Holidaying on Niatross

We finally all got down on Niatross for a good week and the weather was glorious.
We started off with the first couple of days moored right down town Vancouver and Jason and I took the opportunity to go for a kayak in the harbour.
Uncle George played endlessly with Alistair to his delight
On the trip Alistair decided to grab a piece of candy and happily suck on while holding it himself! Whoop whoop this made mama happy. Now he's holding a healthier option, a wedge of pear, and feeding himself several bites!
We used the rough sea bed as a perfect crib for Alistair while he contently slept to the gradual rock of the boat.
The weather was so beautiful out at Gambier Island that we didn't get any actual sailing in but we readily used the kayaks to investigate the surroundings. We kept saying "if only we had these when we were offshore!"
There is nothing quite like BC's coast. With all Dad's sailing around the world the BC coast remained his favorite.
LOVE IT!
Alistair loved hanging out in Grandma's arms. The change of scenery and daily pattern seemed to be really good for Alistair.However, his sleeping patterns totally got messed up. He was basically an angel by day and a little devil by night....mind you he looks pretty darn sweet here! Needless to say this trip wasn't about a good nights sleep for this mama. Mom got out in the kayaks too
She loved it so much that she might just get a kayak for Christmas!
Mom and I drove back with Alistair over a few days and in one of the hotels they had the perfect chair for Alistair. I'm now on the look out for a straight back chair for him that we can casually get him to sit in.

We got to see Uncle Bent and Aunt Jean en route back home.
It was so nice to catch up with them.

Now to our surprise the only "wildlife" we saw the whole drive up was this single cock at a rest stop miles from anywhere. He obviously new that if he came to say hello he may just get a treat or two so we shared an old apple with him which seemed to satifsy his hunger.

It was a great trip south but as always its great to get home and get horizontal in your own bed!

Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful feast this evening with a bunch of close friends and family. There is nothing like sharing a meal, a laugh and great conversation around ones own table. I think that is something we've lost in todays society.

Just a gorgeous time of year. I hope you're all able to get out and enjoy the beauty that surrounds us these days. This is up at my friends farm and the place is just golden.

This is looking down our street and its stunning right now.

Alistair having a snooze on his Dad's shoulder

Music & Water Therapy

Wowzers time has flown by once again since the last blog! Life has been busy as usual. I've been desperately trying to get the exterior of the house painted before winter sets in but the rain just seems to keep coming and preventing me from getting any further. I'm hoping in the next week there will be enough breaks for me to get it done! The shed if pretty much finished and I love it! I'm going a dark red called "Chipolte Paste"! I was a tad nervous at first but now its all good. : D

Alistair has been enjoying life. We continue to work with him to help with his progression and he continues to love two things .....water and music. So I added a couple of videos showing just that. We found out lately that the local pool allows us to go for free since he is "special needs" and I'm his "aide" So hey why not! So we've gone several times and he just gets tuckered out which is great. Lots of sensory input for him which is nice as well and helps me change things up a bit but continue to work on his physio. As for music he just loves the stuff. Always lots of smiles and knee kicks and just pure enjoyment. So he continues to have a good hour of music every day while he lays in his crib. His favorite song is by Sharon, Lois & Bram, ♫ One Elephant went out to play upon a spiders web one day.....♫ I can sing it to him and he grins from ear to ear!

We also found out just recently that our hearing aides and FM system is all going to be covered by the Ministry of Children & Families. I believe its until he's 18 which is a huge relief for us finanically. As his hearing aides alone are around $6,000 every 3-4 years! So again another humbling experience of what is available to us out there. Very nice indeed!

Well I must header and get some more things off my too do list.

Hope your all getting better weather then we are! At least its green here!

Cheers Julie

REALLY...In This Day and Age!

So we went to D'Lanos to have a nice Sunday family breakfast. The first thing out of the managers mouth as we rolled in was "you'll have to leave the stroller at the door" (no good morning, no smile, no nothing)...I explained the situation with my two year old son Alistair being low muscle tone, special needs and needing the stroller......His response "We don't have any room" He left to have look and returned with ....."We don't have any room" He was not apologetic at all, actually seemed quite irritated with having to deal with us while the girl at the front desk was cringing. She tried providing suggestions but he wasn't accepting any of her ideas. We decided to try holding him while eating. Although I'm not sure why we even tried to accomodate! I expected the spots left to be really congested. We got to the very back of the restaurant and there was plenty of room to bring the stroller. Even the server thought so. Actually with our stroller in place a couple could have walked past hand in hand I'm sure! Anyhow, Alistair wasn't coping even after we tried the high chair but as usual he slipped out of that one. So I went and talked to the manager again about needing the stroller. His response again was "There is no room" So I said "Are you saying you won't accomodate us ?" He didn't respond, he didn't look at me, there was absolutely no attempt to accomodate us or apologize. The server was extremely apologetic. I couldn't believe it! I definitely let him know I wasn't impressed and that everyday I live with having a special needs child and the fact that he couldn't accomodate us would prevent us from ever returning again. He didn't look at me, didn't respond, didn't do anything.....and I even stayed polite yet curt with my response. As we left, the girl at the front desk apologized profusely saying she had a special needs kid as well....... So lets just say we had a fabulous breakfast at De Dutch. They were very accomodating and there was much less room there than at D'Lanos yet they still were able to squeeze us in. I just can not believe in this day and age that a manager of a restaurant would act so inconsiderate. There is so much awareness with disability and special needs that one would think that there would be some level of attempt to accomodate.

