Happy Father's Day Update...

It has been over a week now that Justin has left for China.  His week in Hong Kong went well and he is now in Shanghai experiencing his first Monday morning of work there ( he is 13 hours ahead of us). The time change makes it a challenge to talk a lot, but luckily we have been able to speak often and email if talking isn't an option. 

The kids and I had our first full week on our summer schedule and it was a busy one.  Peyton is really enjoying our Monday and Wednesday morning activities of Gymboree and the Trampoline park and Jack warmed up to both pretty quickly both days.  I anticipate with going to Gymboree twice a week (once for class and at least once a week for open gym time) and the trampoline park once a week he will start to really enjoy each of those morning more and more.  He had a good first week of summer social.  They start out at the park each morning then head back to Kerry's house for structured social learning activites and also gets to enjoy some water fun. Which for a boy who loves being out side makes for a good day.  Friday is our free day of the week when we have no pre-scheduled activities planned.  This Friday we had a play date with my friend Jessica and her son Heath.  Peyton was having so much fun she skipped her nap.  The fun lasted all day so we decided to go out for dinner at Whataburger, and then we headed over and played at the open gym.  I was so surprised that girl just kept going and going, my little energizer bunny children :)  She ended up paying for her lack of nap that night, she was overly tired and didn't sleep very well (such the opposite what you expect to happen), but made up for it with Saturday's nap that lasted for just over 3 hours. 

I had some great help this week from my wonderful neighbor Jessica who watched Peyton for me a couple time so I could get to the gym and go to an appointment.  She also brought us dinner Monday night and surprised us with a fantastic bag of goodies for me and the kids.  Peyton always loves to play at Jessica's house, she loves playing with Lydia and really enjoys when Jack entertains her with his balloons :)  Today was also the first time we used Rachel who is someone that Justin found who works at fossil that is willing to baby sit for me this summer.  I had her come over this morning for a few hours to watch the kids while I ran some errands.  It was nice to get out of the house without the kids.  Those trips to Target without kids is truly a mini vacation ;) We finished up our Sunday with an invitation from my friend Celina to come over and go swimming with her and her son Tanner.  Jack and Peyton both had a blast at the pool, and since Jack decided to take a nap today (is there a blue moon or something??) I am hoping it helped wear him out a little so he isn't up to late.

I hope everyone had a really nice Father's Day!  We missed spending the day with Justin but I was able to make him a fun little digital gift he could watch and hopefully it made him feel loved today.  We will be excited to see him July 5th when he comes back home for his week in Dallas. 

Happy Father's day to my Dad too who I am looking forward to seeing over the 4th of July holiday! 

Here is a link to the video I made for Justin if anyone is interested but I'll warn you now its kind of long (16 min)
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6MU3XcwrZzWdGU0WklPZ3FQRWs/edit?usp=sharing

Gymboree Fun!

Color Time!

Skype Time with Dad!

Trampoline Time!

 

Jack's last day of preschool and Justin's on his way to China

 

Jack's first day at Lawson August 2011
 

Jack's at his end of the year party yesterday with his teacher Lynn

 

I may not have been the best blogger the past two months but I have some very exciting updates for this post.  Jack is attending his last day of preschool (PPCD-STC) class today at Lawson.  He started there when he was just 3 years old and is finishing up a big 5 year old! He was non-verbal when we started and now he lots of words and is starting to use them to form simple sentences and can with a partial visual prompt tell us "I want..." and has started to spontaneously ask his therapist and sometimes us for things he wants ( I want to go to dirt piles or I want to go to Target).  His receptive language has also improved, he is doing better at following one step directions and can follow some two step directions in context of an activity that he is doing.  He has learned to use the bathroom and his play skills have become much better too.  He still doesn't understand or know how to be social with his piers but that will be something we will be focusing on improving this summer with the ABA social group program and some other fun summer activities we have planned this summer. 

Yesterday was his end of the year party and it was fun watching how happy he was at school but sad knowing is was time to tell all his amazing teachers good-bye.  I am nervous about our transition to kindergarten next year but we had our transition ARD (IEP meeting) and I believe we have a good schedule for him next year which will include some inclusion time for him during lunch, recess and specials (ie PE, Library, Gym, ect) with the support he needs for success.  His new STC teacher seems great and she has several years of experience which will help him continue to make progress on his goals. 

We also had to say good bye and good luck to Justin this morning he is taking multiple trips this summer for work to do some training for Fossil in China.  His first trip that he left for today will have him in China until July 5th.  He will then be back in Texas for about a week and then will be heading back east.  The first trip is the only one scheduled so far but they will be able to figure out the rest of his schedule once he is over there and can assess the time frame of what the training schedule will need to be.   This is a very amazing opportunity for him and his career so the kids and I will miss him but we know he will do a terrific job and hope he has a fun time experiencing the Chinese culture.  I guess we both were destine for China adventures in our life time :)

The kids and I will be keeping busy this summer.  Jack's summer schedule will consist of Summer Social on Tuesday's and Thursday's from 8:30-2:30, ABA on Monday's and Wednesday's (12:30-2:30) I will be doing a Gymboree class with both kids on Monday mornings at 9, and we have a new trampoline park we plan to frequent on Wednesday mornings.  We will be trying to spend time with friends and hopefully get some pool time in there occasionally to get a break from the hot Texas summer.  Tomorrow is the first day of summer and we are meeting several friends and a new park that just opened up in Frisco that was designed especially for kids with special needs. 

