BRRRR!!!!!

Off and running through another week. I hope all of you up North are staying warm. If it is cold here, that means it must be freezing everywhere else!

Yesterday, I had to go shopping for all the things the girls will need this week for school-party supplies, not school supplies, mind you. Allison and Rachel need party favors and Leah needs candy for their parties on Friday. The fact that I had to go shopping, meant I had to go to Target. I have a love/hate relationship with that store. I love their stuff, but cannot seem to walk out of there without spending too much money and wasting too much time. My neighbor and I call it going into the "Target Zone." I spent 1 1/2 hours in there and spent $100-ugh! I did save 10% with my coupon though ;-).

Today started out COLD! I know that 50 degrees is not cold for most of you, but here, we freeze when the temp gets below 60 degrees. Today when we got up, it was 50 and very windy. The windy made it feel quite chilly. Thank goodness I was able to pick up some coats for the girls at Target yesterday! Allison has not had a coat for the last year. She went through all last winter wearing a fleece jacket. Some days it was just barely enough, so this year she has a new coat. (coat in Florida terms is actually just a little more than a fleece jacket)

I was field trippin' again this week. Fortunately, this trip was to a local restaurant and not the lagoon this time. This was Rachel's trip. The kids went to Carraba's (sp?) and got to try their hand at making pizza, meatballs, and salad. They seemed to have a pretty good time. Rachel was really scared of the flames at the grill and would not even look in the direction of the chef when he was cooking the chicken, but she enjoyed the pizza dough, and her favorite part was getting to eat the food when they were done. Below are some pictures of Rachel's trip.

Rachel gets off the school bus. She really seemed to be excited about getting to ride the bus!
Rachel wears her homemade chef hat. I finally have a picture of her wearing her glasses. She will not keep them on at home, she she wears them mostly at school.

Rachel puts on her apron. Now she is ready to cook.
Rachel works with the pizza dough. This was by far the kids favorite spot in the kitchen. Notice Rachel is not wearing her glasses anymore. She took them off just a few minutes prior to this picture and threw them in the floor.

Rachel's class poses with the chefs who showed them around the kitchen. They were soooo nice to all of us. I could not believe how patient they were with the kids and how they really seemed to enjoy showing the kids around.

Down Syndrome Buddy Walk 2008

We made it to the Buddy Walk this morning. It was broken overcast the first of the morning, but no rain. It was the standard warm and very muggy weather that has come to be the norm for the walk. It was great to get to visit with everyone. We also bumped into an amazing family I had heard about on the internet. They live about an hour North of us. They have taken on the challenge of adopting children with DS from places like the the Ukraine. In a lot of countries, these children are still placed in institutions with very little stimulation. This family has adopted two children with DS so far (I believe they have two biological children one of which has DS) and are actively trying to locate more families to adopt these special little ones. After the walk the girls got their faces painted, rode the ponies, petted lots of animals and played on the playground. Just as the festivities were winding down, the rain moved in. We got pretty wet walking back to the car. Thank goodness I had remembered to take the umbrellas along with us.


The girls just before the start of the walk.

Rachel in the bouncy.

Butterfly girls. They love the face painting, but I dread when they have to wash it off this evening.

Petting the pot-bellied pig. I had no idea their hair was soooo coarse. He was so cute!

Allison finally gets to ride a horse after having to watch Rachel ride every Saturday.

Rachel didn't have to go two weeks without getting to ride after all. She was a bit confused when she made one loop around and had to get off. You could see she was thinking that it was not long enough.

Leah gets her turn.

Rachel gets to swing in a big girls swing.

The rain begins to really come down on the way to the car. Of course it stopped as soon as we got to the car.

Oops!

I forgot to mention that Mike returned from his cross country trek this week. He left on Thursday the 16th, leaving Melbourne around 2:00pm EDT on a commercial plane. He arrived in Portland, OR around 2:00am EDT. Friday morning he got in the company plane and started his trek back across the country in a small plane. He stopped in Boise, ID; Denver, CO; Boulder, CO; St. Louis, Mo; Nashville, TN; and Huntsville, AL. For those friends that we have in those areas, I just want to let you know that if he had been in the area for more than a few hours, he would have contacted you, but unfortunately he did not get a chance to stay more than a couple of hours in most places. He finally arrived back in Melbourne around 9:00pm EDT on Wednesday the 22nd. Thursday he got up and had to fly down to Vero Beach, but that is just 45 minutes away, so he was back home on Thursday evening. After his busy week, he says that he is going to stay home this weekend and not go in to work. We will see if he can stick to that. Below are some pictures that Mike took on his trip this past week.

I would certainly not want to go across the country in something this small!

Snow topped mountains. I would get Mike to tell you where this is, but after so many days of traveling he doesn't know either.

This was taken in Oregon. Mike says it is Mt. Hood. I would love to get out there sometime to see the sites.

