Last Day of Preschool!

Believe it or not Isaac just finished his last day of preschool today! They had a Fiesta to celebrate. I think normally they would have gone on through May, but his teacher is pregnant and due in May. They are also moving soon as her dh was transfered in his job.

I just can't believe Isaac's all finished with preschool and starting Kindgergarten this fall! I'm really going to miss his preschool teacher (who is also a family friend). She has been SO awesome, and I really wanted to take Parker to her too next year, but we are both moving, so hopefully we'll find someone just as good for Parker.

Isaac is SO excited for kindergarten! We went and got him all registered a few weeks ago. We had been debating between a charter school and regular school and decided to go with the regular one. He had to take a little test with the literacy specialist and he passed with flying colors! She acted a little shocked that he knew all the answers!

Isaac's Field Trip

Isaac's preschool class had a field trip to a place called "Farm Country" on Tuesday. Josh and I went along to help out. The kids had a lot of fun. Everyone had coats on because it was so cold!

This is a picture of Isaac's whole class in front of a cow that was in the main building where they gave demonstrations of milking a cow and where they showed how milk got from the cow to the store.

This is a baby goat that this lady brought out for the kids to pet. He was SO cute! Bryce thought he was pretty neat.

Here are a few of Parker & Bryce petting the donkey and Isaac feeding the alpaca.

Josh and Bryce:

Parker and Isaac on the pony rides:

We had a great Easter this year.  The night before we dyed Easter eggs (and Bryce tossed his on the floor).  Josh helped Bryce dye a few then he was ready for bed.   Isaac and Parker had a blast!  They were so excited for the Easter Bunny to come! 

On Easter morning we woke up and everyone found their baskets and eggs that the Easter Bunny had hidden.  Isaac got a watch, a Power Ranger action figure, bubbles, and a kite.  Parker got a toy loader truck, an egg filled with Backyardigans, some Easter Hot Wheels, bubbles, and a kite.  Bryce got a toy dump truck, a new toy cell phone (he goes through these things!), Easter Little People, bubbles, and a kite.  Josh got a new shirt for church and a iTunes gift certificate.   Heather got a digital scrapbooking program.

That morning we went to church.  Easter afternoon we went to the park with Josh's family and had a BBQ/picnic.  There was lots of kite flying, frisbee tossing, football throwing and we had an Easter egg hunt!  Everyone had fun and the kiddos were tired out! 

Update on Bryce

Well I'm definitely not the world's best blogger! I can't believe I haven't posted anything since Christmas!

I just wanted to give an update on Bryce. We took him to the ENT for a check-up a few weeks back and the doctor had him get his hearing tested again. Well his tympanogram levels were flat. :( The ENT checked Bryce's ear tubes and said that they are still in place and didn't appear to be blocked. He suggested that we bring him in and have him sedated. The doc will clean out his ear tubes and they will perform an ABR hearing test on him. I just hate to put him through yet another procedure, but I think it's important to stay on top of his hearing as it can affect his speech. I hope it is only some blockage causing the hearing loss, but we will soon find out as the ABR is a more accurate test. We are also going to coordinate with Bryce's plastic surgeon to have some lip pits removed. They are part of his syndrome, and his geneticist would like to have them biopsied. So we will be doing all that at once. I have had the hardest time scheduling this surgery/procedure though!! I have made so many numerous phone calls and finally talked to someone yesterday who is supposed to call me back to schedule it all.

We recently started working with a private feeding therapist in addition to Bryce's feeding therapist from Early Intervention. He went months without wanting to swallow AT ALL. I couldn't figure out what was going on and he was not making any progress. We found a local feeding therapist that took our insurance, so we got an evaluation with her. We had our first session with her a couple of weeks ago and she gave us a new regimen to try with Bryce. Right now we are working on getting him to accept food on the sides of his mouth rather than just in the middle. We are also still working with the EI therapist and a couple of weeks ago she finally got him to start swallowing water again! I have no idea what changed, but I'm just happy to see even the teeniest of improvements!

