Only Because I Promised

I am only posting this picture because I promised Arion I would. I'm going to assume that you are wondering about what is going on. It would only be natural for a normal person to wonder. You see it was our first day in which the temperature went into the 80's. Arion wanted me to put on the AC. I, of course, refused, because the temp was supposed to go right back down and I am basically a cheap person. In protest Arion took off his shirt. Of course, monkey see - monkey do, Brandon had to follow suit. Several pictures were taken and NO, I did not turn the AC on.

The Words He Uses

I have always been fascinated by the words Brandon chooses to use. He never progressed in the natural order in learning language. I remember his first speech therapist remarking on it when he was only 2 years old. Back then it was that he started with saying "I" instead of "me" or "mine". For most kids, "I" is the last one children use. More recently it the use of "adorable" instead of "cute". Generally it is the more complex word that he chooses. This morning was no exception. We were going over his list of reading words. Some of them are names. Brandon was trying to explain that he knew 2 Ben's. One is in his reader book at school. The other rides his bus. He was telling me that Quinn was his best friend and Ben was his "foe". He went on the say that Ben was his "arch enemy". I don't know what I expected him to say, but that was not it.

Find A Grave and Pictures

Lately I have found a new web site. It's call Find a Grave. You might think me a sicko, but it is really fun for a person working on genealogy. I was going through some old death certificate in connection with trying to find out more information. I saw the cemetery was listed and went to see if they had a web site. Low and behold you can find just about any cemetery you want. The great thing is that members log in graves with pictures of the plot and person. You can also enter a person and request a picture of the plot. Volunteers from all around the area can go and get the picture for you. I in turn am too look for people at cemeteries in my area. So far I have requested 2 photos and logged 6 new graves.

The other thing I'm working on is photos from Jim's Mom. She has lent me some old photo albums and I have been scanning my ass off. I have even managed to do some repair on one of her favorites of her father. What do you think. No bad for an amature.

I now need more ink from my printer so I can add more pictures to my tree. I have a metal tree that I have old pictures of my ancestor on. I now can add Jim's side. This is what it looks like now. I should be able to add about 6 more people. I'm so excited. I know, very sad, but what can I say. I love this stuff.

Wedding Photos



The Bride



Dancing with Dad



Teens having fun



Arion dancing with Aunt Lainie

Pictures from Niagra Falls

Dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe.



Before getting on the Trolley



Being silly at the Aquarium



The beautiful falls. See the tiny boat, we were on that.



Us on the boat (Maid of the Mist)



Before the Cave of the Winds



The teens on the Hurricane Deck

Brandon's IEP Meeting

This morning was Brandon's IEP Meeting. Everyone thinks he is making great progress. They ran all sorts of test, but the Director says she wants to run some more that are non-verbal to get a better idea of his cognitive strength. Everyone believes his biggest issues are with language, specifically his word retrieval. The speech and language therapist is going to try to teach him ques to help him find the right words when he has a problem. Another issue is that Brandon is very self aware of the issues he has. Unless he is familiar with a person his is less likely to speak and withdraws till he gets to know them better. We all agree that it may take time for him to get to know his new teacher next year. Although we didn't meet all his goals from last year I still feel that this years goals are very aggressive. There were some that stayed on for him to continue with. They upped his attention goal to 15 minutes. This means they want him to say on task with less than 2 prompts for 15 minutes. That is a huge goal. They have the math goals about the same. He is starting to get the concept of adding and can do problems with 0 and 1. He needs to be able to do all problems up to 10. He is able to count to 30 with few mistakes, but needs to get to 100. Reading will be working on him sounding out small words and sight reading about 15 words. The OT therapist wants to work on him only using his dominant hand to color and write. We will be working on increasing his finger strength to help in this. I plan on getting some therapy putty and small Legos for the summer. All and all I was pleased. I will be interest to see what the next couple of test show. I'll let you know.

