Lovely Spring weather!

Spring is here! We have had some really nice days in March, too - I am definitely ready for some nicer weather! I am even tackling doing some gardening this year, who would have thought! We have this strip of garden on the side of the yard that was just a weedy mess last year, so we decided to yank it all out and start over this Spring. I am slowly getting stuff planted, my neighbor is helping me because I have no idea about what to plant! Thankfully pretty well everything grows here so I think I am set up for success, but I'm really curious how it will all look. I'll be sure to post some pictures in the summer, assuming it actually looks nice lol!

What else is happening . . . Adam has been showing a lot more interest in Nathan lately. He wrestles around with him and asks him to come jump on the trampoline. As Nathan gets older, he is more understanding of Adam and seems to be tolerating the oddities better than he used to. Lynsey is still more empathetic in general to him, but it's coming! The kids have had a few school events lately, the latest being a St. Patricks Day dance. This was Nathan's first dance and he lasted quite a while at it! Brian did have to pick him up a bit early but I was surprised he was interested as long as he was. 

Yesterday we went to Fox Hollow Farm for an Easter Egg Hunt.We had to take the car because we discovered a screw in one of the van tires, so off to Discount Tire it went. Seriously, I think our van tires are magnetic, the amount of screws they seem to attract! Anyway, it was a pretty fun time. We did notice that the kids around us are getting younger and younger . . . it feels like we are outgrowing these kinds of events! Farms will probably always still work for us because our kids (well, Lynsey and Nathan) love animals so much, and as long as there is a corn pit, Adam is good to go as well. I did have a moment yesterday seeing Adam in the corn with all these younger kids around him - most kids his age have now outgrown the corn pit, but he could still spend hours in there. At least he's not like the other big kids that breeze in and out of there, throwing corn and generally making a ruckus until they are bored and leave. He just takes his little space and sprinkles the corn, not bothering anyone else. It was a good day, and it was nice to do a little outing together since Brian left this morning to go to Israel. Yep, yet another exotic destination for a work trip! He will have a couple of days to go touring, so hopefully he enjoys himself! In the meantime, we will hang out here and hopefully enjoy ourselves as well!

No one under 6 in this house now!

I probably shouldn't show Lynsey this title, as I'm sure she would insist that Luna (hamster) counts as a family member and she is under 6:-/. But, it's been my tradition to name blog posts like this after Nathan's birthday so I decided not to break tradition:-). The last few weeks have been busy - it's almost Spring! Lynsey and Brian went snowboarding on Presidents Day (two weeks ago) and I hung out at home with the boys. The rest of the week was nothing out of the ordinary, and then we had a snow day on the following Monday! Yep, that inch of snow was all it took to shut down life as we know it:-P.  Nathan had some fun in the snow before it all melted away. Adam ventured out in the his bare feet a few times. We had our snow experience for the year, hopefully it's the only one! We decided to take advantage of the day off and drove into Seattle to have lunch with Brian at Facebook. It went really well, low stress. Always a good thing! 

Onto Nathan's birthday on Wednesday! Thankfully he agreed to just have a family party this year (we told him if he agreed he would get more presents, since it's only fair if we don't spend the money on a party then he gets a bit more presents for that sacrifice:-)). It was so nice and low stress! We picked up an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen and put his Captain Underpants cake topper on it. He loved his roller blades and his new Lego,  he was a happy camper! He said he had a really fun birthday so we were happy for him!

Lynsey had her Science Fair last Friday, I think her project turned out really well! Memories of all my own projects came flooding back - none as good as hers, I'm pretty sure! I took Nathan and Lynsey (and a few of her friends) to a roller rink on Saturday afternoon, it went okay. It was a bit chaotic, Nathan couldn't use his roller blades because they had plastic wheels (this place had a lot more rules than the roller rink we used to go to that has sadly shut down!). It was okay, he was more stable on roller skates anyway, good for learning. 

Other than that I can't think of what else is new! The kids are looking forward to going to San Diego, I am a bit (not dreading it as much as I did Disneyland lol!). I'm sure it will be a fun time!

Mid winter break, life as usual

Life has been pretty much business as usual this month. We did get our green cards last week which was exciting! Finally the whole immigration process is settled, no more worries about visas and border crossings and going into secondary screening rooms to be at the mercy of grumpy USCIS agents. We are now permanent residents (but still very much Canadians, as our allegiance to our Canadian athletes in the Olympics is clearly indicating!). 

