Guess Who's Back!?

Guess who’s back, back again, mischief’s back - tell a friend!

Friends, A LOT has happened since my last post back in July. I feel like I’ve lived about 3 different lives since then, but we’ll get to that eventually. For now I want to pick up where we left off and give a quick run down to try to catch up to now.

Last post I detailed life starting Mr. Orange with homeschooling and finally going through the evaluation process for Mr. Blue. and all that comes with that. The emotions, both good and bad, and just how parenting a neurodivergent child affects the whole family. From there we just continued on with regular programming - just feeling a bit more validated and with more knowledge of our child. We still were going to homeschool group, going to parks as the weather allowed, having play dates with friends and overall just going on with life as usual. We also got back into doing ‘dates’ with the kids where either Nic or I would take one of them to do some one on one time with a special activity/treat. And then we went into the craziness that is the holidays. We had birthday celebrations, hosted Thanksgiving, went to Disney on ice, had a family baking day, drove around to see Christmas lights - A LOT, and celebrated Christmas with our families. The holidays can be such a crazy time and writing it out now and looking back can be so interesting.

Because in the moment it seems so hectic and rushed, but thinking back and looking at pictures - it’s always my favorite time of year. The Christmas music playing everywhere, the meals together with family, extra get togethers with family and friends, the magic of Christmas lights, singing Christmas hymns at church, the traditions we’ve started with our kids, the FUN, but most of all - our kids coming to know and understand why we’re celebrating and who it’s all for. The birth of our Savior, the light of the world, coming to save us all. Each year we try to dive in a bit deeper so they can fully understand it and it’s amazing the questions they ask and that they have a yearning to know and understand. We DO also do the whole Santa thing, which Mr. Blue is absolutely starting to figure out but has yet to actually ask us. And when he does we’ll let him in on it and say that Santa is a representation of the spirit of giving and being generous - just like Jesus. And then tell him he gets to be a part of the magic for his younger siblings and feel how wonderful it feels to give them gifts and watch them be so excited to open them. We will also say he can now be ‘Santa’ to others and participate in the joy there is to be had in giving rather than only receiving. I truly LOVE to give gifts, especially thoughtful ones, and watch people open them. But I also love to give, just to give and know it means something to someone, even if I don’t get to witness them open it - and I hope all my kids will get to experience and come to love that feeling of joy as well. We are NOT an elf on the shelf family. That is absolutely not my cup of tea. I’m not knocking it for other families, but it’s not for us. However, we do use the shepherd on the search - the kids have named him Jack and his camel is named cyclone (big Iowa State fans over here). Jack does move every night, but doesn’t pull any shenanigans, and the kids search for him every morning as he makes his way to baby Jesus in the manger on Christmas morning. And each day there are different activities that we can do that relate to the Bible verse for that day or we just talk about the verse.

After the holidays we celebrated Mr. Green turning 2! And as is tradition for our kids on their second birthdays - we went to build a bear where he got to pick out and name a bear (which he lovingly named ‘Bear’ 🤣).

Unfortunately a week later the kids were hit with the flu and it took us out of commission for a good few weeks. Just one by one it took them all down, back to back to back. Luckily Nic and I were spared. But it was high fevers, they’d feel a bit better, and then fever again. And not only does it suck to watch your kids not feel well but when it’s already the dead of winter and cabin fever/winter blues have sunk in - being stuck at home is the worst! BUT the bright spot in all the sickness was me finally listening to that tug to start this blog and get it up and running! Once everyone was back to 100% Mr. Blue and Mr. Orange got to have a special weekend away with the grandparents! Which gave us a special weekend of sweet one on one time with Mr. Green. Something fun we decided to do to help make everyone more comfortable on overnights at the grandparents was to make a tie blanket that would stay at their house. So off to the store we went where they each got to pick out their fabrics to make a blanket for each grandparents house. We were still trucking along with school, playing in the snow when there was some and just playing outside whenever those random nice days occurred.

We were beyond ready for spring and consistent nice weather so we could get back to being outside daily and meeting up with friends at parks. Park days, beach days, going on hikes - just being outside in general is our favorite thing. In early spring we made a surprise trip to my in laws to see my father in law receive an award and while we were there we decided on a whim to look at a house that we heard was going to go on sale soon. While we loved the house we just weren’t in a place where we wanted to move, and especially away from our community. Around this time I began looking at different homeschool enrichment opportunities for the big boys as I felt it would be good for them to: learn from someone other than me, give them opportunities to make some relationships with other homeschooled kids, and give me some time with just Mr. Green and a chance to run errands with only 1 kid. We did a couple try days with: an outdoor school that would be close to a full day a couple times a week, or a forest school that was a few hours 1-2 days a week. Both were pretty expensive so we really had to weigh whether they were a good choice and good fit for us. Mid spring, life decided to give us a little surprise - we were expecting number FOUR!