We're Gonna Need A Bigger Sandbox

 

On October the 8th, we received a call from our agency about a foster placement.  She is 2 and fits right in with our family.  She comes with the 2 yr old "Nos" and an oscar winning pouty face, but she also has the best giggle and laugh!  Joshua and her are getting a long quite well for both of them living as an only child.  We are especially proud of Joshua.  He has done a great job with her and sharing his toys!  She does have toys of her own, but being the younger one, she wants to be where Joshua is and doing or play with anything that Joshua has or is doing.  This morning, they were outside playing very well together, a little too well, because it was quite.  I look out the window and see the picture above.  The two of them crowded together in this tiny sandbox, playing!  They played in the sandbox for awhile.  It was fun to watch them out there playing and running around together. 

Golfing Around

Joshua is still going strong at The Little Gym!  He absolutley loves this place!  We love it to.  All the instructors are super nice and seem like they really enjoy what they do!  I  love the fact that all the way across the gym is all windows, so we are able to watch and take pictures!  Joshua is going twice a week now and instead of doing all tumbling, we decided to enroll him in a sports class.  This class is on Mondays, and 30 mins is about sports and the other 30 mins is tumbling or games.  The first 4 weeks was soccer and now they are learning the fundamentals of Golf(every 4 weeks is a new sport)!  I didn't take any pictures of the soccer session, but here are some pics of him practicing his putting skills.  I love that they are learning the fundamentals of each sport.  It gives them a nice base of what each sport is and how it works, so maybe later on it will help them decide what sport to play(if they want to play a sport).

 

The first picture up top is Ms. Ashley helping Joshua with his putting skills.  They really show them how to grip the club and how to stand, etc.

 

The picture right below is Joshua showing off his mad putting skills.  I really thought it would frusturate him if he didn't get the ball in the hole on the first try, but he seemed to do really well and kept trying.

                                                                   
                                                                
                                                                  Ready to Putt!

Joshua is still enjoying his tumbling class on Wednesday nights!  He loves that he gets to go to TLG twice a week.  It is a needed change from all of his therapies that he goes to during the week.  TLG is NO work and ALL play!

Southern Secret

 

Ok, I am a little late on getting my usual everything about fall post up, but better late than never, right?  As you know, or don't know I absolutely love Fall!  This year it seems that we are actually getting to experience the Fall season!  Yippee!  I am typing this blog with all the windows in my house opened and enjoying the cool temperatures.  The season also brings with it football!  Go Longhorns!  The first game was over labor day weekend and they have won all their games so far.  Last night's game against OSU almost gave Dan and I a heart attack, but none the less they won!  This is the time of year when I begin to look for new soup recipes to make and bring back the good ol' favorites, like chicken tortilla and vegetable beef!  YUM!  Last but not least, Fall also starts the beginning of consuming one of my favorite drinks...Pumpkin Spice Latte!  Starbucks is responsible for this fabulous drink and I wish they would keep it all year round.  I seem to get headaches when I drink coffee drinks, but I will certainly suffer through a headache every now and then for this yummy, fall drink!  So, YAY for the fall season and everything that comes with it!  I have added something new to the list this year, I will probably use it all year round, but I will share the secret!

The picture above is not anything to sink your teeth into, but to make your home smell like Fall!  I found it on Pintrest and it is super easy and super cheap! You take a pot and peel about 3 or 4 oranges.  I am sure you can use more, but this is all that I had at the time.  Take the peels and put them in the pot add about 1 tblsp of cinnamon and then add water just until it covers the orange peels.  Set it on the burner and turn up the heat.  I usually start off on high then drop it down to med-high once it starts to boil.  You want to keep it at a steady boil. Pretty soon your house will smell so warm and wonderful!  I tried it last week and my mom and sister came in the house and instantly said the house smells so good, what candle is that you are burning?  Ha!  I shared with them the secret!  Today, we cooked bacon and you know how bacon can stink up your house, so I threw the oranges and spices together and in no time I was smelling the orange spice smell instead of bacon grease.  I actually decided to add cinnamon and pumpkin spice along with the oranges today.  There you have it!  A great natural and inexpensive way to fill your house with the smell of fall!  I took the peeled oranges and put them in the fridge for a healthy snack later!  I am starting to wonder if lemons and limes would work for the spring?  Hmmm? 

