We had our meet and great at Wysong last night.

Denali and Quinn are officially ready for school to start.

Denali and her 4th grade teacher, Ms. Luedtke.

 Quinn's 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Burbach.  

Who I have taught with for years, so I know this will be a great fit!

 Quinn's Sped teacher, Ms. Brandt.

 Ms. Drake is the Assistant Principal.  Another person I have worked with and will be excited to have her working with my kids.

Isaiah's 5th grade teacher is Ms. Wetzel, but

we agreed I would not embarrass him and take a picture this time.

Ugg mom's can be so embarrassing!  

This school is just opening, so the kids have all moved from different schools to go here.  

It was fun for my kids to run into old friends from Maxey last night.

It was also fun for me to run into my Zeman kids.  We have over 100 kids from Zeman going to Wysong, and I got all kinds of hugs and hello's last night.  My personal kids all got to meet my school kids and see who is in their classes.  My worlds were colliding, and it was so fun!  

Earlier in the day we had our OT therapy appointment with Emily.

We take in books to read, and talk about leaving with adults being impressed with our good behaviors, and the kids still end up on the floor with Quinn and her therapist.  If one of my kids does not become a therapist of some kind, I will be surprised.  Denali talks about it quite a bit, as well as being a farmer and mom.  

 So again, I am so thankful to all our therapists for letting all my kids get in there and work hard.

So today is our last official day of summer.  It was nice to sleep in.  Next week Denali starts Viola camp.  So we will need to be out of the house by 8:30 every day.  A good start to school.  Then I start back, the following week, and the kids start on the 15th.  Where did the summer go.  There is so much to do on our list, but it's been a wonderful, educational, sorrowful, magical, busy summer.  I'm so thankful to have the opportunity to give these three wonderful experiences and watch them grow into great humans!

We have continued to paint the chairs.

Isaiah did a great job helping Quinn.

I helped out too.

 We also have been getting to therapy!  We are so thankful for you Tasha!

 Everyone ended up working on tummy time during Quinn's therapy.

 Then a new day brought a new therapy.  We had eating therapy.

Quinn does so good eating there.  At home is another story.

 Quinn used her Tobii to tell Stacie to wait, she was not done eating.  She though that was so funny, and everyone had to giggle about it.  She is such an amazing kid!

 Here is her Tobii, showing what she said at therapy.

 Denali got her Viola this week!  Her Viola camp starts next week!

 Here is what I happened upon this morning!  All three girls hanging out together!

I just love my girls!

After a couple beautiful days camping up in South Dakota!

The last night stormed like crazy!

So everyone moved into the camper.

The girls had to snuggle.

Then in the morning.  I was up, went for a walk, and came back to find this.

Isaiah, sleeping.

 Quinn sleeping.

 Kaleb sleeping.

 Denali sleeping

 It was a loud storm, and we are thankful for grandma and grandpa's camper.  

Both girls slept most of the way home that day as well!

We had to end our trip with some fishing by moonlight.

The moon looks so tiny in the picture,

but it was so beautiful that night!

The kids were not patient to actually catch fish,

but they sure had fun playing!

* A good tip we learned, any kids in wheelchairs, if you are by the water, don't have your seatbelt fastened, just in case you would fall in the water, you could get out easier!

Thank goodness we did not go in the water, but we did have the seatbelt unfastened!

 Denali had much more fun posing Grandma for pictures!

 The next morning we went out on the boat.

 Goodness, we had so much fun!  Quinn coughed out a bunch of snot, after hitting all the bumps in the water.  After getting that out, she loved the boat.  Giggles all around!  I've told Quinn's therapist that they need boat therapy, to break up all the gunks inside of us, and then just for fun. :)

 It was a great morning!

The fact that we got to hang out with our cousin Kaleb made the whole trip even more fun!

The house is still getting worked on from the hail damage way back when.

They fixed the ceiling and painted, and in turn,

we got to go to a hotel for a few days.

The kids loved it!

 Then we went camping with Grandma Grandpa and Kaleb.  Buttercup loved hanging out with Quinn.

 Denali was exhausted and slept all afternoon the first day we were there.

 So Isaiah and I went exploring.

 Wow, the sunsets were amazing!

 We loved the lake.

 Quinn loved camping!

We played lots of games with our cousin Kaleb.
It was so good to hang out with him!

More to come!

I love giving these guys new experiences!

That's good since the last two days Denali has been cleaning her room and she has not even gotten to her closet yet!  Uggg, this will be a long week for her!

We are sure loving summer, be it cleaning or playing!  

Both are great and we have had some time to work on it!

So thankful!

Blessings!

We have been sharing the love lately!

We sure love Chrissy!

 Lots of snuggles too!

 The house has new shingles from when we had the softball size hail.  They are working on the inside now, so we get to hang in a hotel for a couple days.  So we have been swimming and hanging out with friends.  

 Quinn was giggling in her sleep.

 We were sharping hundreds of pencils and the reward was to run through the school!

 We have had lots of slumber parties lately.  

