First Day of School!!!!!

First Day of school. August 16th. Mason has been going to his new school full time since the first week of August. I just wanted to put a picture of him on so you can see how big he is getting. He is 5'5" and weighs 130#s. I don't have a first day of school picture for Adam because he has to get up way to early for me to get up and take a picture. Adam has started his Junior year of High School and has his learners permit. In Indiana you can't get your Drivers Licenes until you are 16 1/2 and you can't drive with friends in the car until you are 17. Whew! that saves us a little stress for a while. Now for Marcus. As you can see in these to pictures he isn't to happy about going to school. I couldn't get him to wear his polo shirt which is the uniform. Today I went and bought some more plain solid color T-shirts. I am going to have to clean out his drawers and hide his favorite shirts. He has a Mr. Potato Head shirt, A monkey shirt, and a Toy Story 3 shirt and a blue Levi Strauss t-shirt he calls his cowboy shirt. Those are his favorite and always asks for them. Well the first week of school for Marcus started out rough. I couldn't get him to eat breakfast the first day and he would yell at me and tell me no about getting on the bus. Each day got better but he still isn't too happy about having to go to school. He is slowly getting use to the Idea again and doesn't get to mad when I mention it. Something funny that happened was the Sunday before school started a Friend of mine asked Him if he was going to go to school and he yelled at her, NO! She just started laughing. It cracked me up too. He may not want to go but I will put him on that bus no matter what. So now it's my turn to sleep, work out, clean, organize, and what ever else I can do that Summers don't allow me to.

Kirt's B-Day and Date Night

As you know Marcus loves trains. Here he is riding what he calls a real train at the mall. Of course this is on Kirt's birthday and also it is Date Night. With Adam at Scout camp we have a tag a long. During the day when Mason is at school we also went to the Guitar Store. Marcus loves it here. We just pray that nothing gets damaged. Kirt got what he needed at the Guitar Store and then we let Marcus explore for about 5 min. He has lately been asking for a piano. He already has a guitar and a snare drum. He probably wants to make a one man band.

ADAM'S 16th B-DAY

My Boy is 16. Boy does time fly by. This is Adam's party. I chose black and red and an 80's theme. The invitations had the A-team logo and Van. On the inside it said: I pity the fool who doesn't come and celebrate Adam's 16th birthday. 8 boys and 1 girl came to the party. We had 2 -29" pizzas from Barlo's Pizza. The boxes the pizza's were in are the size of my kitchen island. I made his cake. His cake was a decadent dark chocolate cake with oreo pudding on top with cool whip on top of that. We played a few games and the kids talked and joked around a lot. Everyone had fun. Adam got a lot of neat presents. The one he is holding up in the bottom picture is a woven braclet a friend made for him with a pinapple grenade "charm" attached. Lots of Fun. Also, Adam is taking drivers ed. and doing pretty good in it.

These are pictures of what we have harvested so far from our garden. Just love being able to say we grew this. We love having fresh veggies to eat.

Farrah's Sunflower

Farrah this post is for you. You said you wanted me to paint you a sunflower. Is this okay? If not I will give it away. Just Kidding. I will bring it with me when we come in December.

Graduation and Goddbyes

Today was Marcus' last day of Preschool. He graduated and is going on to full day Kindergarten. He will be attending Abraham Lincoln in the Fall of 2011. Marcus had a new teacher this year Miss Heather and the classroom aides are Ms. Angie and Ms. Mary Pat. Angie and Mary Pat have been with Marcus' all three years of preschool. I wanted to do something nice for them and thought I would paint some pictures since I have already made jewelry for them early this year. I will really miss these ladies. They helped Marcus so much and he has come such a long ways in these three years.

Special Olympics

One neat thing about have an Autistic child is you get to watch them participate in Young Athletes Special Olympics. I was so fun watching Marcus at his last meet because he will be going to Kindergarten next year. Also Mimi and Boompa were here visiting and got to watch him too. All the kids are so cute. People really cheer for those children who are really challenged physically. Just for them to use their walker and go down the track until they cross the line. Each class has a different color t-shirt every year. Marcus' first year is was grey, 2nd year is was light blue, and this year it was light pink. For some reason his class never gets the bright bold colors. At least he wasn't as hot in the lighter color. It's fun to watch these special kids.

