2012 goals MET!!

Goal #1:  lose weight
1-1-2012
1-1-2013 (lost 30 pounds, 3 sizes!!)

Goal #2:  potty train Seth
2-3-2012 (notice the diaper sticking out above the pajamas)

11-2012 (Seth didn't want to take a picture in his undies, so you'll have to take my word for it that he's not wearing a diaper except to bed anymore :-)

Michelle's last four months

Luke turned 9 on April 30.  I LOVED taking his pictures at Loussac Library!!  He poses so nicely and doesn't mind going to several different spots to get the best scenery.

School ended in May.  All four kids had excellent school years this year!  They all loved their teachers and got really good grades.

In June, we went to the annual family picnic with the Down syndrome group.  This year, we had horse rides and carriage rides.  The kids really enjoyed that!

I really don't remember why Luke and Seth decided to dress up in their Batman costumes, but they were SO cute!!!!

 The family 4th of July cookout was at our house this year.  Gavin was excited to climb up into our tree house:

 Makayla enjoyed having Makenzie push her in the swing:

 Another July event was Makenzie's haircut.  After four years, she was ready to donate her hair to Locks of Love again.  Before:

 After:

      An unpleasant event in July was the return of "the Herbert."  We named him that because when Luke was a little younger, he didn't know exactly how to pronounce "pervert" and so it came out "herbert."  So that's the title we've given to the guy who on April 13th was half naked in our shed.  At the end of July, he once again got high and then jumped over our fence.  Even worse than trespassing, though, was that he then removed ALL of his clothes and was in the middle of doing something to himself that people should NOT do in public (let alone in a stranger's back yard) when Jason decided to go close the blinds and saw him.  When Jason yelled at him, Joel and I ran out to the kitchen to see what was going on.  We were shocked and disgusted to see the guy STAND UP and slowly put his clothes back on, slowly jump back over the fence, and slowly walk away down the street.  The cops looked for him, but couldn't find him.  The next day, Jason saw the Herbert walking down Northern Lights Blvd, so he followed him.  The guy was supposedly staying with a friend in the house right behind us!!  So Jason called the police who came and arrested the guy again.  As far as we know, he's still in jail and will be charged with the felony of indecent exposure to a minor since Joel saw him like that.  A VERY unpleasant event!!  One month later, and I'm still rattled and nervous about going outside or even looking out the window.

   We ordered this shirt from a Down syndrome group in Texas:

 Seth turned seven last week!  Luke decorated a special balloon for him:

 We invited all the Hofacker/Nelson crew, of course, and also some friends that are like family from church.

 Seth gave his 7th birthday a good thumbs up:

     Now the kids are all back in school and starting off this school year very nicely.  I'm glad they have something more productive to do with their time than watch movies and play video games!  I'm also glad to be able to go to work and do my job completely and more slowly than I had to do over the summer.

Friday the 13th

I'm generally not a superstitious person, but it "just so happens" that something INCREDIBLY weird happened to us on Friday the 13th.  Here's the story:

At 4:00 a.m., I heard a door bang closed.  I guessed it was Joel, too tired to be quiet after getting sick (he still has a digestion problem that sometimes causes severe nausea).  At 4:44 a.m. (yes, I still have a little ocd problem that won't allow me to set my alarm for 4:45, it MUST be 4:44), my alarm went off, meaning I needed to get in the shower and Jason needed to go for a run with his friend.  There's a little problem with our timing on these mornings, though, because I really want that extra time to get ready, but Jason and his friend have agreed to leave their houses at 5:10 a.m. and meet in between the two houses.  This wouldn't matter for normal families, but we're not normal.  We have two little boys who could VERY easily wake up while I'm in the shower and go right out the front door without anyone knowing.  DANGEROUS!!  When I'm the only one in the house and need to take a shower, I have to chain lock the front door.  So Jason, being the easy-going guy that he is, said that he would just leave whenever I got up and do a little extra running before meeting his friend.  I overslept a little, got up at 5 a.m., sent Jason outside, chain locked the door, got in the shower.

