In Transition

While our house is being finished, we are living in my parents' home. It has been better than we all anticipated: hopefully for my parents as well. We are very comfortable with my parents. Even Evelyn is comfortable enough that it makes up for having to change schools. We have hit so many landmarks here in the two months that we have been here!

We are living upstairs in the loft and two bedrooms. Its pretty spacious, but my room has a tendency of becoming the hangout place, so it reminds me a bit of the dorms in college. We just kind of party on my bed.

    We moved in  just before Halloween, so on November 11th, as per tradition we decorated for Christmas! We decorated my parents house too, so that they would have the full impact of living with us during the Christmas season. They are sweet enough that they allowed it with good attitudes.

 Right before we moved in, Timothy got a device from Kids on the Move to help him stand. He gets strapped in and raised up to standing position: my mom calls it Timothy's Rack. He has to be in it 1 hour and 15 minutes a day to help with bone density and muscle development. He likes to either eat or play the piano with Evelyn while he does his time.

 Timothy has always loved food, but right now he LOVES food! He eats it constantly, and begs for more! "MMMMM!" He demands! And if we don't pack some food in his mouth quickly enough, he will even try to attempt the hand sign!

we took Timothy to Tucanos for his first Veteran's day meal!

 In the mean time, our house is progressing so quickly! It looks more and more like a real house!

 Michael started his new job, and he is loving it! It is located up in Ogden so there are lots of commuting hours away, but he is so excited to be doing the work that he doesn't even mind. He was released as Bishop and the Willow Springs Ward was officially dissolved and the members split between two neighboring wards. He hasn't felt the ex-bishop letdown since we moved anyway, and we aren't attending that ward. We all just miss our friends, but love the extra nights together! As celebrating for his release, he grew a November beard. 

 We started  attending our new ward and all had such a spiritual confirmation that it is where the Lord wants us to be! Even Evelyn, who had been dragging her feet a little, felt really strongly like this was home! So we transferred our records there and we are speaking in sacrament next week! There is another kid with Spina Bifida in our ward, which is so crazy, because the rate is 1:2000 people! God is so amazing the way He leads us to where we need to be!

New House!

 In my new kitchen!

In the master bedroom

Life=Crazy!

I cannot believe it is autumn already! I have so much to share! I will do it photo-journal style again. 

 This is the new fluffy hat we got for Timothy: I love how round his head looks in it!

 These Lobster swim trunks are one of my favorite things in the world! I cannot get enough of them! Unfortunately, Timothy couldn't wear them very long: he went from 3 month clothes to 9 month clothes in the matter of a couple months! We started feeding him solid foods to help his diaper rash: which totally worked, but boy did it chunk him up!

 Timothy loves to be in the water. I think that it helps his hips feel better. Plus, he loves getting freed from his braces for a little while. One of our favorite past-times is to take baths together!

 For our family Birthday party (15th anniversary!) we went to Tucanos and the Butterfly Biosphere. It was a really nice time to get out of the house and spoil ourselves a little. Timothy LOVES meat! He can't get enough! What a little munch-mouth!

 Evelyn loved holding the butterflies. She was really good at making friends with the beautiful creatures. I think Timothy would have popped them in his mouth if he could. We made sure he didn't get too close.

 When we were about to leave, a butterfly landed on my chin! It tried to climb into my mouth!

 This is one of my favorite outfits for Timothy. He wore it for Isaac's wedding. During this time we thought Timothy was having mini seizures, but it turned out that he would just tremble as he fell asleep: he will quickly grow out of the tendency.

 At the end of Summer School we had a wonderful Family Counsel about focusing on the positive and minimizing the negative. We had this discussion at the table where I had carefully set up a great center-piece: A bouquet and an open, soiled diaper. Here was Evelyn's reaction when she saw it:

 Below is a closer look at what it looked like. Of course Evelyn could hardly focus on what we were trying to say because she was so distracted with the nasty centerpiece. Perfect object lesson! Pretty quickly into the lesson, Michael leaned forward and put his finger in the diaper, scooped up some of the mess and popped it into his mouth! Evelyn almost freaked! Then she realized we had used chocolate! Now Michael has the nick-name of being Bishop Potty-Mouth!

 Evelyn earned her T-Rex for summer school! We were so proud of her because she had procrastinated so much that we thought she would never get the 90% required to earn it. But she set her sights, and worked hard and surprised all of us by winning it!

 Angelo is starting to get pretty comfortable with Timothy. He still gets a little nervous when Timothy pets him, but that's not surprising, because Timothy is a determined hair puller--as shown by my bald spots.

 This was one of Evelyn's Makerspace projects from 5th grade. We had it all hung in her bedroom when I saw the typo! I thought it was a perfect representation for Evelyn!

We have to watch Timothy very closely when his super-boots are off. Because he has no feeling in his feet, and he has been cutting teeth, he tries to chomp off his toes! He literally bites down and pulls!

I love it when Timothy shows off his Popeye muscles!

 A lot of our summer has been preparing our home to sell, and then in the fall we put our house on the market and started to seriously hunt for houses. After nearly 13 years, we are moving! There are so many memories in our home and we've invested so much into improving our house that it is very bitter/sweet! Evelyn is especially nervous because she has never known any other home. But we are very excited to move on! Here Michael and Timothy are house hunting in a model home.

This last picture is a beautiful expression of Timothy's first experience with a new food. In this case we were letting him taste his laxative. Very quickly he gets very accepting of food textures and tastes and begs for more. I love that Evelyn caught this face!

 Sweet snuggle time on a Sunday afternoon!