Kayla's American Heritage Girls had a sock hop with their dad's this spring. Brian was out of town so Grandpa took Kayla! I know he had a great time because this was right taken right out of his generation.

















Here's most of the Adair family for our annual Easter gathering. The Easter Bunny that put the eggs out make us very rich every year! This year my kids brought home a combination of $150. This is how Easter egg hunting goes in the Adair family (sorry, everyone is married and no one is adopting! Ha!) I believe they are simply passing their blessings onto everyone else in the family.





Here come some very smart little treasure hunters!!












"Mom you won't believe what I found in this egg...don't tell Greg!" (Greg, our rival cousin that always seems to rake in more money than anyone else in the fam)










"I'll take the candy thank you!"
(Colin does like getting the money but he always goes straight for the jelly beans when his mission is accomplished.)

Here's a semi side view of the house we're building. It's taken so long because if you can see right next to the house on the houses right is a fence which is fencing around a creek. They had to install pierium beams (sp??) and that was after they had mistakenly put the forms in the wrong spot 3 times. The pierium beams were placed every 10 feet and 12 feet down and on top of that is the actual foundation. That's a lot of concrete! Here's the truck that was digging the 12 foot holes.

Here's a couple of pictures of the house from the street right in front.

We're very excited to have actual mature trees in the back yard and our very own creek! (which is very likely dried up right now...) But we have room to play in the back and we've met some really great neighbors already. I feel so blessed to have been able to pick everything out for our new home and to actually have more space and also to not have to move very far. God has been so good to us!

Colin went to camp and all he has to show for it is this picture. If you can try to imagine the worst smel just understand that you're looking at that very situation in this snap. Wet clothes, sitting underneath a bus for 5 hours in 100 degree heat...ugggghhh... you can never imagine! Thankfully they were salvaged after a nice long run through the washing machine.

Colin's basketball league this spring.

That's all for now...thanks for checking it out!

Just when I thought I had this blogger figured out it changed. Just call me a very unsavy tech person! Anyway here's a few of our updates, be it that they're a few months late. The bunny was found in our back yard on Good Friday, he was so tiny and so darned cute we really thought about keeping him. But our neighbor apparently has an oasis in his back yard so we let him go back over (under) the fence. Poor thing was scared to death, shivering but mostly frightened stiff (I know that sounds bad but yes he was perfectly alive!) On to the next pictures...it's our lot but of course all dug up and no foundation. I have those pictures somewhere in this computer! Colin's friend Kyle was with us when we went to check it out so they are doing what boys naturally love to do and that is throw dirt around and jump off of the big piles of dirt. Kayla is walking on top of what will soon be our bedroom. As of today our house is framed and they are about to start bricking it. I'll send pictures before we move in (which will hopefully be by the end of August).

Adair family picture - 2005

My brother Ralph and his significant other, Gina

Grandmother & Willard Farness at Christmas with Rachel

Colin and Kayla know how to pose! (from center clockwise; Colin, Noah, Rachel, Kayla & Ezra)

Ezra loves books (my nephew)

Uncle Brian, Aunt Rachel and baby Ezra

Can I say "Gerber baby"? But I am probably a little biased! :-)

My sister Marchelle and I found this at an antique shop, do you think this is e-bay "worthy"???

Colin loves to play with good ol' fashioned Lincoln Logs at Pappa Rod's

Marchell and Johnny

Can the Lexus make it???

Let's give it a try...

going, going...

going...

Yep it made it - sorry but it's not American made!!

Cross Skipping for therapy (no she has no idea this picture is on here!) :-P

American Heritage Girls parade

Game time

thinking about the next move

"Mooooom, do you have to take my picture?"

Our future home site!

I'm sorry I haven't updated in a long time. We've been so busy in the last 3 months! And there's so much to share so I don't know if I'll get it all in. The latest and biggest news for us is Colin started his first day of school on Tuesday! He is attending Temple Christian Academy in Lewisville and he absolutely loves it! This came after many months of prayer and then finally a last minute decision to enroll him now rather than in August. (Colin's first day, excuse the sideways picture!) Yes I think it was more painful for Colin to cut off his long hair than to go to school, LOL!

