Speech Therapy, Lilac Festival, and Conference

Hope you have all had a nice week. Ours was a bit soggy, but there was a day or so that dried up enough for us to get out and about, and this weekend we’ve had perfect weather. So, on Tuesday morning we went to the school district offices and had a short meeting about Isaac’s speech evaluation, and they confirmed that he would start speech therapy – mostly just for his pronunciation of certain sounds and general understandability. He’s going to do it twice a week through the end of this school year, then start up again in the fall. Then when we got home I babysat for my new friend, Jolene, while she had a job interview. And then Michael had his journal club, so he got home later on that evening.



Then on Wednesday Kolby enjoyed a field trip to the planetarium at school that day, where they learned all about the seasons and planets – he had a lot of fun on that. And that morning Jolene called and the boys and I met her and her son Devon, and we all went to the downtown Lilac Festival together. We caught the only nice break in the rainy weather during the week, and it was actually warm and sunny out while we were there. We walked around and saw the different booths, the boys enjoyed a few of the little carnival rides, and we watched a magic show while we ate lunch. We then walked around the park a bit and the kids had fun throwing the beach balls that one of the booths was giving away for free. It was a fun morning, and Lijah even admitted at the end that he had fun (he was rather upset with me when he found out that he was going to be late for school, but he calmed down after a while and ended up having fun). Then I dropped him off at school and put the younger boys down for naps not too long before the older ones got home.


On Thursday morning we stopped at the house of one of the other members of the Moms group that I joined – they do some service projects each year and this year they are raising money for the children’s hospital, so they were doing a garage sale. So we stopped by that morning to donate some items to be sold at the garage sale, then we went to the grocery store before returning to get Lijah on his bus and put away all the groceries, then put the boys down for naps. At 2:15 Isaac had his first speech therapy session, and luckily these are covered by the school district (at least we can see where our high NY taxes are being used), they come to our house for the sessions, and we ended up with Joanne, the same therapist who worked with Lijah before he went into kindergarten. Isaac’s session went well. Since then, he’s been working hard on remembering to keep his hands out of his mouth, and on pronouncing words that start with f, ch, and sh. He liked playing games with her, and he was excited about the idea of getting stars on a chart to earn a little prize after a few weeks. Then, after the older boys got home from school they had their piano lessons. And then later that night after Michael and the boys had dinner I went and met up with a group of 6 women from church for our monthly Ladies’ Night Out. We went to a restaurant called Olives in Pittsford, then afterwards we got desserts at Wegmans and sat outside at some tables and talked for quite a while. And they happened to help come up with several ideas for things we can do in the upcoming months, which was really helpful so I don’t have to think of everything myself. It was a fun night. I’m glad I decided to do the Ladies’ Night Out – it’s nice to get to know everyone, and have a chance to just talk with any little people around every once in a while.


On Friday morning I went and helped out at that garage sale for a few hours, then we hit a couple of other garage sales in that same neighborhood when we left. I was excited, because I spent just a few dollars and got three different things that will be nice birthday gifts for three of the boys: a cute ‘Little People’ farm (they have one at the baby play time at the library, and all our boys like playing with it when we’re there), a big Fisher Price castle for $1 (my brothers actually had the same one when they were little, and it’s really fun), and a Fisher Price pirate ship. So that’s fun. Then we headed to WalMart in Victor because someone told us there was a truckload of clothes for sale for prices like $1 or even 50 cents. There were lots of clothes there on sale, but it was pretty picked over and I didn’t see anything for $1, but I did get 3 school shirts for Kolby for next year for $3, and a few grocery items, so I guess we didn’t make the trip down there for nothing. Then we were supposed to have soccer practice that evening, but it got cancelled again. It’s not the first time that it’s ended up being a nice sunny warm day, but there was lots of rain earlier in the week so the fields were so wet that they still cancelled everything for the weekend. Their game on Saturday was cancelled too. This is the fourth week of the soccer season, and other than one practice that they rescheduled and held in the gym at the rec center, every game and practice has been cancelled for rain or wet fields. (We’re never signing up for spring sports out here again). They are supposed to have a game tomorrow evening, and it’s not rained much this weekend, so we’ll see if that happens.