The kids are still mourning Amelia.  Quinn will use her dynovox to tell us it's not fair, and we agree, we talk about how life is not fair, and it's ok to mourn her, and so we planted an Amelia plant in our yard to help honor her.  

We are busy as ever, trying to fit in new experiences and live life to the fullest!  So this entry is very choppy, but we sure love sharing our adventure!

Blessings!

Susan

Thanks to folks at Dancing Beyond Limits, 

A photographer took some picts, and they are cute as can be.

So my two girls got some great pictures.

 Past that, we are resting, and chilling out.  After a few super busy weeks, physically and emotionally, both of the girls have caught colds.  Denali has huge bags under her eyes, and Quinn only slept for a few hours last night before getting a temp and staying up all night.

So we will rest and relax and pray, and play.  We will try to keep the kids away from each other to stop sharing sick germs, but it probably won't work.  So tylenol, rest, and lots of love will be what keeps us going.  We are thankful we have some time to decompress.

Here is hoping you can all find some time to decompress.  It's good for the soul!  Blessings to you all.  Thanks for checking in on us.

It's been a hard few days.

Quinn's dearest friend Amelia, passed away.

Thanks to a friend, we read some books on

friends passing away, had tears, wrote letters, poems, and drew pictures.

We told stories and said many prayers.

We loved loved loved hanging out with you Amelia!

 The girls have similar stories in so many ways.  They both had a time of innocents, where they were born not knowing what the future held, and we had innocent months.  Then both of them had different issues, with  heart complications and issues after surgery for Quinn, and Amelia faced cancer and issues with it.  This life change is what brought them together.

They would play together for hours, and had an understanding about and with each other that was priceless.  

 The girls loved each other so much.  They would hang out and jabber and love on each other.  

 Any time we would have a party, Amelia would be one of the first people Quinn would want to invite.  She loved Amelia so very much.  

 So today was the funeral.  

A couple days ago after Quinn found out Amelia went to be with Jesus, Quinn did not want to get out of bed, she was so upset by Amelia's passing.  Then Jen and Steve gave us such a blessing.  They asked Quinn to read at the funeral.  Quinn then had a mission and was willing to get up and practiced and practiced.  John 14: 1-4 is what she read.  Isaiah and Denali were happy to help her get to her spot and help with the mic.  Denali has really struggled with this too.   We have had so many conversations about heaven, and our bodies.  About caskets, and funerals.  We have said prayers about Amelia and talked to her.  

 Going to a funeral of a friend is so hard.  I can not imagine what Jen and Steve are going through.  One person at the funeral said, how it must be harder, because there is extra care and extra time that goes into caring for kids like Quinn and Amelia.  So there is so much extra time now.  That hit me hard.  We know she is in a better place with Jesus, but our hearts are hurting so much.

 The funeral was beautiful!  Quinn did her part and was amazing.  I bawled like a baby listening to her use her Tobi computer to share her bible verse.  It was very moving.

Chrissy was one of the speakers and they all did so well, sharing what a beautiful treasure Amelia was.

 So many people came over to talk to Quinn after the service.  It was so good to be in a large setting where folks understood a bit about Quinn, simply because they understood at least a bit about Amelia. 

 We were getting ready to go out to the cemetery, when fate decided otherwise.

 Long story short, we ran Quinn into the wall and a grab bar in the bathroom, and it was a hard hit and we thought we broke her leg.    So we were already sad and then Quinn screamed and cried when her legs got tangled up with that bar.  She is not a cryer, as her pain tolerance is so hight, and she was sobbing and crying.  It was horrible and I was bawling with her.  Thankfully Chrissy was with us and kept some control.  So we talked to Jen and Steve for a moment and headed to the Emergency Room.  I guess we wanted to give them something else to think about on such a big day!

 So to the ER we went.  Chrissy was pretty sure that at least her right leg was broken, and with the way she was crying and screaming, I thought so too.  Thankfully she had her braces on which had to have helped.  Her legs were already looking so much better by the time we got the X-ray done.  Thanks to Amelia looking down on Quinn, they came back to tell us that nothing was broken!  Thank you God and our special little angel Amelia!  So ice and tylenol is in store for Quinn for a bit.  Big props to the hospital for getting us in and out so quickly.  

 We were only there a few hours.  So we still had to say our proper good byes.  Everyone had already gone by the time we got to the cemetery, but we got to say a prayer and tell Amelia we would see her later, but we can now talk to her any time!  To Amelia's family, we will continue to pray for you.  We look forward to hanging out with you and talking about Amelia.  We will also work hard to keep Amelia's memory alive.  Quinn lost an amazing friend, and we are heart broken, so keeping her memory alive will help us get through this.

Amelia you were full of life, faith, wisdom, patience, and acceptance.

We are so thankful to have you as a kindred spirit and dear friend to Quinn.

We are so thankful to have you in our lives and teach us.

 Amelia -  Here is one of the prayers we have been praying for you.

A wish for you.

May God grant you always,

a sunbeam to warm you.

a moonbeam to charm you.

A sheltering angel so 

nothing can harm you.

Laughter to cheer you, 

Faithful friends dear to you,

and now when you pray,

Jesus and heaven can hear you.

We love you so much Amelia.