Holiday highlights from Lowell...

Snow, snow and more snow!!

Lots of fun gifts like legos, a new camera and the much coveted handy manny tool set. Santa delivered!

Giving gifts to loved ones.Playing games with cousins.

Cookie making with Bobo and other holiday sweets!Hope you had a wonderful holiday season!

Feeling fall...

Ok, there's really no excuse for not updating this blog in the last two months. However I can say, no news is good news. GREAT news, in fact. Lowell is doing **wonderfully** in kindergarten and has transitioned smoothly into the school year. He loves it and we are beyond thrilled! He is a "high flier" in reading. That makes his librarian mommy proud:) We've had a great fall. Lots of walks in the woods, pumpkin carving with bobo and leaf pile leaping.
Lowell did a great job trick-or-treating. Much improvement over the last couple of years, even though he was sick.
Now we head into the holiday season. Yikes...already!? Looking forward to introducing more traditions this year and continuing with others that have become more meaningful as the kids get older. Now if he'd just stop making us call him William, or is it Hamilton today? Not sure where this new "name" phase came from, but they don't really appreciate it at school. Always something to work though:)

SIX years old!!!

Happy Birthday Lowell!!
xoxo
You are in such a good place in your life. You're doing so well in kindergarten, you love to play with your little sister and are such a wonderful little boy to be around. We love you!

We now have a kindergartener!

Lowell had his first "unofficial" day of kindergarten today. We stayed with him and there was small group time and curriculum, more of an open house. He was thrilled to meet his teacher, see his classroom and seemed very cool and calm about the whole thing. We're really excited about this year!

Afterward we had a picnic lunch and took this photo with my camera sitting on a log on the self-timer. I think it's my new favorite.

Howdy from Lowell...

We're long overdue for an update here, so I'll give you a brief re-cap of our summer. It started out with a bang...literally. We headed down to Cannon Falls for a good old 4th of July parade. Then came home and did bottlerockets and sparklers with the kids for the first time. They loved it!!

Then the Ecklund's came into town from California and we had a week "up north" at Thunder Lake with my parents and my sisters family. We had a great time and Lowell got to meet his new cousin Hans for the first time!

Sidewalk chalk has been a huge hit this summer for the kids. At any given time our driveaway is covered with wild mazes and drawings that are enjoyed by the whole neighborhood.

We've been watching our sunflowers grow from seed all the way to 8 feet tall! Now they are all starting to open one by one. They are gorgeous and full of bees!

We also have been enjoying our huge, red, juicy tomatoes. The kids love to pick them, I love to eat them!

Another big milestone this summer has been the kids each starting to ride a bike with training wheels.

Lowell has no fear and is already a speed demon cruising down the street lickety split. Yikes!

We still have the State Fair to look forward to in a few weeks. Then Lowell is off to kindergarten. He is soooo ready and we are so excited to have him fully integrated into a typical classroom. A week later he turns SIX years old!
Finally, on September 26th we will be doing the Walk Now for Autism event for the third year. Here is our web page for Lowell if you feel inclined to support us.

Thanks!

Mother's Day...

What a nice day it was! Flowers, hugs, handmade gifts and a book... what more could a girl ask for?! The day began with Lowell's first t-ball game. He is on the St. David's Cubs Miracle League team. He was the team captain for the first game. Go Lowell!!What a slugger! With Bobo by his side, it was a very fun morning.
The afternoon was spent with Nana and Bobo. We had a great grilled meal and took a walk through their neighborhood looking at all the flowers. What a lovely day!

Spring has sprung!

We are overjoyed with the wonderful spring weather we've been having!The kids planted their seeds last week. We start them indoors and then plant them into the garden when they're ready.So once the seeds starting growing, we began preparing the garden. We turned over the soil and made the garden a bit bigger.Can't wait for planting day!

We're continually amazed by Lowell's comprehension and vocabulary! He seems to understand what we're asking and wants to know more and more about the world around him. In the next post I'll tell you all about the Miracle League baseball team he's on...the St. David's Cubs!

Wishing for spring....

The weather has been gorgeous here the last few days and we've taken every opportunity to get outside with the kids and enjoy it. This kind of weather makes you just ache for spring. It's like once you get a taste, you're hooked! Looking forward to our annual spring wildflower walk. Looks like we usually don't go until May. Do we really have another two months before the flowers start to bloom?!

I enjoy looking for signs of spring with the kids. Now that Lowell is talking a lot he is asking all kinds of fun questions:) It's fun to put on my "naturalist's hat" when we're outside and teach the kids about the natural world. They really enjoy it...and so do I.

This weather is definitely something to smile about.

Enjoy the season! One quick thing related to Autism. This article appeared in the New York Times yesterday. It is about Autism and the Somali community specifically here in Minneapolis.

Happy *~heart~* Day!

It's been a cold winter here in Minnesota, so we haven't been able to get out as much as we normally do. This past weekend we had some warmer days and so we got out and enjoyed the Fire and Ice Festival at Parker's Lake nearby. Lowell got a kick out of this ride (below) because it was called "Captain Lowell's trolley ride". Basically we were pulled across the ice by a man (apparently his name was Lowell) on a tractor. We also saw dog sleds, Norwegian fjord horses and ate s'mores.Valentine's Day is coming up and Lowell had some of his class parties. He made handmade collage heart cards and passed them out. He got his face painted for the first time. He wasn't sure what to think of it, but he went along with it and didn't wipe it off.
We also made it through kindergarten "round up". We were pleased that Lowell did pretty well. Our proudest moment is when they had the kids leave with a teacher that had a certain color balloon that corresponded with the color balloon on their name tag. The woman with the blue balloons came and we said, “ok Lowell, go follow the lady with the blue balloons.” It took every ounce of our being to not follow along since we thought he may stop at any random door and go inside and look for the scotch tape (a current obsession). He followed along and we sat with tears in our eyes (yes, it’s the little things!) as he walked away with the kids. He did make it to the room and we didn’t hear anything from the classroom, so no news is good news. Kindergarten here we come. Yikes!!