11/15 - More updates

Unfortunately, grandpa Hank passed away on 11/1/11 early in the morning. He had a great 95 years though. God is great. It worked out that with my mom here, I could go to the funeral. I left really really early on a Friday and came back on Sunday late morning. I managed to take some pictures before I left. Here is Nana helping Aiden put together his alphabet puzzle and then walking all over it.

Nana also spent time with him threading different shape cut-outs that we have. They had fun.

Both of the boys thoroughly enjoyed one-on-one time. Eli got a chance to do some puzzles and loved that too.

Eli was Nana's little buddy while she was here. We would get home from being gone for a few hours (or from daycare) and he would get out of the van and start screaming, "Nana" as he ran to the door. It was too cute.

The boys had fun with Nana talking about colors and using window clings to experiment with what happen when you place something that is orange over something that is blue. Nana always thinks of creative fun things to do with the boys.

Empty boxes are always a hit in our house. Aiden decided he would try and push Eli around the house in the this box I got out of the garage.

Both boys enjoyed getting to spend some time with Bronco. They had to take turns feeding him (they both like to do that). Eli was a little more tentative around the boys than he has been in the past but they boys are getting older (and louder) and can follow him around too. Bronco was pretty good with Aiden but wasn't so sure of Eli.

We've been practicing some of Aiden's occupational therapy stuff at home. We ordered putty for him to play with and I hid some "treasures" in it. He doesn't really like playing with the putty but it's really good to help his motor skills and build up some strength in his fingers and hands. In the second picture, he's concentrating so hard that is tongue is sticking out. He actually does this a lot and his therapist said it's probably a safety feeling for him.

We got out all of our matchbox kits and the boys love to hook them all up and play together. We don't even have enough bridges to hook them all up because we've bought most of them (except one) at consignment sales or Goodwill and most have missing bridges by the time we get them.

Eli really enjoyed the time with Nana. He's often left in daycare 4 or 5 days a week because Aiden has therapy, sometimes as often as two times a week, that Eli cannot attend. He was basking in the extra attention and personal play time.

Eli is trying so hard to use his words. We can only understand a handful of them of this point. He does such a good job trying though so I'm not too concerned. He'll actually try and repeat 3 or 4 words that we say. Aiden didn't even attempt that until he was about 3.

Aiden enjoyed the special time with Nana too. I had a very fast visit to Iowa for grandpa Hank's funeral. Brad was able to leave Nevada and come over as well. With the help of some awesome friends, Nana did a great job with the boys. Ms. Amanda took the boys to daycare on Friday and Jen, our neighbor, picked them up and dropped them off. On Saturday, Ms. Sara came and took Aiden to her house to play with her 3 girls for the morning and then brought him back for a nap. Jen, Ryan, and Kia took Eli in the afternoon and did some errands. On Sunday, Nana had them all to herself until I came home around 1:00pm. Everything went well and Nana did a great job.

God has been teaching me that I really don't have control over things like I'd like to think I do. He had to take away my Plan A and Plan B and leave me completely relying on others (and Him). It was a humbling experience but I think that was the only way I was going to learn that lesson. I'm very thankful Brad is back home for a bit. We are trying to get back to normal. I only have a couple weeks left teaching which will be good. While I have thoroughly enjoyed it, it has taken the majority of my attention on daycare days and has greatly limited what I am able to do. Throughout all this, my eyes have gone nutty on me and I've learned this: Eli gave me a transverse fracture on my nose about 5-6 weeks ago; my eyes are so bad that I need bifocals; progressive bifocals are crazy expensive (I just spent almost $400 on 2 pairs of classes).

11/14 - A very late recap of Halloween

A lot has happened over the past 2 weeks which is why I haven't been posting. Brad's grandpa fell and broke his hip and his parents had to leave to go back and be with him. He had surgery a few days after he fell and the surgery went okay. I went to St. Pete on 10/31 and picked my mom up to help me out. We came back to town, picked up the boys from daycare, and headed to a friend's house who lives in a subdivision across the street to go trick-or-treating. The kids had a blast. I had to buy them off with some skittles until everyone got there but they didn't mind that. :)

Aiden caught on to the idea of getting candy from people right away. Eli didn't care for all the people and he didn't really like people putting candy in his bag. He wanted to pick out candy and put it in himself.

