December reflections

Some random pictures from December.

I finally got that fish up over the fireplace. It was my Christmas present from last year. It totally changes the feel of the room and I love it.

Snow.

The three musketeers forever.

What goofballs.

Toby thinks he got the best Christmas present.

Of course Andrew thinks he got the best one too.

Aaron loves the movie the Christmas Story. "Don't shoot your eye out kid"

Aaron with Ms. Alice his piano teacher. He's now in his 3rd year.

Forever my cuddle bug. I will never get enough pictures of the boys sleeping.

"She's With Me"

I've never been a huge fan of Collin Raye, but this youtube is making the rounds on the listservs. The difference is that I know that I will be seeing Andrew in heaven when the time comes. I won't have to wait for his invitation.

You'll need to mute the playlist to watch the video.

"She's With Me" by Collin Raye

Miller reunion and grandma's birthday

This past weekend was our marathon Miller Reunion and celebration for Grandma's 90th birthday later this summer. Most everybody made it for at least part of the weekend. We met down at Crooked Creek Christian Camp on Friday evening and finally broke up at 1pm on Sunday. From there we went to grandma's open house at Fairview Mennonite church in Kalona.

So, what does one do at a reunion celebrating the "Tribe of Mahlon"?

We all look at pictures: Danny, grandma and Ben
And then we all get to know each other again: Yvonne with Ian and Rachelle with one of Angie's twins.

And of course we play games, and more games, and more games...

Do not play Monopoly with these guys! They are wicked.

"Dutch Blitz" Definately a family past time.

We take pictures...

There are 30 first cousins. We were only missing 6 (Monty, Roger, Tim, Adam, Heidi and Rob).
Back row: Art, Ryan, Scott, Josh, Kendal, Jed, Micah, Steve

Middle row: Liz, Jen, Shannon, Rachelle, Mike, Jared, Dan, Katelyn

Bottom row: Laura (me), Sheila, Angie, Kim, Taylor, Becky, Bethany, Sarah

My Grandma is on the very bottom.

The aunts and uncles: Paul, Mark, Elmer, Barb, Ben, Mary (mom), Ez, Nora (Bets), Verton and Danny with grandma on the bottom. Uncle Joe passed away last August.

Cuddles with grandma.

Aaron climbing the rock wall.

Playing pool with Keegan.
From Crooked Creek we went to the church for grandma's open house. I won't bore you with all the details other than there were a lot of people. At one point the line went out into the parking lot. So while grandma and the aunts and uncles stood in the receiving line, some of us cousins sat and "descreetly" took pictures of some of the Amish kids coming through. Please note the bare feet. I tried to get a close up of the feet, especially the boys, but couldn't. They were extremely dirty little feet.

We are referred to as the "Tribe of Mahlon" because of my grandpa who passed away in 1990. One of the things we talked about at the reunion is how greatful we are that grandma and grandpa provided such a good Christian home to their kids.

And we'll do it all again in June, 2011.

Family visit

We are just coming off of a very busy weekend and I have more pictures than I can fit into one post. I'll start with Ben and then move on to the Miller reunion.

My brother Scott, Beth and baby Ben (not sure why I call him that) got here on Thursday evening. They hung out here for a little bit before leaving to spend the night at Ryan and Natasha's. Then we all met up again down at Crooked Creek Christian Camp for the Miller Reunion and Grandma's 90th birthday.

I am of course, totally hooked on my nephew. I wish I would have thought to take a picture of one of Scott's baby pictures because they look exactly alike. In fact, Aaron grabbed a picture of Scott when he was a baby and said it was a really cute picture of Ben.

Grandpa Chuck and Ben.

Andrew and Ben checking each other out.

My mom with Ben.

promotions

Friday, I had the opportunity to go to Aaron's 4th grade promotion. This is actually his 3rd promotion since entering school. He of course was promoted from preschool to kindergarten. And then from kindergarten to 1st grade. And now my 10 year old is being promoted from 4th grade. He's leaving the budding years of elementary school behind him and moving on to Intermediate School, where he will be on the fast track to those pre-teen, adolescent years that scare me so much. *sigh*

So, my son who will graduate in the class of 2017, is officially a 5th grader (actually, it's not official until tomorrow, which is the last day of school).

And what's with the cheesy school pictures anyway? I've really grown to not like these things because my dear, dear child cannot pose a picture to save his life. Note the kindergarten next to the 4th grade. I think I'll save this for graduation day, that and his future wife. I can't think of a better way to torture the poor child.

I much prefer the more mature looking picture below. I'd much rather have no smile than the cheesy thing above.

Now on to the fun of Scouts. Because no post about Aaron would be complete without Scouts. He is a Cub Scout through and through and is reaching for his Arrow of Light.

