12/15 - Yes we are alive

I've never been away from the blog for this long. Brad has been extended out in San Diego and things got really crazy here and I'm just now recovering. Recovering isn't even the correct word. I can breathe now at least. Recovery will happen once Brad is and the holidays are over. So what has happened in the last month?

Well, my mom and I took the boys to the fair. We went on Veteran's Day around 1pm and got in free and then we also bought some wristbands and then just went wild. Aiden loves the fun house with mirrors and did a great job navigating us through it. We all went on the giant ferris wheel which was great because then the boys could see all the other rides and we knew where to go. Eli just made the cut-off for many of the rides so his world was great. He needs to grow really fast next year so I don't have to go on so many rides. The boys had a ton of fun but we left around 5:30ish because it was starting to get completely crazy with hundreds of people showing up and we were tired.

Aiden has had a few events at his school over the past couple weeks that I've been able to go in and help with. He is doing so great in school. His teacher just told me he has a few first grades sight words to work on and then he can go to second grade. I had no idea he knew so many words. My mom and I were able to go to Aiden's class one day and help make rice krispie treats which I had never actually made before. It was fun and the kids did a good job following the recipe. Aiden really wanted Nana to help at his table and that was cute to watch. Aiden's teacher invited the parents in for Thanksgiving for Pumpkin Pie which was fun. Aiden started off crying because someone gave him a slice and I ate a little bite and then convinced him to try a bite and he liked it. He then proceeded to have a second piece of pie. They even sang a few songs for us and they looked adorable in the attire they made for themselves. Aiden has earned a V (very good) for his behavior everyday this year. His teacher said an 'E' would be extremely hard to get and if you saw one or two during the year then that was really good. Aiden finally got an 'E'! He was so excited and had no idea. I called him over and then took his picture when I showed it to him (middle right picture) and he was so excited and then held up his paper to show me. 

Eli's daycare invited the parents to come and have Thanksgiving lunch. We signed up to bring mac and cheese and green beans. It was cute and the kids made their own place settings. Eli ate a ton of food which doesn't really surprise me. We were able to read a few books together while the rest of the parents showed up. Nana and I didn't get the memo that we would be almost the only women because all the dad's came (there was one more mom). It was a bit shocking but warmed by heart too. Eli's daycare is going okay. It was touch and go for a while but we are just trusting in God that he is in the right place and with the right teacher. I used to get things from his folder almost everyday and when he moved teachers, there was nothing in his folder ... for weeks so I eventually stopped checking it. I finally did check it last week I realized that they have started to doing things which is great and that he missed a birthday party (boo on mommy for not checking his folder). 

Brad was able to take leave and come have Thanksgiving with us which was great. We did a low-key dinner here and were just excited to be together. The night that Brad came home, a group of guys from church came over and helped do a bunch of random stuff like change lightbulbs, get all my christmas stuff out of the closet and put a ton of boxes in a closet, trimmed a hedge, and then put chrismtas lights around our house on the roof. It was so helpful because they did almost everything on my to-do list for Brad which enabled us to have family time together instead of Brad is here to work. I actually had A TON of grading to do so Brad played with the boys quite often so I could grade. I did take a solid couple hours off and we went to Wild Adventures in Georgia. It was about 2 hours away and I was nervous after driving that far and not seeing one sign for it. You then pull up and it looks like it's in someone's backyard and I got really nervous. It ended up being awesome for the ages of the boys. They were able to go on about 70% of the rides which was great. Military got in free which is why we went in the first place. We had a blast there and it was much colder than we were hoping. We were there for 6 hours I think and I was certainly worn out. 

 After church on Sunday, we made a stop to Home Depot on the way home to get a Christmas Tree. I wouldn't be able to get one without Brad so if we were going to have a tree we needed to get it now. We even put it in the stand and in the house before Brad left. I put lights on it after a few nights and then the boys wanted to put ornaments on it so we did that for a bit one night. I never actually went back to "fix" anything so we have a ton of ornaments from hip height and down and few from me that are up higher. I also added a few lights on the house as well. It's not in the picture below but we also have our blow-up train and my 3 spiral christmas trees. Our house looks quite nice. I blew the circuit the first night so I had do some creative plugging in so that everything wasn't going to the same circuit (the garage and outside outlet are on the same circuit). I haven't really decorated inside because well, I would have to take it down and if I don't have time to put it up, I surely won't have time to take it down. :)  It can stay in the box and hopefully next year will be less hectic and I can properly decorate.

