mmmm frosting on icecream cupcakes

Decorationg and eating cupcakes

Juice Break

Some of the kids took a juice break at Sam's party.

It's R2D2, no, a Rocket, well, it's a cake

Sam wanted a robot cake, so I attempted to make R2D2. Sam had some other decorations he thought it needed, like red stripes. It tasted good too. It took two recipes of buttercream frosting though, that's a lot of butter, and a lot of sugar.

Cake Bakers

Cake Mix

Parsley from the Garden

I have volunteer parsley from the garden, it's actually last year's plants, only way healthier than they were last year. I only have the three plants, and they've kept me in parsley for about a year now. This parsley was put into the red beans.

Chopping peppers for the beans

Yeah, so this one is an inside joke. I am such a pepper diva.

Cooking for Sam's Birthday

Peeling an egg

Awyn likes to peel them, but not to eat them. Good girl, just like her mama. Sam and Eric can eat them all by themselves. Even funnier, Sam got all plastic eggs at the hunt, and Awyn got all hardboiled, and they ate from each other's baskets.

Admiring the loot

It was kind of nice to be able to let Easter have religion this year. In normal years, the hunt is sponsored by the school, so no religious references past the obvious. This year the bible study class and Sunday school classes sponsored the hunt. In this picture Sam and Awyn are finding all their Easter tattoos so I can put them on. They didn't last very long for temporary tattoos. Sam and Awyn like them; and there's something different about a tattoo that says, "Jesus Lives".

Comparing Cards

Sam reads his Easter Card

Yes folks, my son chose to be Captain Kirk for Easter.

Wow, an Easter Card!

Yay, we're done!

Here I confess, I forgot to take the camera to the Easter egg hunt and Sunday school.

Easter Eggs

Sam and Awyn enjoyed dying Easter eggs.

Sharing Milk

Desert Hike

The other day Eric took the kids for a short hike to get them out of the house. They came home tired but happy. It wasn't a very long trail, but it was out on the desert floor, so a little hot.

Reading a sign

Yes, Sam is wearing two hats at the same time. One is orange, his favorite color, and the other has a giant 5 on it, his favorite number.

Desert hiking fun

Paper or Plastic?

I went to the store today to pick up some last minute Easter and birthday supplies. I forgot to take my cloth grocery bags. No problem, as I needed a few more anyway, I thought. Walmart even had them at the end of the aisle for a dollar each. I picked up about four of them, as that's about how much I had in the cart. I don't shop at that store very often, so these were a different color and design from my other bags, black with only a tiny tag saying Walmart. I figured they'd do just fine.

So I go to the checkout counter. I put the bags on the counter first, so she can use them straight off. Well, she rings them up, and then sets them on top of the plastic bag turntable, and starts to ring up a few other things, putting a pair of shorts for Sam on top of the bags, and then starts to put things into a plastic bag. I couldn't help it, I said, "you know, you can put things INTO the cloth bags - that's why I'm buying them." So she gives me a non-commital grunt, and puts a few things into ONE of the bags, and sure enough, she put the other three into their own plastic bag. I swear, she put about two items in each plastic bag.

Moving will be Bittersweet

Yes, we will be leaving the Big Bend. This has been our home for more than 4 years now. We moved here before Sam's first birthday, so he's about to celebrate his 5th birthday here in the park. We've had the greatest backyard a family could have. We have friends that are incredibly hard to leave behind. I can't entirely explain all of our reasons for leaving. There's the whole park service truism: move onward to move upward; we've been here a while now. I think the biggest reason is Sam. We moved here for him, so he could grow up living inside a national park. Some of Eric's greatest early childhood memories are of living with his family in Yellowstone, where his dad was a seasonal park ranger. But this means we also have to be willing to leave for Sam. He needs more than what he can get here. So we chose a park in a small town with large city benefits nearby. We chose a town with a good school system, and best of all, regular speech and occupational therapies available. Sam's made huge strides, but he's got such a long way to go, and he needs everything we can give him. I've worked with him as much as possible, but I'm his Mama. He needs a real SLP to do the therapy, and once every three weeks isn't cutting it; it never has. His current therapy schedule goes against everything I learned in college during my clinical work. He's on a monitoring schedule, not a therapy schedule, and that's how it's been since he started. Now the Coop that I used to work for is going to start using 'teletherapy'. This is, I think, where an aide will assist Sam at the school, and his SLP will monitor/direct via satelite uplink. Given that Sam has a sensory integration issue, I think this is going to be disasterous. Heck, I'd be against it for any kid. I'm vehemently opposed to my son being a guinea pig for this. The parent letter I received in the mail stated, "studies have shown it to be as effective" as regular therapy. Hah! Did they cite any of the studies? Nope. I'm willing to bet I could find 5 studies for every one they had stating the opposite. I do owe Sam's SLP an apology. I vented and took my frustrations out on her when she called to set up Sam's next therapy session on the 25th. Anyway, I think teletherapy only really makes sense from a managerial point of view. When you have as many miles to cover as the Coop does, and you have a very limited number of therapists available, coming up with ways to cut down on the number of hours your therapists spend on the road instead of in their office or doing therapy does make sense. I should know; I lived that life until I got sick of the driving and 12 hour days. Oh, they'll still have to send someone down in a car - San Vicente ISD doesn't have an aide on staff, let alone anyone qualified to do therapy in concert with someone via satelite, and I never did convince any of them that it was faster and shorter to drive through Marathon and down 385 (94 miles instead of 110, 1 hour 40 minutes instead of 2.25 hours).

So where are we moving to? Chickasaw National Recreation Area. Sulphur, Oklahoma.

Ice-cream Boy

I was playing with this picture for his party invites, and didn't use it afterall. So I'm putting it up here on the blog. Sam is really coming a long, long way. He let me cut his hair this time without a single complaint. Just amazing, considering that I still use the clippers, and how much it really bothered him in the past. It was heartbreaking to have to pin him down with my legs while I shaved his head with a razor, while he's shrieking, "Scary, scary! Mama, Scary!" Scary was a word he learned to explain what a haircut was.

Popsicles in the Basin

Circus

Well, acrobats, really. This is a Brittish couple working their way around the US in an old double-decker bus. They're at the Starlight through next week, as they've realized that Spring Break will bring in plenty of money. This is exactly the right kind of entertainment starved community for a small act like this. It was a fantastic show, and Sam loved it. Heck, all of us loved it. They were incredible. Best of all, no admission fee, just a passing of the hat (and boot). We might go see it again. Maybe next time we can get there early enough to get drinks first. (the Starlight Theater is a working restaurant and bar, think Brit-style pub)