Love is in the air

Our family loves to celebrate ANY holiday. Holidays at our house are filled with traditions. Our family celebrates counting down the days until Valentine's Day with a calendar in which you fill heart shaped pockets with different little surprises for everyone. This tradition started a couple of years ago when my friend and former college roommate, Christy Roberts, sent us the valentine count down calendar. The kids love waking up every morning and running to the calendar to see what that days pocket contains. Here is Ian and Kohler sporting their super-hero masks.





Kohler's First Party
February 11, 2011
We decided to throw a Valentine party for Kohler and the kids in his Sunbeam Primary class. He has had a difficult time transitioning from Nursery to Primary and we thought this might help him become acquainted with the other children who were his age in the neighborhood. On the day of the party only two of the 7 were able to attend. Well, Kohler and his two friends, Mia and Molly played fish pond, cake walk, play doh, decorated heart shaped cookies, and traded valentines. It was a lot of fun for Kohler and after the party was over he delivered the remaining treats and valentines to the kids who couldn't come. In the end he had a great time.


February 14, 2011
Valentine's Day

Our family celebrated all weekend long. Saturday was spent at a party for the kids at Grandma Larson's home. She planned all kinds of games and activities for everyone...along with PRIZES! We love Grandma's parties.





Ian's school valentine's 2010

Ian was really worried that he would miss out on this year's school valentine's day party. He had been sick the whole week before Valentine's Day with high fevers (103 degrees) and a sinus cold. But luckily, he improved by the weekend and to his relief was able to attend school Monday and celebrate with his class mates.

Christmas 2010

This year tops my list as one of our families best and favorite Christmases together. December was a fantastic month with no sickness. The weather was unusually warm with only two hard storms. We had very little snow and Christmas weekend was warm and sunny.

We celebrated throughout the month with some family favorite traditions. We started the season out by purchasing our traditional fresh Charlie Brown Christmas Tree the day after Thanksgiving and decorated it later that evening.



The boys enjoyed taking their turn daily opening the family advent calendar and counting the days to Christmas. We enjoyed the Ward Christmas Party and Family Parties. We baked together and even delivered goodies in warm weather to our friends and neighbors. We created our family gingerbread house and enjoyed eating it in the days that followed.

We had Grandma Susan over for Christmas Eve dinner and gift exchange. The boys loved having the evening to celebrate with her.

Christmas morning was exciting and wonderful. Santa visited and surprised the boys with "exactly what they asked for". *Santa always TRIES his best. The kids loved opening each gift and playing with their present before moving onto the next one. They loved relishing each item which was unusual. In the past the boys have raced through their gifts, tearing off the paper, and wondering what they were going to open next. This year they took their time! It was relaxing and memorable. We especially loved having Grandma Larson with us to celebrate that morning.

Bedtime Moments

While laying by Kohler at bedtime he asked me to “draw a picture” of himself on a motorcycle on the palm of his hand. I used my finger to tickle the image onto his hand. When I had finished drawing the picture he said, “now tear it off” (as if it was drawn onto notebook paper). So, I pretended to tear it off and hand it to him. Then he asked me to stick the picture on the top of his bunk bed. I pretended to stick it on the bed frame. Then we just laid there and admired his little picture. It was a very cute moment. One of those moments where you hope you never forget it.

Torticollis

Around 2 months old we noticed that Ty seemed to drop his head ever so slightly to one side. We worried that something was wrong with his neck. When we took him into his wellness checkup, Dr. Hoagland told us that Ty may have a slight torticollis and that it would require some physical therapy. Torticollis is when a child’s head is tilted to one side and turned toward the opposite side. It is caused by having tight muscles on one side of the neck and weak muscles on the other side of the neck. He referred us to Primary Children’s Rehab in Bountiful. During the first visit or evaluation, I learned that Ty did in deed have a slight left sided torticollis in which the muscles on the right of his neck were weaker. One blessing was that there hadn’t been any misshaping of head and that he had 1 mm difference in the measuring of his eyes to the back of his head or as the PT Lisa said “cranial vault asymmetry”. We were catching this early on and the PT felt that there wouldn’t be any long term effects like the curving of the spine, poor vision, and problems with balance. Therapy would help by stretching his tight muscles, strengthen his weak muscles, develop motor skills that would naturally help in correcting this position and a home plan for implementing physical therapy.

I left the appointment feeling overwhelmed with information and nervous but determined to help Ty. The appointments continued with therapy 1 time per week for 1-2 weeks, then 1-2 times per month for several months until the goals we set were reached. After two visits, Ty began to recognize and resist the PT stretching him and working with him. I could tell during this visit that Lisa was becoming very frustrated with Ty and his “accomplishments”. As the appointment wrapped up she said that she wanted to start seeing Ty every week because without physical therapy he would never learn to ride a bike, throw a ball, or drive a car because he would need the use of his neck muscles in turning and tilting his head to look over his shoulder and behind him. I was shocked by this statement. She told me all the ways this would debilitate him in life which almost had me in tears. I was working with him daily at home and I felt confident in his progress. She told me that we needed to start coming weekly in order to achieve better results. As she walked me out to the foyer and asked me to set up weekly appointments for the next month I explained to her that it all boiled down to cost. ($300 a month just in co-pays, not including the other costs left over after the insurance is billed made it impossible for us to come weekly.) She honestly didn’t care. I told her that I wouldn’t be able to do that even though she said I could cancel the appointments later on! We then agreed on one more appointment in which she would re-evaluate his progress. I came home ready to see another PT or even quit knowing the exercises and plan to treat his slight torticollis. After talking it through with Rob, we decided to work hard with Ty and meet with Lisa one last time.

One month later we met with Lisa for the last appointment. In a few weeks time, Ty had increased and improved in every area. It seems the older he got, the stronger and more active he became, which in turn naturally helped him in correcting this problem. Lisa went over our goals, practiced his exercises, and re-measured him. It turns out that he was right where he was supposed to be. With the information she had given me and the exercises she had taught me I felt confident that we no longer needed to attend PT and that it was time to move on. She agreed and that was our last appointment.

Ty shows no signs of limitations now and seems perfectly fine. He is crawling, rolling around every which way, and can turn and look in every direction.

Really Laughing

All week long Ian fought getting ready for school and complained about going to bed at night. It was a struggle to get him out the door in the mornings and then to bed at nighttime. So, on Saturday (Dec. 8), we decided that the boys needed a day at home with absolutely nothing to do and nowhere to go. We spent the whole day at home doing nothing other than enjoying each others company. We didn’t do any chores, laundry, dishes, or cleaning…just did nothing. Well, not nothing exactly. We enjoyed some of the simple things like: Eating all three meals together without hurrying, pulling out and playing with every toy the boys had, dancing to loud music and being silly, playing under piles of blankets, watching movies and letting the boys remain in their pajamas until bedtime. We haven’t had a day like this in a really long time. It ended up being one of those days in which our family just couldn’t stop laughing all day long. We laughed until we were crying and our cheeks hurt! Thanks Ian, for reminding us that sometimes you just need a break.