And that's when the real "fun" began.  Jason went into the garage (which, by the way, is connected to the house by a wall with no door -- there's no way to get into the house from the garage) to get his running jacket.  Connected to our garage is a very small shed.  There's a window between the garage and shed, but no door.  The back garage door was dead-bolted from the inside of the garage.  As Jason was grabbing his jacket, the shed light came on.  He looked up and was shocked to see A MAN IN OUR SHED!!!!  He yelled, "HEY!!!  GET OUT OF THERE!!!!" and proceeded to dial 911.  Normally, Jason doesn't take his phone outside with him, but "for some reason" (a.k.a. "because of God's providential care"), that day he had.  He waited out in front of the house to make sure the guy didn't get away out the front way.  Jason was pretty much a "sitting duck" because I had chain locked the front door and there's no key for the back door.  There was absolutely no way to get into our house without breaking glass.  It "just so happened" that the intruder didn't have a weapon or violent intentions, so Jason was safe outside when the police drove up less than five minutes later.

When I got out of the shower, I heard Jason calling up the stairs.  I was SO irritated!!!!  I was thinking, "What in the world??!!!  He's gonna wake up the kids at FIVE SOMETHING A.M.!!!!"  He knew I'd be thinking that, so when I got closer to the door, he quickly said, "There was a guy in our shed.  The cops are here!"  Obviously, that stopped any tirade I had planned!

The police were looking around the shed, shining their lights in the shed, looking for evidence telling where the guy had come from and where he'd gone when they realized that HE WAS STILL IN THE SHED!  The guy had buried himself under all the boxes of junk in there (this is our garage sale junk/summer equipment storage shed).  When they get him out of there, they realize that the guy was NAKED from the waist down!!  He had on a shirt and coat -- that's it!  Since there were no footprints in our front or back yards or on our deck, he must have jumped the fence NAKED (we have a 6-foot wooden fence, and the gate doesn't open).

He didn't seem to be trying to steal anything (who would want our garage sale junk or plastic kiddy pools?); he was apparently trying to hide from someone.  He had gone up on our deck, probably looking for food since the thermoses outside the door were opened (they had seven-month-old creme soda in them that I had meant to throw out six months ago) and the grocery bag of dirty diapers was off its hook.  He had set up one of our camp chairs inside the shed behind the door and unrolled an old sleeping bag.  Apparently, he was getting good and comfy in there.  For "some strange reason" (again, God's working), he turned the light on within the 30-second timeframe that Jason was in the garage, otherwise we wouldn't have known he was in there.

One of the police officers "just happened" to be a friend from church.  This made me feel so much better in this crazy situation because someone we knew and trusted was helping to take care of everything.  After the shock wore off, we could see all the terrifying "what if's" of this ordeal.  The guy was high (track marks on his arms, needles in his pockets, and unintelligible thinking), and therefore completely unpredictable.  He could've broken into our house; he could've had a weapon; he could've been violent; he could've NOT turned the light on right then and it might've been ME that found out he was there AFTER Jason and the kids left for school; he could've not gotten caught at all and broken into our house after we ALL left for school/work.  BUT none of those things happened.  It all worked out so that we were all safe.  He was arrested, charged with burglary (because he was caught "red-handed" inside a building with our stuff), and taken to jail.

This all made me (1) thankful for a God who watches over us, (2) thankful for Jason's quick thinking, (3) thankful for a good police force, and (4) thankful for locks and alarm systems (which is now also installed on the shed, not just the house).  Of course it also made me feel violated and angry, but I'm choosing to focus on the gratitude!

toothless Seth

Seth lost his other front tooth while he was eating his goldfish crackers.  He's such a little cutie!

We had Seth's IEP meeting at his school last week.  Up until that meeting, I was thinking of trying to move him to a different school because he seemed to not like it at all.  Plus, he's in a "life skills" class instead of "extended resource," which I thought meant that he's not really getting much academic education.  I learned at the meeting, though, that the only real "life skills" thing he's doing is potty training.  Everything else that he does is academic.  He goes to the regular kindergarten class for reading.  He goes to an adaptive P.E. class with his special ed class, but also goes to regular P.E. with the regular kindergarten class.  He gets speech therapy twice a week, occupational therapy twice a week, does reading and writing and numbers with his teacher and/or teacher's aides.  He has also started feeling more comfortable in his new school and playing/teasing with his teachers and one of the other kids in his class (the other boy with Down syndrome).  My only real concern is that he is more advanced than anyone else in his class.  Several of the kids in his class can't speak at all.  They make sounds, but can't speak.  I'm not sure if this really matters in Seth's development, though, since he's with our family, church family, and the regular kindergarten class so much.

