April Round Up

In looking back at the calendar, April seems like it has been a pretty slow month, but I have been crazy busy all month.

We started off the month with a lovely conference weekend. On Saturday the 6th, we got Spencer a bike in between the day sessions. And spent part of the afternoon session putting it together (while listening to Conference) and the other part of it telling Spencer he has to wait to ride his bike until it’s over. Not the smartest move on our part, but it all worked out in the end.

Spencer LOVES his bike. He asks to ride it all the time. He’s actually getting pretty good at it. He remind of me of my brother, Alan, when he was a kid. We have to constantly remind him to LOOK WHERE YOUR GOING! He would rather watch his feet pedaling. It’s so interesting how the gears work. He is very interested in how things work.

That Sunday, I decided I was going to train for and race in a Triathlon in July. So, I’ve spent a good portion of the month fixing up a bike, getting swim gear, finding a pool and getting started with training. As of the 30th, I’m officially registered for the race, 3 months from now.

The boys and I got to take a trip to the Science Museum this month. And we had a fun little surprise while we were there. On the way, my Dad ended up behind me on his way to do a job with work. He finished early and he came and joined us. Spencer loved showing Grandpa some of his favorite places at SMO. And we got some really cute pictures while we were there.

Matthew was getting way more mobile, but hadn’t quite started walking (on the 8th) when we were at the Science Museum, but by the 10th he took his first unsupported steps. The last full week of April, Matthew got REALLY brave and started walking. As of the 30th, he is toddling all over the house and LOVES “running” away from his mom when she’s coming to get him.

On the 13th, Spencer earned a trip to Krispy Kreme. Here’s a scrapbook page I did about our trip there.

The journaling says: Spencer was promised a trip to Krispy Kreme if had a great week at school. According to his teachers, he not only had a great week, but he even had a couple of double thumbs up days. Hooray! As a result, we all go to enjoy the fruits of Spencer’s hard work. Matthew especially enjoyed the hat he got to wear and the couple of tastes of donut he go as well.

We’ve been able to have a couple game nights with our friends and do a lot of awesome things, but the best thing that we’ve been able to do this month is support Adam in running his half-marathon on April 28th. I’ll let him write about that, but here is what happened for us:

I woke the boys up at 6:45. Got them fed and dressed and out of the house by 7:15. We headed downtown and found a pretty good place to park, even if it was expensive. We made it to the race sidelines by 7:45(ish) and waited. I texted Adam, told him about where we were so he knew we were there. I made a sign for him the night before so he wouldn’t miss us. I kept track of him on Runkeeper so I knew when he would pass us. Spencer had been holding his sign for a couple minutes when Adam ran by us on the wrong side of the road and TOTALLY missed us. I think he was particularly focused on the finish at that point. It was pretty close.

After the race, we exchanged a few texts to find one another. Ultimately, my sign was helpful in reuniting with one another after the race. We took Adam to his car from our awesome spot and had a great rest of the day together as a family.  We (as in the boys and I) are so proud of you daddy!  Congratulations on your accomplishment!

April has been full of little successes (and big ones like Adam’s half and Matthew’s mobility) for us. We’ve been very blessed and very busy this month.

Easter, eggs and rolls

We had a wonderful Easter Holiday at our house.  It’s the past 3 years it had been a little crazy and last minute when we were planning on egg dying and all the fun stuff with Spencer.  We did have enough fore thought to ask the Easter Bunny to come visit our house on the Saturday before Easter so we can focus more on the Savior on Easter Sunday.

We dyed Easter eggs on the Thursday before Easter so they would have enough time to dry before they got hidden around our house.  Spencer has gotten really good with his hand eye coordination and was able to dye the eggs with little to no help from us.

We had a great time when the Easter Bunny came on Saturday too. Of course Mommy’s camera wasn’t set quite right and the pictures came out dark of the Easter basket opening, but the Egg Hunt pictures are great fun. 🙂 Both boys had the best time.

Later that evening, we shifted our focus from Bunnies, eggs and candy to Christ. We made Resurrection rolls. A lot of people have done these before, but we thought it would be a nice illustration for Spenc. I didn’t take pictures, I was busy participating. 🙂 I’ll tell you about them though.

