Christmas in Dallas

This past weekend we went to Dallas and had Christmas with Jay's family. It started with the big family get together on Saturday. All of the kids get a present, and this is Andrew scoping out the other presents that he thought were way better than his:


Aunt Mindi is very happy!
Saturday night we had our gift exchange with Jay's immediate family. Andrew, of course, got tons of stuff!



He thoroughly enjoyed opening the presents this year. After he opened all of his, he then proceeded to open all of mine. He's such a great helper. Then Sunday morning while I was making breakfast, Andrew opened his Pop's present! I re-wrapped it and explained that it wasn't his...I'm not sure if he cared. We spent the rest of Sunday just lounging around and enjoying spending time with family.

Dylan Kane

Yesterday my little sister had her second baby, Dylan Kane. He weighs 6lbs. 7 1/2 oz. and he's 18 inches long. Isn't he adorable??

Since my sister had a c-section, I decided to take my neice, Alyson, off of her hands for her until Friday. Andrew and her are having so much fun together!

Andrew's First Awards Ceremony

This past Sunday night, the precious praise choir got to walk across the stage and get their award for memorizing hymns (which Andrew did not, but they had pity on the little guys). Let me tell you that when they told me Andrew would be doing this, my heart stopped. Andrew LOVES, I mean, LOVES to be on stage. So I just knew that he would never get down once he was up there, but he surprised me once again. They brought them in the sanctuary all together, as seen here:

When they called his name, they led him on stage and he got his trophy (with his name engraved and everything!). He then turned around (wish I had a picture, but the camera malfunctioned) and just looked out at everyone and smiled. He started to protest getting off the stage, but then miraculously just came down and sat with Jay and I. We were very proud of him.

Thanksgiving

We spent Thanksgiving day with Jay's family in Dallas, where unfortunately I didn't get many pictures. I did get this one of Jay and his cousin, Casey.

Casey has three kids and Andrew loved his oldest, Katherine. He kept calling her "hey girl" and followed her everywhere! On Friday we headed to Tyler to see my family. Andrew and Alyson had a blast playing together!! I'm so glad that he's starting to enjoy his cousins!

The picture below is my cousin's little girl...isn't she a cutie!
We really had a great time seeing family and now we're getting ready to head back to school tomorrow. Getting to sleep late this past week has been wonderful, but Andrew is ready to get back into his routine. He's asked for Ms. Becky (his teacher) every day this week! On that note, he's doing really well in school. We had a meeting a couple of weeks ago where they confirmed that Andrew is autistic...moderate is what they labeled him. They said that academically he's doing great. They also said that he's got great receptive language and a really good vocabulary. They said that he does really well one on one, but when they try to do group activities, he gets distracted. They feel that by the fall he will be in a mainstream pre-k classroom! This was really great news! Please continue to pray for us. We are really thrilled with Andrew's progress, but we want to know that we are doing everything possible to help him recover from this. He will always be autistic, but seeing how far he's come in so little time gives us hope that he can lead a "normal" life.

Visit to ER....

And I'm not referring to the set of the popular medical drama. Today Andrew had his first visit to the emergency room. He started coughing yesterday and then woke up this morning having trouble breathing. So we gave him a breathing treatment. It helped some, but by lunch time he had also developed a fever. So we decided to put him down for his nap and see how he was when he woke up. Well, he couldn't even get to sleep he was coughing so much, so I went in his room to check on him and I heard the wheezing as soon as I opened his door. He was really struggling. So we decided to take him to the clinic that's open on Saturdays. As soon as we got back in to the room the nurse said, "wow, he's really struggling, I think I'm going to go ahead and get the dr." The dr. came in and listened to him and said that he really thought we should take him to the ER. He said his chest was really tight and he really thought he should have an x-ray. So, off we go to the ER. I'm really worrying by this point because I didn't think autistic children and hospitals meshed very well. I just knew he was not going to cooperate with them, especially since he was going to have to have an x-ray!!! Well, Andrew amazed us. He did soooo great through everything. They gave him three breathing treatments and decided that he has bronchitis. We've always had to hold him down for breathing treatments, but by the second one he just sat there like a little angel and we even gave him one tonight before bed and he just laid back and relaxed during it!!! Here are some pictures of our visit:

