Daddy we love you because...

Thank you Daddy for all the sacrfices you make to provide for our family. Thank you for always making it a priority to spend time with us even when you are really busy. We love you!!

Changes

Lots of changes have going on in our life and around the house. The biggest one is Jason graduating with his Masters. We received his diploma in the mail yesterday so it is official. It is nice to not have school work hanging over our heads when he gets home. When he is home, he can focus on hanging out with the family.

I would like to say that since Jason has finished school that life got less busy. That has not been the case. We are redoing the front yard. We are making progress, but it is not going as fast has we would like because of the other stuff going on in life. The grass is coming in nicely. The pathway is a slow process, but we are almost ready to start laying the rock. You can see the outline of the path on the left side of the picture.

Today we found a table with 2 leaves and 6 chairs for only $200. The chairs are solid wood, but the table top isn't. We wanted solid wood, but after a year of looking, there was no way to get table this size with a solid wood top for less that $600 and we just are ready to put that kind of money into a table. I am okay with that because this table will provide the extra space we need to have people over for dinner without everyone feeling squished.

I was mowing the yard a few weeks ago and almost ran over these little guys. It had been awhile since had mowed because of the rain.  I saw something black in the grass and thought it was a rock so I stopped the mower to move it. I realized what I thought was a rock was a nest full of birds. Mama bird made the nest up against the house on the south side. We had the birds around for about a week before they were big enough to leave. It was fun to have them around.

That's fun we are having at our house. Now I better get outside and help Jason work on the pathway some more. :)

Fun outside

Here is what we were up to this past week:

Playing in Jaron's crib.

Playing on the slip and slide. This is Josiah's friend Samuel.

Going to the park.

Eating snacks.

Hope you are able to get out and enjoy the weather, too. Now I am off to mow the lawn. :)

School pictures

Here are some pictures of what we did last month in school. Josiah is getting better at writing. He is getting better at sounding words out. 

Jaron likes to participate during school also. I typically just give him worksheets or a whiteboard to draw on while I work with Josiah. Jaron learns a lot just by listening. He's learned a lot of his shapes and numbers that way.

Last month was fish month. I bought a full fish for the boys to study one day. Here is Josiah explaining to Jaron the different parts of the fish.

We also went to the aquarium and read lots of books on sea life. It was a fun month. We are winding down school for the year. Josiah likes school, so I will probably continue to do worksheets with a few activities, but not spend as much time working on it during the summer. Because Josiah turns 5 so close to the kindergarten cut off date we will keep him home another year.  I've talked to a lot of people and they all said you want to keep a boy out an extra year because boys mature slower than girls.

2012 Easter Egg Hunt

Here are pictures from this year's Easter Egg hunt. Jaron had a better understanding of what was going on so he had a lot more fun. Josiah of course knew what to do and he collected a lot of eggs. After is was all done, some of the older kids replanted their eggs for our kids to find again. Our kids are spoiled.

Then we got a few pictures up in the tree.

Jaron Singing

I know I haven't posted anything for awhile. I got off my weekly rhythm, but I am slowly working back into things.

A lot has happened since I last posted. My parents came out for a couple of weeks and we tore up the front yard. There were some drainage problems with it. Plus had a whole from a tree we took out when we first moved in that we needed to fill in and we wanted to add a rock pathway so the best way to accomplish all of that was to just tear it up and start over. It was a lot of work, but I think it was worth it. I will put up pictures when the grass starts coming in.

Jason finished up his last class of his Masters. He took his comprehensive Bible exam and is waiting to hear back if he passed. If he passed then he will DONE!!! He has been taking classes for 7 years. It will nice to have a summer where he doesn't have to work on school work.

We finally made it to Jaron's neurologist appointment. The first appointment was cancelled due to snow. The prognosis is really good. It looks like he will be on medication for two years to keep him seizures free and train his brain not to have seizures. Then we will wean him off his medication and hopefully be done. Jaron's verbal skills have grown by leaps and bounds. He is singing and talking in sentences now. He knows most of his shapes and recognizes several letters and numbers. He learned all of this from watching his brother.

Josiah is continuing to learn a lot. Reading simple words is getting easier. He can almost count to 100. He is learning how to add by one. He isn't enjoying the worksheets as much right now (I think he has spring fever) so we have been reading lots of books and playing learning games. I wish we were playing outside, but we have only had a few nice days this spring. The rest of the time it has been raining. The books he likes to read right now are comic books and Great Illustrated Classics. Jason got him hooked on Spiderman comic books. Now Josiah is likes to pretend he is Spidyboy and tries to climb the walls with his "sticky" hands. I am considering finding a place to make a climbing wall. :)  I got Josiah on Great Illustrated Classics because the shorter books were getting boring for him. I like these books because they are chapter books, but every page is a picture for him to look at while I read. We read one book about every 3 days because he is always wants me to read.

I don't have any pictures, but I took this video of Jaron singing with my computer camera. It is kind of fuzzy, but I think it is cute.

While Jason was away...

Jason was gone to Memphis for his last class for his Master's. After 7 years of schooling we are finally seeing the finish line. We are very excited.

While Jason was away we tried to keep busy. I scheduled extra stuff in the evenings, like library story time and time with friends so we could get away from the house more. I stayed busy getting the garden ready for planting and organizing the house. My friend Jasmine helped me organize the boys' toys which has been a huge blessing. It is much easier to keep the living/dining room area clean now. She got me excited about organizing so I kept going. I organized our craft/homeschooling corner, my desk, and Jaron's closet. My bedroom is pretty organized, so now I just have to go through the hallway closet and Josiah's closet and I will done with my indoor cleaning. If summer ever comes (it snowed today) I can enjoy being outside and not have to worry about the house.

Last week was Moon week in school. Here is a picture of Josiah helping create a memory game with the different phases of the moon.

During moon week we learned about the phases of the moon, why the moon changes, took an imaginary trip to the moon, and watched some videos of the astronauts on the moon. He can count to 30 and is close to being able to count backwards from 10-0. We are still working on skills to prepare him for reading and sometimes he will challenge himself and read a word from signs he sees. He is even trying to spell simple words by sounding them out. It is amazing how fast kids learn.

Socially Josiah is really blossoming right now. He went through a shy phase for about 2 years. We have been talking to him about how to talk with people and making new friends. Recently he gained a lot of confidence so we enrolled him in soccer. Today Jason took Josiah to a free trial to see if he would like it. Jason said Josiah walked right up to the teacher and started talking to her with no problems. The free trial was of the beginning class since Josiah is new to soccer. Josiah's teacher said he did such a good job following directions and participating, that in a couple of weeks when the new soccer season starts, we could put him in the next level up. Josiah came home very excited so we think this will be a long term thing for him.

Jaron is doing really well. He has not had a seizure in two weeks. His vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds and it is so fun seeing his personality come out. He is a really funny kid.