We did do a family campout last weekend up at the Boy Scout Camp Wakonda. It was a pretty fun trip, other then the freezing cold temps that Saturday night. We did our 3 mile hike, which wouldn't have been so bad. Except it wasn't until you got to the bottom of the hill that you realized you had to go back up it. Oh, and then down the next and up again.

I didn't do very well taking pictures this time around. I was too distracted doing other things. We did do foil packets for supper. Each of the boys made there own meals. We used alluminum foil and layered cabbage on the bottom, followed by hamburger and your choice of vegies (potatoes, onion, grn pepper, carrots, mushrooms, corn, green beans, mushroom soup, lawrey's seasoning) and topped with a good dallop of butter. DELISH!!

Cooking our foil packets...



Aaron "finally" discovered smores on this camping trip. As many times as we've tried to convince him that roasted marshmallows are really good, he wouldn't have anything to do with them. Well, we had a major break through in the picky eating department. My son actually likes smores.lol

Fancy Toes

I met with friends from our spring Bible study so we could get pedicures. Now, I have never before had a pedicure, but I think I might do it again. I'm not one for painted toenails, but they do kind of grow on you.

baby deer

We had some excitement at our house yesterday as we found a baby deer (fawn) sleeping in the long grass next to our front porch. It was very obviously a very newborn.



Aaron's friend Kollin was spending the night, so of course both boys were excited to see this fawn. He was really cute all curled up and of course my mom and I were out with our camaras snapping pictures. We also noticed mama deer hanging out at the bottom of the clearing, keeping watch. Right around noon my mom got her camara and went out to take another picture and see if the deer was still there. She then comes running in saying there are two. Sure enough, there was a second deer curled up in the corner.

Long story short, we spent the day keeping the dog away from the deer and sneaking out about every hour to see what they were doing. Later that evening mama deer snuck up to the house to claim her babies. They were last seen scampering into the timber.

Aaron's projects

I was going to use this post to share only of some stuff that Aaron's been doing lately. But I have a few housekeeping issues.

First, Andrew did very well on his swallow study today. He handled the whole thing really well which is saying alot. Even a year ago he would have been screaming bloody murder. He has been passed for eating and drinking orally. The issues he has are all oral motor, his tongue just isn't cooperative.

We also had an Orthopedics appointment last week and his hips look great. Dr. Dietz said the left hip is solid and he is not worried about it ever becoming dislocated again. The right hip is pretty close, he's hoping the next time we go for x-rays it will be at 100%. This is awesome because I really have no desire to do the hip surgery thing again (ever). His hamstrings do continue to get tight. But Dr. D is not anxious to do any kind of surgery on them yet. Andrew is only 8 1/2 and doing the surgery too soon would mean doing it again later. We want to put it off until Andrew hits puberty.

We also saw Dr. Bishop for GI (he ordered the swallow study). He discussed with me the possibility of doing a fundo-nissen because Andrew still has some issues with reflux (GERD). I basically said "no". Andrew is not having any respitory issues that would make us think he is aspirating, so at this point I think it would be an unnecessary and yucky surgery. Dr. B agreed so we're done with that conversation now. He did suggest we go back to overnight feeds though because Andrew's issues seem to be more volume issues. His tummy just can't hold it all in.

We see Neuro in June, and then I can breathe. Oh wait- eye is in there somewhere too. Guess I better check on that.

Now on to Aaron....

He's just been doing alot of projects lately that I wanted to share. He and I went with his scout pack down to the Coralville Reservior on Saturday for a conservation project. We joined with more Scouts, the DNR, Corp of Engineers, and Americorps clearing away invasive species of trees and shrubs from Woodpecker Trail. It was a great time. The weather held up until about 3:30 when the rain started and it just got plain cold. So we were cold, wet and cold. The boys had a lot of fun though.

This is the Webelos Den from Pack 37.

Kollin and Aaron taking a break.
Aaron and Kenny hard at work.

The Corp of Engineers had gone through and cut down a ton of trees which were laying on the side of the hills/slopes and in the gullies. Our job was to pull them all up to the top so they could be cut for firewood or put through the wood chipper. Once through the wood chipper the DNR uses them on the trails.

The Boys Scouts took time out to show the Cubs how to set up a tent. They then had a race to see who could set up a tent the fastest. The Boy Scouts were great. They all played Monkey in the Middle and other games. I'm thinking the Cubs can't wait for crossover in February.

The next project was changing a headlight in my minivan. I had a headlight out so it seemed like a prime opportunity for Aaron to work on one of his required achievements for Scouts.

Soccer! Need I say more. Spring soccer has been going on for about 4 weeks and still has two weeks to go. We're bummed because the season is so short. For whatever reason the soccer league has decided to have two games each Saturday so there is a shorter season instead of a longer one.

Aaron is doing awesome at soccer. He improves every year, but this year he seems to have found his equilibrium. Always before he seemed somewhat unbalanced and clumsy. He's staying after the ball and staying in the game and a "player" on the team.