A Day Out With Thomas

We were awesome parents this last weekend at took the kids to A Day Out With Thomas.   Its an event were the kids get to do various Thomas related activities and actually ride on Thomas.   It was at Greenfield Village this year which is only about a 45 min drive from our house.  

We decided to take a picnic lunch since I was starting The South Beach Diet and I didn't want to cheat.  I was worried the kids wouldn't want to sit and eat right after we got there but we all sat in the shade and had a good lunch before the fun began.

This is the front on Thomas.  He is huge.

 Whats a Thomas event with out lots of train tables.

 We had some sharing issues here, but it was a cool set up

Lego Thomas

 They had a gift shop obviously  and I was happy to buy the boys some sort of suvineer.  They had these great big Mylar Thomas balloons that the boys were very excited about.  Only problem was they were $10 each for a balloon.  I know they were cool and all but $20 for 2 balloons not gonna happen kids.  We settled on some cool Thomas shades.

 A nice lady took our picture while we rode the train.

You could go to the train after your ride and get your picture taken.  Sam couldn't take his eyes off Thomas, it was very cute.

 The hundred year old carousel

And Sir Topem Hat

We had a really good time.  The boys were on their good behavior and it went very well.

Cannoli

Sometimes I think I am a pretty cool mom.  Not often, but sometimes.  Today was a cool mom day.  There is a show on PBS called Curious George.  We watch it A LOT.  There is an episode where Curious George wants Canoli and cannot get it for various reasons that involve a cat and a chef and a scientist. 

Well the other day Max asks if we can have cannoli.  I asked why he would want some and he responded with "It's on Curious George and its yummy"  I told him I had never had a cannoli either but maybe one day we would try one.

So fast forward to today, I got to the local butcher/bakery and I see they sell cannoli and they are like a buck a piece.  Ohhh cool mom moment, and of course I have to tell the baker why I want them, probably thought I was nuts but who cares.

So I come home with a box of Cannoli and tell Max I have a big surprise.  I open the box and he eagerly eats a cannoli and then asks me what the surprise is.

Talking

That is actually a post from another blog I read
http://niederfamily.blogspot.com/2011/11/we-are-more-thankful-than-you-are.html
if you want to check it out.

Once again today I am reminded of how thankful we are.  Today I am thankful that Max is finally finally learning to express himself though language.  He has always been a late talker, had early intervention services and the like to get him to use his words.  The problem is he just barley passes something called an articulation screener so he no longer qualifies for any language services.

Who knew talking wasn't a given thing?  Who knew we needed to be thankful for the ability to fluently communicate.

To give you an idea on Max's lack of communication, his two year old brother has better pronunciation of certain words then Max does.  Sam can say his L's correctly and Max still says L's as if its a Y. 

Today we are on our way home from Preschool and I ask Max if they played out side for recess, "Yes mom."  Then I ask what they had for snack "Apple sauce and graham crackers" he says.  Now this is already more than I usually get out of him.  Every day up till now when I ask what he had for snack he would say "I don't know."  So I am already pretty happy about the conversation and then he goes on to say "Also I was the snack helper"  Wow did my son just volunteer information, holy cow I was very excited and thankful that he his FINALLY talking.


I was driving home from the hospital with Sam the other day and I was doing 80 in the passing lane and some person decided that was way to slow and swerved around us and gave us the bird in the process.  A younger me would have been pissed off but now I kind of feel sorry for that kind of person.  They don't realize they should be happy to be alive and able to drive.  Its a strange thought to think, gosh I'm kinda glad some things have happened to us, I'd hate not to appreciate what we do have.  Cause what I was doing on right near the Barton Drive exit was praying for the Mama's that have babies at Mott's that day and being grateful that we only had an appointment not an over night stay. 

Skiing

Isn't this just the cutest picture of my little boy before we go skiing?

And doesn't Sam look cute too?


It turns out not so much. 


Let me start at the beginning.  Their is a group in Mt Pleasant Mi called the Deaf Blind society.  Since Sam is legally Deaf Blind, although not really deaf or blind just duel sensory loss, he qualifies for services.  So every year they have a free ski weekend at Challenge mountain which is an adaptive ski resort.  I was so looking forward to this since I had never been skiing before.



So we loaded up the mini van and headed north.  It was a four hour trip for us and the kids were pretty good but ready to get out of the car for sure.  Once we got there we were supposed to have a welcome buffet.  Well the kids were so done sitting still they ran around the tables like little wild monkeys. 

We took them up to our hotel room and got ready to go swimming.  That part went okay but the water was cold so we didn't stay too long.

 The next day we were all ready to go the second the ski resort opened.  Max and I got our skis and thats when it started to hit the fan.  You see in order to ski you have to wear a helmet.  Sam didn't want to.  Also you have to wear goggles.  Sam really didn't want to do that. 
So Sam is super pissed off from the get go and they put him in this seat that is behind a snowmobile and they take him up the hill and then a guy skis behind him on the way down.  It looked cool and fun, Sam hated it.

