My Cute Little Monkeys: Special visitors! (And school and stuff...)

We had a special visit last weekend... and I don't mean the hurricane!

My kind of hurricane though, for real, the only thing exciting was a tornado warning for a half hour on a Friday. Other than that, schools were closed and it was just a big rain and wind storm. The pool got a TON of water and it's all of a sudden freezing! Anyway, I mean a visit from Jared and Aarika and their cute little family!

They came into town on Saturday and crashed here. It was SO FUN. Not only was it a little piece of home, but they are good people with a cute little flock of well-behaved children. We swam, a lot... and did some fun things around the house but that was about it which is perfect! Hoping some of that well-behaved-ness rubbed off here instead of us rubbing off on them!

Toward the end of their visit we asked the boys who they were going to marry and at least got Ian, Duncan and Asher paired off to the girls. It was highly convenient that they each chose a different one! Of course, I am not sure they know at all what marriage entails yet... we will work on that later.

We were all so happy to have them here and then sad to see them leave. On our family meeting the day they left it was all the kid's "worst part of the day". Duncan is IN LOVE with Bea. He thinks she's the best thing that ever happened and is convinced he needs a little sister now. I told hime if we couldn't have Bea he was out of luck and her mom said no, so we don't get to keep her. He still busts out with an "I love Bea!" a week after they left.

Greyson and I have been making the most of mommy and me time this week. Of course he does so much better when he has a little bit of an outlet. Our church branch has Wednesday play date activities they try to plan to meet somewhere or do something fun that they saw at the library or whatever. We hadn't gone until this week and we went to the beach for an hour or so with two moms and their three kids. They still play independently so the kids just played in the sand for the most part and didn't say a whole lot to eachother. Greyson thought it was amazing though so we will have to go back.

Assuming I can handle the sand.

Because... sand.

During the month of September annual zoo pass members can get two people in to the zoo with them for free so that was the plan for Friday, I am not opposed to buying a pass for Greyson and I to go but I think I would at least like to see what I am paying for first right? I volunteered to drive because honestly, the huge van is totally excessive when I am not running all of the kids around every day. As is, we are only in there one day a week, Sunday, and that's it. To down size or not to down size... that is the question. I mean, when there is seven of us, there's seven of us an a wheelchair.

At the zoo there were lots of us, like... 8? 10? Most pushing big strollers. There was hardly anyone there and it was great. Hot, but great. We didn't see much of the zoo because we weren't there that long and we were traveling at a 3 yo's pace but it was still a great adventure and fun.

They played in a little splash pad there towards the end. Cute to watch, but it was hardly a splash pad by Utah standards. Total weak sauce. But it was cool water and they were hot kids so it was totally fine to them right?

Dylan had an appointment with Neurosurgery this week. It was really nothing at all exciting, you just need to see a neurosurgeon to be able to get a referral to the spinal defect clinic. Interestingly, most of the doctors you see at the clinic are the same as in Utah except in Utah Neurology ran the clinic instead of neurosurgery and Neurology doesn't even attend! So you have to go see them separately. However... to balance out the goodness, you can actually see GI here in the clinic instead of having to make an appointment there so I guess that's good.

We have an appointment for clinic in October but I think Matthew might be out of town and it's at 12:30 so I am not sure I can go and get the kids home from school? A neighborhood and church friend offered to maybe get her kids from the bus, then come to my house to play if the kids can get off the bus and come home with each other and be here for ten minutes until she gets here. That should be easy? Ugh... I don't know. But if we don't go in October we won't be able to go again until December since they only do the clinics once a month.

I did like the Neurosurgeon, she was great... I had requested a lot of Dylan's records and scans and she basically took them all to go through and add to their system . Unfortunately, the scans they sent did not include her brain and spine MRI's (What?! I said all scans!) so I had to request those and we will hopefully get them. They just need a baseline in her records so we don't have to repeat them and if there is an emergency they have something to work off of. Hopefully this new request does the trick and I can get them to her. A neighbor sent me a text and told me that this neurosurgeon was the one that did surgery on her daughter for her chairi malformation and they really liked her so YES! All that calling around and trying to get into the right place was apparently helpful.

I did have to drive in to downtown for it and I will have to for the clinic which is a bit intimidating but clearly we could handle it. My friend said if you want any kind of serious healthcare you go down town so that's what we will do!

I also went to Ian and Duncan's 'curriculum chat' which is like a back to school night for them. Ian's was on Tuesday and it was great. His teacher is AMAZING. She's quick though, which probably makes her a great teacher for their quick brains! She said she has the sweetest class this year and she would say if she didn't. She is able to have them do some different table activities while she does one on one and testing and she said she normally isn't able to do that with her classes until into October so they have been great and they are moving along nicely.

Duncan's was a little bit of a different story. I have really been struggling with him because he has had SO MUCH homework. Like a ton. The other week he had to do some homework on an elevation map, locating and listing high and low point. I asked him if he knew what an elevation map was and he didn't... So homework on a subject he didn't know about? Hmmm...

He brought home a test from school and he got a 69% and it had NOTHING to do with the homework we did. I was kind of irritated, if he needed to focus on those concepts why weren't they in his homework? Help me help you, for real. However, a lot of his marked off things were what they call "non-negotiables", punctuation and spelling... his bad. We talked to him about slowing down and checking his work.

Needless to say I was a bit irritated about the not studying. I thought homework was re-enforcing what they learned in class, not having to teach them entirely new concepts. It was only the beginning of the challenges that I have had with his class but in spite of that he LOVES it. He loves school and he adores his teacher. So the fact that we(me) are struggling with homework wasn't reflected in his enjoyment of learning... yet, which is good.

I wrote the teacher an email, I didn't want to be *that* parent but for real... come on. I was nice though, I promise. I genuinely am grateful that she is fostering a love of learning but I did want to check on a few things. She said she is working on better aligning their homework to the testing and it will fit better. But then I went to this back to school night and guess what folks? It's not her... it's US. There are things she mentioned that Ian's working on getting the concept of this year but Duncan's missed out on two years of learning the Florida way of doing things. He's behind in math, he's behind, not in reading, but in reading comprehension, he's behind in the non-negotiables, he just a little behind... and he's not a behind kid.

Basically I got out of back to school night that we are going to have to bust our buns for the next month or so to get him caught up but that once he is caught up it will be easier and worth it. I came home and had a one on one with him, spent 10 minutes and taught him some multiplication that he should have probably already known (0, 1, 2, 5, and 10) and sent him on his way. He gets it, and he's a fast learner. I was concerned though...

Then Friday he brought home the assessments for reading and Math and reading he is totally off the charts (higher than expectation/goal, higher than the school average, higher than the district) and in Math he's in the target zone where the school and district averages are below the zone entirely. I don't know what to think now! Is it possibly she pushes them hard now so they have a great 'most improved' grade? Is that the way they do things here? He doesn't seem to be discouraged which is great. We will just keep plugging away and busting our buns. Gosh I hope he continues to love it.

We were tired of the hurricane weather and finally just decided to go swimming in the rain!

Jared's trying to get out of the picture, sorry Jared, this was the best one.
(My camera kept fogging up, welcome to Florida...)