Speech-Part 2

I finally got back the results from Em's speech therapy evalution. She did qualify for speech therapy. I was a little shocked since the therapist originally said that she didn't think she would. But I do think it will be good for her, and it can only help. Her therapist said that she has a phonological/articulation delay due to difficulty understanding her words/sentences. In that particular area, she is about 40% behind. (you have to be atleast 30% behind to qualify) Emma does tend to say a lot of things that no one can really understand so I think the therapy will help alot with that. She used to have her sessions twice a week but now she will only have it once...on Thursdays.

Also, this has nothing to do with therapy, but I would love for all to say a little prayer for little Hailey bug. She has been sick for almost a week and spent several hours yesterday in the ER. I hope she is on the up side and will start feeling better soon. Love you little Hailey. :)

Favorites

As a stay at home mom, my days are mostly the same. Same routine, same places, same everything. It gets old sometimes. Don't get me wrong.....theres nothing I'd rather be doing that spending everyday with my girls. But between the everyday things, there are times each day that I really look forward to and I wanted to take time to jot them down.

One of my favorite things during the day is when the girls get up and eat their breakfast. We aren't ones to sit at the table and eat. Mostly because I don't really eat breakfast often and the girls aren't big breakfast eaters either. They are generally happy with their milk and some dry cereal...or sometimes Emma requests a fruit pop tart. Emma usually wants corn pops and Ryleigh LOVES cheerios. Once we get the bowls of cereal I sit on the couch and Emma sits beside me and Ryleigh sits on my lap and we watch Mickey Mouse while they eat. It's one of my favorite times because believe it or not, I actually miss them when they go to bed and I'm so happy to spend some quality time with them as soon as they wake up.

My next favorite part is when Ryleigh wakes up from her nap. 99% of the time she wakes up before Emma and I go get her from her crib and bring her to my room. We will sit on the bed and read a book. We have a special first words book that I keep in my room and she is always so happy to see it. I love spending this quality time with her because since I am home all day with both of them, it's very rare that I get one on one time.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE bed time. No, not because they finally have to go to sleep. Josh and I take turns putting the girls to bed so that neither of them get use to just one person. Ryleigh usually isn't up for reading books or anything, she likes to just get in her bed, but Emma on the other hand LOVES to read books. So now that she has a big girl bed we lay down together and she snuggles up to me and we read a story. Once the story is over I say I love you and she says it back and then I say Goodnight and she says "Good night mama". MELT. MY. HEART. She is just the sweetest little girl.

So, these are just a few of my favorite times. With two special little girls, I have many of them though. I am truly a blessed mama.

Breast Cancer Fundraiser

*scroll down to see our pics from our morning with the ducks :)

This past Saturday we had our big Susan G. Komen breast cancer fundraiser. The main goal was to raise money for Autumn and Katie to go walk in the 3 day walk in September. My mom and dad did a great job planning this event and it turned out great. We didn't have as many people as we expected but we raised a lot of money for the foundation. About two weeks ago my dad decided that he was going to build 4 cornhole sets and have a tournament at the fundraiser. He worked so hard to get them built and painted and it turned out to be the best thing we could have done. Everyone loved to watch and he had several teams play. That is where most of the people were hanging out. He did a pretty awesome job building them too. I forgot my big camera but I took some pictures on my phone but for some reason or another I'm having a hard time getting them off. We all really appreciate everyone who helped us and everyone who gave their support. We couldn't have asked for anything more.

Ducks!

This morning I took the girls to lake that is near our house to feed some ducks. I think there were more geese than anything though. There is a big dock that we walked out on and the girls had the best time. Emma kept saying "more bread mama". She was so disappointed when we ran out. Since I was by myself I took Ryleigh in the stroller because I was afraid she might fall through the railing if I wasn't constantly watching her and I wanted to be able to help Emma and take pictures. At the end I got Ryleigh out and let her walk around. I gave her a piece of bread and helped her throw it in the water but then when I gave her the next piece she looked at me like "mom, why are we throwing perfectly good food in the water".....and then she shoved it in her mouth. I hope Josh can go back with us soon so we can spend a little more time there. Emma has been asking all day to go back and feed the ducks.

Speech Therapy

As most of you know, Emma started speech therapy when she was pretty young. She was I think about 20 months old or so. She did really well working with her therapist but a couple of months before we moved we had to pull her out because of some scheduling issues.(theirs not ours) We decided to wait until we moved to get her into another program, especially since we would be moving into another county and wasn't sure what services were available. We finally found a private company that would come to our house. Katie, her therapist, came this morning to do Emma's evaluation to determine if she needed it. I won't get the exact numbers until Monday but she said that she doesn't think Emma needs it. She said according to the answers that Emma was giving her, she believes that Emma is back to where she should be for her age. Emma has certain words that she doesn't pronouce well and some that don't make sense....but what kid her age doesn't? I kind of had a feeling to begin with that she might not qualify but that is a good thing. It means that she is just an average (almost) 3 year old now. We will still have to wait and see what her exact numbers are though. Her vocabulary has really taken off the past couple of months and I can tell that she is really starting to learn so many things. I'm so excited to see her continue to thrive.

hot...hot....hot

Today it has finally cooled off a little bit but the past few days have been awful. They've been around 100 and the girls and I have stayed inside in the AC. I can not wait until the fall. Summer can be fun but when it's so hot that you can't hardly stay outside long enough to do anything, it gets miserable.