After a long struggle with insurance and many phone calls, Bryce finally got a new pair of DAFOs. They were a different kind this time and did not have tread on the bottom, so we had to buy shoes to fit over them. Now if we can just get him to keep them on! The joy of orthotics and babies!

Bryce has finally started getting the hang of walking better and has been doing a lot more of it. It was really cute because for awhile, whenever he walked, he would have to hold on to his ears for balance! He's finally gotten past that, but it was cute while it lasted. LOL

Christmas 2007

We had a great Christmas this year! We got to stay home and just be together as a family, which was nice. We went out to lunch with Josh's parents and then we went down to visit my family the day after Christmas. Here are a few pictures:

Christmas morning. The boys got a GIANT
Spiderman tent from Santa!








Bryce playing with his new toy phone.




Parker playing V-smile.




Parker and his Cabbage Patch Kid.




Bryce and his stuffed dog from Grandma & Grandpa C.





Josh playing with his Powerball.


Isaac & Parker chillin' playing V-smile. :)





Our baby who doesn't eat got into the chocolate. LOL
He didn't swallow any of course, just made a mess with it. :)

Christmas Eve

We had a great Christmas Eve this year. We spent the whole day just relaxing and together as a family. It was perfect. In the morning we made a gingerbread house together. The boys had so much fun and it turned out great!

Parker & Isaac working on the gingerbread house.


The finished house.

We got LOTS of snow on Christmas Eve, so later, Josh took Isaac and Parker outside to build a snowman. It was so funny because with his snowsuit and coat on, Parker looked like a little marshmallow man! LOL. They had lots of fun with Daddy until it started getting really windy.

Josh, Parker, & Isaac all ready to go out in the snow.

Parker & Isaac.

Parker the marshmallow man.


Isaac all bundled up.


Parker working on the snowman.



The finished snowman.

After the boys got warmed up we made some cookies for Santa Clause. Isaac requested we make reindeer cookies for him this year, so we did. It was fun. The boys had fun putting the antlers, eyes, and noses on, although Parker's ended up looking a little Picasso like. LOL. They turned out really cute.

We had dinner then we all sat down together to talk about Jesus and the meaning of Christmas. We read the story of Christ's birth from our Children's bible and used our Nativity set to kind of "act" it out so the kids could get a better picture of what happened. Then Josh read from the regular bible and we sang a couple of Christmas songs together. It was nice.

Afterwards we opened some Christmas Eve gifts... Pajamas for everyone then the boys set out cookies and milk for Santa and oats for the reindeer and went to bed! It was such a fun day.


My silly boys in their new PJs.

Happy 5th Birthday Isaac!

Isaac cheesing it in his party hat.

Isaac's 5th birthday was on December 22. I can't believe he's 5 already! Not too much longer and he'll be in Kindergarten! He had a really fun day. He opened his presents in the morning and got a big remote control truck from Mom, Dad, Parker, & Bryce. He also got some new church clothes and a "Slap Happy" game from Grandma and Grandpa Bell and a tent from Grandma and Grandpa Chappell.

Isaac with some of his birthday presents.

Isaac with his remote control truck.

Later that day we had a birthday party with some of Isaac's friends. He had a blast. Isaac has been into dinosaurs ever since he went to the Dinosaur Museum last year with his preschool. They played some dinosaur games like "hatch the dinosaur egg" and had dinosaur cupcakes. I also made him a dinosaur cake. It turned out pretty cute. I used crushed chocolate and regular graham crackers to make it look like dirt on the cake and cupcakes. :)

Isaac's Dinosaur Birthday cake


The dino cupcakes.

Isaac had so much fun playing with his friends at his party. That night he got to sleep in his new tent that his grandma and grandpa gave him. We set it up in the boys' bedroom. They had so much fun sleeping in there for a few nights.

They boys in Isaac's new tent.