Bloomsbury Farm Fun

We had a dear friend from back home send us a gift for family fun.  It is such a blessing to be loved by so many.  We treated the girls to the Bloomsbury Farm which is one of their favorite places on earth.  It was such a blessing to enjoy all the activities with my littles, and to have Molly here for the first time.

 The jumping pillow is Anna Mei's absolute favorite activity!  Molly Kate agreed with her!

 We made precious memories as this girl is growing up so much now that we have a new baby home!

 Fun!  Fun!  Fun!

 This sensory seeking girl loves this farm.  Running, sliding, and digging in corn/hay is a perfect combination for a fabulous day in her book.

 This little one loved the hay too.

 The corn box.  It is a giant crib full of kernels that come up to my waist.  Need I say more?  My Jilly billy is in heaven here!  She couldn't wait to get to the corn!

 More corn silliness!

 Daddy was off on Thursday when we visited so Jilly had Daddy to herself.  The littles weren't going to slow her down.  She hardly left the corn!  She would walk a corn field for hours.  It is so peaceful for her to just walk among the stalks.

 This little one walked all. over. that farm, and tried out just about everything.  After a few hours of walking and playing, this little lady was worn out!

 Her legs are getting so long that the little slides don't slide much anymore. :(

 I am surprised that Molly liked the corn as she is not a fan of the rice tent or bean bin at our house.  She did, indeed, have a go at playing in there though, and smiled!

More corn for Jillian!  Seriously, the girl could be found in the corn box or the corn maze most of the day, but she was so, so happy.  She tried the slide once, and liked it, but the corn is a LOVE.  I love this farm!  I am grateful for the gift we received that allowed us to visit!  Thank you for your love and thoughtfulness Connie!  It was a wonderful, family day!

DELICIOUS Pumpkin Donuts

I found the recipe for these yummy pumpkin donuts on one of my favorite blogs the other morning.  I didn't own donut pans, but went out to buy some ASAP as this recipe looked so very good!  I had to make them.

 I had some especially adorable helpers which also added to my desire to whip some of these yummy, rich tasting treats up.

 These two, with their tall stools, are always, always right beside me as I cook.  I love it!

We were very, very pleased with the final product!

 These eighteen donuts were eaten in a flash.

In fact, the clan can't wait until we make more!

Pumpkin Soup Making Sensory Play

I set up a fun sensory table the other night in the backyard.  I scooped out a pumpkin, and set the seeds and guts in a bowl.  I then added shakers full of sand, squirt bottles of water, dirt, leaves, grass, and water to our table.  I had lots of ladles, spoons, and bowls for mixing too.  Then, I invited the girls to create their own version of pumpkin soup.  It was a huge mess and wonderful fun!

 Jillian was not at all sure about the pumpkin, its guts or seeds, for a long while.  Eventually though, she was right in there with her sisters.

 I only had one shaker for sand.  My natural inclination would be to provide three to erase any fighting, but having one was wonderful for practicing language, turn taking, and sharing.  The shaker was a favorite, and the girls were so cute shaking sand in their soup.

 I know I keep saying it, but you wouldn't even know this little lady has a hand special need.  She does everything her sisters do, and sometimes she is even better at it despite being two.

 Sometimes, soup was created inside the pumpkin.

 Other times, the soup was mixed in some bowls I provided.  Anna added so many natural elements to her soup.  She is quite the chef.

 This girl watched and watched her sisters with this shaker.  She loves shaking sand, and I could see she wanted a turn.  Then, without any prompting from me, she signed my turn.  I was thrilled.

Here she is overcoming her fear of the pumpkin and adding the guts to her soup.  She was great with the tongs.  Jillian loved showing these pictures of our play to her teachers, and she has signed "pumpkin soup" to ask to play this again most every night.  We will be getting more pumpkins as this game made our special treasure very, very happy.













Just watch Molly use the ladle to get water and dump it in Jilly's bowl..

After her sisters had moved on to playing in the hose with Daddy, Jillian was even using her hands in the pumpkin guts.  My she has come so very far!  My heart overflows watching her!

