Conversations with Joshua v1.2

My son Joshua is autistic. He has made leaps and bounds from a tantrum-throwing toddler who didn't speak until he was 3 years old, had problems handling play-doh, sand, shaving cream, etc and no social skills. Our city has a great program (LAUNCH) which accepted Josh and helped him and us so much.

Josh still continues to improve and he comes up with some funny stuff. The other day we were watching TV and some commercial came on. It was Walmart or something and the man was talking about having 3 kids and taking care of them.
Josh turns to me and asks,"How come you only have 2 kids?"
I'm trying to think fast and come up with a good answer so I just say,"We decided to just have 2 children. It is the right number for us. Don't you think it would be busier with more kids?"
Josh: "Yes, 10 kids would be A LOT of work for you! Your life would STINK!"

Then we both started laughing....

Carnival fun

recap

So behind with the blogging but oh well.

Here is the recap:

1. Went to the beach last week(?). I can't even remember. Spring is here.
2. April is almost here and we have to pack up for Mammoth. 4 days of snowboarding/skiing with the family. I can't believe that this will be my first time up to Mammoth this season.
3. I finished Professor Layton and Curious Village on the DS. Puzzles of all sorts which help exercise my brain and it's fun.
4. Our water heater went kaplooey so we were without hot water for 3-4 days. Hector fixed it yesterday so we are all happy again.
5. I made lengua (cow tongue) for the first time. Pretty simple and not too disgusting to make. Btw, cows have sandpaper tongues.
6. We took the kids to a carnival Friday night. Definitely not in our usual neighborhood but we had lots of fun. Pictures later...

Video 2

Day 2 of my Victoria/ Vancouver trip. Just a sightseeing video and a gorgeous day after rain from the day before. I didn't totally watch the entire video so if I have footage of my feet, I apologize.

Finally...

my 1st video from Canada is uploaded. Yes, only a month after our trip. My Flip took while to get all 93 videos showing but I have the 1st day edited into a little movie. Enjoy.

I will get working the next one...

Kool-Aid experiment

My cousin Hannah sent me a cool link about Kool-Aid dyeing in your crock pot. This method is so much simpler than the other methods I've tried. I had a 6 quart crockpot doing absolutely nothing in the cupboard and some white sock yarn so I put it to the test.
To make a short story really short....here is the result. I used black cherry and pink lemonade packets added directly to the yarn in the water. Yay, the yarn turned out really vibrant and pretty and is already on my needles for a pair of socks.

I'll be doing more Kool-Aid dyeing in the future but I need to work on my already big pile of yarn stockpiled in the corner. :)

Field Trip

The kids and I took a nice walk throught the Madrona Marsh. It was a sunny yet windy day and the last few months of rain has brought the land to its marsh-like state.

The kids had some binoculars and another camera so they're happy to look about and take their own pictures.

We did see some kind of heron (?) so we had fun creeping about trying to get a closer look.

More butterflies

More pretty butterflies from the Butterfly Garden. These are the better, non-blurry pictures from the outing!

I'm getting over the illness that has hit our household. Hector had something slightly different with the cough lasting over 3 weeks now. Josh had a fever with cough which is almost gone and now me with general coughing, sore throat where I lost my voice for one day and sneezing. I keep asking Tyler how he feels each day and he's fine (so far). The next 2 weeks will be 'cold' watch.

Gardens and Butterflies

More from Canada...

Brandon, Lupe and I at the sunken garden portion of Butchart Gardens.

I think this was our second go around since we practically ran through the place because we only had 90 minutes. We came back to the sunken garden to see how the light changed for pictures.

It is very peaceful and pretty.

Butterflies from the Butterfly garden. Very warm and tropical inside and we spent our time chasing the butterflies to take the perfect pictures. Not easy.

Kat had a butterfly guide to identify the butterflies but I'm not very good at it. We spent a lot of time chasing a pretty blue butterfly that kept flitting about and when it landed, it would fold up its wings so the ugly brown camoflage part showed. Kat found a dead one in the bushes.
She also got some footage of a live blue butterfly that of course landed on my butt so I didn't get to see it!

Kenpo Tournament

Tyler had his very first Kenpo tournament on Saturday.

He entered kata and self-defense which was really competitive in his age/belt class. Tyler got a participation award but was upset he didn't get a trophy. Sigh. I thought he did great but unfortunately other kids did better. I really hope he will take this as a positive learning lesson...keep your fingers crossed.

Just keep practicing Tyler, you're doing great!