The FIRST Haircut

Ahh yes here is my little man with is drenched locks ready to get them chopped. It was getting to the point that he was starting to create dreads in the back and was a tad frizzy so ...chop chop

At first he wasn't too worried about the whole manner.....

Ooops and then he was! LOL Luckily this was momentary!

It was so convenient as my friend Mandee is a hairdresser and she came to Lise's home and cut all our hair! LOVE it! She was so good with him.

AND he still has lots of curls....just a tad more controlled....

...and by the end he was googlin at Mandee .... tx Mandee : D

Therapeutic Trees

As always everyone in our family feels better in the head once they've gone out for a beautiful walk in the forest. The other day we decided that we should go check out the "Ancient Forest" which is about 90min east of Prince George. So glad we did! The little hike took us about an hour which wound through an impressive stand of ancient cedar trees. Although it poured the whole hike it made the stand of trees appear all the more impressive.
Since the center of the trees start to rot as they naturally develop it makes it difficult to determine the age of one such as the majestic cedar above. However, with a 16 foot circumfrence and estimated core samples they figured this one is at least 2000 years old. Isn't that incredible what its stood through! To our amazement Alistair calmed down after a 5 minute melt down during the start of the hike and calmly allowed us to enjoy our hike about this beautiful forest. He took quite an interest to the umbrella that Dad held overhead which I think helped to distract this not so familiar form of transportation for him.

Talk about distration, thats what it is all about in regards to getting Alistair to put weight on his feet. As soon as standing becomes his main focus he generally decides to flop down on his butt. However, if we can distract him as Lynn is above with a cool vibrating toy he seems to tolerate and even be quite content weight baring.

I don't know if you remember but our first real successful distraction was the cedar tree out in our front yard. Well all summer I have been using it to encourage Alistair to stand and its worked incredibly well. But like anything kids get tired of the same old thing so now that my flowers have bloomed he loves picking the heads off them! Definitely a good weight baring distraction...he loves my geraniums especially! LOL

Well as always its a bit of a roller coaster ride. I get so pumped with the different developments that Alistair reaches and then he plateaus. We've just joined a playgroup at the Child Development Center which I'm really keen on since Alistair gets very little interaction with other kids. Unfortunately, its right at his sleep time so its not ideal at the moment but I'm hoping to see some changes in his sleep patterns soon now that his teeth have all finally popped through. I have found the playgroups a tad tough as all the other kids are younger than Alistair and so much more advanced. Likely another reality check for me. But I have to admitt I do find it heart wrenching to see where he techniquely should be and isn't. However, reality checks are good and deciding what to do with them is really whats important. As advised by the speech therapists I should always keep one step ahead of Alistair to assist with advancement. So a good example of what we did the other day was set up a bunch of toys on the couch and he got so focused on them that he didn't realize we weren't there supporting him! That definitely made me feel all warm and fuzzy all over. He's our very special little man and he's taught me so much....patience, acceptance, and perserverance just to name a few!

Well now that its August we are finally getting some summer weather! So enough of this typing stuff I better go catch some Vitamin D while its available....Cheerio Julie

50th At the Dead Horse

This July long weekend 170 people totally surprised my Aunt Marilyn and Uncle Bill for their 50th Anniversary right on their ranch, The Dead Horse Creek Ranch, up an hour north of Fort St. John. Their daughter, Angela, strategically held us up in the bushes for half an hour so that we could come honking down their lane in a big procession.
The fact that they weren't expecting it was fantastic! They got a lot of hugs and handshakes : D

Highschool friends from Ontario even turned up.

and ballons got tied to their belt

There were people EVERYWHERE

The best part was all their kids could make it.

After a huge potluck we resided to the cow shed for some presents and cards and then.

ELVIS of course! My Aunt Rosie organized a Elvis tribute artist to come up and entertain the crowd for the night. He was FABULOUS!

In no time we were rockin the dance floor.

Alistair got right in there with everyone else and got tons of snuggles and cuddles

Here my cousin Chris and his wife Sarah have some Alistair time.

It was one big social!

Alistair finally crashed at about 1130pm. Thats when being hard of hearing is an advantage. Take off the hearing aid and the world becomes a quieter place

The next day my cousin Rod organized a huge game of Mantracker. There were tons of teams running all over the hillside trying to keep out of sight.

Here's one of many teams ready to rock the hillsides

If you know our family its all about card games and specifically hoss. We formulated 20 different teams and played a huge round robin tournament that lasted until 2 in the morning.

It was a weekend full of smiles, laughs and good times which was just a wonderful way to help my Aunt and Uncle share their 50th Anniversary with a BANG!

(Enjoy this little video clip of "Elvis and Hayley, my cousins eldest daughter,

singing "5 little monkey's")