Now while all of that was going on Max and I were trying to ski down the bunny hill.  I got to go down twice and it was fun and I like it.  Max however didn't understand/didn't want to follow direction such as what to do with your feet so he had two volunteers help him down the bunny hill and then he was done.  Bummer

So we went to find Jeremy and Sam and they were sitting inside and I start telling Jeremy about skiing and didn't realize that Sam was asleep I woke him up he was crying it was a mess. 
So its like 10:30am now, and the kids are done with what we had driven 4 hours and stayed in a hotel for.  So we load up the kids, grab some Wendy's and head back to the hotel.  Sam takes a nap after lunch and Max and I go back to the pool again. 



We decided that 1. the kids were to young for this and 2. While it was a bad trip it was not in fact grounds for divorce.

I almost forgot, Sam pushed the emergency help button on the elevator.  Also exciting.

Swimming

The other day Sam's pre school had a field trip to a local pool so I took both the boys.  While we had a good time I was reminded how upset Max gets if he can't touch the ground in the pool.  When they tell you a panicked person in the water can drowned you they arn't kidding.  Max nearly scales my body in an attempt to sit on my head the second the water gets over waist height.  So I decided we needed some lessons.

So we signed up both boys for swim lessons and they started today.  I was a little concerned by the fact that they started in the deep end since he hates not touching the ground.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here he is crying in the corner

Thankfully he isn't the only kid terrified.  I thought it was really interesting their were 3 groups of kids.  The confident water lovers, the we don't love this but we will do it group, and the get me out of here group.  He did do the kicking like they wanted but only from the side.

They bribed him back in the water with a pool noodle.

And then their was Sam.  He loved his swim lesson.  He loved every min of it.

They tied a pool noodle to the kids and let them paddle around.

Happy Birthday Sam

We celebrated Sam's Birthday a couple weekends ago.  We had it where Max goes to pre school.  Community Ed had purchased 3 bounce houses and for a fee you can rent them along with the gym for a couple hours. 

We had several people cancel at the last min and I was considering cancelling since we were only going to have 6 kids and 3 bounce houses but then I thought Sam will have fun no matter who comes so lets do it any way.  In the end we all a great time. 

Every party we have has few people but its so much easier to host the small ones.  By the time the kids are 10 we may just do cake at home :)

 Hey this place has Cheetos

 Food Table

 Mom spends too much time on Pintrest

 Notice the Mickey sippy cup?  I wanted the kids to have something to drink so I got juice boxes with out thinking that Mr.Sam can't have them due to his unsafe swallow.  Opps sorry buddy.  He loves his Mickey cup though.

 I chose this picture because think this really shows what stairs look like to Sam.  Especially on the left side of the picture it really does look like a flat surface.

 More Cheetos please

 Grandpa Bruce!

 Sam's friend Briedish.  Sam loves her they hold hands now its cute

 Aunt Rachel helping down the stairs

Cake!

 Carolyn and Norah, my friend Cathy's kids. 

 Cool baseball air thing

I had this momentary feeling when we first got to the bounce house.  That OMG what was I thinking bringing Sam here, what if he can't enjoy himself and its his party.  His balance is bad, he can't see that well and has low muscle tone.  Then he ran around for 2 hours and had a great time. 

Yes we invited Max too

Alicia came and helped also

Vet a visit

One of my friends from high school reminded me that today was something called vet a visit at MSU.  Basically its and animal oriented free family fun day complete with a teddy bear fix it shop.  I was excited, this sounded like something the kids would enjoy so this morning we were all ready to go. 

Then is started to snow a little bit.  Sam gets super cold super fast and I remembered this being an out door event so I thought Maybe Sam and Jerf should stay home and Max and I could go.  So we hop in the car and drive out to MSU and find that we are so not the only people that are there.  Oh well, we get in line to have Max's Mickey Mouse stitched up.

Then we walked around and Max is getting bored and annoyed with how much waiting in line there is and just kinda wants to split so we walk to the Dairy store and the boy is happy again.  We walk back to the car and I am trying to figure out how to salvage the day.  We drove all the way out here we need to do something more cool that pet a guinea pig. 

I decide Preuss Animal House might be a good idea.  It was.  I got to see some co-workers from many many years ago and they recognized me right away.  Crazy how some people never change.  I had forgotten how cool of a store it was.  It had a stream with fish you could feed right in the store.  Max loved it.

I got home and I was telling Jeremy about our day and I was thinking, this really wasn't like what I remembered from this event.  There were no ducks, or chickens.  The I realized I was thinking it was Small Animals Day, not Vet a Visit.  Silly Heather.  Wonder how many animal events MSU has?  It ain't called cow college for nothing.