Party Time!

I have for the last few year put considerable time and effort into making great birthday party memories for K.  This year was no exception. It took three days to make the pieces for his cake, but I think it turned out pretty good.

 

We held the party at a hotel pool, where we absolutely love to have his parties.  Lots of his friends came and much wet fun was had by all.

Happy 9th Birthday!

Wow!  Has it been 9 years already!  Happy Birthday K!  K has picked an Angry Bird Space theme for his birthday this year.  We will be having a party and celebrating with friends soon.  For today there was a partial solar eclipse, couldn't miss the universes celebration of K's big day. So we drove over to Minnesota to a university where they set up telescopes with the proper viewing filters to watch.  Low key celebration, but still one he enjoyed.  Love you K!

Swimming Lessons

K has been taking swimming lessons at the same place since kindergarten. Knowing that we will be moving in a few months I wanted him to get one last set of lessons in.  We have sure enjoyed all the lessons he has received here. Hopefully we can continue taking lessons wherever we may go.

Changes

Changes are coming, big ones...just not sure where.  This is my last year of school, after graduation hopefully a job. So interestingly enough my first offer is for the hospital I was working at as a pharmacy technician before being accepted to NDSU.  The second is for the pharmacy in my hometown in Kansas.  As well as I have a few applications out here in this area.  Of course we would love to stay where we are.  We love this community, have a place to stay, K has friends he has gone to school with for almost 4 years.  But we will have to see what plays out.  I was able to travel out to the western side of the state for an interview, and as luck would have it I  was able to bring a friend along for an interview as well.  At this point decisions will still need to be made, we will need to see what offers come, and make the best move for our family.  But one thing is for sure changes are coming.  So here are a few pictures of my grandkids and K for your viewing pleasure and a few that I got because not only is our life changing, but the seasons are changing as well.

Cub Scouts

K is now a Wolf Scout and we have been working hard. This was our first year to participate in the Pinewood Derby. I love his car, it was his and DH's own design. Unforturnately the car got bumped before the race and the alignment got off. We had fun anyway! The next picture is a costume that K made for a play his group put on. He is a robot space alien butler.  Then his awards at the Blue and Gold banquet, he really worked hard!

A little sledding ...

I am really bad about not going sledding. I know that K will love it, but I still can never seem to find the time or desire to take him. Knowing that we might be moving on later this year, I decided I could brave the cold for a little while. There was definitely a lack of people, but K had fun and that is what is important.

Holland

I have read a story several times about a mom who plans to go to France, but somehow ends up in Holland. I am not going to share the whole story here, but we have officially landed in Holland. As many of you know K has had his share of struggles. He has been receiving special education services since he was three. We discovered two years ago that he had some big vision problems, so we began vision therapy. We were hoping that we would see some real progress in his schoolwork as we began to correct these problems. K has made a lot of progress with his vision therapy, but we are not seeing it translate into his schoolwork. Up to this point K has been considered speech-delayed. What was not clear was if the speech delay was causing the other delays we were seeing or if the other delays were causing his speech delay. So on top of everything else he has been tested for since his seizure, we took him to be tested for an auditory processing delay. The testing showed no auditory processing delays, but did show that there was possibly a global processing delay. They said that the halves of K's brain do not communicate as well as they should. The school did a complete evaluation and K is now officially considered learning disabled. This has been kind of hard for me to accept without blaming myself, I feel very guilty that maybe there was more I could have done. I know this is probably normal. It appears that K is average in most areas, but that he has a problem with his working memory that is affecting everything. This does not mean he has memory problems per say, he has a great memory. He is always randomly telling stories, replaying scenes from shows, but this is all random. His problem appears to be recalling specific information at a specific time to complete tasks. At this point we really have no idea what all of this will mean for his future. I never expected these things when I was pregnant. But I didn't expect all of the health problems he has had since he was born. So while I did not make it to France, I love Holland. I would not trade my wonderful, brilliant little boy for anything. At the end of the conference, we asked what we should do if we move this summer. I was very happily surprised when his teachers and principal responded with, "you can't take our K away!" So it is not just me who sees how wonderful he is. So with that let's go look at the tulips!

Bowling

I almost forgot about bowling. K is in the Wolf scout program and bowling was a belt loop activity and an elective activity. So we practiced at home on the WII, went over all the rules, and practiced some more. So during Christmas break we decided it was time to play a real game. Thanks B family for coming and having some fun with us!

Christmas Break Fun

We did not do much over the break, but I did manage to fit in one fun activity. K and I went out to the Governor's Inn to go swimming. We always enjoy it and I wish we could go more often. They had actually remodeled everything since we were last there, which made it even more fun.