We took crescent roll dough and spread a triangle out on the table. The roll represents the tomb Christ was buried in. Then we took a big marshmallow, which represents Christ, rolled it in butter and cinnamon sugar, which represent the spices used to prepare his body for burial. Then we placed the marshmallow in middle of the crescent triangle and folded it up around the marshmallow and sealed the edges (the best we could).

We baked the rolls as directed (10 minutes at 350), which represented the 3 days he laid in the tomb. Then we took them out and opened the rolls (after letting them sit for a couple minutes the marshmallows make those things HOT). The marshmallow was gone when we opened them up, which represents the Resurrection. Spencer totally loved it and understood the point. We were so glad he did. And the rolls are quite tasty, so it makes an excellent lesson for Easter.

We had a great Easter and are so grateful Spencer is willing and anxious to learn about our Savior. It was an awesome, low key holiday for us.

First Steps

Just as a side note for remembering, today (4/10/13) Matthew took his first two unsupported steps. He was hanging on to the coffee table when I came into the living room from the office. He looked at me and smiled that precious baby smile of his, I held out my hands to him, and he stepped away from the coffee table toward his momma.

Spencer and I had a great time celebrating with him after that, but we couldn’t really get him to repeat his steps. He had turned it into a falling into momma’s arms game that was much more entertaining at that point than walking.

Have you heard? I’m sure you have.

We’re runners.

I haven’t actually posted about Adam and my latest habit, running. I’ve mentioned in my Chiari 2 year review post, but that’s about it. 🙂

Starting about 6 weeks before Matthew was born, Adam decided he needed to lose some weight and get healthy.  As part of the changes he made, he took up running and started couch to 5K.  He’s been going strong and getting faster ever since.

In September, my post baby weight-loss was slowing down a little bit and I wasn’t thrilled about that so I started walking to help boast my calorie expenditure each day.  I worked into running more slowly than Adam did, but I also started couch to 5K, and ran my very first 5K (not race, just distance) on my 29th birthday.

Feeling pretty awesome about that, I saw there was a 5K race on January 1, 2013 and I wanted to do it.  I asked Adam if he would do it with me, and we ran our very first race together and ever on January 1, 2013 in 29 degree weather with freezing Oklahoma wind.

TIME: 35:57

Not long after that I wanted to run another race and both Adam and I signed up to run the Creek Classic 10K race.  Adam was already at a place where he could go out and do that, but I had to train for it.  And train I did.  I developed trocanteric bursitis (basically a continually sore hip joint that got better with rest, but flared back up after a run), and we went on a cruise.  Even on our cruise, we ran on both sea days at least 3 miles.

When race day came, it was the first time I had ever run the 6.2 miles that is a 10K.  And I met my goal. I wanted to finish in under 70 minutes. I had a great pace for me. My best pace yet for such a distance.  Adam made great time.  Here are his results:

 

 

TIME: 57:05
OVERALL: 41st of 113
MALE: 30 of 54
AGE: 4 of 5 (M30-34)

 

 

 

 

TIME: 1:07:09
OVERALL: 86th of 113
FEMALE: 40 of 59
AGE GROUP: 10 of 10 (F25-29)

After the 10K, I was put on a week of rest along with an ibuprofen regimen to help the swelling in my hip go down.  I’ve since gotten sick and had to take another week of rest after only 4 runs back from my rest.  I’m back on it next week though.

Not long after signing up for the Creek Classic, Adam signed up to run a half Marathon at the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon on April 28th.  He’s been training hard, and he got sick too.  It really didn’t help either of us.  I’m excited to go to the race to support him.  He’s gonna do great!

As for my next race, I am currently toying with the idea of training for a sprint Triathlon in September.  Who would have thought. Certainly not me. 🙂

Matthew, a 10(and a half) month chowhound

So, I kinda skipped Matthew’s nine month and ten month mark.  We’ve been CRAZY busy for while and I don’t think we are going to be slowing down, ever again…  Now that I have sort of a minute to talk about him, he’s almost 11 months old!  It has good so quickly.  He’s growing like crazy.  I’ve still neglected to do his portraits recently, so here is a picture of him at the end of January.