Absolutely Incredible News

I let my Jilly off at school everyday.  I watch the assistant who is assigned to pick her up from my care greet her with so much love that it takes my breath away.  I watch the other adults working the outside drop off line stop everything they are doing, and watch my Jilly because they are waiting for her to approach them to greet them.  Greeting others is a goal that they have for my sweet girl at school, and everyone there knows it.  All of those around her, stop what they are doing, and wait for her greeting.  She is cherished there, and not just by a few, but by the whole community.  I receive text messages throughout the week from her team of very special teachers.  These messages report her victories and triumphs to me on a regular basis.  These things that are reported would seem small to most, unworthy of a text most certainly, but to these professionals who love and celebrate my girl playing with a peer at recess is worthy of being shouted from the rooftops.  If you had told me four years ago that an army of people in an elementary school would love, and be so devoted, to my very special baby I would have never believed it.  I spent thirteen professional years myself walking the special education halls of a public school, and, while I loved my students, I often felt I was waging war against the establishment as my students were never cherished and valued the way my own daughter is here in our local school district.  They provide her with absolutely everything she needs without counting the cost.  This was so not the case in my own experience as I taught.  My experiences were that we were usually given the cast offs as far as most everything was concerned, and expected to survive on a shoestring budget.  I was absolutely against my Jilly ever going to school because of my experiences.   I tried the school district back home before moving here, and my experiences as a professional moved to the personal side as I was deceived, lied to, and hurt by the very people assigned to teach my child.  I never signed her paperwork, and I wouldn't have let them near her.  Again, this confirmed my "I will never send Jilly to school attitude" as we prepared to move to this state, but I was also coming face to face with the fact that I had added another sweet, little babe to our family who was a bit more demanding of my time than I had hoped.  It led Sean and I to meet with the district here hoping we might find a better case scenario after we moved.  Well, this school district is pretty near perfect.  Perfect because they are 100% about loving and caring for my girl, and giving her exactly what she needs.  She has several assistants that throughout the day give her all the support she needs.  She is reading (by choosing the words on her Nova Chat or pointing to flash cards as she is still nonverbal), writing, modeling words with letter tiles, counting, doing independent tasks, and communicating up a storm through sign language.  Many, many days I wish I could go back to that official in her home land to say "I knew she could!" because his "she would never learn" statement was a bit off.  She has music, PE, and art all with her peers.  She also had adaptive PE everyday (still can't get over this).  She spends as much time as she can with her first grade class, and loved attending the fossil gorge field trip last week where she spent the entire day away from school just like all the other six year olds.  At her most recent IEP meeting, her teachers were sharing with me just how much she was communicating through sign, and how,at times, she was so frustrated that they didn't know what she was saying.  (You should know that while my Jilly can hear everything we say, and follow verbal directions pretty well, she can't speak and uses only sign to tell us what is in her head most of the time.)  I was told she was so persistent though as she led her assistant to the very object she was signing for when they didn't understand her monkey bar sign one day.  One of her assistants was even doing her best to teach herself ten signs a day so she could communicate with her (LOVE), but it is hard to keep up with Jilly.  Last year, she didn't communicate very much at all spontaneously, because it takes my girl a very long to feel safe.  This is her second year in this school, with this same staff, and I suspect that she is now taking off because she is feeling 100% safe.  I mentioned that it would be over the moon incredible if she could have an interpreter full time.  They would be able to model all words and would know her words too.  Then, they could redirect what she signed to her NOVA CHAT because ultimately she will be more widely understood in life if she masters this form of communication so we really want her to master using it.  Well, I was crying tears of joys this week in the hallway at my darling girl's school when her amazing teacher told me that the district had approved hiring an interpreter for her full time and that the position was now posted!  I can't believe the resources they pour into my beauty to insure that she will meet her full potential, but I am praising God that we have access to so much for her as I know this is so not the case everywhere.  I can't wait to see where this takes her.  Praying they find the right person for this job as my Jilly is one special cookie.

A Broken Record..Another Great Place to Visit Here

 I feel I constantly go on about the incredible things to do here where we live, but we discovered another amazing, free place to visit today.  It was a beautiful day so we decided to check out our local nature center.  I read about their natural sensory based play trail online, and it sounded right up our alley.  It was amazing.  I can't wait to take Jillian here.  It has all the makings of a wonderful day for her without a doubt.  We also had a special guest go with us.  Our friend back home sent us her Flat Stanley to visit for a few days.  We took him with us on our adventure and will chronicle it for her class to read after we mail him back.

 Digging through sand searching for fossils was one of our first stops.

 I can't believe how well this little lady does with all fine motor and gross motor tasks.  She is incredible.

 There was a pit to assemble bones.  There were baskets and baskets of all sorts of bones.  Anna Mei began to sort them by type touching them ever so delicately.