Small things - we bought Adam a bed wetting alarm system a few weeks back, we were just so tired of changing sheets at night and it did not seem to be getting any better. We had been waking him at 11 to take him to the bathroom which was definitely helping, but it wasn't solving the problem because he STILL sometimes wet the bed before morning, and sometimes he had wet the bed before we even got to him at 11! So, we splurged and got the special underwear with an alarm. It is definitely working! The first week the alarm went off several times and he didn't really wake up, but he must have sort of heard it because by the time I got to him he wasn't very wet yet. Well in the last 10 or 11 days, it's only gone off once! And this is without us taking him to the bathroom at 11! It seems like something clicked for him last week sometime, and he's learning bladder control again. Thank goodness! We will keep up with the alarm for a while yet just to make sure he really has it under control. He doesn't even mind wearing the transmitter, and reminds us to put on his "hanging thingy" if we don't get to it right away:'-D. It's quite a relief! Hopefully the success continues!

What else . . . nothing much going on. We survived Valentines Day and all the Valentines party stuff. Brian took Lynsey snowboarding again last Saturday, and hopefully again this Monday. We have had a lazy few days at home with mid-winter break, had some playdates here yesterday. We are really enjoying watching the Olympics and feeling very patriotic! Go Canada!

February Already??

Here we are, we survived January! The last few weeks have been good, Brian and Lynsey enjoyed their snowboarding day (I ended up skipping the gym and going to the babysitting co-op playdate instead which was good!). The kids had conference week at school last week which meant we met with their teachers, and they had a lot of half days. Nathan and Lynsey are both doing very well in school. Lynsey sometimes has trouble paying attention in class but nothing to be alarmed about. We are very happy with how she is doing! Nathan is way above grade level in basically everything, little smarty pants. I was happy to hear how that he's a great kid in class and kind to his classmates, since we are much more concerned about his social skills than academic ability right now. I'm just so relieved that he seems like he will not require a lot of extra intervention. Is it terrible for me to say that?? That I'm relieved that he is catching on to everything and needs less from us to be able to succeed?? I guess time will tell for sure, but for now anyway, he is just sailing through Kindergarten without a hitch:-).

A few noteworthy things happened this week. One, we booked a getaway to San Diego for part of Spring Break! Brian's parents will join us so that should be a lot of fun! The second is that we had our Green Card interview yesterday morning. We had to get into the van at 6:30am and drive down to Tukwila (south Seattle) with all the kids. Thankfully everyone was in a pretty good mood! We got there and after checking in, we went into this room with rows of chairs where people were sitting, many with lawyers, waiting to be called. Our lawyers were in San Francisco and they didn't think we needed one so it was just us. Our kids were looking pretty disheveled, just barely presentable for a school day, and other people had dressed their kids up in little suit jackets. I momentarily wondered if maybe we hadn't put enough weight on this interview! Thankfully we didn't have to wait in that area for too long, I think it was about 25 minutes. Adam was doing pretty well, starting to get a bit anxious but keeping it well together. Our interviewer was really nice. He didn't mess around wasting our time, and was very understanding about the kids being a bit restless. He told us at the end that he didn't think there would be any issue with us getting approved, and sure enough, that night Brian checked our status and it said, "Approved"! It will be such a good feeling to get those Green Cards in the mail, like we really achieved something immigrating here. It's really not an easy task. Brian did 90% of the work in gathering all the paperwork and such, so I guess he should take most of the credit (and the fact that it's his job that got us the cards in the first place I guess lol!). 

Back to routine

January is half over, and we are getting back in the swing of things. Today was a beautiful day so I was even able to take the kids over to the tennis courts by the park to practice some tennis with their "new" rackets (thanks Value Village!). What has been going on . . . not a whole lot. Nathan has discovered reading and is doing a great job with those level 1 readers! I am so impressed by how quickly he is catching on, and he is so motivated. 

Adam is going through a very high repetitive phase. He now requires us to repeat even the sounds of us clearing our throats or coughing:-/. It really is ridiculous. The only positive thing to report about this is he doesn't seem to be getting as agitated, even when we don't respond right away, so I suppose that's a step in the right direction. He has transitioned very well back into the school routine, and his therapy hours went up by quite a bit starting last week, and he's done well with that. I don't understand this repetitive thing at all, I wish it would just go away! 

I am hoping to get back to painting this week, planning to tackle the spare room this week! There I said it, now it's out there and I have to do it:-D. I cleaned out the boys's room, gave their dresser away (changing table dresser, it was time to get them a more grown up dresser!) and gave them ours (since our closet organizer has eliminated our need for a dresser. Now I have the perfect space for a sewing table in our room! I wonder if having my sewing stuff out and well organized truly will mean I will sew more . . . here's hoping!

Brian and Lynsey are going snowboarding tomorrow (MLK Jr Day here, kids and Brian off) so I'll have the boys for the day. Debating between going to the gym in the morning and going to an organized playdate with my babysitting coop . . . we'll see what wins out!