Neil and I met with Chase’s team about his school situation next year. I am so nervous about sending him full day. I know I have very little control over it so I shouldn’t worry as much as I do, but I’m a mom — worrying is part of the job description. I do feel way better about it than I did last year. Washington Irving has been great to Chase.  He’s had a phenominal kindergarten year and I am sure they, along with us, will do everything they can to help him transition into first grade as seamlessly as possible.

They haven’t gotten teachers or TA’s nailed down yet but we talked about a few things like his writing and how the day works when your child has a TA — you know lunchtime/recess/when the TA takes a break etc… I feel good about it all and we will meet again at the first of the year before school starts to talk with his teacher and hopefully TA and set everything else up.

Anyway it all went well and I am breathe a little easier over the summer :0) 2 days left of school! YAYAY!!!!

Saturday morning we went to a event called “Touch a Truck” at UCO. It was pretty cool. There were trucks of all types and styles from ice cream trucks to cement mixers, to UPS trucks, to Borden Dairy trucks.  They let the kids climb all in them and honk all the horns. It was pretty neat. Alex and Aiden loved it. Chase enjoyed sitting in a few trucks once he had earplugs and a snack to calm him down. The horns were a little much for him and me. EEK!! Here’s some pics :

We woke up Sunday to a rainy morning. The weather man said the sky would clear up so we all got ready and headed out to the zoo for a few hours. It was the perfect morning for it. There were more worker than actual patrons, it was like having the zoo to ourselves. Enjoy the photos :

Papa and Gigi got Alex his first bike for his 5th birthday. Aunt Amy got him a scootboard. A scootboard is a skateboard with a scooter handle that can be attached for learned, and detached later. He is very excited about both… Here are pics :

This post is all about Daiya! Pronounced “DAY- YA”. It means “loving kindness and compassion”. It’s a gluten free/dairy free/soy free cheese alternative that actually melts and STRETCHES even after it cools!! It makes these claims but I have tried and seen that it does work. It’s awesome!!!

So it melts and stretches like cheese, but does it taste like cheese? Well no not exactly — BUT if you’ve been dairy free and tasted the other alternatives — this is heaven in a cheese package. It’s not identical to cheese. If I made two gluten free pizzas only difference between the two being real cheese and daiya you would know the difference. However, if you can’t eat dairy it’s a pretty yummy substitute that has similar taste notes as cheese, enough that I would use it, and that my kids LOOOOVE it.

So basically it’s not cheese but it’s the next best thing if your dairy free. It will make going dairy free a little less painful. Now if they could only come up with a cream cheese that doesn’t look, smell, and have the texture of wall putty we’ d all be set… :0)

Below are pictures of pizza’s I made with the Daiya cheese. My boys have also had it on baked potatoes and exclaimed they were the best potatoes ever made… Convinced yet? Where do you buy it? Online at Cosmos Vegan Shoppe or at “The Health Food Center” at I-240 & Penn.

So Chase saw the movie “How to Train Your Dragon” and wanted that to be the theme for his birthday party. I assumed he would want a Night Fury (Toothless) cake and even though I could find no pictures of cakes made like it online I figured the body shape was pretty simple, the head was simple, I was okay. Then I made the mistake of asking Chase to confirm which dragon he wanted his cake to look like… well mistake meaning more work for me… he informed me he wanted a “BLUE TWO HEADED TWO TAILED ZIPPLEBACK DRAGON”. So since I asked I figured I had to deliver…

The final cake size was just under 5 feet long and 4 feet at the widest point.

Here’s some photos of what I did.  The only thing I didn’t get photos of was me making the wings. The wings were made about a week in advance with dyed gum paste and were draped over a flexible cutting board laid on top of a smaller tupperware container to get the board to curve and the wing to dry in that shape.

Alex turned 5 this past weekend. My youngest child is 5. Man do I feel old. LOL!!

Alex had a big year — this past year is when he started school. He has done amazing. He had an amazing teacher, and his first experience was great! We just heard that he got into AM Kindergarten for next year. He isn’t quite sure he wants to go to kindergarten. He really wants to stay with Mrs. Lawrence forever. :0) Silly boy.

Alex invited all his friends to his party. He really wanted a Marvel Superhero Party. We rented a pavillion out at the park so he could invite all his friends that our family hangs out with, friends from church, and friends from school.

His party was very relaxed and alot of fun. I have to say I enjoyed the relaxed park setting probably more than anyone. I told Neil afterwards that I almost felt like the party didn’t happen. Without making a crazy cake and all the manic cleaning before and after, and ending the party not feeling stressed one bit… it was kind of surreal. Surreal but nice.

Alex had a GREAT time!!! He played hard and partied hard!! Thanks to everyone that came out and celebrated with us!!!

HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALEX!!!

I really would like to poll parents and see who really wants their kids to be served food outside of lunch in the school… Edmond schools or the ones we’ve been to have been sooooo soo centered around food. It’s crazy. There isn’t a “special day” that doesn’t involve it.

Beyond the fact that it takes time away from academics to have snack time, some of the snacks being brought in are homemade items. No one really knows the shape or cleanliness of ones home… Has modern television taught us nothing… LOL!! Seriously how many people can we see on TLC that look put together but live in a hovel…?? What guarantee do I have that the cookies brought for Sue Ellen’s birthday were cooked in a clean SANITARY kitchen where animals aren’t on counters and Sue Ellen’s mom cleans the cabinets after dicing up raw chicken before she makes the cupcakes…

That aside… even the store bought stuff that’s brought in is crap… I am not saying I don’t bring things for my kids birthdays. I do. I feel like they miss out if everyone else does and they don’t so I give into the pressures of sending them a birthday treat too. I WISH I DIDN’T FEEL COMPELLED TO. I just feel like my kids are singled out enough because of their food limitations I get tired of saying no… I guess I should be stronger and set an example. Practice what I preach.