We were on base twice last weekend for Christmas stuff. Last weekend the squadron that Brad is checking in to had their children's christmas party and I took the boys to it. They had blast watching Santa fly in on a helo and then just playing in the bounce house and watching a magician/comic for a bit. Aiden was obsessed about participating in a cake walk (I didn't even know what it was). Well, he had a complete breakdown after his second time walking because he still didn't win. They let him participate in the last one (they had 4) and surprise, he won. They totally let him win because he was crying after the other one from not winning. My kids seems to do that alot and I told them I am tired of it. I told them I will be a better mommy and make sure they are disappointed more often because clearly they need practice in how to deal with disappointment and loosing. So, we have been practicing that lately :)  

So the rest of this is just some randomness that I wanted to include: 

I never thought I would see the day where Aiden would peel an orange but here it is. I'm so thankful for all the therapy he has gotten and how much it has transformed him. He hasn't received any on-going therapy since we have been here in FL and is doing great and his food choices are coming along so well. 

Little Eli had some testing done the other day and we had to stop by the store so I could get some cold medicine. We found these santa ears and Eli tried them on. He' facial expressions just crack me up most of the time. He did well on his testing but is very weak in fine motor skills but also scored much higher in cognitive thinking skills than I thought which is sorta troubling for me. He can be smart if you make it fun and a game but usually doesn't want to put in the effort to have to think. I think this child is going to test me so much when it comes to school and academics.

 We were able to help a friend celebrate her birthday a few weeks ago. The day before this and the day after this had highs in the 60's and this one day it was about 80 degrees in Florida at the end of November. It was crazy warm at the park and the boys were seriously sweating. They had lots of fun celebrating Jordyn's birthday and seeing some of their friends again though.

 This is Brad and I when I dropped him off the the airport after Thanksgiving. He really does balance me out which is why it's so hard on me and us when he is gone.

We did do our Thanksgiving tree again this year. It wasn't the same without Brad here though. I have a before and after picture but Blogger isn't letting me access to those so I'll have to post them next time. I love our Thanksgiving Tree and it's so neat to see what the kids have come up with every night. It's great when I've had a stressful day where everything seems to have gone wrong because it also puts everything back into perspective for me and I realize how truly fortunate and blessed we are.

In mid-November I was blessed with tickets to see Toby Mac in concert. I invited Arin along we had a great time. We were shocked to find out our tickets were floor tickets, just one section back from the stage. There were lots of awesome artists there too. Our friend from Maryland, Cindy, sent the tickets to me about 2 months before the concert just for fun. How awesomely nice that was. 

Things are going to be busy here over the holidays as Brad's parents come to visit us. It will be great to see them and it will be an awesome Christmas present to get Brad home before (or on) Christmas Day. Merry Christmas everyone!!

10/9 - Therapy & the Fair!

It's been a bit since I've updated because I need to transfer pictures off my computer to make room for more and that takes a little while to do. Aiden is finally back in therapy and has done really well!! I'm excited with his progress. Ms. Rusty, his new occupational therapist, is quite awesome. She's really good with him and gets him to do stuff that he won't do for me. Last week, she had Aiden draw a bear. I didn't think he'd be able to do it but he copied her pretty well and made his own bear. See how he is up on his knees? He doesn't like to kneel like that (he'd rather put his bottom down to his feet and sit on them) but it helps make him stronger.

He just made the bear a hand...

Now she is teaching him how to draw a fish.

After they finished drawing their bears with fish, Aiden had to play the bears a song on the iPad using just his fingers (not moving his entire forearm).

The crawled over to the bears and were trying to get the fish some water using a squirt gun. It was a neat idea/story to incorporate a bunch of different therapy things.

Grandma and Grandpa Hoyt went home about 1.5 weeks ago. We really enjoyed visiting with them! Here is a picture with the boys the night that they left.

The boys are enjoying their new swing set. We have to be careful going out at night because Aiden and I get lots of bites. The boys were doing mazes outside last week. Aiden wanted to sit on the table on the swing set to do his. Eli didn't like sitting at the table because the seat was farther away than he would like.

Aiden is actually really good at mazes. I've printed a bunch of mazes out and laminated them so he can use them numerous times. I even have a few really easy ones for Eli. It's great therapy for motor control and writing and I would have never thought that until Ms. Lisa (his therapist in Jax) gave some to him.

Here is little Eli doing his. I tried correcting his grasp but he doesn't like that and starts crying. I (and his former therapist) worked on that for months with Aiden and just in the last couple weeks has he started to use a regular grasp of marker. Aiden still likes to use his whole forearm to draw/color but we are working on getting that stronger. Eli cracks me up in this picture because he's actually resting his elbow on his leg so he doesn't have to move his whole arm. They are complete opposites!

