Catching up...

Photo taken at Six Flags June 2010

It seems as though the months have flown by since we've updated our family blog. You may be anxious to hear how Matthew's first year of school went in kindergarten or how Andrew did in first grade... Well, there just isn't enough room to include it all or you'd be reading for hours. So lets just say it was a pretty uneventful school year. Matthew adjusted well to Kindergarten and looks forward to first grade in the fall. Of course he made lots of friends and did well in school. Andrew, again did well in first grade despite our fears of the higher expectations. He continues to receive PT, OT, Speech and all his other support staff regularly help him each day.
Now that summer is here, we've hired a nanny who is working out really well! The boys are happy to be home for the summer and we're happy to have the stress taking off of bringing Andrew to therapy everyday during the summer and bringing the boys to camp etc. She's been really great at helping the boys really learn this summer by doing homework time, library time and daily outings like blueberry picking and the park. We've also installed a pool this year!! Our greatest purchase to date for entertaining. Not only do the boys love the pool, but we do too and it gave us a big excuse to finally replace our failing deck. Now we've got a great place to sit, relax and entertain with no worries of the whole thing collapsing. We were lucky to have an acquaintance of Sean's give us their pool that they didn't want, so we were able to finally afford it. Andrew's physical therapist for the summer is starting aquatic therapy on Wednesday so this should be interesting but hopefully successful.
Sean and I continue to work hard and the summer has been filled with fun outings. We went camping in June/July, which was beautiful weather the whole time. We took the boys on a surprise trip to Six Flags and Lake George on the last day of school. We surprise them by bringing them to dinner, stayed in a hotel with a waterslide and surprised them with the theme park & waterpark the next day. Their faces were priceless.
Sean competed in the Plattsburgh Half Marathon this past April and did great for his first time. He seems to be a natural runner. Sean & I competed in the Lake Placid Half Marathon and ran together the whole way. It was quite the challenge and hope to be able to go again next year. We both have been running a lot and feel great about staying healthy. We also competed in the Boilermaker 15k in Utica which was a huge race through Utica that ends at a brewery! It was an amazing race along with about 14,000 other entrants in 80+ degree heat. And a few other smaller local 5k races.
Matthew has been happily competing in the local fun runs and has gotten quite competitive about his running. He won his first race a few weeks ago and we're so proud of him. He also did great playing his first season of coach pitch baseball. Andrew was unable to continue his Hippotherapy this summer but we hope to be able to get him in and riding the horses real soon. Andrew is happy enough to cheer us all on... although we can tell that sometimes he feels left out. It's difficult to find activities to get him into with is disability.
So we've been pretty busy lately and apologize to all of you who follow our family's blog... We'll try to update more frequently... Especially since we are looking down the road at Andrew having another surgery in September. We'll update more as the information comes to us. The blogs were a great way to update you all on his progress and recovery during his last surgery, so we'll be sure to keep this up and running again.