 It was a picture perfect day!  It has always been a dream of mine to be a stay at home mom playing with my littles.  At nearly 40, God has certainly granted me the deepest desires of my heart!

 There were giant rocks to climb on!

 At every turn, there were logs, stumps, and other wood things to explore.  I love the natural blocks and table to build with them on.  I really want to build one in our backyard now.

 After we were done playing on the sensory trail, we had a picnic, and then headed to the hiking trails.  We climbed down the embankment and explored the creek from a dry sandbar.  I really can't wait to have Jillian here!  It will be a dream come true!

Flat Stanley lost an arm along the way, but, no worries, we repaired him in our kitchen hospital when we returned home.  These two both took stellar naps this afternoon, and I am so grateful for the time with these babies!  Good, so very good!

On the Pumpkin Farm

 Daddy and Em were gone for the day visiting a local Bible college so Grandma and I took the littles to the pumpkin farm.  Today friends is a day that my heart looks at my girls and gives abundant thanks to God for the great, giant sized joy they fill our hearts with.  They are incredibly wonderful and I just can't imagine my life without them!

 Anna Mei is growing so much.  She is turning into a big girl right before my eyes.

 This little punkin is so adorable exploring everything for the first time and loving every single minute.

 Jilly really enjoys lots of activities at the farm.  She loved climbing on the piles of pumpkins.  I can't honestly believe how easy life is for this girl these days.

Her second Halloween home, we had to leave the pumpkin farm we visited because she was melting down and terrified of everything.  She is such a miraculous thing!  I just never dreamed all those years ago when her little heart was so broken that she would be able to live life so fully.

 How I love them so very much..these two adorable little girls were so made to be mine.

 Getting all three to look at the camera is next to impossible, but still I try.

 The whole way there, this big girl signs "corn, in, walk"!  Jilly LOVES her some corn so the corn maze is one of her favorite activities!

 She also loved pulling her sister's wagon.

 Her first apple cider donut.  Oh my heart, she is so adorable!

 More donut goodness was to be had by my dear four year old.

This face is pure joy and I rejoice that she is here enjoying fall with us for the first time!

My First Baby

 My first baby is growing up too fast.

 She is an incredible young woman.

 She hates to be photographed, but I had her cooperation the other night so I took and took and took pictures of her.

 The garden was as beautiful as the young ladies I captured, and it was so fun to see them all dressed up.

 The littles didn't mind jumping in for a few shots.

 These frames were so fun!

 I am so grateful to have the chance to parent this young woman.  God is so very good to have blessed me so with this child of mine whose face matches her daddy's to a tee. I know these moments together are fleeting, and I long to sit and soak her in as long as I can.

DIY Lightbox Play

Have I mentioned how much I love to play?

I am planning a little learning unit all about the moon to do with my little girls this month because of the mid autumn moon festival, and I knew this kind of light box would compliment our unit perfectly.  It was a rainy night when I introduced it for the first time.  Thank goodness I had it finished because rainy nights can be a killer as we are stuck inside.

 I set out some translucent jars and bouncy balls on the box initially.  The girls moved the jars, unscrewed the lids, rolled the balls, and put the balls inside the jars for a long, long time while the light shined through.

 Then I remembered an old transparency set I had from my teaching days, and set out the shapes for them to explore.  Anna "wrote" her name.

 They had great fun exploring the shapes and colors.

 Is she not so cute?

 The glow of the light made creating so much more fun!

 Before long, houses were being created, and shapes were being named.

Jilly even came down off her trapeze bar that is mounted to the ceiling in our playroom to join in.

Making this box was so easy, and we have continued to play with it.  I took a 60 quart clear under bed clear storage container that I had laying around to make our box.  Then I bought a 16 ft string of rope lights that I also purchased at Walmart for $12.00.  To assemble the box, I had to drill a hole in the side of the storage container so that the light cord could come out the side in order to plug it in.  Once the hole was drilled, I strung the lights throughout the box, put the cord through the hole, and plugged it in.  I used some "spider web" Halloween decorations on top of my light in the box to diffuse the lights.  You could use colored tissue paper, parchment paper, or a number of things to change the light if you want to experiment.  I just had this webbing on hand, and so I threw it in there.  This project cost less than $15 to make because I had many of the items on hand, and the container stores easily under the couch in our playroom. I love it and so did the girls!