Feeling less than adequate.

Lately I have been feeling very inadequate at home. Really its nothing super major but the kids had McDonalds for dinner one night last week, the laundry is piling up, our house is just generally a mess, and the days just keep flying by. With work, sleep, or lack of because of all the appointments that have to be scheduled during the day I get to sleep for like 3 hours then I’m up for the day. 

 We did get some news about all the evaluations for Ronnie though. He scored a 77 on the paper test part. Which is basically a booklet of questions for me to answer about him, the school Occupational therapist said that she would be able to write her program off of the information that she already had from Ms. Christine at our outside therapy. I’m not completely sure how the speech therapist felt after our time with her. We have one more cognitive evaluation tomorrow in the morning and then all of the specialists and the teacher get together to score all of the evaluations. After they all talk and determine how to move forward we then schedule a meeting to talk and get on the same page to write his IEP. 

 I’m still not 100% sure what to think of it all. Although it’s happened really slowly, it’s actually really fast in my head with everything else that’s going on. I guess just wrapping our heads around all of it has been kind of overwhelming. So I am told that an IEP will be like the directions on how to get to our education goals. 

 I am thankful that I have a friend who has gone through this with her children and can help walk me through it all. Although she is now home schooling and that is working out way better for their family. I don’t know if homeschooling is the right path for us. So for now my goal is to finish this year and next year in the special education program and then for Ronnie to go to Montessori kindergarten like Evee does now. I do have a plan really I do, I have to have a plan or else I will go crazy. 

 I guess that I really shouldn’t feel as bad as I do about our messy house or, McDonalds for dinner. The kids are happy, growing, learning, and being kids. Feeding them McDonalds one night for dinner is actually probably the least of my worries. At least they actually ate it! Because they sure don’t eat the majority of what I actually cook! Definitely not the acorn squash I prepared the other night.

 Miss Evee saw the customary bin of squash at Fred Meyer and decided that we needed to take one home. So we picked out an acorn squash that was on the smaller side and it went home with us. Honestly it sat on the counter for a good week and a half before I actually decided to cook it. I cut it in half with a really sharp knife really I could have used a rubber mallet too, that sucker was hard to cut in half! Once I halved it I scooped the insides out like a cantaloupe as Evee said. I coated the inside with butter and brown sugar and sat the halves in a square glass baking dish with about ¼” of water in the bottom, then baked it at 350 degrees for an hour. To serve it I scooped the meat out with a spoon and served it. Really it was ok for a squash. I’m not a huge fan of the flavor of the meaty type squashes like that, but it was ok. I probably will not make it again though because the rest of the family didn’t like it.

The Pumpkin Patch.

So I should be sleeping for work tonight but I am just not tired! We went to the pumpkin patch yesterday and then out to dinner with some friends and their kiddos and we all had an awesome time. We went to Hunter Farms, the patch that we have gone to for the past 6 years. It’s a really nice farm, they have cattle, the pumpkin patches, a corn maze, and various gardens. When you get there you pay to get in and then you get a tractor hay ride out to the pumpkin patch to pick your pumpkins. After you have them all chosen you load them back up on the hay ride and go back to the main barn. This year has been really weird for crops and such and we found that most of the pumpkins that were left in the fields were already rotten. But we went walking around looking anyway and found a couple good little ones to take home but we found our two big pumpkins right at the beginning of the field where they put a bunch of the good ones that they cut already and drug out of the field.

After we returned to the barn to pay for the pumpkins there is a bunch of animals to look at. Sheep, rabbits, chickens, pigs and even a creepy looking emu. We walked all through the animals and then the kids played in the hay maze. They loved going down the slide. 

Ron and I went to go look at the general store for some fresh produce and found huge tomatoes, a huge head of cauliflower, and yummy white corn. They were also having a salsa tasting while we were there and of course we bought two jars. It was really good homemade salsa. 

By now we are all starving so the plan was to head to Smokin Mo’s for lunch. Smokin Mo’s is this amazing BBQ place that we love to go to in Shelton and it was only 12 miles away from the patch so uh yeah we are totally going!! My favorite thing about Smokin Mo’s is that the meat is sauce-less so you get to choose how much and what kinds you want. I am not a fan of BBQ that is smothered in so much sauce that you don’t taste any of the flavor of the actual meat itself and the flavor at Mo’s is amazing! 

 All in all it was a great day, we left the restaurant stuffed and loaded down with pumpkins to carve.

 

One tired mama!