Mike's requisite self portrait. He is really stylin' with the nasal cannula!!

Week of Goofy

Wow!! I cannot believe that it is Friday already. This week just zoomed by. Monday I volunteered for Allison's teacher. Fortunately, that was short and sweet. Tuesday, I was busy washing and folding clothes. It was the only day I had to get that done. Wednesday I was back at Suntree to volunteer for Allison's teacher. She gave me a "simple" task of sorting the class T-shirts and putting them in the kids' mailboxes. I was thinking I could handle that quickly. I was wrong! I put all the shirts in the mailboxes, only to discover that I had not noticed that there were youth mediums and adult mediums. Okay, easy enough to fix, right? Just go through the 23 mailboxes and find the mediums. That would have been easy if a kid had not gone home sick while I was there. I gave him his shirt before he left, but not before I discovered there were two sizes of medium. After going through all the mailboxes and not finding the adult medium I was missing, I assumed I sent it home with the sick kid. I called his mom and left a message for her to call me back. At that point, I came home to do some things around the house. When the mom called about two hours later, she told me her son had the right size shirt..........back to Allison's school, back through all 23 mailboxes again, no medium adult shirt to be found. The teacher and I came up with plan B to get a T-shirt to every kid.

I thought I was done with the school for the day. I was wrong again. The teacher happened to bump into the assistant principal and decided I needed to help him too. I ended up having to count out a couple of hundred papers and distribute them into the teachers' mailboxes. The teacher also decided that I needed to bring in a cooler to her classroom before school was out. I had volunteered to bring a cooler for the field trip the next day, but nowhere had I been informed that the teacher wanted the cooler at school the day before the field trip (I could have taken it one of the two times I had already been up there that day!).

After stuffing the teachers' mailboxes, I ran to get Rachel at her school. She and I ran home and grabbed a bite to eat and ran back to the school with the cooler. Then, we ran to the pediatrician to get Rachel a flu shot. When I first discussed this with the doctor, she stated that we did not need to make an appointment, but when I called to check to see if they had the vaccines available, they told me I needed an appointment-that costs me a $20 copay for an office visit. From there, we had to hurry home because the big girls were already home from school. I had given Allison the garage door opener when I ran back to school with the cooler. I told her that I probably would not be home from the pediatrician when they got home, but I would be home soon after that. I told her to just get her and Leah into the house and get started on their homework. Well, when I called home to see that they had made it into the house, no one answered. So I called next door and found out they were there, thank goodness. It turns out that on the way home from school, Allison dropped the garage door opener and the batteries fell out. She did not get them back in there correctly, so the she could not get the door opened. Note to self, next time give her a key!

Thursday I went on a field trip with Allison's class. It was to the Indian River Lagoon. The kids got to seine in the lagoon and take water quality tests. It brought back memories from my marine science days! It was a lot of fun. The class caught a HUGE puffer fish, two pipe fish, some juvenile fish that I have no idea what they were.......so much for those marine science memories.......and two of the tiniest seahorses I have ever seen. It was cloudy, windy and cool, but getting in the water was not too bad and it only rained on us a little. All in all it was a fun trip.

Today I had to go in for a follow up mammogram. I went in a couple of weeks ago, and they thought they saw something suspicious. Today I did another mammogram and an ultrasound. The doctor said it looked benign, but he wants me to come back in for another mammogram in three months just to be safe. This afternoon, the girls have had friends over to play. The girls are sisters that are Allison's and Leah's ages. They have played pretty well together, so maybe we will do it again. Tomorrow is the Buddy Walk, but it is supposed to rain. I am not sure if I will go if it is raining. I have done that before, but I am just not up for that this year. They neighborhood is also having a Halloween party at the playground and the girls are having a fit to put on their costumes and go to that. Below are some pictures from this week.

Rachel works on riding her tricycle. She is not happy here becasue she is saying "done" and I am saying just a little bit more.

Rachel's new favorite thing is the Leapster game, the Letter Factory. She may actually be learning some of her letters and letter sounds.

This is what happens when the kids get their hands on the camera and are in a silly mode.

Allison's field trip.

We've Got Style!

We got through this morning on schedule. I could not believe we made it! I reminded the kids that today was the day to wear red-for the Just Say No To Drugs Week at school. Fortunatley, Allison did not want to wear red. I actually don't think she owns anything red!! Leah said she wanted to change her outfit, so she picked out a red outfit and I ironed it for her. Then she decided that she did not want to wear the red shirt. I said that was fine, but I did not know that she intended to wear the red skirt with the brown shirt (with pink polka dots) from the first outfit. I suggested she not mix and match the outfits, but she would have none of that. Below is a picture of her as she headed out of the house this morning. The picture doesn't do the outfit justice. Oh yeah, the socks are light purple. She is my little fashionista!