No picture I snapped could adequately do justice to the sublime happiness of our little Jack-Jack. Daddy's boy through and through!!!
During General Conference I was struck by the many talks devoted to the family. I particularly loved Elder Wirthlin's talk about having fun with your family, and choosing to make happy, wonderful memories together. (I laughed my head off at his story about his daughter and the babysitter mixup!!!) This sparked the conversation with Brad that we need to do more things together as a family. The time with our kids is just slipping by too quickly and I don't want to regret anything about this time when the kids are grown in just a few short years. We often ask in our family prayers that we can "live without regret" so I'm really trying to do that.
Saturday there were the usual 1001 things to be done around the house and yard, and I needed to run over to the church for a RS Super Saturday activity, so Brad put Jack and Kate on the lawn mower with him and they cruised around the yard mowing and picking up leaves. The kids thought it was the greatest thing! Todd dumped flower pots, swept leaves off the cement, etc. so by the time I got home the yard was looking great. We ate some lunch, went to the pumpkin patch to find the perfect pumpkins, then decided to take a drive to Albion to look at the old Normal School Campus which has recently been transformed into a hotel/convention/reunion site. (You should definitely browse their website or come up and take a tour -- it is an awesome spot. They two couples that bought it have done a fantastic job thusfar.) It was so fun to spend the day talking, laughing, playing I-Spy, and just being together.
Once home, we baked a chocolate pumpkin tart (I'll post the recipe later), painted pumpkins, and made cheesecloth ghosts. Todd also painted a paper mache mask like an alien for a scout project. We were TIRED by bedtime -- but it was a great kind of tired.
Jack has had a veritable word/sentence explosion lately -- unfortunately it is still fairly difficult to understand. So with a little help from my visiting teachers (both of whom have had children with the same types of problems) I was able to contact a childhood development center that could help Jack. They came to the house and played with Jack for about an hour to evaluate his cognitive/motor/language abilities. They were so great with him! He had a ball playing with them, showing off, and really trying to mimic everything they said and did. It was so cute to watch him have such a fun time. They just loved him and kept saying what a doll he was. In fact, they ended up staying and playing with him about twice as long and they usually do because they were having so much fun with him. :)
At the end of the session one of the therapists said he is SO smart. Cognitively and in terms of fine and gross motor skills he is way above his peers, but he is just having difficulty with articulation. I had basically thought the same thing, but it was good to hear from a professional. She referred him to an articulation therapist at Cassia Regional Hospital in Burley. We will be going there for an evaluation tomorrow morning and then should be able to start therapy very soon. It will be so good for him to have something intensive to help fix this problem before it becomes an issue for him. He's just getting to the age where he's starting to be frustrated that I can't understand everything he says. I think if I ignore this problem he'll become a very unhappy/unpleasant little boy. A lot of behavior problems in children come from frustrations about learning or communication difficulties.
I'll update after our appointment tomorrow.
The snow continued to fall all day yesterday and all through the night last night. It finally subsided sometime around 10-11 am this morning. Just look at how much snow is on these benches (above) -- this was taken yesterday afternoon, so add about 4 inches to that and that's how much snow we ended up with. Now the sun is shining and the snow is steadily melting. You really have to dodge the giant snow blobs falling out of the treetops! All freeways were closed last night and this morning. We needed to be at stake conference anyway, but I was bummed that I couldn't be in Logan for baby Cannon's blessing. Looks like the storm would have been a problem anyway. Sorry we weren't able to make it to the baby blessing, Juge and Stanton -- hope everything was wonderful (doubtful that it was anything but).
Due to the heavy snow on the trees we lost several pretty significant branches in both the front and back yards. We're very thankful that they didn't hit the house.
We were reminded during stake conference today that it was an unseasonably early 18 inch snow storm that stranded the Martin Handcart company so many years ago. Tears flowed as I thought about the excruciating cold and wet conditions they endured. We are so blessed to live in such luxury and comfort. The snow was nothing more than a minor inconvenience, at worst, in fact, it is actually quite beautiful and fun! I'm sure the early saints considered snow to be a lot of things, but 'fun' was probably not one of them.
Yesterday we were picking pumpkins, plums, and grapes in the backyard, this morning we woke up to 4 inches of snow! It's still coming down hard, we're supposed to get at least 6 inches by tonight, with more in the forecast for tomorrow. We have some very excited kids -- in fact, the first thing Kate said this morning was, "Mom, Santa Claus is coming tonight!!!!" Sadly, we had to break it to her that, no, Santa doesn't come just because there's snow. Nice try, Kate. She recovered pretty quickly and as I speak the three of them are outside making snow angels, ski trails, and snow balls. Yea! Winter is here!!!
It's been a looooong time coming, but Kate finally learned to tie her shoes all by herself. Sometimes these milestones are bigger for the mom than for the kid herself!!! It's so nice to be able to have her do it for herself -- and it's especially fun to see her glow with pride and confidence. Very cool.