Trip to Niagra Falls and Wedding

Over the weekend we went on vacation to see Niagra Falls with the kids and then to a family wedding. The falls were great, the hotel was the pits. If we could have found a different hotel we would have moved. Here is a run down of the place. We were quoted one price on-line and then ended up paying $150.00 more. The room had the feeling of being dirty. The beds were small. There were lights out in the hallways. The tub spout fell off the wall when Arion went to take a shower. I was going to dry my hair using an outlet under the desk till I noticed that it was broken in half. The cot they brought up had stained sheets and the mattress was yellow. Very disgusting. I took the cot back and asked for a new one. What they brought back was the same cot with about 4 sheets tied on. They were supposed to have a breakfast, but I don't call a tiny muffin and a cup of cold coffee (they had NO tea) breakfast. The only good thing was it was in walking distance from the falls.

The kids had a great time. We did so much in one day it was exhausting. I will have to post more pictures later. They are all at home and I just haven't had the time. This one was taken before we went down to the "Cave of the Winds". Basically a walkway that was at the bottom of the falls. VERY WET AND COLD. Lauren sort of lost it half way though. She said she was cold, but I think she was scared too. We also went on the "Maid of the Mist". This was a boat ride around the bottom of the falls that takes you into the horse shoe part of the falls and then back. Brie sort of lost it during this. She kept saying that it couldn't be safe. I think she was half joking, but half serious. We also went to the Aquarium. Small, but fun. Brandon only got away from us once. VERY SCARY. He was right in front of me by the rail and then he was gone. We all started yelling to find him and he was found about 20 feet down. He said he wanted a better look.

The next day we all headed to the next hotel and the wedding. The next hotel made up for the last one. Very nice. The wedding was great. Mary and I worked hard to get the teens out dancing. Aunt Eliane even got Arion out on the floor once. THANK YOU.

I promise to post more pictures of the trip. There are some really good ones.

2500 !!!!!!

One of my great hobbies is genealogy. I have been working on my tree since Lauren was born. The would be about 8 years now. I started with some information that my grandmother had left behind and worked from there. It has taken lots of time on-line and several trips to different archives and libraries, but I have finally reach my goal of 2500 people in the data base. The funny thing is that after I entered the last two, I made a major discovery while search for my great-great grandfathers family. I found his wife's family. I am now sending a letter to the woman who posted the information with great hopes that she will send me some copies for my records. I am still searching records for the original family, but unless I can find a list a musicians from the Court of Saxe-Meininger (Germany) from 1834, I think I am going to be out of luck. Maybe I'll start looking for boat records.

Update On Going Green

As some of you know my Resolution for this year was to try to be more "green". I'm not really doing to bad. We started by switching all the light bulbs to CFL's. I try to buy about 3 each month. Then in March it was switching the household cleaners to the new "Green Works" brand (by the way, I do like them). Last month I bought us a new washer and dryer. That was super cool and something I have been thinking about for several months. The old one was 19 years old and not in any way efficient. The new one is a front loader and should drop our water usage by 63%. My project for May is planting some vegetables on the back porch. You see, we live in a townhouse that forbids vegetable gardens. The loop hole is using pots. It helps that our back porch is enclosed. So yesterday I bought a tomato and cantaloupe plant and seeds for carrots, beans and lettuce. We'll see how it goes. I figure I need to get very small result to make my money back. The great part is the kids are very excited about the idea of growing our own food. I am also starting to look in to trying rain water collection from the drain spouts for watering the garden. I just need to get the containers. I looked on-line and they can be very expensive. Shannon suggested that I contact the recycling center and see what they have. Jim is even getting into the act. He is talking about looking into solar panels. The back of our roof faces south and would be perfect. Of course we would have to get the homeowners association to agree. That may be our biggest problem. I'll let you know how it goes.

Some Progress Being Made

It seems were are making progress on several front with the kids. Lauren was asked if she wanted to read to the Daisy Scouts and instead of her usual reaction, she agreed and happily went over. Five months ago when asked to read at Girl Scouts, she would grab my arm and refuse. Of course a came home yesterday to her crying on the couch that we had to delay our Cinco de Mayo celebration one more day.

Brandon's progress was in the form of a night visit to the bathroom without waking anyone up. One only problem was he couldn't get his pajamas back on and was lying next to them when I found him the next morning.