Saturday, May 24, 2008

Austin's Preschool Graduation

Austin's preschool graduation was yesterday. He did such a good job. I am so proud of him. The class sang "Mr. Golden Sun" and "The B-I-B-L-E" and Austin was so adorable up there singing along. He looked shy but had his smile on and just made me so proud. I nearly teared up a couple times while he was up there. He is the smallest boy and the 2nd smallest in his class and was just so stinking cute.

After the graduation I went back to my class to teach and about a 1/2 hour later I get called down to the kindergarten room for a quick meeting of the minds with the principal, K teacher, pre-K teacher, and daycare director. They want us to put Austin in Kindergarten next year. They think he is ready, Joe and I are worried about his maturity but they seem to think he'll be ok. They definitely think he is smart enough. So it looks like we will be going straight to Kindergarten as opposed to young 5's. If by chance it doesn't work out there is nothing wrong with having him do two years of Kindergarten but they are thinking he'll flourish. And they were right in moving him up to the 4 year old program from the 3's back in September. I think he'll be ok, but as always it's nerve-wracking. But honestly, I'm overjoyed that Austin is doing so well. He's thriving! I apparently do not give him enough credit.



Monday, May 19, 2008

Hello from DC

Hello friends! I am in DC with my class and am having a great time. I've been keeping the student's families at home up to date with what is going on so I am going to just copy and paste my posts so you can see what we've been up to.

Sunday, May 18, 2008
Here in DC!

Hello everyone! We are having a great time and except for having to jump start the car this morning the traveling went very well.

The internet connection is not great here so unless somehow it miraculously gets better I won't be uploading pictures.

Tomorrow we will be touring the Basilica of the Shrine of the National Conception. We will also be touring the Capitol Building and then Union Station. We will end our day with a night tour of DC. Lets hope for good weather!

Monday, May 19, 2008
A fabulous Monday

Hello everyone! What a great day! We left this morning at 9:00 and took the Metro to the Basilica of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. What a beautiful church. I think everyone was amazed at the crypt level, upper church, and many chapels. It was absolutely sublime. We went to mass and the priest even welcomed our group publicly. Some people from Gaylord then let us know they were there from MI too.

We took the metro over to Union Station and walked to the Capitol building for a tour. We then took a snack/treat break before walking to the Air and Space Museum. A few of us braved the flight simulators while others saw the Wright Brothers plane and other fun in aviation.

Then we walked over to the Mall and found that the film "Night at the Museum 2" was being taped. We saw Mr. Ben Stiller himself! He waved at our rowdy "star struck" group and even asked where we were from. Mackenzie then got bold yelling "I have a brother named after you" he asked her "for real and how old" she replied 9 months and then it was back to taping. Ms. Gabbie has already approved our field trip next year to see the movie. Yeah! :) That was really exciting!

We walked over to Union Station where we had dinner. We then took our Twilight Tour. It was nice. We saw the Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, WWII, Korean War, & Vietnam War Memorials.

I think everyone is tired but happy. The weather was beautiful! Sunny & pleasant! Tomorrow is looking like lots of rain all day. :( Oh well, I am thankful for today.

The kids are behaving wonderfully and the parents are doing well too.

I guess that their is a St. Elizabeth mental hospital out here and a few people have found it comical to say something to us about letting us out to tour the city today. hahaha...right? We all looked great in our shirts.

So that is the general DC report for Monday. I'll let the students add in the comment section some of the finer details and their fondest memories of the day.

Hopefully tomorrow will be just as great, rain or shine! Nighty night!
Posted by Dawn at 11:10 PM 0 comments



I was able to light two candles in the crypt church this morning after mass. I lit one for my Grandmother's and the other one of course for Autumn Rose. She was born 5 months ago today and her due date would have been today. It wasn't too hard of a day but she was on my mind a lot. I got a few text messages from people saying they were thinking of me today and that meant a lot. So thank you, I really appreciate it! Later taters!

