Right in the mommy daddy button.

What a ham this kid is. He loves playing catch especially cheering himself on in front of a Christmes eve audience. Poor uncle Robert gets drilled.

Silly Face Time With Payton.

What did we do?

I know it sounds bad but with our every waking hour consumed by children and planning for the new one we cant help but start to wonder...what the heck did we do before we had kids? Well, based soley on old pictures, because it seems like ancient history we would do all the normal things couples did, movies, dates, late night ice cream trips, trips out of town for no reason even though you didnt have the money. I didn't think we traveled all that much but when I look back at the list I guess we did:

San diego, anaheim, and san fran California, Utah, sedona, Las Vegas, jacksonville, st augustine, daytona, orlando, miami, alabama, tennessee, georgia, cozumel, and surrounding islands, mexico

Try it, take a look at the old photo albums (or digital picture files for sll you hip kids out there who dont know what albums are), i bet you will find some pictures you forgot about. great memories. Here are some of ours.

Jacksonville, Fl. 2003

2002 utah rainbow bridge

2005 Sedona biplane tour when i blew chunks on sedona

kristy's 21st birthday cruise. this might be the omly time i didn't have a drink in my hand. :) look at us all tan and sexy. dadgum my wife is hot.

2003 Alabama trip we drove with Faye and Furman and my grandma to see the braves.

Results from Friday...

Well, the day went better than we could hope for. We went to the school district meeting thinking that Payton was going to go through about 2 hours of evaluations and testing to determine if he qualifed for special education preschool. We brought along the final report from Payton's visit with the developmental specialist we saw in early December (which just happened to arrive in our mailbox on Thursday). With her report, we were able to skip the initial evaluations. He still had vision and hearing tests, in which he passed, but we were only there for about an hour. We were told that he will more than likely qualify for special education preschool, but they need to do more in depth evaluations in speech, language, cognitive, social/emotional, and adaptive behavior to be able to "assess his current needs" and place him in the best classroom for him. So we are waiting to receive a call to schedule an appointment.

With the DDD appt., we thought he was, again, going to have an evaluation. Turns out that the same visit with the developmental specialist saved us again. We signed a couple dozen pieces of paper and that was it! Yeah!

Thanks again to everyone who said prayers for us. We truly are grateful. Love you all!

Payton in School

This Friday we will be meeting with the PV school district for Payton getting in to Pre Pre Preschool??? I think its the grade before preschool and we are getting him in early. He will receive not only more interaction with children but he will get more speech and occupational therapy. In the last few weeks (after many hours with daddy and many tantrums, face hidings (or trying to completely disappear as seen in the picture below), and head bangings ) we are finally starting to learn some new words thanks to our sign language cards. We have a 2 hour evaluation friday and then we will go from there. Its always hard to watch these meetings because Payton looses it and gets overwhelmed so quickly but at least now we are on the right track. It's hard because sometimes he seems so normal and happy and in a second he's laying on the floor punching himself for no reason and i just cant imagine him at school, alone, it sickens me but i know he will adjust.

He also got approved for DDD although that sounds more like a wrestling move than a helping organization. There is a chance the school psychiatrist can administer the Autism spectrum test which will help us out financially. We appreciate all your support and appreciate the prayers.

Family prayer

"Lord, We all love Payton so much. Wrap him up and give him peace. Thank you for blessing us with such a special child. Please grant us more patience and thicker skin so we can help to better understand him and the reactions of those outside of our house. Payton, You are so special and gifted and I know it will be scary, even for us, but we will make it through. And they even said you can ride the little bus which is good because there isn't much room on Daddys bike." So cute and yes he does have a couple black eyes. He got really overwhelmed at target the other day and started hitting himself in the eye. Its terrible to watch and i just dont know what to do.

Payton hiding after one of our learning sessions turned ugly.

Sometimes he needs quiet time but this supprised even me.