This is after the second breathing treatment, I think. He was already feeling better. Oh and did I mention that we were supposed to be having our sunday school class over for appetizers for our progressive dinner tonight? Thankfully our pastor's wife is a saint! She came over and fixed all of the stuff I had already bought and everyone just came over as planned. When we got home we couldn't even tell anyone had been here!! So anyway, hopefully Andrew will be feeling all better soon. He's on cough medicine, steroids and an antibiotic so I'm sure he will!

Happy 30th Jay!!!

I think it was a pretty good farewell to the 20's. We started the celebration yesterday by heading to Dallas after lunch. We dropped Andrew off at Nana's and then headed off to:
It was wonderful!!! From there, we headed to the Dallas Stars Game. If you know my husband, this was the perfect birthday present. Someone gave Jay their season tickets for that night and we sat 8 rows off the ice! It was sooooo cool to be that close. Unforunately the Stars played horribly and lost 5-0! But we did get to see Wayne Gretzky so that made it a little more bearable. Oh and we saw a fight with blood and everything....you get to see a really disturbing side to people at hockey games when the players start to fight. They start taunting and cheering the players on to beat the brains out of the other one....like I said, disturbing.

Then today we spent with Jay's family. His dad drove down from Oklahoma and we ate way too much and just enjoyed laying around together. Among other things, Jay got a Blackberry from his family and it's pretty cool even to a technological idiot like myself. Overall, I think it was a pretty great birthday.

The Force is Strong with this One

This past Saturday was the fall festival at the elementary school so our little Yoda decided to make his debut. He was not thrilled at first with his costume, but I convinced (forced) him to wear it anyway.


Below is Andrew and James, our music minister's little boy. Andrew was very excited to see him!

There was a bubble blowing machine outside at the musical chairs and that would be where we spent the majority of our evening. Who cares about candy when you have bubbles??

ABC's Part II

We thought you might want to hear the ABC's for yourself. He didn't do quite as well this time as he did last night, but still quite cute if I do say so myself.

ABC's

Tonight as Jay and I put Andrew down to sleep, we prayed with him and then asked him if he wanted to sing a song. Usually this consists of Jay and I singing while Andrew joins in a few lines here and there. Tonight he busted out in the ABC's and did the whole thing by himself! It was the most precious thing to hear....Jay and I were both in tears by the end. We thank God amazing times like these.

Fun Time in Beerleyland

Sorry that I don't have any pictures for this post, we accidentally forgot the camera on our adventures this week. And I say adventures because we had two separate ones. Jay headed out to San Diego for a youth minister's conference, while Andrew and I stayed in Dallas with Nana. Jay had a wonderful time. He said that it was very smokey from all of the fires. I'm glad he got out before it got too bad in San Diego. Andrew and I also had a wonderful time with Nana, but Andrew got sick while we were there. He was running fever and pretty whiney the whole time. Jay flew back Monday night, then we went with Nana yesterday to go get Aunt Mindi from work and then headed home. We got here at about 5:30 and it was pretty cold in our house, so we turned on the heater and then these little wall heaters in the bathrooms because they don't have vents. Well, the carbon monoxide monitor went off so thus begun our crazy evening. Andrew was already asleep, so we just opened all of the windows and doors and let the house air out. I then called the gas company and they said they would send someone out shortly. An hour and a half later (10:15 p.m.!) the guy showed up.....we were freezing by this time. He said that those wall heaters were putting off an insane amount of carbon monoxide and he wanted to shut our gas off altogether. He checked all of the other gas-run things in the house and since the wall heaters were the only things putting off the CO he had mercy on us and made us sign our life away saying that we wouldn't use the heaters anymore. Like he had to convince us! Today the church sent out a plumber today to cap the things off so they can never be used again. I guess we'll just have to get some electric heaters because let me tell you it's almost unbearable to go in there and it's only into the 40's at night right now! But I am thankful that we had a CO alarm in the house. If you don't have one and you have anything run on natural gas....GET ONE!
On a quick side note, I decided to take Andrew to the dr. today since he cough had worsened. It turns out he has a double ear infection!! No wonder he was so whiney at Nana's!

