super friendly librarians, preschool story time, books on tape/CD, and on and on.  These days my very favorite part of the library is the Hold Shelf.  I can browse the card catalog from my home and magically all the books I want appear in envelopes with my name on them!  It's like Christmas opening that envelope and peeking inside to see what treasure awaits.  I love it!

Sometimes though, it works out that several books magically appear at the same time, and being highly desirable they cannot be renewed so they must be read, and read quickly.  Last week that happened.  Three books and a movie all converged in the pretty blue envelopes at the same time.  So this past week I have been reading.  And not blogging.  That's why the dry spell.  I am trying to make it up (and back dating to fill in the gap) so please be patient with me.  And if you're interested, the books were great:  I Will Carry You, Water for Elephants, and The Help.  All amazingly different, but good in their genre.  Historical fiction is my fave, and The Help is awesome.  I Will Carry You is not to be read outside the walls of one's own house because nearly every page brings heart wrenching tears.  Buckets, in my case.  And Elephants I liked for the historical part of it, and the love story was enjoyable too.  I probably won't see the movie though, at least until it comes out on DVD.  (You know movies always ruin books!  Except in the case of John Grisham books/movies, but that's another story...)

So now I will attempt to fill in this past week in real life, the world outside my fantasy book life...

Test Results

We have heard back about several of Justin's recent tests.   Here's the word:

1. The thyroid tests are basically the same.  TSH is high but T3 and T4 still in range, so no treatment required at this time.  Just more monitoring and back in four months.
2. The nutrition tests all came back great.  All of Justin's levels are well within range which means he is absorbing what he's eating and it's all sufficient.  Also, the CBC came back fine.  (Always checking for leukemia...)
3. The speech evaluation was the only disappointment.  Miss Sarah thought he would be close to the "normal" range, but instead his number was 70.  (Normal being 85-110 or so, I think.)  He does really well in receptive language, but the one part he didn't do as well was the picking out specific parts of things or differentiating between two similar things (like "Point to the girl's sock" or "Point to the wheel on the car")  The test requires very specific verbage and that is what flubbed him a bit.  Of course his expressive is still behind.  She has started working on some vowels with some sticks.  The are different thicknesses and when you bite them you can only make a specific sound (we're talking vowels mostly I think).  She showed us the "e" one today and it's like a plastic popsicle stick.  It's actually very funny looking, but we'll see how it works.

Also, we heard from the sleep center and Justin has an appointment for an evaluation next month.  Very glad about this!

Save the Date

The 2011 Buddy Walk will be December 3!

And we are moving to a new location - Minute Maid Park Diamond Lot!

Mark you calendars and plan to join us for our fourth Buddy Walk.  It will be a huge event, and even more special because it's Justin's first Buddy Walk as a real walker!

Tidbits

Some little tidbits that make our lives unique!

• My mom is almost finished with chemotherapy.  Only one more to go!  And her hair is beginning to grow back.  She has the softest little peach fuzz all over her head.
• The garbage men came to pick up our pile of Be the Church Day trash.  One of our other neighbors, who couldn't help on Sunday, sat outside for over two hours keeping watch for the garbage men to ensure our piles would be picked up.  When they said that we had piled it the wrong direction (up the driveway rather than down the street) he help me move the pile so they would get it on their second pass.  Some of those bags were very heavy and starting to rip.  And did I mention it rained yesterday??  He is amazing.  He's the one who cleaned up our yard after Hurricane Ike while we were still in the hospital after Justin's surgery.  We are so blessed!
• We have been trying to get in some extra speech therapy sessions and our amazing Miss Melissa got us in for two extra sessions over the next few weeks.
• We have been making doughnut bread pudding from all our extra doughnuts that our Doughnut Lady gives us.  We put them in a bag in the freezer until it's full and then we make up a batch.  When Travis told her what we've been doing she looked confused so this time when we made some we brought it to her.  She was so sweet and thankful so she gave us more doughnuts!  And kolaches!  My mom decided that we would never get ahead!
• We are reading the last of the Little House on the Prairie series (The First Four Years).  Travis loves them.  He always wants to read the "Laura and Mary" books.  The other night Randy turned on the video monitor and we listened to him saying all the names of the family:  "Pa...Ingalls....... Ma...Ingalls... Ca..rrie...Ingalls... Grace...Ingalls..."  We laughed!
• Justin just had his re-evaluation for speech therapy and without having scored it, Miss Sarah said that his receptive language was almost in range for his age!  She was really impressed.  I was just thinking about that the other night, that it really seems like Justin understands most everything we are saying.  And he will respond to the best of his ability.  We keep asking him how old he is and he puts up all his fingers on one hand because the finger isolation is too difficult for him.  But he really tries!  He lets us help him do his fingers right, and then he can't hold it so then he laughs!  Super cheesy!
• We are only a few short days from welcoming our new little nephew into the family!  Thatcher is due in 15 days and counting!
• We are getting another new family member this fall when my brother marries his girlfriend, Olivia.  We are excited to do some leaf peeping up in Pennsylvania for the October festivities.