So, on Saturday morning Michael mowed the lawn while I went to the Fairport farmer’s market and got one more tomato plant for our garden (we’re still waiting to find one last plant – we really want a yellow pear tomato plant again), and then I met my friend Danielle at a craft store there and we got the stuff for our upcoming Mother Daughter activity for the girls at church this week – we’re doing a luau theme, and they are going to decorate flip flops, so we got the materials for that. Afterwards, I stopped into a little boutique kind of thrift store next door and picked up two pairs of shorts (I haven’t had any shorts since we moved here, and I don’t want to have to go through another humid summer in jeans). So I’ve been enjoying the nice shorts weather we’ve been having this weekend. :) Anyways, after getting home we fed the boys lunch and got ready, and I went and picked up Holly to come babysit. We headed out to Palmyra and went to the temple for the endowment session of one of our friends from church. Then we went to an LDS book store out there that we’d never been to before, and we ended up getting a children’s book called “What are the promises I make at baptism?,” and we got a couple of talks on CD by our favorite speaker, John Bytheway. We got one about marriage and a couple about missions especially for the boys to listen to, and started listening to some of them on our car rides this weekend. Then we stopped for a quick dinner at a little place there called the Chill n Grill before heading back to the stake center for our annual adult meeting for stake conference, which had some really good talks. So that ended up being a nice evening.


Then this morning we went to the general session of stake conference, and this year it happened to be a broadcast to the entire region by some of the church leaders. We got there early so we could make sure to get some good seats (figuring that the boys would be able to pay attention better if they could see the screen easily). When we got there it turned out we didn’t need to be quite so early, because there were only about a dozen or so families there so far, and the boys chose to sit on the front row. We weren’t sure about how they would do (if I have to carry crying kids out of church, I’d rather not be sitting on the front row), but we decided to let them. It was a longer meeting – usually on Sunday our church meetings consist of about 1 hour in the chapel, followed by two hours in two different Sunday school classes. But stake conference is a 2 hour meeting in the chapel (it’s shorter over all, but sitting in the chapel for 2 hours straight with no children’s Sunday school classes to look forward to can be pretty difficult for little guys). We were pleasantly surprised at how well the boys did. We got there early, so we were actually there for about 2 ½ hours, and only one of the boys (Courtland) had to be taken out into the hallway for about the last ½ hour because he was so tired – he almost fell asleep on my shoulder while I was holding him. They were all so good, and it was nice to be able to hear most of the talks. Elder Nelson especially gave a very good talk on things to teach your children – wish I could have a copy of that one to read again, but I don’t think they print copies of the stake conference broadcasts. Oh well.


After church, lunch, and naps, Michael played Uno with the boys while I did some reading, then we made dinner. We had orzo salad – one of our favorites – and this time we had some restaurant-style bread that someone had given us, and we sliced it up ad let the boys all try dipping it in balsamic vinegar and olive oil, and were surprised at how much they liked that. Then we went on a walk around the neighborhood, before coming home and doing our family night. We did it tonight, since we’re crossing our fingers that they will finally get to play soccer tomorrow evening. We read that book about baptism to the boys and talked about it with them for our lesson, and it was pretty cute to see Kolby and Lijah get so excited that there were scripture references on each page of the book, so they can look up and see what the scriptures say about it later on. What cute kids! I’m looking forward to when Kolby will get baptized later on this year. We’ve set the date already – Saturday, November 5th at 3:00pm – and all our family and friends are invited.


Well, we’re looking at a pretty eventful upcoming week: a soccer game, a few different playgroup activities, I’m working at the family history center, we need to get 3 gifts for upcoming birthday parties, 2 speech therapy sessions, the annual Mother Daughter activity for the girl’s class I teach at church, my friends’ son is coming over one morning before school so she can take one of her college tests, piano lessons, a birthday party for Kolby’s school friend, a soccer practice, and on Sunday Michael is flying to San Diego for a week to interview with two different dermatology practices (yes, we still have a year to go with his residency here, they just get started on the interview process early). So, it’ll be really interesting to learn all about those practices and find out if Michael can see himself joining either of them.