Zoo

Yesterday I went to Tyler to see my little sister and neice Alyson. We decided to take the kids to the zoo since it was such a pretty day. Andrew LOVED it!!! I knew he would since he loves animals so much.

He behaved pretty well too....the only tantrum came when we were leaving the reptile house. I think he might make that his new home if I would let him. But I spanked him and then ignored his fit for a minute and told him to come on and he just got up and came.
Afterward we went to visit my grandmother where Andrew and Alyson played/wrestled some more. For some reason Andrew really loved laying on Alyson.

The day must have worn him out because after about two minutes into the ride home, I looked back and saw this:

Haircut & School Update

We decided that instead of paying for Andrew's haircut, we would do it this time. We just buzzed it, but he did a lot better for us than he does for the ladies at Cool Cuts for Kids. It made me a little sad to have his hair all gone, but I got over it when I didn't have to fight him to fix it for church!


He's doing really well in school. In the three full weeks he's been in now, we've seen dramatic improvements in his behavior. The Wednesday night after he started, I picked him up from the church nursery and they said he actually participated in the lesson. And everytime since then when I've picked him up they tell me that he's doing tons better at playing with the other kids, doing the craft, and sitting in circle time. Thursday night and Friday night we went to some local football games and he sat there the whole time like a little angel! He never once tried to get off the bleachers...he just sat and either watched the game or played with his toys. He also ate some popcorn at one of these games! This is a big deal because Andrew would never eat popcorn before. He loves it now though. Hopefully he will continue to try new foods. His teacher tells me that he does great at school. He has the occassional tantrum, but gets over it quickly. They even go to the big cafeteria to eat and she said that he just sits there and eats his lunch (which I hate to call lunch since it's at 10:30 a.m.!). So we're really proud of him. We are currently looking into taking him to a doctor who specializes in autism. There are just tons of things we've read about that we'd like to have him tested for. But it's a little scary because we know nothing about these doctors. I made an appointment with one the other day and asked Jay's mom to see if she could find out anything about him (she's a nurse in the Dallas area) and it turns out he's a quack who reads the kids aura!! So please pray that we'll have wisdom in choosing the right doctor.

First Day of School

Well, it's been a long time since I, Jay, have taken the initiative to post on our family blog. Tonight I decided that I would share our new family reality with you.
Today was Andrew's first day in a real school, the local elementary school. While thankfully they have not decided to move up the age at which you must begin school, allow me to share how this event transpired.
On Friday Andrew went for a speech evaluation where a diagnostician was present. It was the consensus of the group that there was something more than just speech that was wrong with him. They felt it was probably a sign of autism. Not wanting to immediately make that call, they asked us to enroll him in a 30 day evaluation of him in their special education program that deals mostly with autistic children. This has been quite the shocker for us. While we've been preparing ourselves for this, the reality still weighs heavy. Many emotions have been swirling around the house for days. No time for all that now...
So, here we are. Andrew is in big boy school, luckily for just 3 hours a day. They have mercy on the 3 year old. We will of course keep you up to date on all of this. Sorry for no first day pictures. We woke up late ;)

Swimming Table?

This morning Andrew wanted to go outside and play in the "wawer", so we did. He has a water table that Nana bought him for his birthday so I put water in it and he played normally for awhile and then moved on to the sand box. I had to start lunch so I left him out there for a minute. I can see the back porch from the kitchen, but Andrew has never been too adventurous anyway, so I knew he would be fine just playing. I peeked out the window at one point and saw what I thought was his foot in the water table and thought, "what in the world is he doing?" Well, it wasn't just his foot, it was his whole body!!

