Christmas time is here!

It's only a few days until Christmas! December has flown by like it always does. The kids are looking forward to some time off school, as well as all the Christmas excitement of course:-D. 

So what happened in December! The first few pictures are of the kids greeting the Santa truck that comes around Redmond every year - so fun for them! I wish Adam would have joined in but alas, he was not interested. Back on the first Friday of the month, Brian and I had the adult Facebook Christmas party at the Wamu Center down at CenturyLink - so much fun! We had a really nice time with friends, enjoying the fun atmosphere, food and drinks. Facebook also had a family party the following Wednesday at the Zoo. It was an interesting evening. I may have mentioned previously that Adam absolutely refuses to wear a coat at any time, except for in the morning when he gets on the bus. For whatever reason, he has deemed that to be an acceptable time to don a coat, any coat at all. Anyway, this party was outdoors (zoo lights on a December night), it was forecasted to rain, and it was not warm, so we knew he would be uncomfortable without a coat. We told him before we left that he would wear a coat, and while he was not at all happy about it, we eventually convinced him to put the coat on and get in the van. Thinking we had scored some kind of big victory, we drove to the zoo with high hopes of a successful evening without a cold and wet Adam.

Our pleasant feelings were short-lived. We got there and as soon as we got out of the van, he tried to unzip his coat. How odd, he agreed to put it on while in the warmth of the van, then as soon as we get outside he wants to take it off?? We tried so hard to get him to keep it on, but not wanting to make a big scene in the middle of the Facebook party won out and he took it off before we were even through the front gates. At this point, it was not raining so he happily skipped along looking at the lights with the other kids. I am thinking, maybe this won't be such a disaster after all - he does run very warm, so as long as it doesn't rain, this might just be okay! Of course it started raining about 10 minutes later. We had gotten our food and were eating in a heated shelter outside, so still okay, but we couldn't sit in there forever. We started walking towards the carousel and Adam starts losing his mind. He's getting wet and he doesn't like to be wet - who does! He starts yelling about an umbrella, we know that sometimes when it's raining at recess he stands under his teacher's umbrella. I had left my umbrella in the van because it was not raining when we got there, and honestly I just didn't think about it. We had met up with Andy and Kristy mid-meltdown, and thankfully Kristy pointed out that we were standing right in front of an information desk that had umbrellas to lend out. This seemed to help him out a lot. We walked to the carousel shelter where there was a warm place for him to stand and watch the other kids on the carousel for a long time, and he was happy as can be. We hung out there for quite a while, but Lynsey was not about to leave the zoo without seeing some animals, so we went to watch this presentation on hawks. Adam was fine for the first while, but he started to get cold and was making noise about going home. Heaven forbid we make Lynsey leave before the presentation was over, so Brian lifted Adam up and took him out of the presentation yelling at the top of his lungs. Great times! He took him to the van where he waited fairly patiently for the rest of us to join them. He was apparently shivering by the time they got to the van. Not once would he even consider putting his coat on. #autismproblems

The rest of the month has been filled with getting ready for Christmas, watching hockey and football (how about those Oilers!), and making some progress on our reno. The drywall started this week and they might even be done today! They will probably have to come do some touchups tomorrow, but he said definitely done by Christmas. We got a tile guy out to measure, still waiting for his quote, but hopefully we can get tile done not too long after the new year. Then it's just cabinets left for really big things; bathroom fixtures, lights, and the entryway cubbies Brian can do on his own. So exciting! I cannot wait, having the walls and tile in will be huge milestones. 

What else has been happening . . . I saw the Lion King musical at the Paramount Theater this past Friday, so good! Brian and Lynsey are going to see it tomorrow, I am pretty sure Lynsey will love it:-). I'm kind of glad Nathan swore up and down he didn't want to go when we bought the tickets, I think he would have enjoyed it for a little while but then gotten bored, he doesn't have the attention span for a 2.5 hour show just yet. This will be our first Christmas Day at home since 2013, looking forward to a very low-key Christmas! Trip to Alberta coming up on the 29th, looking forward to that as well. Merry Christmas!

Christmas is coming!

