houses, mud puddles and much more!

Since I last blogged I can now report that we have all 10 of the houses up that we are building! It is such a great feeling when you drive into the cul de sac and see all 10 houses standing! Wow, I found myself last Sat. getting quite emotional as I drove in, thinking of the sacrifice and hard labor that everyone out there has given to build their own house or help someone else to build their home :)
We have the siding up on our house and are ready to paint, that has been quite a fiasco trying to pick out paint, really can it be that hard???? I think I told some of you that I had picked out this color and when I went out tot he house to test it on the siding Sabin took one look at it and said it was pink, I tried to convince myself it wasn’t! I said oh it will be fine once it is on there, yeah right a week later I looked at it, yes it was definitely pink!!! Sabin said he couldn’t live in a pink house, even though I am the only girl in our family right now I don’t think I can either!! So anyway I went back to the paint store and talked with a very knowledgeable lady who helped me pick another color and so we tried it out too and love it :)
The boys are adjusting to a new routine after Summer, E is doing very well in kindergarten and we have seen him progress with his speech, lots of new words and trying to converse with us! It makes a huge difference for him to be able to comunicate a little better! He is a very bright little boy, loves to sing. Last week I hear him humming a familar tune, then I heard hmmm hmmm hmmm be in dat mumber...............he was singing when the saints go marching in!!! It was so funny! A few weeks ago, I was feeling very sad, nothing in particular had happened. But I had been thinking on and off about Ethan and his diagnosis, I happened to look at my calendar and then I realised it had a been a year since we had taken him to OHSU and had him evaluated! I am thankful to be a year on from the diagnosis as I know that much progress has been made and it has been a blessing for our family to know. But there are still times when I feel a little sad and it hits me. I talked to Sabin about it and he said he feels the same way some days too! I guess in a way it is a good thing, it helps me work through some of the emotions I feel and also makes me trust God even more with E! I have read many articles recently on special needs and it suddenly struck me how much of a blessing E is to our family, yes it is hard but it is really making us better people and also he brings something to our lives that we would never have experienced otherwise :) Everything he does he approaches it with excitement and puts his all into it!

M is doing well, I am enjoying my time with him while E is at school. Although that has been an adjustment too, he has had a hard time with him being gone all day! In the am if he is awake he has to stand at the door and wave at the bus until it is gone! I ask him where E is during the day and he tells me " he is on a bus " :)
Yesterday M & I had a lot of fun, we went to the park it has been cold and dreary here but I figured it was time to get out for a while. So I had M well dressed, hat and coat and I took a picnic lunch and a towel to the park to wipe down the equipment but it never dawned on me that the actual ground would be wet!!! yikes!! So there was huge puddles at the bottom of every slide, so my little boy decided it would be fun to splash a little bit with the puddle, then he started to run through out, which I was thinking ok, this is fine but then all of a sudden he is on the ground rolling in it!!! I am thinking ok , there is nobody here!! Then I hear voices, ugggghhh I am sure they are thinking crazy for lettng her son do this!Then I heard hi Jayne, it was my freind :) With her 3 kids, two of which are boys and of course they joined in the fun too!!! They were so wet, her boys even took their shoes and socks off!!!
Anyway after much fun, we decided once little teeth started chatter it was time to go!! WhenI got home I soaked M's clothes and then washed them, my washing machine was full of bark muclh, so i got my vaccum cleaner out and cleaned out my washing machine........lol!!

Well I need to finish up my ramblings, while typing here M has brought 5 trucks placed them on my knee and is now sitting behind me on the chair pinching my arm, do you think he may want my attention???

Will try and blog again soon :)

New beginnings!

This past week, was like a new chapter for our family. E started kindergarten and we also started work on our home :)
E had a great first week, I am always so thankful with him when things go well. Especially new transitions as I know it can be so hard for him! This am he was content again, I put him on the bus and there was a little boy crying :( He looked about E's age and his face was so sad, another boy was sitting with his hands over his ears, I guess trying to muffle the noise. It brought a tear to my eye, it is easy for me to have compassion for these special little ones!! I am not sure if I would have understood a few years ago but in some ways I am very thankful that God has allowed our family to experience it!

I am also very thankful for Special education and for people who have a desire to work with the kids and to try and understand their world :)

Yesterday after 5 months of waiting and helping others to build their homes we got to work on our own!! It was so strange to be standing inside the foundaions of our soon to be built house!! Very exciting, I can't wait to be in there and enjoying it with my family.
Well someone needs me so I need to go, isn't it nice to be needed :)

Life with the G family is never dull!!!

Let's see what has happened this past week? Well the good news is we have foundations on our lot :) We got them on Friday of this last week, very exciting!! We will finish up on the exterior type stuff with the other 7 and then start on the final 3 and then move back onto the others to do the inside work!!
I had fun yesterday I got to cut out the door ways, with this big saw saw I think that is what you call it?? I also got up on the trusses again to help with that, that wasn't such a wonderful time for me, i felt very nervous but I am glad I was able to help!!

I got E registered for Kindergarten on Wed. He starts Sept. 2nd and I am very anxious about it, but I know he will love it and he is need of the routine again!

