My Husband "Subvet" says that when our first son "Sonshine" was born the sun rose on our world, when our second son "Gator" was born the sun laughed and when our daughter "Sugars" was born all the flowers bloomed. That says it all.

"Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass...
It's about learning how to dance in the rain."
Anonymous

Your mind is the garden, your
thoughts are the seeds, the harvest can either be flowers or weeds. — William
Wordsworth

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

A Documentary about life with Autism

When Tracy Thresher has something to say, he uses his right index finger — and a special computer that gives voice to what he types. Hunched over the device, he begins.

Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap, tap....

Autism silences the 43-year-old Vermont man. He doesn't speak. But he has a message for the world about how people should think of people like him. So he taps it out.


"To think intelligence, even if you see wacky, goofy behavior. We are simply intelligence, shown in a different way," comes the robotic voice, broadcast out of his computer.

"It was hard growing up," said Thresher's mother, Susan Thresher, 62, of Barre Town. "It was difficult going to school and being shut in a room doing a puzzle, when you've got such intelligence upstairs that he couldn't explain to everybody,"


grab a tissue and read the whole thing!

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Back to being a bag lady....

I've mentioned before about how I'm a bag lady. For their birthdays this month Sugars and Gator got 2 puzzles each. Small 24 piece puzzles that they absolutely LOVE. But that adds up to 96 puzzle pieces floating around the living room!! So I stuck them in a ziplock bag to keep them together..

..which worked.....till hubby found Sugars with said ziplock bag on/over her head. SO! The question then became how to store the puzzles and yet not allow the kids to asphyxiate themselves. (Boxes were destroyed 4.6 min after being opened) Which put me at the sewing machine for about an hour tonight.


voila! a BAG!!


a zippered cloth bag, without handles or strings or anything else that the kids tend to use to cause harm. Just for storing all those puzzle pieces! Hooray!

Friday, March 25, 2011

The Box

So, Sonshine is studying habitats in science at school. Part of this is his first 1st grade project. He is supposed to decorate a shoebox representing the habitat of his choice from the 4 they're studying.


He chose "rainforest".


Now, according to Wikipedia, the difference between a rainforest and a jungle is the undergrowth. When there's a thick canopy of leaves overhead no light gets to the ground so there isn't much if any undergrowth. Where this canopy thins or is damaged light reaches the ground allowing for thick undergrowth called a "jungle".


Since I happen to have a good friend "Jungle Mom" who lived in the jungle/rainforest of Venezuela for 20 years as a missionary to the Ye'kwana tribe I actually have learned a fair bit about jungle living. At least as much as I care to learn because jungle life AIN'T for me!! I got her permission to use some of the pictures from her website along with those found on the internet and Sonshine and I went to town making his box!


First I took the fabric that I'd used to make the curtains and crib skirt for my kids' nursery and covered the outside of the box.

This is the overall inside view. In the background is Jungle Mom's Ye'kwana village. Then from upper left clockwise you have a 3 toed sloth, a red howling monkey, a fake coral snake, a blue poison dart frog, a silver backed gorilla, a tomato frog, and an Emperor Tamarin. The sloth and the howler monkey are in honor of Jungle Mom as she's talked about them many times.



In this shot you can see the fabric "tree leaves" that we cut out and glued to the top of our box.



On the left side here you have a macaw and 2 jaguars. Jungle Mom has told us about keeping macaws as pets and scary encounters with jaguars!



Down here on the bottom, with one (and only ONE) exception, is where Sonshine chose to put some of the different things Jungle Mom has talked about EATING in the jungle! Can you guess what the exception is?? **leave your guesses in the comments!**

from left to right there are: squirrel monkeys, tapir, palm grubs, crocodile, and a Calumma Parsoniia


On the right side is a portion of a picture Jungle Mom has of a gorgeous waterfall in the middle of the jungle. You can see the whole picture at the top of her blog.




So, many many thanks to Jungle Mom for being my bloggy friend these last 4 years. As you can see, I've learned many things from her! And boy was this an easy and fun project made so much richer for both Sonshine and me because of her friendship!

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Miracles!

I mentioned that I'd seen and photographed 2 miracles last week.

Here's the first one:

Gator boy at 8 days old.....



Gator boy turned Six Years Old!!
a very healthy and very happy BIG boy!

Here's the other:

Sonshine, has vestibular intolerance. For years and years and years we worked to get him to SIT on a swing.....a non-moving swing. He freaked out if the ground he was on wasn't completely solid and firm.

Yet here he is, age 7,

walking

across a

rope
bridge, all by himself. Without ANY prompting or encouragement from me!!

You can't imagine how cool it was to watch him do this oh-so-nonchalantly!!

