Yes I'm alive/summary

Ok..so I haven't blogged in months...It's not that life was boring or too busy. I'm just lazy I guess. We had a great Christmas. My mom came out and visited. We saw my sister and her family over break as well as my auntie and her little family too. She was brave enough to have me and minions (as their daddy calls them) over for a sleep over too!!! We all had a blast. We went to the snow, fell on the ice, fed the ducks and psycho seagulls that attacked. Trav has gone to a convention and is headed to another shortly. Sophie has begun to babble and has wrapped her daddy aroound her pinkie with her "da da da da da da" She scoots...backwards, rolls everywhere and oh yeah...growls. Joshua is now a cub scout and gets baptized in less than 2 weeks. Audrey participated in a Christmas program or two and spelling bee. Krystia and Ian marched in a parade, spend hours at school for drama, and got rockin' grades. Trav hurt his back pretty good recently and is on the mend just in time to throw it out of whack once again at a convention. I have juggled school and church meetings, failed at blogging, housekeeping, christmas card writing and the such. I have also entered the world of facebook...but my sister burst my bubble by informing me that I need to post pictures. I knda like the grey blue question mark. It's curvy, like me.

Joshua, leopards, & Joseph

After church yesterday Joshua was telling us about his classes and explained that the person who was to give the talk in primary was not there. He went on to say that he volunteered to give the talk because he had a favorite scripture story to share with the rest of the kiddos aged 3-7. He was so proud when he told us that he shared the story of "The ten leopards." At first I thought I heard him wrong. I mean the kid is missing 6 of his front teeth! When I asked him to repeat himself it was till leopards. So trying to restrain a laugh, I asked him to tell me the story. He went on to tell me that Jesus healed 10 leopards but only one leopard came back to say thank you. I'm pretty sure the boy knows it wasn't large cat creatures, but I guess leopards sound pretty close to lepers.

A little while later I got a phone call from a lady at church. She wants Josh to act out the role of Joseph when the kids do their Christmas program next week. My little man is gonna be Joseph! I was a bit concerned that he would not want to do it because he can be shy, and they do want him to put his arm around a girl...But he was actually okay wit that. He's quite excited too. His count down last night was of how many days until he gets to be Joseph rather than the usual how many days until Grandma comes or Christmas.

Oh yeah..the one request Josh was given for his performance was that he smile while he's up there. I guess I'm not the only one that loves that almost toothless grin.

And He's Humble Too

Joshua had a substitute teacher today in class. When I was waiting to pick him up my friend who works at the school smiled as she told me the following:

Joshua raised his hand in class and when the sub called on him he said "I'm the quietest one in my class." I guess he works really hard at being good in class and wants EVERYONE to know it. Good for him! :)

The end of an era...

for our family that is. When Krystia went off to speech in 99 we had no idea how many years we would spend in speech therapy. She'd go to a special pre-school twice a week and participate in speech therapy there. Then in homeschooling we'd travel down to the church building the charter school used to have more speech therapy 2 times a week. Off to public school and she was still in speech. Even in middle school she was still in speech... Well just last year she was exited out. I teared up a bit and was very happy to know she had reached that point.
In the midst of Krystia's speech career Mr. Josh came along and decided he didn't need to talk because everyone spoke for him! When he did begin speaking we could not understand what he was trying to say and he'd get soooo mad!!! I tired to get him into speech at the age of 3, no luck (darn therapist..I KNOW he qualified) anyhow before Kindergarten he "qualified" and had been in speech since. Just last week I had his annual IEP and he had his triennial review/test that we were going to go over. Well, he no longer qualifies! I have to admit he's improved dramatically...if only we could get him to slow down it'd be great!

Sooo after 8.5 years of speech, 13 IEP meetings, countless speech homework forms and a mountain of parental rights notification forms, we are done! I'm proud of my kiddos and how hard they work. I'm grateful for the wonderful speech therapists we've had throughout the years. Let's see what little miss Sophie does....speech or no speech. That question will be answered in about 2.5 to 3 years....