Game Day!!

We are college football junkies around here and today we are ready for Mike's Louisiana Tech Bulldogs to play tonight against Auburn on TV, and of course the Hokies play tonight!!! We have eaten tailgate food here at home (David has a snotty nose) to prepare for the games! I have taken two naps so I can actually stay awake for all the action. Kyle, Hope and I are going to a neighborhood Hokie party to watch that game, and Mike and David will stay here to watch the Bulldogs.

David the bulldog football player and Hope the Hokie cheerleader!
My mom bought this outfit for Hope for the football season. It is plenty big on her now, so hopefully it will last through the whole season:) The orange bow is just a plus!

Cool quotes and such

"Real friends do not count chromosomes!" I love this quote so much and I ran across it on a Facebook profile for Down Syndrome. I finally caved and created a Facebook account and found it on there. Love it! David is blessed with so many friends at this stage of his life and I just pray that it continues. Raising a child with DS is fun, exhausting, and overall we just feel so blessed to get to raise this wild man. Parenting any child is not easy, but when you have a child with a disability small milestones become a huge celebration!

Inclusion is such a buzz word these days but what does it really mean for David? So far, we have been blessed that David has been in an educational setting where he is truly "included". Basically that means that he has been for the last two years in a regular classroom with his friends. Yes, he has support people in place such as an occupational therapist, physical therapist, speech therapist, special ed teacher and such, but all these wonderful ladies help make a regular classroom work for David.

I pray for David as he gets older that these friends he is in class with will always love and accept him because they have been in class together since Pre-K. My prayer for David is just like any other mommy's prayer that my child is loved, accepted, and is learning at school despite the number of chromosomes he has:)

Unfortunately in my school days years ago, children with IEPs were not in typical classes and I did not get the precious opportunity to get to know a child like David because he/she never sat beside me in class. Hopefully David and Kyle's generation will be so much more tolerant and open-minded of others because of inclusion in their classrooms now:)

Flowing Along

Flowing along pretty much sums us up these days. We have had beautiful fall weather around here this week and I took the kids outside to play tonight and caught these fun pictures:)

Hope and I hosted our first playgroup here today and it was such fun-despite the fact that Hope slept through most of the playtime:) It was nice to sit and chat with some other moms and catch up. It has been four years since I was in a playgroup last. I was amazed this morning getting ready for everyone to come over. If you would have told me this time last year that I would be hosting playgroup for my daughter I would have laughed. But sure, enough that is what we did today. Life is always full of surprises-God likes to keep us on our toes:)

I LOVE the expressions on Hope and David's faces. He was singing her the bee song and she was loving his attention.

Kyle loving on Hope. They miss her so much when they are in school:)

Sweet girl

Hope is not quite ready for the bumbo seat yet, but I did try her in it yesterday just for fun.
Our Davey-he wears us out so much, but he makes life so much fun also.

Both boys are settling in to school and doing great. This week is such a relief from the stress of last week. I made chicken pot pie tonight for the family, and it was a HIT. I will post the recipe tomorrow-protein, lots of veggies in an easy to make casserole that everyone loved. I am so thrilled when I find stuff like that to make:)