May was…

busy. May was so busy with birthdays, school stuff, evaluations, work outs and weather. The calendar doesn’t look that busy, but we seemed to always have something happening.

Here are some of the highlights in pictures: I’ll talk about them as the post goes, but here they are to start.

At the beginning of the month, we celebrated Matthew’s first birthday. I can’t believe he is a year old already. He’s grown so much and we are so blessed to have him in our family. He’s such a good little guy to have around in our house. As a matter of stats, Matthew is growing well. He’s in the 77% for his weight, 89% for his height and 76% for this head size.  He’s quite the mover as well.  He’s practically running around the house now chasing after Spencer.  He definitely keep us on our toes.

At Spencer’s school, they had a Mother’s Day “tea” (meaning punch and cookies). He escorted me to my chair and my place mat. Got me my drink and my cookies. Then all the other kids sang a song, and Spencer promptly ran away not waiting to be around for the loud music. Other than the running away and fit throwing, he did pretty well.

Spencer’s school ended on the 16th of May. It was very bittersweet. We loved his teachers so much, and they have been SO good for him. I’ve seen lots of growth and change in him from the beginning of the school year to the end. So, to help us maintain that change, we have started Occupational Therapy as well as speech and pragmatic skills therapy (in prep for social groups). He’s doing very well thus far, and as a result, Spencer was able to feel confident enough to learn to buckle his own seat belt! (HUGE at our house).

Just like we did with Spencer, a couple weeks after Matt’s first birthday, we did some really cute cake smashing pictures. (Thank you Shana!) They turned out absolutely darling. You can seem them HERE

We’ve also started the process of expanding our patio in the backyard. We have a lot of space that is unusable. It doesn’t get any sun and is usually pretty muddy. So, we’re going to expand our patio so we can use more of our backyard. It’ll be great if it every gets done now. The wet weather we’ve been having has prevented things from moving forward as quickly as we planned.

On Memorial day, we enjoyed hanging out together as a family. We even made a trip out to Pop’s. It’s a soda shop that sells all kinds of bottled sodas. It has a restaurant in it (we’ve never gone for the food), and is definitely a cool thing to do in Oklahoma.

Adam and I have been busy with our training and both are making good progress toward our goals.

That’s been our month of May.

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.

August Newsletter

(This is the first of a series of newsletter entries that we’ll post on here. We do these every month, buy well start posting them here as well.)

Hi family,

A good month. We started it out with a really nice 4th of July. A big dinner at the in-laws, a nice fireworks display at a friends, and our dog actually being sociable with small children made it a great day. Lucy has always had a hard time with kids, but we’re not too worried about how she’ll interact with Spencer.

We went to Dallas one weekend to find maternity work clothes for Jessica. You may not have known, but it’s hard to find not-expensive clothes of this type in a city like Oklahoma City. Anyway, we went to some stores that had a maternity section, but we still weren’t finding anything not outrageously expensive.

While we were leaving one store (feeling frustrated), the clerk told us about a maternity store nearby. We decided to try it, we’re glad we did. It was basically a maternity superstore with lots of expensive clothes, but LOTS of clearance racks of NICE clothes. We bought everything we needed there and were so glad we found it. We also saw Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3D, and that was pretty good.

We’ve started being able to see Spencer kick. It’s so crazy to see his little feet hitting that hard! His kicks are also easily felt now. He reacts REALLY well to music put on Jessica’s belly. He particularly likes the Bee-Gees.

Other than that, it’s benn pretty normal around here. We’re getting along pretty well. Have a great month!

Adam and Jessica and Spencer and Lucy

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