Eli found a tape measure in the toy bin in the car (I have no idea how it ended up in there) and brought it inside. He said it was his snake and carried it around for a while. I've already told these boys that they will never have a real pet snake in the same house as me. :)

These two boys love to play with each other and one of their favorite games is Puppy. That's right. They act like dogs and love it. Aiden made Eli, the puppy, a bed by emptying out everything in this storage box and putting Eli's blankets in it.  

I brought blocks to Cubbies last week and had to go pick them up this week from another leader's house. I brought them home and the boys really wanted to play with them. That's funny considering they never usually want to play with them. Aiden is building a little city with all his blocks.

Eli wasn't as interested as building with the blocks than he was with playing with the wood-shaped automobiles.

I've been more diligent lately about working with Aiden doing some of his therapy stuff. I'm in the process of making a new section in his notebooks with all the different things he can do for therapy so that when we put our schedules together, he can choose what kind of therapy he wants to do. My goal is for him to do one therapy activity at least once a day but have 2-3 days where he does a couple different activities. I'll take a picture of it when I finish the book. Below, Aiden and Eli are painting while Skyping with Nana. Aiden actually painted 2 pictures (I drew things/shapes on the paper in pencil so he had an outline), did an entire Snip It picture (I'll show some pictures of that in a few days) which was hard for him, and even did his putty for a little bit. He then said he was really tired and I don't blame him. He did a great job. Eli painted a picture too and enjoyed it. He was all done with therapy stuff (no he's not in therapy) and wanted to play Meatball (a made-up game in which you throw a balled up blanket at someone and yell "meatball") with his dad.

Aiden had been telling me he wanted to be a parrot for Halloween. I started looking up parrots costumes to see how I could make one. I then asked Eli if he wanted to be pirate since they kind of go together. Eli was excited and said yes so I went to the dollar store and bought a hat, mini sword, eye patch, and gold coins for $2. Aiden liked it so much he said he wanted to be a pirate too. Needless to say, Halloween costumes are all planned out now.

On Friday afternoon, Brad and I picked the boys up and headed to the fair. The local fair in Prattville didn't open until 6pm so we drove over to the Montgomery county fair which opened at 4:00pm. We walked around for a while and showed the boys the different rides. We were not sure how the rides would go because Aiden didn't care for them much when we went to Disney a few months ago. Wristbands for unlimited rides were $30 each and we weren't willing to dish that out not knowing if they would even like them. That said, we bought 24 tickets for $20. We headed up to the first ride the boys wanted to try not even thinking Eli might not even be able to do the kiddie rides without and adult. Thankfully, he measured in right at 36 inches so he was able to go on by himself/with Aiden (Brad and I didn't have to waste tickets for us to go on the ride).

Wow. These boys LOVED the rides. I knew Eli would because he's a thrill junky. I wasn't sure about Aiden.

After a few trips around on the motorcycles, the ride ended and Eli started to get upset and asked for "more." It was too cute. We told him he could pick another ride. The boys chose these SUV trucks as their next ride. They each wanted to drive their own which was fine because it was not busy at all (it was the first day of the fair and the rides had just opened at 5pm).

These pictures of Aiden enjoying the ride so much just melt my heart. We don't get to see him this happy very often, especially on a ride or something that moves.

This one is a little blurry but the look on his face is equivalent to most people's toothy smile; he's loving it.

As I mentioned, Eli is a thrill junky and I knew he would have fun. I'm glad they enjoyed doing rides together this year because as soon as Eli is tall enough for the crazy rides, he'll be on those. The whole family can get wristbands then and Aiden and I can do fun houses and little rides and Eli and daddy can go on the zipper, graviton, scrambler, and other rides that turn my stomach upside down.

We did go to one fun house. I used to LOVE fun houses. This one was pretty neat but Eli got a little scared at one point because he had to climb a huge ladder rope. He was scared and starting crying. We told Aiden to go back and get him and he tried. Thankfully, the woman working the ride/taking the tickets, jumped over a banister and helped him all the way up. He was good to go from there. Thankfully, Aiden waited for Eli at each section of the fun house (what a sweet brother). It ended with this HUGE slide. I wasn't so sure they were going to do it but once they got on there, they actually didn't move that fast. 

The boys really wanted to ride a kiddie roller coaster but the little one was closed down. They had a slightly bigger one that they wanted to go on but they were not tall enough. They were sad but there was nothing we could do. We told them they each had enough tickets left for one ride. We walked around and got some cotton candy while they decided on what the last ride would be.

Here they are standing in line with their tickets, staring at the roller coaster they weren't tall enough to go on. They chose these balloons for their last ride. They went up and down while going in a big circle and it was a perfect last ride for them.

Here they are just sitting down.