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Average Austin

All seems to be well with the young beast. Tommy had his well check today so I dragged Austin in too so they could look in his ears. I guess the infection isn't quite gone yet but he doesn't act like his ears are bothering him so we're just staying the course on the amoxicillin. He goes back in 2 weeks. I was on the phone with his ped. a lot the last couple of days as he was the middle man with the neuro. The neurologist (at UofM) is supposed to be contacting us to go down soon for a full work-up. She wants to see his new CT scan, do an EEG and also an MRI. I guess it will be good to see if their is any change from when he first had his "incident" as an infant.

Going on 5 years I wonder if his brain has mysteriously healed at all. I know doctors give you worst case scenarios but I wonder if his neuro's had a clue or is it really a crap shoot when you have brain damage and they try to give you some sort of prognosis. After our first visit to neurology (Jan. 2004) we left with our hopes and dreams crushed as we were "Welcomed to Holland" and told our son "could" be severely retarded and have severe CP. I hate telling "sad tales" and you can imagine how difficult those phone calls were to people. But many responses were, "just wait and see" and "he's already a miracle baby" and yeah, look where he is now. Today he had his Kindergarten readiness test and was labeled (don't you love labels) average!! Yes, lovely AVERAGE!! Isn't that wonderful? Bless em' heart! He's an average boy! I know his struggles are not all behind him, but for today I can celebrate that cognitively he is simply average.

Friday, May 9, 2008

We are home!

Thank goodness.

My Mom came and got us and we just got home a little while ago. I guess Mom's car was hard on Aus' back and he was crying pretty good for a bit but seems to be relaxing comfortably on the couch now. His back is probably sore from his tap.

Such a hard ordeal. I don't know how some Mom's handle a child's lingering illness so well. It's so mentally and physically draining.

My Mom is at Manley's filling a prescription for Diastat. It's a seizure med that you give rectally if a seizure lasts more than 5 minutes. I guess we'll be carrying that around with us for a while. I hope to God that he doesn't have another seizure, it's so frightening. I suppose if it does happen we will go the anti-seizure meds route. Again it's hard to gauge whether it was simply a child's fever that caused the seizure or if it was his brain damage but it was probably a combination of both.

Oh my, no local pharmacies have the stuff. Finally Walgreens in Saginaw is going to hook us up. Mom is going to head out there now.

Austin seems good for now. Just watching Mickey's Twice Upon A Christmas. Yahoo! Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers. It is much appreciated.

Austin is in the hospital

Hello blog family. It's been a crazy couple of days.

Yesterday afternoon Austin just kind of out of the blue started complaining about his ear after his nap. He had a temp so I knew I had to take him in to his ped. He has an ear infection but no big deal right?

At home he varied between completely fine and ultimate crab. Around 6:30 I snuggled him all up on the loveseat and a few minutes later I see the back of his head bobbing funny. Somehow I knew he was having a seizure. It was very rhythmic and less shaky but scared the daylights out of me none the less. Being the idiot parent I picked him up and just hoped I could snap him out of it before finally putting him on the floor and calling 911. It lasted forever, about 12 minutes from when I called 911 til when the EMT's said he stopped. He didn't come out of it for what seemed like forever.

Tommy was great through the whole thing and went over to John & Janet's to stay while I went to the hospital. He was very calm and I'm so proud of him. I was on the phone with 911 and he says, "Mom, where's your cell phone so I can call Dad?" What a thinker. He did end up opening the back door and was out in the driveway greeting the EMT's for us. Joe was down at the Tiger game with coworkers so that was another problem. They came back early, what a bummer for them. Thankfully, he has some very understanding coworkers.

Anyways, back to Austin. They did an IV before even leaving the house and they put it in his good arm so that has made things extra miserable for him. They wouldn't let me back there with him. He finally started crying a bit so that calmed me. On our way out of the ambulance he threw up. They ended up cutting off his shirt. He wasn't happy at all last night when I told Joe that. He was in beautifully mismatched jammies, his choice.