Thurs. didn't get off to a good start at all, I woke up with a migrane headache, I get so sick to my stomach with these, not fun when your home with the kids alone :( I was so thankful though as M slept in that am until 9.30am he doesn't do this normally, I think it was God's grace. The a few hours later M & I got locked out of the house by E, we coaxed him into letting us back in as we were out there in our P.J.s. The boys had got out of the house while I was on the phone with my mum she had called earlier in the morning when I was sick, so she was checking up on me, when I had my back turned the boys got out the front door and were running around outside in their PJ'S so I went outside to bring them in again and while getting M, E locked the door.......ahhhhhhhhhh!!! Once we got inside I figured it was time for some quiet creative play so we got out the playdough, now what else could go wrong? Well somehow the playdough got wet, not sure how as I was in the kitchen the whole time but anyway E had playdough all stuck to his legs, which then got stuck to my carpet!!! GROAN!!! I looked at the clock and it was only noon!!!
Thankfully things got better in the afternoon :)

Anyway that was enough excitement for one morning, actually for one week!!! hehehe

house building update!

ok two blogs in the one day, I know.......shocking! It is hard to believe we are now into our 4th month of building these houses! We have 7 out of the 10 on the go! It is just amazing to see these houses go up and to know you were part of it all, I love the fact that once they are all done and I am walking or driving past that I will be able to look at them and remember exactly what I did on that house :)
The foundations for our home have not been started yet, they told us another week and a half, oh I hope so!! It is kind of hard to see all the other houses go up and ours not be started but no-one moves in until all the houses are done!!

We have been really enjoying building, but it is a lot of work! The boys have done amazingly well through all of this, I think they do miss us as they sometimes seem kind of mad at us when we get home, but we are doing it for them, not that they understand that right now but hopefully in a few years they will :) I am learning so many new things, it is so funny for me to now see a house and take note of it's color, how it's made etc. things I never would have thought about before!

I can't believe we are now into August, I love Summer and don't want it to be over just yet! But I do look forward to the day when we can move into our new home and also daydream about next summer, having our own house, yard and hopefully lots of people coming to visit us!

brothers having fun

I can't seem to figure out how to post any pictures on here!! I am not sure if it is with having dial up that is just takes forever!! I will have to give it another try, so for now you will have to make do with just my ramblings :)
Today is the third day that M has been successfully potty training! I can't believe it, it seems like he was just born! He is doing such a good job, it so funny to see him in big boy underwear! Tonight we went to Sabin's moms house for dinner, afterwards we were sitting in the living room watching TV, the boys wanted a cookie so I had them up at the table, from the living room we could hear giggles, M was sitting cracking up at E:) It was so cute to see him enjoying his big brother, E was laughing too, not sure what was so funny? Just a blessing to see them have fun and to be interacting, something I was never really sure at one time would happen!

I am thankful for my boys, they remind me to enjoy the simple things in life and to just stop and enjoy the moment, something we often forget to do as we get older and busier!

good times!

This past week Sabin was on vacation and we had good freinds from Wa. come down to visit us for a couple of days and to help work on the house a little. It was a couple that we met in college and have known for ten years but we hadn't seen them for about 4 years. It was one of those really fun weeks of catching up, enjoying each others company and lots of laughter. One night after all our kids were fast asleep in bed we brought out the game Ballderdash, it was hilarious as we were all very tierd which made for us being pretty silly and we all sat around giggling like we were back in high school without a worry or a care in the world!! The next morning one of their girls who is about 6 yrs old said " I heard you guys playing that game" I said I know we were being pretty silly, she said yes :) Good times with freinds are so special and also a great reminder to me of how important freindship is to all of us!! I think no matter our age we all long to connect with someone! We want to have those special people in our lives who encourage us, love us, support us and even at times challenege us! Our family has been very blessed to have several of those kind of freinds in our lives.

Walking in Someone Else's Shoes

Recently in our area they had an event called "walking a mile in her shoes" it was to bring awareness in regards to domestic violence, they had men walk for a mile in ladies high heel shoes! I think this would be a challenge for even some women, me in particular who prefers flat heeled shoes! I guess the idea of it was to bring an awareness and understanding to other people as to what it is like to be someone else!
Something happened to me the other day that brought this particular phrase to mind. It was one of those events that before I had children or understood what it was like to have a child with Autism I would probably have rolled my eyes, mumbled parenting advice under my breath and made a judegement about the situation.

We had made a visit to the Dr. with E and while there it just did not go very well at all! It ended in me having to carry a kicking, screaming and very frustrated little boy out of the dr. office, during all this I vcould feel all eyes on us, even murmurs coming from those in the waiting room!

Even though we finally made it out the door, it went from bad to worse, with him not wanting to get in the car or his seat! It was really quite awful!
I have had other things similar to this happen before, but it had been a while!!!

This situation reminded me we are all walking in different shoes. Somedays I don't particularly like the shoes that I have to walk in , sometimes they hurt, they make me cry, they make me tierd, make me sad and sometimes even a little angry! Yet all of us have some kind of shoes we are walking in that we don't like either, whether it be illness, fianancial worries, marital concerns, maybe even sleep deprivation from a newborn baby. But for me going through this and walking in these shoes I really hope makes me stop and not be so quick to judge a persons actions or a particular situation! It gives me insight into a whole new world that definitely did not understand before!

I don't like Autism, I don't like that we have a son with Autism and I don't like that my son has to deal with it too! But for some reason this is what God has chosen for our family and I want to be able to walk in these shoes with Grace, Love, Patience and mercy and with out judgement of others too.