For as much as they enjoyed the rides and wanted to keep riding, I was surprised that when this ride was over, they didn't complain, cry, or meltdown that it was their last ride for the night. I told them we will definitely go to the fair next time it's in town. I wanted to make sure we got a family picture. Aiden didn't really want to because he was so tired. I look like I have blue teeth from sneaking a few bites of the blue cotton candy. :)

We had a great time at the fair and I am so glad we were able to go as a family. Last year, I took the boys but Brad was gone so we didn't do any rides (Eli was way too little and there was no way Aiden would go on a ride by himself) so I promised Aiden we would do rides when daddy could come with us. Promise fulfilled. I'll be posting again shortly since I have room for pictures now on my computer. We had a fun day on Saturday too at their daycare family picnic and Aiden had another successful therapy visit today. Cheers from the Hoyt Family.

4/5 - A trip to the fair

I took a couple pictures on Tuesday when Aiden was at therapy. In the first picture, he is playing swords with Ms. Lisa. 

He's been doing so well in therapy and it's helping so much. I told him on the way home that we won't be able to see Ms. Lisa much longer because he's doing so well and she has other kids she needs to help. He got so sad and said he wanted to keep seeing Ms. Lisa. He said, "we can call her and ask her to keep seeing me." It was so cute and grown up. I told him "we'll see" because I felt like I was breaking his heart. He asked if he still got to see Ms. Shannon (his speech therapist) and I said yes but then he replied, "but I really like Ms. Lisa. Can I start to talk to Ms. Lisa?" The kid is too cute and smart for his own good. In this second picture, he has weight on both hands. Ms. Lisa put the weight on his forearm and hand and the little booger decided to use his right hand so he had to find a weight to put on that. It was pretty funny.

On Tuesday night, I took the boys to the fair for the first time. It would have been much easier/better to go as a family when Brad could go so we'll have to go next year in AL.

We got there a little later than I wanted and missed the pig races which Aiden was excited about. We went to see the K-9 unit but the boys were not as interested as I was. We took the family picture while we were waiting for them to bring the dogs out. We hadn't even walked that far and Aiden's face was all red from walking. The first two pictures of Eli are him not even paying attention to the cool and smart K9 dog.

Eli is actually facing the OPPOSITE direction of the dog.

After we walked around for a bit and looked at the rides, I told the boys we could get a bag of cotton candy. We sat down to watch the frog jump contest and the boys enjoyed some yummy, colored, sugar.

The man hosting the frog jump contest was a little crazy. The boys mainly stayed entertained and Aiden even raised his hand twice to be chosen to pick up the frog. That cracks me up. The kid can't stand touching slimy/wet things and I have a hard time getting him to just try touching new surfaces/animals so I can only imagine what would happen if he tried to pick up a frog.

We didn't ride any of the rides because I wasn't sure Eli and/or Aiden wanted to go and I Aiden wanted me to ride it with him but Eli didn't want to go and I couldn't figure out a way to magically duplication myself. My God's mercy on my sanity, Aiden was a little sad when I told him we were not going to ride the rides because it was too hard with just mommy and that we could do rides when we go to Disney in a couple weeks or next time we go to the fair and daddy can come with us. He said, "awww" and then just moved on which was so awesome of him. We went to look at all the animals and the boys had fun doing that. They found a huge bunny to pet in the picture below.

In the collage picture, Aiden is sitting on my lap watching the frog show and Eli has slid completely out of his stroller and his bottom is on the ground while eating cotton candy and watching the frog show. In the bottom collage picture, we are sitting in a cazebo that had a swing eating dinner (sandwiches and apples) and getting one last taste of cotton candy. I was shocked when I told them that this was their last bite of cotton candy for the day the they could have some more tomorrow but I didn't want to hear anyone ask about for the rest of the day. They both complied!!! Extra awesome.

Grandma Jo and Grandpa Dave brought this jello/cookie animal mold cutout thing last time they were here. My mom made some jello and we used it for the first time. They didn't actually get to have an animal for the first time until the other night though. The first picture is Eli showing me his elephant jello. They are such thick pieces that I just put it on a plate for him with no silverware.

You can't see it in the picture very well but Eli's face and hand are all red from holding the jello.

After carefully watching Eli eat his jello, Aiden decided to try one eventually. He took forever to touch it but once he finally did, I think the taste outweighed the uncomfortable part of having to touch the jello. His hands and face were all red too and he asked me to leave his hands all red for the night. He cracks me up. Lucky for him, the red didn't come off even when we washed his hands.

I just got the results back from Aiden's IQ test and anxiety testing a few weeks back. Nothing completely surprising (I'll do an update in a few days) but I need to make some phone calls and start praying on what to do with our special little boy.