They were very concerned with it being such a long seizure. Poor dude had to have a cath. put in for a pee sample because he wouldn't pee, blood drawn, CT scan, and a spinal tap. Everything is coming back normal thankfully. They think that the fever triggered the seizure and his previous brain damage made it last so long. They want to do an EEG on him on Monday. Scares me to death but I know he's in good hands and I just have to have faith that he'll be ok. Here is yet another curve ball thrown our way. We got into our room around midnight. I stayed the night with him and we both slept well I think. Joe just got in. They are probably going to let us go home this afternoon.

He's alternating between happy and mad/sad pretty regularly here. He's most upset about his left arm being out of commission. He just plowed through breakfast and just keeps bugging us about going to school. Funny that is the main thing on his mind, he wants to go to school!

Huge thanks to Julie and my Mom for coming up the hospital last night and saving my sanity. I was completely freaked, it's easier to freak out when others are around. ;)

I pray that this isn't the beginning of seizure activity for us. He went to neurology for years and last summer they said chances are we would be seizure free since he hadn't had one yet. Hopefully it'll be just a fluke, Tommy had a fluke febrile seizure when he was 2 and hasn't had one since. Gosh scary.

I'll keep everyone posted on the situation.



Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Student News

I usually keep the students out of this blog but I just had a big crack up thanks to them so I have to share.

We are going to DC in less than 2 weeks and I've been working on the itinerary among other things at school. I just opened up my laptop and I guess they had some revisions for the itinerary.

Here is what I first saw mind you in big bold font!

Go to the pool and hurt the teacher!!!!!!!!!!!

Make sure to bring home an orphan as a souvenir. (Make sure it’s a homeless person from china town!) HAHA!

It is our real plan. Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



They're killing me! ;) You gotta love them and I have a feeling I know who to blame.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Tommy's Goalie Debut

Is today! He's been wanting to play goalie forever and Joe and I just aren't keen on the idea. His house team however has no goalie so it's his turn. He's pumped like no other. I wonder if he will look as good as Miss Jill? I just hope he doesn't decide he would rather be goalie than skate out for his career. Do you know how expensive goalie equipment is? Plus, I'd probably stroke out from the pressure.

Friday night his Stars team beat the Flint Icelanders 9-4. Tommy got thrown in the penalty box for a slash. His first penalty in over a year. That made it a 5-3 penalty kill but our team did indeed kill it. Tommy played great defense in the effort.

Saturday afternoon Tommy got to play Winger on his house team. He hadn't played offense in Mites at all so it was a nice change. You work a lot harder on offense and I just had to laugh when he was going to the bench needing a shift change. I guess he is a bit soft in that regard. hehe. He came close to scoring a few times but couldn't find the net. He's still very defensive minded and it showed as they won 3-1.

We're going for 3 win weekend here.

Tomorrow night I get to play Jill's team. Should be exciting. I've heard that her team is recruiting from both Russia and the Czech Republic these days. 8:30 tomorrow, one of us will be dealt our first loss. Please help me in talking some smack. ;)

I also just heard from my cousin's husband Kenny (he's the rink manager in Lapeer) that the Lapeer Polar Palace Lady team wants to play our Chicks w/ Sticks team. Maybe the Hat Chicks will be resurrected! I would love to give it another whirl!

****Update****
Tommy played respectably but his team lost 3-0. Matthew Pike scored all three of the goals; the kid is amazing and played defense on Tommy's fall team. The other goalie did awesome though too. Tommy faced 10 shots and had a save percentage of 70%. He sure had fun though.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

The House Painting

Good ole Aunt Michele did such a great job! I am in love with the house again.

Here are a few old pics to go along with the new.





We went bold and did the totally in thing right now and got some dark colors. I don't think the pics do it justice but you probably get the idea. Big changes for us. When we built the house we got all white walls. I loved the white walls with the wood trim throughout the house but after 7 years we needed some color. Now we just need to get our pics back up on the walls and such.