I believe that God's purpose for Seth is encouragement.  Seth makes people smile, feel better, feel happy.  That's why he was born, this beautiful gift.  He probably can't accomplish that purpose, though, if he's miserable.  I was afraid that being in the new school made him miserable, but maybe it just took some time to adjust.  Everyone there likes him and is glad that he's there, and Seth seems to be liking it more all the time.  Maybe he's in the right place after all.

wrestling tournament

Luke wasn't supposed to wrestle this weekend because Jason had a big track meet, but Luke decided that he DID want to wrestle. So we all got up early and got all ready to go out to Palmer. One problem: I couldn't find the baby leash. There is NO WAY I can go to a wrestling tournament with Seth without the baby leash. We looked and looked EVERYWHERE in the house, but couldn't find it. I finally decided that we would have to stop by the store on the way to the tournament and buy a new one. One problem: The store didn't have any. I think I won't get in trouble for this because I used it around his tummy like a baby leash, but I had to buy a dog collar and leash. Some people will be appalled by this, but even more appalling would have been to lose my sweet Seth in that crazy wrestling tournament! He had his wrestling singlet on under his shirt so that the leash didn't scratch up his skin, and he doesn't mind wearing it at all. He knows that it keeps him safely close to me when he forgets how important it is to hold my hand. I got plain black so that it didn't look like dog equipment. I could have put him in a stroller the whole day, but he's really too big for a stroller. He would've been uncomfortable all day, he would've had no exercise and no freedom to move at all, and we would've had a VERY difficult time getting around all the wrestling mats.
Luke did really well in his first two matches. Click HERE to see Luke's first match and HERE to watch his second match (and once again I must say that girls should NOT be wrestling!!!! I do NOT like it that my son who has anger issues has to take that aggression out on a girl!!!! He tries to hurt people when he wrestles. He usually follows the rules, but he IS trying to win). I didn't put the third and fourth matches on youtube because Luke lost and also because I don't know how to edit out the sound of me yelling like a crazy mom who wants her son to WIN. Gavin got second place in his age/weight division, and Luke got third place in his division.

recorder and tooth

At A.C.S., the third graders learn to play the recorder for their music class. Every time they successfully play a song, they receive a "belt" like in karate (the teacher gives them a colored piece of string to tie onto the bottom of the recorder). Each consecutive song gets a little more difficult. Today, Luke played "Amazing Grace" to earn his black belt :-)

Another reward of all the practicing is striking the gong. Luke LOVED that part!

Seth's teacher and I write notes back and forth about what Seth did at school, what he needs to bring to class, or any questions I might have. Today, one of his teeth was taped to the notebook. Seth apparently would rather endure the pain of ripping out a loose tooth before it's really ready than feel it wiggling. Now he's looking a little "snaggle-toothed" :-)

Easter 2012

Let's compare Easter over the past few years :-)
2008 (I think):


2010:Not sure why I don't have a picture of Joel for 2011:And now for 2012: I asked Joel to move everything away from the fireplace. The next thing I knew, he was vacuuming without being asked! WHAT?! My teenage son was doing something that needed to be done without being asked???!!!! Weird, but GREAT!
And then for the cousins pictures :-) I have more somewhere, I think, but here's what I could find tonight. 2010:
2011:And 2012:2012 after Seth scratched Luke in the eye because Luke was trying to get Seth to look at the camera by grabbing his chin and turning his face. Apparently, Seth didn't like that. Not sure why we keep putting Seth and Luke next to each other. It pretty much never turns out well.
Our girls sat nicely, though, and posed SO sweetly:Makayla looked BEAUTIFUL :-)Gavin posed very nicely so I could get a picture. He didn't really want to because it was time to eat, but he did it with such a sweet smile :-)