At 10.5 months, Matthew:

-LOVES to eat.
–is giving up totally gave up baby food in favor of table food.
-would rather eat what is on Mom or Dad’s plate than his own
-was not quite crawling at the beginning of 10, but he sure is now. WOW.
-is a great belly wormer/army crawler, but has totally giving it up for crawling
-preferred mode of transportation is walking while holding onto fingers
-prefers Spencer’s toys over his own
-has a strange fetish for remote controls and cell phones
-sleeps like a PRO, about 12 hours a night
-still takes 2 naps of at least 1 hour each.
-loves it when his brother comes home from school
-is Spencer’s biggest fan
-laughs the very best and most for Spencer
-seems to be the happiest, most chill guy ever (until it’s time to eat)
-makes the most hilarious sounds when he wants to eat more
-when he gets frustrated, he says, “mamamamama” (we’re not sure if it’s because he wants me or he’s chastising me. Maybe a little of bother)

And some pictures of him over the last months

A Year in Board Gaming – 2013.8-18; A Bunch of Games

I haven’t written one of these for a while, but I have an excuse! Really! On Monday morning, 1/28, we decided to go on a cruise. Three hours later, we booked it for Saturday, 2/2. Most of these entries are from the cruise. The rest of the time we were packing and unpacking.

2013.8 – Escape: The Curse of the Temple – 1/24/2013

We got a chance to get away from the kids for an evening and spent some time with our friends, Brian and Shanna. We brought out Escape: The Curse of the Temple and played a couple of quick rounds. In this cooperative game, you are exploring a cursed temple that threatens to fall down around you. You move about revealing tiles, trying to find precious gems that will allow you to escape. The exit tile is somewhere at bottom of the tile stack, so you have to keep moving. Sounds easy, right? Well, you accomplish all this through some custom dice. Any action requires a certain combination of dice rolls, and guess what? Your dice can be locked, causing you to be delayed at the most inconvenient moments. Not too bad, but wait, there’s more! You only have ten minutes to get through the entire temple! The game has an actual 10 minute soundtrack, and if you can’t escape by the time it’s over, you lose. Oh, and don’t forget that twice during that ten minutes, a gong will sound, requiring everyone to return back to the middle of the temple. This game is a real-time game, meaning that no one takes turns. Each person has their own set of dice and controls their own explorer, but you have to work together if you have any hope of success.

A Year in Board Gaming – 2013.4-7; Agricola ACBAS, Pandemic, Mage Knight

2013.4 – Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small – 1/13/2013

I think this is the third time we’ve played this one. We acquired it at BGG.Con last year. It is a light, fast worker placement game derived from the classic Agricola which is much heavier and more expansive. While Agricola deals with all the aspects of raising/developing a farm, All Creatures Big and Small (ACBAS) is just about raising and keeping the animals.

A Year in Board Gaming – Mage Knight, 2013.2; Arkham Horror, 2013.3

Mage Knight, 2013.2

Two days after our first play of Mage Knight, we had to do it again. It was all we could think about. Ok, it was all I could think about, but Jessica really liked it as well. So, on Sunday, 1/6, we played another round of the tutorial scenario. Right off the bat, I got an edge by taking the really easy bad guy that showed up. This is important because your first kill will get you your first level-up fast. Jessica wasn’t quite so lucky, and that initial separation between the two of us only grew throughout the game.

I managed to draw really good cards throughout the game, even taking about some pretty sweet fire mages at some point. Jessica, however, always seemed to get unfortunate card draws that led to a lot of stagnant turns. It was a little painful to watch at times, but not so painful that I wouldn’t swoop in a take-out the bad guys that Jessica would flush out but not kill.

Overall, Jessica (obviously) didn’t have as much fun, and as a result, neither did I. I’m hoping it was not indicative a runaway leader problem in the game. We will see, but next time we will probably do a full scenario. Also, since we are not really into super-competitive games, we will try one of the cooperative scenarios. We’ll see how soon I can get Jessica to play again. 🙂

Play Rating: Looking for Balance

Arkham Horror, 2013.3

The starting setup

On Friday, 1/11, we brought out our all-time favorite game, Arkham Horror, to break in one of the new expansions we got for Christmas, Curse of the Dark Pharaoh, and to use some of the cool new custom pieces Jessica got me. In Arkham Horror, you play an investigator who goes about the city of Arkham gathering clues about the Mythos that you can then use to seal portals to other worlds and dimensions. You fight to stay sane and conscious as you encounter all manner of horrifying monsters and events. You know, some light-hearted fun!