Anyway aside from the interruption in academics, Sue Ellen’s Mom being a hoarder that serves salmonella laced cupcakes, the other stuff being crap… What about FOOD ALLERGIES??? What about the fact that we are teaching our children that are struggling with obesity even at a young age that every celebration should center around food…

I don’t know maybe there are stats saying if kids have a snack they focus better or whatever… but if that’s the rational let the school serve up fruit or carrot sticks from a sanitary monitored kitchen… and heck skip the side of ranch.

I could probably count up how many times I had to send snacks this year for my kids because they don’t eat wheat and milk… and let me tell you the number of times they have snacks would astonish you. ITS CRAZY. My number would probably be lower than the real one too… Heck Aiden just came in the door and told me they were serving up snow cones and thing today at school because he read his 5 books and became a part of the “authors club”… — EVERY KID IS A PART OF THE CLUB….

Anyway that’s my rant…

Chase has been having a rough couple of weeks… really it’s been a few months, but it came to a head the last couple weeks. However, in the last few days all of a sudden everything is clicking again and better than ever. LOOOVE IT WHEN THAT HAPPENS. Seriously unless you have experienced the lows of autism you just don’t understand the highs. It’s like a Disney movie. I feel like Snow White singing and all the world is sunshiney and the animals and nature are all harmonious and in balance. LOL!!! Sounds dumb but that’s the feeling. The biggest improvement is that he isn’t as anxious and high strung at the moment, he’s more relaxed and going with the flow. He is HAPPY. He is SOOOO happy, and he is VERBAL!!!!! Boy oh boy is he verbal.

Today I ran into Chase’s old home study teacher at Wal-Mart. It has been exactly one year since he’s seen her. You really really really forget how far you have come in a year until your thrown back like that. He is doing things he wasn’t even remotely capable of last year. Last year it was like torture to get him to sit at a table and do a activity for 15 minutes at a time, and that was what we had worked up to…. After he had to have 5 minutes to decompress before he would do anymore and after 30-45 minutes it didn’t matter he shut down that was his limit. Today he ran up to his occupational therapist who does only games he used to HATE… He greated her and was able to do 60 minutes STRAIGHT — No breaks for rewards. He is now doing therapy with another little boy and is doing great with that as well. Last year he didn’t want to tolerate other kids — let alone have fun while doing therapy and games with another child. That just touches on the progress, but it’s dramatic. No to mention he’s reading and more… His old teacher was beaming and impressed as I told her!!! It felt SO GOOD!!!!

I cannot believe that Chase is 6 years old! It just doesn’t seem like 6 years have gone by. Everyone tells you time flies and we all know it does but really it does.

This was a GREAT year for Chase, and we celebrated it with a GREAT party. Last year was the first year Chase really even cared about his birthday and that was a huge thing for our family, but this year — THIS YEAR HE LOVED AND PLANNED HIS BIRTHDAY!!!

We recently attempted taking Chase and Alex to the movies and they love it so we’ve been cashing in our bonus points for gift cards to AMC. Recently we went and saw “How to Train Your Dragon”. Chase LOVED the movie. We all did. When he saw they had party stuff for the movie he changed his mind about having a Ben 10 party, and decided he needed to have a dragon party.  Chase was very specific about what he wanted at his party. Some of the things that made the list….

Friends, Presents, Big Presents, Cake, Big Balloons, etc….

We have the friends, got the presents, I asked my friend Bobbi about balloons (Bobbi is AWESOME at everything balloon), and then I assumed Chase would want the cake to look like the main dragon. I searched and scoured the internet for ideas for a cake and found none that were specific to the movie. Then I made the mistake of asking Chase what dragon he wanted the cake to look like… He didn’t tell me the simple dragon that I was planning but he wanted “A blue two headed two tailed Zippleback dragon”… OF COURSE HE WOULD… I asked so I figured I must deliver. I plotted and planned, and sketched. I came up with a sketch and Neil helped me enlarge it to life size. We figured the bigger it was the easier it would be to get the details done. So I made him his cake and it was a beast, and he said it was PERFECT!!!! (I will add a post about how I made it later)

So the cake was made, decorations purchase, Bobbi came through on the balloons, and all our friends came and helped us celebrate Chase’s big day!!! Chase did FABULOUSLY!! We had a hoard of people in our house and he was so excited and handled it all well. While singing happy birthday to him the paper under the dragons caught fire and he even did well with that added commotion. As for presents he got EVERYTHING he wanted and even more for his birthday!!! The highlights were his dragon backpack, dragon shoes, dragon clothes, dragon toys, ben 10 omnitrix, and more…

THANK YOU EVERYONE WHO HELPED US CELEBRATE OUR PRECIOUS 6 YEAR OLD BOY!!!!

You really really don’t know how big a blessing and how big a deal having a “happy birthday” is until your child doesn’t enjoy them or care about them. When he finally “gets” how fun a birthday is, and not only gets it but gets the concept of asking for what he wants at his party and planning it… IT’S A HUGE MILESTONE one that has nothing to do with age.

I love you Chasey and pray you have a FABULOUS YEAR being 6!!!!!