Thank God for the miracles you see every day!!!

Monday, March 21, 2011

Spring Break!!

I've had so much fun the last couple weeks with my hooligans that I haven't taken the time to catch you guys up on our excitement! Sorry about that.



The first sign of Spring.....BLUEBONNETS in my front yard! HOORAY!!







and in my bed.....Hyacinths!









It's obviously time to weed the bed, huh?









Saturday before last we had Sugars' birthday party....Ms Big Suff is FOUR now!









She's soooo big she decided to make her bed all on her own.....while Daddy was washing her sheets.









Then we had Gator's birthday! His party will be this coming Saturday.









Here he's showing off his construction efforts.









Subvet was on retreat all weekend, so while I had the kids to myself I decided to take them out and about as much as possible.





First off we went to Chili's for a birthday lunch!







Quite the little food critic here.....see her bag of underwear and pants in the background?? We're getting there!










Then on Sunday we went back to the Heard Museum.....I just love this place! We went on a brand new (to us) trail and saw some great sights! This is going to quickly become my favorite trail as it's 1/2 mile loop, uphill to a ridge where you can see across the treetops, downhill into a gulley that's closed when it rains, and back. it was awesome.....and QUITE a workout!!





I made a few attempts to get a good pic of the three hooligans for my header since SOMEONE mentioned that Christmas was over....but here's the best I got, for some reason no matter where the sun was they just DIDN'T want to look at the camera that day.



First they're sitting by the tree that survived being struck by lightening.






Next, here they are standing by a 250 year old oak tree.



Kinda gives you a new perspective on those little irritants of the day, doesn't it?



Then we tried again on a bench back at the building.....



yeah, absolutely no luck at all.....


This is Celeste, he's a 27 yr old cockatoo that was whistling and chatting with us.....


We had a great time enjoying our 80 degree, sunny and breezy weather!


Today it's back at school for the boys, but sister has gotten herself another stomach bug so we're home pooping up a storm. I had to put her back in pullups because the diarrhea was SOOOO bad! I'm praying that it doesn't set her potty training back, sigh.



Last week I was able to see and photograph 2 miracles straight from God! I'll put those in another post so stay tuned!





If you haven't yet, please take a min and give a buck or 2 to March for Babies in honor of Gator, my NICU boy. I'll be walking 5 miles on April 16th and hope to raise money so that no other new moms have to leave the hospital without their babies. Tell all your friends to give too! Just go to www.marchforbabies.org/MightymomSarah to donate. Thanks!

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Productivity, and the recuperation from it.

Yesterday I was quite productive:

Served jury duty.....all 1.5 hours of it

Went out to breakfast with my husband

Pinned together my sister's quilt

Walked a mile in 21 min 18 sec

Spent 3/4 mile figuring out how to use the treadmill

Remembered why I HATE treadmills

Spent $60 on A tank of gas

Went to the quilt store and actually spent LESS THAN $10!! replacing my scissors and getting some more needles.

Went to a meeting of Lady Knights.


Today I'm wiped out! That was entirely too much productivity for one day!
Therefore I'm going to sit at home and do nothing all day!

Well, except eat a TON of sweets! It is Mardi Gras after all....

Oh, and start quilting my sister's quilt.....

Oh, and potty train Sugars!
(pray for me)


Maybe I'll have to recuperate tomorrow.....except.....

This week off isn't near as relaxing as I wanted it to be!


If you haven't yet, please take a min and give a buck or 2 to March for Babies. I'll be walking 5 miles on April 16th and hope to raise money so that no other new moms have to leave the hospital without their babies. Tell all your friends to give too! Just go to www.marchforbabies.org/MightymomSarah to donate. Thanks!

Friday, March 4, 2011

I'm Gonna Do It!!

I've known it was there forever.....

I've known I wanted to for six years....

I've known I could do it for over a year....

This year, I'm gonna DO IT!!

I'm gonna join my dear friend and fellow NICU Mom Shannon and Walk 5 miles in the Dallas March for Babies on April 16th!!

See that pic up there on my March of Dimes banner? That's my Gator-boy on his NICU graduation day!! For reference, it's my hand you see in the pic. And if you've never seen a NICU baby before, at 5 lbs and 5 oz he was considered BIG among the other NICU babies!!

Hard to believe that tiny thing is about to be SIX YEARS OLD!! **he's the stinker to the right on that Santa pic at the top**

So, if you'd donate I'd be grateful. I set my goal low to see what kind of response I get....I may up it later!

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Bring It ON!!!

As I was driving home this morning I saw that a neighbor had DAFFODILS BLOOMING in her yard!!!!


So I had to run and check my bed for signs of life......







Spring is sooo close!!
BRING IT ON!!!