Aiden did a great job with using his manners and saying 'thank you.' There were a few houses that Aiden didn't want to get candy from because they were too scary or the people giving out candy were too scary (yes, they were in costumes).

Overall, the boys did great. I had to pop a few balloons for each of them as the night went on the make their costumes less bulky. They both pretty much walked the whole time. Eli got really tired at the end and rode in the wagon. Aiden actually pushed a stroller around almost the whole time.

Here is a group shot of the kids. Eli is missing because he was too exhausted and grumpy to get up and join the rest of the kids. He was sitting on the curb and refused to be picked up to joint the group.

We didn't get home until about 8:00pm and it was way past the boys' bedtime. They handed out candy to a couple of kids and found that to be quite fun. A few houses down from us built a hunted house in their backyard and it was a huge hit. There were tons of people coming to go through it. It was apparently really scary and they were actually using real chainsaws to scare people. The boys just sat outside with Nana and I and watched and listened to the kids get scared.

They enjoyed their late night out and woke up bright and early at 7:00am the next day.

10/29 - Picnic & Sue's Halloween Party

We've been getting our bearings since grandma and grandpa Hoyt left. I picked Eli up early from daycare on Tuesday and we went down the park to have a picnic. Aiden had his first occupational therapy evaluation on Tuesday morning. He did well and I'm curious and excited to go back on Tuesday to find out the summary of his evaluation. We've been doing his homework which is rubbing him over his arms/legs with a soft brush and doing some deep pressure exercises on some of his joints. It's supposed to help re-program his brain for touch. He actually really likes it.

We had fun at our picnic. The boys ran around a bit and then we had dinner (yogurt, apples, crackers, and hummus). They are such silly little boys and are so cute. Eli soaked himself with water at daycare so he had to borrow a shirt (which is why it say OPK on it). I can already tell I need to send about 2 changes of clothes a day for that child.

They played in the swings for a bit. All the pictures of Aiden came out blurry. There were 1 or 2 that came out okay but I would have had to type too much to convince you he was actually having fun. As you can see in this picture of Eli, he was having a blast on the swings.

We had some stale crackers so we fed those to the ducks. We then decided to take a family picture (minus Brad who is in Nevada) at the park. It actually turned out pretty good. We then walked back to the house and did our night time routine.

Last night we went to Sue's for her annual Halloween Party. Last year it rained right as the movie was about to begin so I just left because Eli was getting pretty fussy. This year I was determined to stay as long as the kids would allow. Here are the costumes. I was able to do much of it by myself although my neighbor did sew a seam at the bottom so we could loop some cord through it. I should have gotten a picture of my costume. I went as Awesome Amy! The boys were not too excited about putting their costumes on but I told them they had to for a bit. They have brown pants but it was too hot for that.

They were trying to play soccer while dressed in their pumpkins costume. It was funny to watch seeing how they had balloons stuff under their costumes to help add some volume.

In the picture below, Aiden is telling me he's had enough of his costume and he wants it off. He didn't even keep it on long enough to march in the parade with it on.

I took it off but he still wanted to march in the parade. He ran around the whole circle almost (which is pretty far for him to run). I didn't know he had that much endurance. He was pretty worn out at the end.

The picture below cracks me up. Stephanie and her family came and the monkey is Blaise. He was too cute. Eli and Blaise were playing with the ball and it was too cute to watch a monkey and pumpkin run around chasing a ball.

Here is Super Sara getting ready to take Eli's costume off.

With costumes off, the boys played in the backyard again. Eli was draw to the sand mound while Aiden was content to just kind of walk around and look at various things.

Poor Aiden. After all that running, he was exhausted by the end of the night.

We ate pizza, grapes, and pretzels and waited for it to get dark. Once it was dark enough, the movie (Charlie Brown and the Pumpkin Patch) started. The boys that it was so neat to stand in front of the screen before the movie started.

We didn't get home until about 8:45/9:00pm. The boys went straight to bed. And what time did they wake up? Guess. Normal wake-up time is 7:00am. They were up by 7:10am! Only 10 extra minutes. I'm thinking they will take longer naps than normal today. They had lots of fun but weren't quite ready yet to go in the not-so-scary hunted house yet. Sue really outdoes herself with the production she puts on. There were probably about 30 kids there (plus all the parents) so it was quite busy. We did errands this morning including getting our oil changed. I'm not sure what this afternoon will hold for us. Brad is in Reno for the weekend and is going motorcycle riding all day today. That should be fun for him.