He's never done this before, but I guess he wanted to go swimming! I'm not even sure how he got in there!!! The table isn't the sturdiest thing in the world so I would have figured it would have toppled over as he was trying to get in. But I guess for a three year old, where there's a will, there's a way. He stayed in there for about 30 minutes and was just as content as could be. Finding things like this is one of my favorite things about parenting.

Fun with the camera

Every Thursday night Andrew and I have to find some way to entertain ourselves since Daddy is gone playing basketball. Last night we decided to have some fun with the camera. This may sound ironic, especially considering the directory picture incident, but Andrew loves to have his picture taken. If we're not in a studio he really hams it up. Last night was no exception.





On a side note, we may be gaining some ground in the potty training arena. I thought this day would never come. Before yesterday when I would ask Andrew if he wanted to tee tee in the potty he would say "otay, otay, otay". Which when translated means, "leave me alone!" But I asked him the same question last night and he actually showed some interest. He stood there and kept saying "tee tee in potty", so I tried to show him what to do. Of course Jay wasn't home so he didn't get to see exactly how it's done. However, when he did get home, Jay asked Andrew if he wanted to go and he was all excited again. So they went in and Andrew tried again. Of course he hasn't actually gone tee tee yet (Andrew, not Jay), but we're so excited that he's showing interst.

Family Picture

I told you I would scan it once we received the awful attempt at a directory picture, so here it is.

And to think that Jay wanted to actually have this put in the directory!

The Wedding

This past weekend we went to the wedding of one of our previous youth. It was so good to see all of our "old" kids and they were so glad to see Andrew. This picture is of Matthew, Codye (Weaver's new bride), Matt Weaver, Tip and Jay. We have some great memories with these guys! (How did Deana not make this picture!)

Matt Copeland has always been one of Andrew's biggest fans as you can see:

Andrew did so great! We had a lot of reservations taking him to a wedding, but we bought him the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie and put it on the floor in front of our pew and it kept him occupied during the whole service. And even some afterward...he really loves that movie! During the reception he just ran around saying "picture" wanting me to take his picture. Which is pretty ironic if you refer to the previous post. But here are a couple he posed for:

The wedding was in Big Spring, Tx which is really in the middle of nowhere. We drove a total of 15 hours to and from the wedding. On the way back we saw this crazy wreck. We're not sure how something like this happens....

On our way home Sunday we stopped in Eastland, where we used to be on staff, and went to church there. It was wonderful to see everyone again. Overall it was a good weekend, but very tiring with all of that driving. We're glad to be home and hope to not go anywhere again anytime soon!

Andrew: MIA

There is no photo to go along with this post, but there will be one coming soon. Since Andrew has been in our lives we have now had three directory pictures made for church. They've never gone great, however, we've always managed in the past to get that one pose where we're all smiling and thus have an acceptable portrait for the directory. Tonight that all came to a very dramatic ending. Andrew was having no part of it. We did get several of him "in" the picture, but I use that term loosely. That means he was in a shot where I was trying, without success, to hold on to him and Jay was trying to reason with him while the man snapped a photo. In each of these pictures he is screaming and Jay and I are looking at him, trying not to lose it in front of the photographer. We actually got our free 8x10 of one of these poses because it is quite funny to look at. When we get this picture in, I will post it for your enjoyment. Jay really wanted one of theses awful poses to actually go in the directory, but I talked some sense into him. So instead, Jay and I will be appearing in the directory and Andrew is, as the title says, missing in action for this year's directory photo.

More Vacation Pictures

On Wednesday evening we decided to take a walk along the water's edge and didn't get very far before Andrew insisted (and I use that word with all of it's force) that we stop to see the "wawer". He really wanted to get in, but we convinced him to just sit and throw the rocks ....Daddy joined him.

After a lot of fit throwing, we drug him away from the water to the little park area. I really wanted a family picture of us, but as you can see in the picture below, Andrew was not cooperating.

Yesterday (Thursday) we spent some more time at the pool.

We finally got a decent picture with all of us in it. It's kind of blurry, but trust me, I'll take it. Overall our vacation was great! We're back home now, refreshed and ready to get back into our routine.