Joshua says the Darndest Things

 

Lately, Joshua has been some saying some really funny stuff, so I wanted to write it down, so I want forget.  He is so witty and comes up with the craziest stories!

 

Just today we were at a stop light and Joshua wanted his umbrella but couldn't reach, because it was on the floor.  He asked if I could get it for him.  I was trying to reach around my seat to grab it and told him that I couldn't reach it.  Joshua says, "Momma, yes you can,  just use your muscles and more muscles, you can do it!" Ha!

 

When leaving the gym he told the worker's in the childcare center, "Bye, thanks for having us!"

 

Almost everytime, I share something with Joshua in the form of good news, like we are going to "X" place or "X" people are coming over, how was his day, etc.  He almost always asks "Are you so happy?"  Apparently this is something that some PDD kids do.  They need that extra reassurance, because they do not know how to process self praise and encouragement, therefore they seek it out.  They are not very confident in what they accomplish, so their need to be praised is much greater.  None the less it is still something cute that he says, so I had to add it to the list.

 

 

He love to have our dog, Milo do tricks for treats!  Joshua will ask Milo to lay down or sit and after Milo follows the command, Joshua will say, "why thank you!"

 

Joshua is always encouraging Dan and I.  He will say, "You can do it!"  "You got it"  "Yay, you did it!"  He our little encourager for sure.

 

Joshua was telling me the other day about a game he played in Grapes class called "Whack A Mole". I asked, "what did you do?" His reply, "I whacked them moles right on their heads!"  haha!

 

This little man keeps us in stitches and we are always eager to hear what he is going to say next!

 

Thank you, Joshua for always making Daddy and I laugh!   

Fostering to Adopt

We started our foster to adopt journey back in May.  We have taken the training classes, turned in our mounds of paperwork, filled out our 40 page home study questionnaire and completed the home study interview.  We are about to be licensed!  We started this journey wanting to adopt and infant.  During our training we were told that if we wanted to straight adopt an infant it would not be possible.  We would need to foster to adopt in order to take care of the infant that we wanted.  I was not sure how I felt about it at first, but God completely changed my heart and is preparing me for the foster to adopt program. We are very excited to start this journey.  We are just waiting for the agency to give us our next instructions. 

We are so excited and we can't wait to start giving these sweet kids a loving enviroment and hopefully one or two will become our own through adoption!

Mini Vacation, Babymoon, or Whatever You want to call it

We decided we would take a little hiatus from our day to day norm and get away before Joshua starts school and we start our foster to adopt journey. We went to Kemah and the Houston Space Center. We had a lot of fun! I put the pictures pretty much in order of how it happened over the weekend. We first started out going to a place called Jumpoline! I have mentioned it before in a previous blog. We were waiting for daddy to get off work and getting some energy out before we got in the car and drove for 3 hours. On Saturday we went to Kemah Boardwalk and spent all day there. We met my sister and niece that evening for dinner and some splash pad fun! We ate at a really cool place called The Aquarium. The kids loved looking at all the fish in the tanks. We also got to feed the fish that were in the water once we were outside on the boardwalk. Sunday we went and ate a place called Kelleys for brunch before we went to The Houston Space Center. Kelleys has the best eggs Benedict! Yummy! The space center was fun, but a little to over Joshua's head. He loved looking at the space shuttle and playing inside the playscape, but he didn't really care about the learning aspect of it. We will give it a go in another couple of years! Before we headed home on Sunday we stopped and fed the ducks at a pond near by. Those ducks were not afraid to get close as you will see in the pictures. Oh and my son is not scared when it comes to carnival rides. He wanted to do every ride, but he couldn't do most because he wasn't tall enough. He did ask to do the ferris wheel and loved every minute of it! So, here are the tons of pictures that I posted. Enjoy!























































































































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Musical Beds

This is where Joshua starts out sleeping. Nice and comfy in his bed....


And this is where Joshua ends up sleeping, here on our bedroom floor. Nice and cozy, don't you think? :). Joshua comes into our bedroom almost every night so we decided after having to fight for our right to sleep comfortable in our own bed, to make him his very own spot on the floor. He actually loves it and even sleeps late. Works for me!!


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