Our biggest goal right now is to get Kayla prepared for a higher level education and the past 4 months have been very difficult to juggle to 2 kids in their schooling (and neurodevelopmental therapy). So Brian and I decided to enroll Colin to be able to get the best out of Kayla's therapy in the next 4 months. Trust me when I say this, it was one of the hardest and most nerve wracking things I have done in a very long time! Colin has never been to school except for pre-school and a few sessions at our church's co-op so you can imagine how this made me feel to drop off my "baby" at school! I have had way more nerves and fears about this than him! The amazing thing is he's very laid back about it even though his work load has nearly doubled. He's got a really good teacher, she's very organized and thorough and Colin asked me this morning on the way to school, "Mom is my teacher smarter than you?" Which of course made me laugh because of course she is, she's a "teacher" after all and I'm not! (I say that very lightheartedly about myself.) Anyway Mrs. Alvis said he participated the first day in raising his hand to answer questions and was also very active in class games and activities. It's like he never missed a day! (amazing!) So we're very excited that Colin loves being in school and that I am able to spend more time with Kayla. Which reminds me we had a very good evaluation last week with Little Giant Steps. Kayla once again improved in many areas. We don't even have to go back in for more evaluations unless we want to because she is on course developmentally. But we do have 4 more months of more work, not so much "therapy" but a lot of vocabulary, reading and math. Our plan is to get her up to speed in order to enroll her in private school in the fall as well. Which will officially end our homeschool season and that makes me sad but I also know that we are on course with God's will for us as a family. Sometimes I feel like a failure and I tell Brian so but he is kind to tell me that I did not fail, we are not "quitting", I have simply reached my limit and we have run the course. I am very thankful to have homeschooled, I have met some of the most wonderful families and I will truly miss the homeschool "talk" that I continue to have with them to this day. But I will always leave the door open to homeschooling again because you never know what the next season will bring you in life.

If you've made it this far in reading my blog then bless you because you like to read and I like to write! :-) Anyway there is one more thing I want to post about. We're building a new house that is only about 2 blocks away from our house and I have a picture to post of us on the plot that we bought. It will be finished in about 4 months and I am going to try and make regular posts on here about our new building process (thanks to a good friend's idea to). That will help me when I eventually make a scrapbook about our building process. And I don't mean to sound ungrateful or anything but let me tell you that I've heard before that if you've ever built a custom home once you never do it again! (can I say painful a few times?!) But it will be so exciting when we finally move!

I just can't believe the difference the new activities have proven. The differences this time around is like going from working 20 hours a week to working double over time. Well not literally but that's how it feels! It's just so very different and I'm trying very hard to take it in stride and adjust. I'm needing more down time but there's always the guilt in the back of my mind that we've just got to get therapy done! Lori did warn me that the second 4 months is really very trying and is she ever right!

We no longer do digit spans with only numbers we now do digit spans with numbers and letters mixed. The other digit span activities are spelling backwards, she repeats what I spelled backwards and then says the word. Plus saying 5 to 6 words in a row and her repeating; all activities being 2 minutes long. It's so much harder for a child to go from repeating numbers to repeating words. It takes a lot more brain power and a lot more patience on my part! The reading aloud portion has also changed. We have 3 books to read from, I read a paragraph, she reads a paragraph then we talk about what we just read. This works on her comprehension skills. Plus she has cross skipping to do (frontward and backward) which she doesn't like and a concentration exercise plus bean bag toss and a whole bunch of other activities. We're also working on bringing up her math level and I can see with the workload that if she doesn't improve with that I will be very surprised. It's repetition, repetition, repetition. I'm tired now just thinking about it. But I know it will be worth it in the long run! Kayla is doing so well and trying so hard, I'm really very proud of her! But boy it isn't easy. But does God ever make lifelong changes easy? Positive lifelong lessons and changes usually involve patience, time, faith and love, which I'm pretty sure I've thought about that before. Anyway, for the month of October we completed 78% of the activities. Which isn't bad but there's always room to improve.

It's been a while since I've posted an update on here. We've just been trying to get used to the new schedule and activities. Which has and hasn't been a big adjustment, if that makes sense? Bottom line is, it hasn't proved easier or less work this time around! Just a little bit of tweaking of the schedule (mom) and pushing the boundaries (daughter) and finally - getting the work done! Basically this time around we are focusing on reading comprehension and concentration. But there is also math to do and lots of listening to books on tape. Colin has been doing less of his school work that is geared towards him and more listening in on our reading assignments. That's another great benefit of homeschooling, adjust what works for you and move on. Everybody is always learning and growing as well! So far this week we've done 100% of our work, but that's because we're going to see a play on Friday and therefore we'll probably only get 30% of our work done that day. I love the passage in Ecclesiastes where Solomon talks about "a time for everything" because that is so true and I have especially embraced that lately. I need clear agendas, clear boundaries and clear schedules. I love black and white thinking when it comes to our life. But I have to be very careful with that because I tend to be a little bit too rigid at times and overwork the kids and forget about "play". So I know the kids will enjoy our outing on Friday because they deserve it!

