Seattle here we come!!

What a whirlwind the last few months have been!

When Stephen said he had a recruiter reach out to him last April and he wanted Stephen to interview with Amazon, both of us said sure, why not get some practice interviewing. Thinking nothing would really come of it. It won't hurt anything.  Well that ball just kept on rolling. We (or I should say Stephen) had passed interview after interview after interview. After he flew out for his final interview, the offer they gave us was not much different than Stephen's current role and we turned it down. He was tired of his commute in Atlanta, but we loved where we lived. Andrew was in an ideal situation with his therapy and school. 

Then in early June, Stephen received an offer for a new position at AT&T. It would be an awesome role. Shortly after that, Amazon came back with a totally new offer and a whole new position.  This one was a lot harder to brush off. Now we had a huge decision to make. I was about to fly to Utah and we would need to made a decision. 

Once we got back from Utah, everything happened so quickly! We quickly finished our big back yard renovation project and worked feverishly to get our house ready to sell. All the while Andrew started another intensive therapy program and we were gone everyday from noon-5pm with that commitment. This made it incredibly hard to get anything done. Many late nights repainting rooms, working in our yard, We squeezed in a quick house hunting trip, just Stephen and I one weekend and with all the stress, it was just what we needed. 

We randomly drove past this Seattle Icon....an artist's rendition of a troll under a bridge! 

Lake Union is so incredibly beautiful. It was fun to stay in a hotel right along the shoreline!

Our realtor gave us a good suggestion to ride the Gondola up Crystal Mountain and eat at the restaurant on top of the mountain. It was incredibly beautiful! 

And when we got to the top....we had a breathtaking view of Mt. Rainier!! 

This 14,000ft glacier-capped volcano was an incredible view for dinner!!

Then one night we took a ferry to Bainbridge Island and walked along the beach. It was so fun and we felt like we were back in our good old dating days....without kids...walking along the beach at sunset...holding hands....awe....

Our view of the night skyline heading back to the city on the ferry!

Before I knew it the movers showed up August 1st to pack and load our things. So I took the kids for the day to one of the places we've wanted to see here in Georgia! Stone Mountain! It was awesome and I wished we'd come sooner, because I would have loved to go back lots!  It's a state park, but a lot of stuff you can do. The kids and I had a ball "killing time". They have some amazing trails with all sorts of ability levels. Museums, and shops! The highlight was the train ride we went on around the mountain (especially this train loving kid) and of course the candy shop! We got dumped on by two huge storms, and I did have umbrella's in the car. That's when I realized that I somehow locked my keys in the car. Oh yeah, this happened because Andrew desperately had to go potty after the 45 minute car ride, so as I was rushing trying to get the kids out of the car and buckled in the stroller and bags and such I didn't realize I set my keys down instead of putting them in my bag. Thankfully, I have a wonderful husband who although it wasn't convenient and couldn't have been worse timing with everything going on at house drove out to rescue us that evening.

 Playing on the rocks and in the little stream to cool off...oh and we were already wet from the storms! So why not!

Watching the Stone Mountain train drive by was almost as much fun as riding it!

There it is in all her glory....Stone Mountain! A HUGE granite (what people out east call a...) mountain sitting among the thick green trees!

Here we are getting drenched on our train ride in one of the storms!

Not sure what these three thought after all that rain...but they loved the ride!!

A few days later, we hopped on a plane with a one way ticket to Seattle. 

I don't know if it's a good thing or not that everything happened so fast. We officially signed the offer July 8th and we flew into Seattle August 4th. In my head and in my heart we had planned to settle down in Georgia. Which made it was so incredibly hard to leave.  This huge change for our family came from nowhere. All this change has hit me a lot this time around, especially emotionally.  And now we are dragging three kids along with us on this crazy adventure. I never would have thought when I married Stephen 9 years ago that he'd take me on such a wild ride around the country. 

Right now we are in temporary corporate housing, just a little apartment with all that we could fit into a few suitcases. It's feels mostly like a vacation, the weekends we go and play and we don't have any of our things.  We are just waiting for our house to sell so we can move forward out here. Trying to have a lot of faith as to what will happen with our family and where we will end up. 

We've been able to explore some fun places and soak up an extra month of summer we didn't think we would get. 