Bokrug

In this session, we sought to prevent Bokrug from awakening. He had some minions that were trying to bring about our demise with their evil presence. On top of that, the Dark Pharaoh was acting as a herald for Bokrug and made it deadly to obtain magical items. Things were a bit grim. We had to overcome one burst seal on a gate as well as some other frustrating things, but we persevered and won the day!

The End of the game. Look at all those monsters. Don’t they look sad that they can’t eat us?

In the picture above you can see some of the sweet new pieces Jessica got me for Christmas. On the bottom left (and bottom-right) at the top of the white character sheet, you’ll see a stack of red pieces and a stack of blue pieces. Some guy in Texas made these from polymer clay and are fantastic. I’ll get a better picture next time we play. Also, if you look towards the bottom-right of the board between a green and yellow box, you’ll see a brown circle with a star symbol on it. That is an Elder Sign, and the same guy made these from a fallen branch off one of his trees that happened to be the exact same diameter as the locations on the board.

The Curse of the Dark Pharaoh adds some nice items and spells to the standard decks. The Exhibit Items were pretty interesting, though the Dark Pharaoh herald made it very hard to want one. Every time we picked up an Exhibit Item, we were cursed. I’d say next time we probably won’t bother with that herald.

Gardner’s Place in Dunwich didn’t fare very well. 4 monsters in one place!

We played with the Dunwich expansion as well, but we didn’t spend much time up there. Jessica made it up there early to seal the gate on Wizard’s Hill and never returned. Gardner’s Place was a sight to see. Or not see. Always choose the latter when a Dark Young, Proto-Shoggoth, and Chthonian (and vampire, but he was weak sauce) have a party.

Custom storage solution

We store the game in an artist’s box we got at Hobby Lobby. It fits everything quite well, though not both Dunwich and Innsmouth expansions. We swap those in and out and play with one for a while before switching back. Above is the box fully deployed, and below is it closed up. We will one day put a vinyl Elder Sign on the front or even burn it in. We’ll see.

Custom storage solution

Until next time, Arkham.

Play Rating: Still Sane!

Living with an Aspie: So happy…

A rare moment caught on camera while we were just talking. I don’t even remember what about.

So, Spencer has been sick. For most of the month of December he seemed like his was going through one thing or another. As a result, he was acting out A LOT. He handled changes with even less flexibility than usual. He threw fits at the slightest provocation or response in a way he didn’t want. It was a little rough. We honestly were going a little bit nuts wondering where our little boy who had been doing so well had gone.

We’ve figured it out. He was SICK for most of the month of December and he got to totally thrown off of any routine we had had when school let out for Christmas and his uncles came to visit. So, it would seem that all of those thing combined in it a perfect storm for meltdowns and acting out.

We only realized all this after the first week of school finished. To start the week, we moved to an 8am church meeting time, and he did wonderfully well. He is at his most cooperative in the morning. Then, he proceeded to have the most AWESOME week at school. His teachers told me everyday what a good day he had.

We are so happy to have Spencer back, and we are looking forward to continuing to teach him. He didn’t regress over Christmas at all. It was just a reaction to all the insanity that illness and holidays can bring. We are looking into getting him into a social skills class so he can learn more skills and hopefully keep them up over the summer when we don’t have school to count on for his extra practice.

Funny thing about Spencer and photos: To get a smile out of this boy, you often have to tell him HIS knock knock joke.

Knock Knock
Whose there?
Reggie.
Reggie Who?
Reggie Jackson!

Why he thinks this is funny we don’t know, but he thought of it and thinks it is absolutely hilarious.

Choose the Right

Tonight, we were talking about choosing the right, since Spencer got his first CTR ring at church today. This is how his conversation with Dad went:

Dad: Spencer, how do you choose the right
Spencer: Like this ::points to his right with a rather matter of factly::

It was hilarious!