I hope that everyone has had a good end to the school year.  I am planning to try and get back into a good routine of blogging and I will try and keep everyone posted on Justin's adventure and our own summer time adventure here in Texas!

Jack and his teacher Tyler

 

Jack with is teacher Stacey

 

Good Bye Daddy!

 



Happy Easter!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter weekend.  We had a very relaxing weekend that included an Easter egg hunt on Saturday, Justin getting to go to our regions Sweet 16 and Elite 8 basketball games at Cowboy stadium and Jack and Peyton dying Easter eggs.  We got a few really cute pictures of the kids at the Easter egg hunt and they both had a great time putting the eggs in there basket.  Jack got the hang of it very quickly and I am sure if Peyton had realized there was candy in the eggs before we got home, we would have come home with about twice as many eggs, lol.  The wait to see the Easter Bunny was a little to long and we weren't sure if Peyton would enjoy seeing a gigantic bunny rabbit so we decided to hold off on that activity until next year. 

 

 

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Happy Birthday Peyton!

I feel like I might be a broken record with this statement, but sorry for the long break between posts.  I will start off by telling you about how our little baby girl turned 2 last week.  This past weekend we put together a fun park birthday party for her and some of her friends. Along with our friends a lot of our family was able to come into town for this special event, which included both sets of grandparents, the great grandparents and my sister Stacey.  We took a lot of great pictures (some of which I will post here the others can be seen on my Picasa site) and Peyton had a blast!  Her favorite part of the party was probably the cupcakes and the presents she even oohed and awed at the packages and gifts as she was opening them.  Her least favorite part was when everyone sang her the happy birthday song.  She started yelling "NO!" and when that didn't work he little face made that incredibly sad upside down smile frown and started to cry.  Luckily since the birthday song is short and was followed by a cupcake made for a quick recovery :-)  The weather was perfect, slightly windy, but over all the party was a huge success!

 

 

The week before last Justin left for a business trip that took him to Hong Kong for 9 days.  Last week was also spring break for Jack and my mom so since Justin was going to be gone she was able to fly down and give me a hand.  We had a fun and pretty relaxing week.  Jack had all his usual therapy appointments like OT and ABA and was also able to attend the spring break session of his social group on Tuesday and Thursday.  That was very helpful because it last almost the same time frame of school and helps to keep him on schedule.  I did have a few rough nights where Jack decided it was a good idea to come jump into bed with me around 1 or 2 in the morning, but thankfully with my mom around I had the opportunity to either sleep in or catch a short nap on those days. 

I hope that everyone who had spring break has enjoyed the time off of school or work.  Jack is back in school this week and Peyton and I have been into our normal weekly routine.  I am going to sign off for now so that I can get her down for her nap and get a few chores done around the house while she sleeps.  Have a great week and I will do my best to post again soon...but no promises ;-)

Happy Valentine's Day & Hello Again...

I hope everyone had a great Valentine's Day. The Griggs house has been keeping busy between school, therapy, sickness, and visitors; I looked back and noticed my last post happened almost a month ago so I decided I should take a some time & let everyone know what been happening in our world. I'll start off with the not so good and try & end on a happier note :)

Last week Jack woke up Tuesday morning and spend his first few hours of awake time glued to the toilet. I took him to the Dr and he was diagnosed with Strep, again. This is the third time since Thanksgiving my poor little guy has come down with Strep. I don't think that was the only reason for his sickness. I think he was also fight some kind of stomach virus along with it, but thankfully the Dr was able to treat him and after an entire day and night of sleep he woke up the next day as if nothing had happened. Unfortunately for Peyton and I Wednesday we came down with the same thing. Thankfully, Justin was able to come home early from work, jumped into super dad mode and take Peyton (along with Jack) to the doctors office before they closed; while I went to the urgent care clinic. Jack was better and able to return to school on Thursday which gave Peyton and I the opportunity to relax and recover.

On Friday I had signed up to take a workshop class which thankfully I was still able to attend. The workshop was put on my Region 10 education services center. Region 10 ESC is one of 20 regional service centers established by the Texas State Legislature in 1967 for the purpose of providing services to the school districts within a defined geographic region. There missions is to create a dynamic learning community, passionately committed to educational excellence, is to anticipate the rapidly changing needs of students and other stakeholders by building partnerships and providing a wide array of high quality, innovative products and services, efficiently and economically.

The workshop was for a new program they are trying to launch to educate parents on the ARD/ IEP process in order to help other parents. It was very informative & I learned some new things. There is going to be additional training in the future & I look forward to seeing how this new program grows & evolves.

My parents & sister came into town this weekend. My sister & I had signed up to run in the Dallas Hot Chocolate 5k. My little stomach bug might have slowed me down a little, but we still had a fun time (despise the enormous traffic jam that we got stuck in prior to the race which we though was going to keep up from getting to the starting point on time) Nothing like having to run to the starting line before your run a race, lol.

The kids had a fun weekend playing with there NeeNaw, PaPa & auntie Stacey. I know they will be very happy when they can come back for another visit.

Justin & I spend valentines day at home with the kids. Justin brought home Olive Garden takeout for dinner, he rented the movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower & I made us some chocolate covered strawberries for dessert. It was a very nice relaxing evening.

I am very glad it Friday & I hope my kids can finally get out of this bad pattern of being well one week then sick the next, but until we are officially out of winter I probably shouldn't hold my breath. I hope everyone had a great week. I will do my best to update the blog again sooner rather then later ;-)

Have a great weekend and a Big Birthday shout out to a fellow friend & blogger Gwyn!