The awesome part about Seattle is there's so much to do out here. You have the ocean right here and tons of lakes. Then you also have the mountains, tons of hiking trails and waterfalls. It's absolutely beautiful and green (in a very different way than the green down south). 

It's just hard when I hear Andrew pray in his prayers that his school here will be closed down so that he can go to his old school Whiltlow Elementary. And then just out of the blue while he is playing he'll tell me how much he misses Georgia and our old home. It just about breaks my heart and makes me want to jump on a plane and head back. 

I know things will work out how they are supposed to, they always have. I've grown tremendously each time we've moved and each time I've fallen in love with where we are at. I know we've needed to be in certain places, meet certain people, and be where the Lord has needed us for different times in our life. Partly for Andrew's medical care and partly for our family to rub shoulders with some amazing people. He has a much greater plan than I could have ever imagined and I'm sure our move to Seattle will be no different. 

Just A Little Project...

Last year we had an idea of completely redoing our back yard. What we thought would be a big project...became a huge project.

Everything in Georgia is so hilly and it was incredibly hard to find a home with a useable flat backyard. With Andrew's walking ability we needed something flat so he could run around and play. So we decided to make our own. We started last November ripping stuff out, transplanting plants and bringing in dirt. Then we had an awfully rainy winter and couldn't get back out there until almost April since then we've been putting in every extra minute into our yard.

Here's the before pictures...

Our good friend Jason, came down from Tennessee to help us with the tractor and bring our first few loads of dirt into the back yard.

We even convinced Stephen's dad and brother to help us do some digging while they were down visiting for Christmas! It wasn't rainy that day, but it was sure muddy. We spent most of the winter months covering and uncovering the pile of dirt with plastic to "keep it dry" and "let it dry out". It started to become quite the joke.

Once Spring rolled around, things started happening again. We hired some people to come help build the retaining wall. Then we had an another pile on our driveway...this time it was gravel. The girls seemed to love it. After they had taken what they needed for the wall, we still had a bunch left over. One afternoon I was chatting on the phone with a friend and came upon this picture. Toys dropped and shoes left precisely at the doorstep and the door wide open. For who knows how long....

Then I came upon these pictures! Thankfully they hadn't gone too far. This became one huge playground for these two. They loved filling buckets and cups full of rocks...just scooping and pouring them between containers. Then throwing them into the grass. 

Then once again another lovely pile appeared. Our poor neighbors...one pile finally disappeared and then the next weekend another pile would be delivered.

This time around we let the kids go at it and just play till their little hearts were content. We spent a whole Friday afternoon and an entire Saturday shoveling and hauling dirt into the back yard.  And they had a ball.

Wheelbarrow rides with dad! 

(I think I have a similar picture with me and my little brother Matt.) 

I never thought that Georgia had such red dirt. I'd only seen that color of dirt in Southern Utah. But yes. It is VERY red and completely clay. And I might add, it stains like no other. It is the absolute worst. We've thrown out a bunch of socks and a few shoes. After a day of playing in the dirt, our kids seriously looked like Oompa Loompas with that red dirt covering them from head to toe. I still can picture the bath water after...we had to switch it out three times and they still had a reddish hue to them.

After we got to this point, we had just accepted an offer to work for Amazon and knew we'd be needing to sell our home. Nothing like a dead line to get a project done...right? So we threw together the rest of the back yard pretty dang fast.

We only had about 3-4 weeks total by the time we signed the offer and flew out on an airplane. Wish we could have stayed longer to enjoy the fruits of our labor, but such is life. Everything was so crazy and so fast that I didn't remember to snap a few pictures of the final product. But I stole a few from our listing so here you go!

SDR Update

It has been 5 months since we've been in St. Louis for Andrews surgery and now we are back!!

It has been a long and hard 5 months, but we signed up for this and knew all the hard work that would come with doing this procedure. Immediately after the surgery, I noticed how 'free' he was from his spasticity. His muscles were still tight, but with all that spasticity gone when we do his daily stretches, things would stay stretched and not regress. On top of his regular therapy 5 days a week for an hour, We've done three sessions of intensive therapy through out those five months. That's nine weeks of therapy, 3 hours a day. Plus our exercises at home. Plus hippo therapy and OT once a week.  That's a ton!! It hasn't always been easy, with a lot of melt downs and sticker charts to earn rewards. But we've done it and I'm amazed at how quickly he's gaining progress. It would take him FOREVER to improve on skills and just over the last five months he has learned how to:

independently hold on to a rail and go up and down steps

step up one small step(like a curb) without a rail independently

not drag his left foot anymore

stand up straighter(I swear he grew almost two inches just from being able to stand up taller) 

sit in criss cross sitting (not his favorite, but he can actually do it! If I distract him enough he's sat there for a good 10 minutes a few times) 

stand up in the middle of the room without holding onto anything 

walking 15+ steps between a 12 inch width 

bend over and pick things up without holding onto anything

step over things up to 3-4 inches high

go up and down steep inclines independently 

and the one he is most excited about learning to ride a two-wheeler bike with training wheels independently 