This week has been very challenging at our house. It actually started last week when Evee got sick at school and spent a couple days home. Now Ron has had it this week starting on Sunday. Luckily it hasn't hit Ronnie and I as hard as it has the other two....yet. I'm waiting really just waiting, because I work every day but one this next week and have multiple appointments during the day some days, I will for sure get the worst of the cold right in the middle of my busy week.

This Monday we were supposed to have our evaluation with the school district. It was Columbus Day, I thought for sure she made a mistake and we weren't supposed to actually go on Columbus Day. I mean Evee was out of kindergarten and none of the other schools had school, so I was for sure that we must have made a mistake in scheduling and she would call us on Tuesday and say sorry and schedule. Well boy was I wrong! 15 minutes after sitting down for lunch the teacher called us to see where we were. Crap! I profusely apologize because now I feel horrible. We have waited so long for this evaluation and there I go missing it completely! Luckily she was understanding and rescheduled us for as early as possible, which was this morning at 9:30.

Yay!!! We had our first evaluation this morning! We met with the school speech therapist, the school psychologist, the preschool psychologist, and special education preschool teacher. The school occupational therapist wasn't able to be there today. We scheduled appointments next week to do further evaluation with the school psychologist and the Speech therapist, that's good I think? After we all talked the preschool teacher had me fill out some standardized booklets to score Ronnie, kind of the same was Ms. Christine did for OT in the beginning. She played with Ronnie while I did this and I'm sure doing further evaluation of him. She noticed that he likes to sprawl all over the floor without me saying anything, and pretty much agreed with me that that is just a battle not to fight. Hey if the floor is clean, whatever makes him happy! So this up-coming week we will go back for more evaluations that will help with deciding placement and possible IEP writing. YAY!! For progress getting Ronnie help!  

Miss Evelynne has her very first field trip this Wednesday. Her class is going to the pumpkin patch. I'm excited for her to get to ride the bus since I haven't let her at all yet this school year. So I am sure that it will be fun for her, I'm also almost positive that she will come home wanting to ride the bus to and from school and I dont know if I'm ready for that!

Awesome, amazing, back to school pictures!

For Evee's first day of school we wanted some special photos to help us remember the day forever so I enlisted the help of a friend who has an eye behind the lens to rival many. Wesley at Penumbra Productions #penumbrapro is amazing to work with and has an exceptional creative personality that makes him a pleasure to work with. I cant say enough good things about him and his work. I am in love with our photos and will remember the amazing memories he created for us for years and years to come.

I also saw an idea on Pinterest #pinterest +Pinterest Fan Page to order a shirt in a size that an adult would wear and take a picture of your child in it every first day of school and last if you wanted, to show how they grow each year. The idea is that when they are a senior in high school that the shirt will fit for the last first day of school picture. So I ordered up a shirt from #zoeysattic on Etsy and had it personalized with Evelynne's name and graduation year. You can purchase your very own here Zoeys attic. I paid the extra $5 to have it be a woman's fitted shirt instead of a regular tshirt. 

You can see in the last picture that it was super cute and I have no doubt that the shirt will last the next 12 first days of school. Ron was even excited about the idea too. He was telling friends about it before it even got here.

Life update!

Yay for another down time night! Not really, it’s such a pain in my butt to do downtime at work. I’ll be so happy when we go to epic and we won’t have to deal with stupid downtime. 

Updates in the life of us are, we FINALLY have an appointment for special education pre-school! It only took two months and a ton of paper shuffling. So this up-coming Monday after therapy we will go to the elementary school and met the special education teacher. I have to say that I am a little scared of the whole process. I’m really hoping that all goes well and they don’t fight me much about him going. Especially now that the behaviorist told us that he wasn’t going to be able to see us because his case load was too much. It’s frustrating because something like sensory processing disorder isn’t as recognized as a lot of other disorders like, ASD, ADHD, ADD, and or OCD. 

So Monday can’t come fast enough for us. I also am getting very worn out very fast from the sleep/work schedule that having Ronnie home creates for us and my new work schedule rotation one day off then doing a stretch of four nights just is taking its toll on me. I’m ready to get into a schedule that is easier on all of us.

 Ms. Evee is getting ready to go on her first field trip to the pumpkin patch with her kindergarten class and hopefully it will be at a time where one of us will be able to go with her. I’m going in to talk to her teacher to see about helping in her classroom once in a while. Evee has been sick the past two days with something in her sinuses. She sounds funny when she talks and says that her throat hurts. I’m guessing that it will pass in a couple days. She just feels miserable and it makes me feel bad for her so I let her stay home from school. 

Made it through another downtime night yay!