This weekend is the big fundraiser for the Susan G. Komen walk that Autumn and Katie will be doing in September. My mom and dad have done a great job planning this and I hope that we will raise lots of money for the foundation. There will be a hotdog supper and also a cornhole tournament. My dad has handmade 4 cornhole sets and from what my mom says, he has really out done himself. I can't wait to see them.

I have been itching to go to the beach lately. We didn't get to go last weekend because the weather was going to be horrible. Every spring I always say that we are going to go to the beach more during the summer but things always seem to come up. I think we might be going next weekend though so I'm pretty excited about that. Then we have out big family beach trip in September that I can't wait for!!!! It's going to be the Joyners', Newnams', & Hollifields' playing out on the beach every day!! We all haven't been together in so long and I know that the girls are going to have a great time with everyone there.

I am still in the middle of planning Emma's birthday party. I just ordered her invitations the other day and I can't wait to see them. They are too cute. Josh and I have a great birthday present planned for her and I can't wait to see her face when she gets it.

For years now I have heard people talk about how awesome the show BIG BROTHER is. Well, I decided that since I didn't have a whole lot of shows to watch right now that I would see what it was all about. I have watched the first 3 episodes and so far, I don't really get it. But I'm gonna continue to watch and hope that it gets better.

This weekend is going to be busy and I hope that the fundraiser goes well.

Phone Pics

I currently have 1,087 pictures on my phone!! Thats just crazy. But I take pictures with my phone all the time. I always have it with me and most of the time I am able to capture what goes on during the day and not so much what I "plan" to take pictures of. It doesn't take the greatest pictures but I love looking back through them and I'm glad that I have them. I wanted to post some that I've taken recently.

Waiting to eat dinner!

I love this picture of sweet Ryleigh.

We moved Emma out of her toddler bed into a full size bed this past weekend. She outgrew her toddler bed a long time ago and I'm glad she has more room now. Here she is showing off her big girl bed.

Emma coloring a picture in her Hello Kitty book.

We took this picture tonight to send to her daddy since he is out of town. He loves getting pictures when he is away.

Ryleigh does a great job of eating with her fork.

My sweet Ry bear sleeping.

This one is Ryleigh watching the Backyardigans with daddy. Usually she gets up from her nap first and I will bring her back to our room to watch a little cartoons until Emma gets up. She is a Backyardigan fanatic and does not like for you to get in her way. Her face is so serious when she watches it.

I just took this picture about 15 minutes ago. After I put the girls to bed I noticed that Emma had "set" the table. She does this often and I think its so sweet.

4th of July & birthday celebrations

This past weekend was so much fun. I love having 3 day weekends to spend with family. Saturday we stayed at home all day except for Josh going to work at IronPlay and to the grocery store. Sunday morning I spent making two birthday cakes. We always celebrate my dad and Autumn's birthday along with our 4th of July cookout and they both like different cakes so they deserved to have what they wanted. After the girls nap we headed to my mom and dads and swam all afternoon. We had hamburgers and hotdogs for dinner and then of course, we had some cake!

Yesterday was my dads birthday. He turned 49 years old. We didn't really have any plans so we headed back up to Stokesdale to spend the day with him and swim some more. The Hollifields and Katie came so it was like a party all over again. Today is Autumn's birthday so I want to wish her a Happy Birthday too! I am so glad that this is a short week. We only have two days at home and then Thursday we are headed to Oak Island. I'm so excited to go back to the beach. I can't wait to stick my toes in the sand. (these next pictures were taken my Autumn so they are a little smaller since I don't have the big files)

Friday!!

I am so glad it's Friday. This week has not been a great week and I'm thankful that it's almost over and then we get to enjoy a 3 day weekend. My little Ryleigh bear is currently cutting about 5 teeth and all this week she has been whiny and mostly just fussing every day. She didn't get any teeth for a while so I knew she was going to get a bunch at once. I have been giving her Tylenol and once that kicks in she is good for an hour or two, but then the screaming starts again. I'm hoping that they will all come through sooner rather than later and this weekend will be enjoyable.

This morning the girls and I headed out to Party City. I had to get out of the house and the girls are always so happy riding in the car and looking around stores. We went to check out what kind of Hello Kitty supplies that had. I'm still trying to plan Emma's party and I just wanted to see what they had so I knew what colors to work with. A week or so ago I got Emma a Hello Kitty nightgown at Target. They had it on the clearance rack and she was dying to have it. Ever since the first time I put it on her, she hasn't wanted to take it off. In the morning when I take it off, she hides it under her pillow and then wants to put it back on at nap time. It's the cutest thing ever. I know she's going to LOVE her Hello Kitty party. (this pic was taken with my phone....so not the greatest)

I have been so slack lately with blogging but truth is, most days are about the same. We play outside in the morning most of the time, eat lunch, naps, play inside, eat dinner, then sometimes we go back outside to play after dinner or do baths. Same old thing. Not much to really document but I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things and start blogging a lot more.

Josh's grandmother has been in the hospital this week. She had knee surgery a couple of days ago and Josh's parents have been taking care of her and visiting alot so they haven't seen the girls in a couple of weeks. I know they are really missing them so I wanted to give them a few pictures of the girls. Of course there are more pics of Emma because Ryleigh has not been in a good mood and wasn't really wanting the camera in her face. My girls are just the cutest little girls ever!