Here we are on December 3rd, what happened to November?? Let's see, I went on a field trip with Nathan's class to the Children's Museum in Everett, we had a lovely Thanksgiving at the Davey's house, we did some Christmas shopping, worked on the renovation (that was Brian only), put up our Christmas tree, celebrated Brian's birthday, did some purging to get ready for more Christmas gifts . . . does that about cover it?? I am completely done with Christmas shopping for the kids which is really nice, I feel like I will be much more relaxed for the weeks leading up to Christmas this way. Just have to wrap everything, which is mostly the fun part:-).

What has been happening with the kids . . . nothing too new to report. Adam got a different therapist in the afternoon sessions, we'll see how that works out. We have been thinking about dropping his two afternoon sessions and having him just go to school full time instead, but we will give this new therapist a shot to see if he can make some more progress with Adam. Lynsey continues to do well at school, as does Nathan. We had tried putting Nathan in a martial arts program and he didn't seem to like that too much after the initial novelty wore off so I'm glad we didn't invest too heavily in it. 

Life is pretty much just going along as usual! We are ready for the city inspectors to inspect the electrical, mechanical, building and plumbing parts of our renovation, and after that the drywall goes up. Haven't got quotes yet, fingers crossed they are what Brian considers to be reasonable! 

We have an 11 year old!

Here we are almost midway through November, yikes! It was a busy few weeks. As I mentioned in my last post, Brian was in Israel the week before Halloween week - we managed okay. The kids always get a bit antsy by the end of the week, so we were all happy to have him home! He did a few tours while he was there, but I decided it wasn't my place to blog about his trip. Since he hasn't posted anything on here since the first few weeks of me starting this blog back in 2007, I wouldn't hold my breath for that post to come!

He got back Monday the 29th, and on the following Tuesday night we carved the giant pumpkins we got from the pumpkin patch before he left. Lynsey mostly did hers, and Nathan tried to do it, but really they just aren't that interested in carving pumpkins. We scaled down to three pumpkins this year, maybe next year we will only do one or two. We'll see what the interest level is! Halloween night was fun, Adam went to more houses than he ever had before! He wore his policeman costume for the 4th time, we sure are getting our moneys worth out of that costume lol! Jaqui and Joey joined us, which was a lot of fun - Nathan was thrilled that for once he also had a friend to do something with, not just Lynsey. Halloween is fun, but I would by lying through my teeth if I didn't mention how relieved I am every year when it's over!

Lynsey's birthday was this past Saturday, and she had 8 friends join her to watch the movie "The Nutcracker and the Four Realms". It went really well actually! It was a good movie, and when you have 11 and 12 year olds it's pretty manageable. They all came back to our place for some ice cream cake and hang out time. Jaqui helped me out which was great, it all went pretty smoothly. We have been parents for 11 years, how about that! Sometimes I think we know less about parenting now than we did 11 years ago haha.

This last week has been a bit more calm. I have been working on my Fehr family calendar, which I finished today, hurray! I got a new laptop Thursday which is really exciting:-D. Who doesn't love getting some new electronics?? The kids are doing well, Lynsey is really doing well in middle school. She has really impressed me with how she is managing the changes in how things are done, keeping up with her assignments and getting good grades, and rarely needing to do any homework at all. Her school life is so far so much less stressful than fifth grade was! Adam is going to be getting a new therapist for his Tuesday/Thursday afternoon sessions, hopefully he will be a bit more willing to work with this new guy. He used to love his male therapists when he was at RSA, so I'm really curious to see how he will respond to a guy working with him now. If it doesn't work out, we will consider taking him out of afternoon therapy and just have him at school full time. He seems to be doing well at school, we haven't had any reports of him "attacking" teachers, so we are already one step ahead of last year lol! I need to set up a meeting with his teacher and see how he is doing. His repetition seems to be at a bit of a low point right now, although he has sadly re-introduced some very annoying sensitivities (bye bye piano practice for me, I now can only practice in peace when he's not home). He has historically always cycled through these things, so fingers crossed he lets this one go soon! Nathan is doing really well, just typical six year old problems. A little bit of rage here and there, but we're working on teaching him to deal with that. So tough for such a passionate little boy!

Brian is currently working on the electrical wiring for our renovation, so we will see how much progress there is in the next few weeks. It is looking like Christmas is probably not a likely completion goal, but who knows! One step at a time!