...and those are just the big things.

Plus he's doing all these things with less support, since he is now wearing his SMO braces instead of his tall AFO braces.  Many other little things like just seeing how strong his legs and core are getting. It's awesome!! But we also have a long ways to go. We've been told that kids who've had this surgery early on continue to make progress for the next 5-7 years.

It was awesome to see Doctor Park again! He was very pleased with Andrew progress and gave some great suggestions on things to work on as well as some realistic lifetime expectations for Andrew. 

Teaching Andrew a hew way to stretch! 

All of which is very exciting for this boy! The awesome part is that we can decrease his therapy to two times per week. If you had told me 4-5 years ago that he'd would be where he is today with the potential that Doctor park gave him, I would have not believed it. 

Since we were able to come a few days early, we had a chance to play. We hit up the famous Fitz Restaurant here in St. Louis! Both Andrew and I are suckers for some good rootbeer. They brew & bottle their own rootbeer right in the restaurant plus about 10 different other sodas, some of which are totally unique like 'toasted coconut' mmmmm. We ordered a peanut butter cup cream soda float and it was heavenly!! Nothing like dessert first!! 

This kid was in heaven and dived right in!  Don't worry they split our float in half and I got one just the same size! 

The thing he talks the most about from when we came out here in March was The Haven House.

 It's an amazing facility for children connected with the hospitals and their families. Andrew was ecstatic that we got to stay here again! They have a huge gym, a playroom packed with toys, a library & game room and an art room, plus they provide breakfast and dinner each day.  Then each wing has a kitchen and family room. 

They told us we could leave our mark,  so we took advantage and added his hand to the famous walls in the playroom. 

Riding scooters in the gym. 

We've met some amazing families and after talking with them, I'm always humbled and grateful for the trials in my life. Some of these kids have to go through some pretty tough things. One family we met this trip was visiting from Egypt.  Their little boy just older than Andrew will be having the very same surgery this coming week. It was neat to chat with them. So grateful for places like this to help. 

We also headed to the city and found the gateway arch. Andrew thought it was incredible because we got to ride a train/elevator to the top. Which pretty much are his two most favorite things that he is totally obsessed with right now. He wasn't too interested in the view up there, it was amazing!! 

We also found the St. Louis Temple on Sunday and had a picnic there. I asked Andrew what we do in the temple. His answer was the cutest! "We get sealed mommy and get married" Then I asked if he wanted to get married in the temple someday. His reply "Yes! Mommy, will you marry me so I can get sealed?" 

This boy has such a light that resinates from him. I've had more people comment on that this trip then anything. From the flight attendants to the rental car place to the grocery store to the ward we were visiting to the therapists. 

We also got the chance to meet up with a therapist that worked with Andrew when he was 2 and we lived in Texas. She had just recently moved to St. Louis and is now a manager for the speech therapy department at St. Louis Children's. Hospital. So after our appointment we walked down the hall to her office and met with her. It was so fun to reconnect and have her see Andrew three years later.

It's totally fun that the children's hospital is just down the street from the zoo. What's even better is that it's free!! So to kill sometime before our flight left, we headed to the zoo and walked around for a few hours. Andrew requested we see the giraffes first, but I think he had a ball on the train. We could have ridden it all day. 

Andrew also got a neat opportunity on the way home. As we were boarding the plane, he asked where the pilots sits. Well, a flight attendant overheard and let us go up and met the pilots in the cockpit. They even let him sit in the pilots seat, wear their hat and push a few buttons. So cool! He's still talking about it and pretends to be a pilot. And daddy was a bit jealous he couldn't be there! 

It was a fast trip and we packed a lot in for the three days we were out there. So wonderful to spend some one on one time with my sweet Andrew!!