Rain Storms

This was a good rain storm. Marcus loves to play in the water and mud. You can see by the big rock how flooded it is. We had lots of rain and flood warnings everyday. Of course we also had tornado warnings and as usual they don't come near us. That's good, but it gets annoying hearing the siren going off. It's not like I am going to take Mason and Marcus into our small half bath and wait in there for an hour. People out here in Indiana like to weather watch. Some people will even take chairs out and watch. I will take pictures of storms rolling in but stop and go inside when they hit. I don't have any pictures of storms yet because our computer went down and I lost all the pictures I had. Oh well could be worse. We do love having the rain because our grass is green, our plants and garden are growing and soon we will have our own home grown food to eat.

Marcus is trying new foods

One day our Home Teachers who also happen to be the Bishop and his Wife brought pizza to us. It was a nice suprise. Well Marcus hadn't been eating much of anything at that time. Just his milk and lollipops. Well before I could thank the Home Teachers and close the door Marcus took the pizza and put it on the table opened it and started eating it. So I got him a plate. He ate about half of the piece he was holding. He has tried it a few other times but still prefers eating bread sticks instead. This was a start to a new trend. He eats bread, bacon, chicken, hamburger buns, white chocolate chips, vanilla ice cream, and the list goes on. He has even sat at the dinner table with us and tried nibbling on a carrot. So we hope this continues and he will get past his sensory issues with food.

It's Spring Time

Spring came early this year. We had a lot of blossoms and flowers all over. Of course living in Indiana you have weird weather. We got cold again but not cold enough to kill my flowers. They didn't last long though. We are now coming out of a cool rainy trend and will be warming up for the Fathers and Sons outing this weekend.

2 Calla Lillies

These are the two Callie Lilly paintings I have done. The one on top is new. The bottom one was done in early February. It is also the one I sold at the auction fundraiser.

Newest Paintings

I am working on painting flowers and landscapes. These are my latest paintings. I think the Calla Lillies turned out the best. I will have all three of these at the auction/spaghetti fundraiser.

Valentines Day

This is the Ice Cream Cookie Cake that I made for Kirt and Adam for Valentines Day dessert. We had Barlo's Pizza and bread sticks. Yum, Yum, Yum.

Snow, Ice, Snow and then the Meltdown. Yeah!

We had about 2 weeks of really bad weather. Snow then and Ice storm and then snow again. Its was so cold too. This is the second day of 5o - 60 degree weather and so we started chiping away at the Ice so we could pull out without sliding and walk to the mail box without slipping. Marcus was so happy to play in the water. He put his boots on and jumped and splashed for at least 30 min. before I told him we were going in to get warmed up.

More Paintings

So here are the next 3 paintings I have done. What do you think. The mountain scene didn't turn out the way I wanted. It's hard to paint with having to get up to get Marcus stuff and do the computer typing for Mason. I like to have a few hours a day when they are at school and I can do what I need to do and want to do. Some Me time. I have to say that the boys have been pretty good so I can't complain to much. It would be nice if the boys were still at a napping age. Mom would like a nap but I can't seem to talk them into it.

ICE ICE BABY!

Monday night we were told to get prepared for a bad storm coming across the plains. We got hit with freezing rain and it coated everything in Ice. The road has about 2 inches of ice on it. The worst thing about this is that the boys are home with school being cancelled for 3 days in a row now. Adam was ready to go back to school after the first day off. It is no fun being stuck inside with nothing to do. Believe it or not the roads are passable. I went to the store and didn't have any problems but the side walks and parking lots are the reason school is cancelled for the 3rd day. I don't even know if they will have school on Friday. I say yes. But it really doesn't matter since the kids only went to school on Monday. Now they will have to use all the days off coming up, like Presidents Day, to make up school days. These pictures I took on Wednesday morning and I have to say even though it is cold, I sure think it looks so pretty.