This is Colin and Kayla in the spinning chair along with Arthur "Arty" our cat. This was taken last week and now Kayla doesn't have to do spinning anymore, only the log roll which can be a giggle fest for the both of us! :-) And if you read my other post for today (just below) you will see that we had an excellent re-evaluation with Little Giant Steps.

I have been feeling very discouraged the past couple of weeks but we still managed to do about 70% of the program. Doing this program day in and day out makes you feel very irritable and after talking to Lori about this she advised me that it's important to go easy for a few days or you will burn yourself out. But then comes the incredible encouraging results you get from a re-evaluation with your neurodevelopmentalist, which we got 2 days ago! :-) There has been so many changes that I am so thankful to God for blessing with this program! And it is a huge relief and boost to help us go on. Kayla definitely had an extra spring in her step after we left the office of Little Giant Steps. Both Jan and CJ were beaming when they found out how much Kayla had grown and changed. But I want to add that Kayla has been for the most part very compliant through this whole process and I am so thankful for that. I don't think I could go on otherwise.

There have been many changes with our activities and we lost a lot of activities. No more trigeminal stimulation, yeah! For those of you that have no idea what I'm talking about don't worry it doesn't involve torture it's just a little exercise you do on their head to stimulate their brain. It was done during our reading time but for some reason I couldn't wait till it was over every day. (There is a brief explanation of that on my August 29th post if you're wondering.) So the changes in Kayla have been phenomenal! Kayla advanced in math a little bit (we do need more work in this area), she advanced in reading comprehension an entire year and 2 months and her auditory processing is now at a 6, previously she was at a 4, that means she developed 2 whole years in 4 months! Wow, wow, WOW! Is what I keep repeating to myself. I just can't believe the changes. And there are more but I won't list them all because I just want to get the point across that THIS PROGRAM REALLY WORKS and I am so thankful to the good Lord for bringing us to this point! When you want to see real changes in your child that will last a lifetime you can't look to quick fixes, they just don't work. And believe me I've tried a lot of those.

Anyway, for the next four months we have been given a whole bunch of new activities to replace the ones that are no longer needed. So as soon as I get together a new schedule we will be rolling along once again.

And thank you all so much for your encouraging e-mails, they really do make my day.

Today would definitely be called "one of those days". It has to do with the saying, "you can lead a horse to the barn but you can't force him to eat." Actually today’s sessions were going along fine until I told Kayla something that I noticed in her. I told her I noticed that she doesn't complain of aches and pains in her arms, legs or feet anymore. She used to come to me at least once a week asking to put a wrap on her foot because it was aching or her hand hurt or something like that. Around here it was very common to see Kayla wearing an Ace Bandage somewhere on her body because of these "aches and pains" but honestly she hasn't complained for at least 2 months now and I'm considering giving away our collection of Ace Bandages (that's a joke)! The deep pressure exercise that I have been doing with her is supposed to help her to be able to sense deep pain appropriately. Children like Kayla feel things overly exaggerated. Pain to them is very deep, something that I wouldn't bat an eye at, or they don't feel pain at all that most people would find very painful, if that makes sense? Well when I told her that, she seemed to disagree with me. She said she still has aches and pains which was aggravating to me because she was once again making a statement contrary to what I see in her or notice with therapy. Well sometimes she will agree with me but most of the time she disagrees with me about things that I notice. I think it's just another mark of adolescence shining through and I hope and pray she gets over it soon because I notice every little change in her, I should after all I am her mother and mothers have eyes in the backs of their heads right?! (especially us homeschool moms!) :-P

But seriously this is an area I have to let go of. I have to give the entire outcome to the Lord because obviously my way isn't working. I think just need prayer about getting the therapy done, not saying anything that I think is obvious to Kayla and wait on the Lord to "bring her to eat" so to speak. Because I can do therapy all day until the cows come home, if Kayla doesn't see or feel a need for it then it won't make a bit of a difference. So I suppose I also need prayer that Kayla will clearly see, appreciate and feel the need for therapy.

I know in my heart that God has lead us to help Kayla in this way. I just need to have faith in Him for the outcome because my faith is indeed wavering right now and I can't allow Satan to get a foothold on our family or my thoughts either.

Mark 11: 22-24; 22"Have faith in God," Jesus answered. 23"I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. 24Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.