September 18th 2008
Hello family and friends,
Tomorrow is Kensington's 1st birthday. Happy birthday.
Hope you get lots of fun noisy stuff to drive your parents crazy. :) XOXOXO
Stephanie Stoddards birthday is on Monday the 22nd. Happy early Birthday
It has been a good week, the usual cleaning, laundry, preschool, shopping, etc. As you can all tell we changed our blog again. I hope you like it. I wanted a bigger type space and more room to add fun things, like a new slide show. We met with Grant's teacher today. I think it went well. She is working on some things for us. We are going to be adding somethings to his IEP. She was very understanding. She let us know that the parents of the other boys had been contacted and they where working with them as well. So hopefully this takes care of that... I pray. I am going up to Mom Stringham's house in the morning after Grant goes to school to do freezer peaches. I am excited to get them done. I feel really bad our neighbor next door got layed off from his job. I wish I knew how to help them! Its times like this it really help put things into perspective. I am very grateful Mike has a good job. We are not millionaires, but we have what we need, I am very grateful for that. We are all very rich in our own ways. I added a food for thought column. My friend Jamie emailed me some good things so... take a read. Thanks again for all your support with Grant. Kandace, thank you for letting me talk your ear off today why I folded laundry. I hope you got all your stuff done. I didn't Ha ha. Natalie is going to come over tomorrow night and Saturday to see if we, or should I say she, can get the volcano painted on Grant's wall before she leaves us and moves to St. George :(. I will take pictures. Mike is going to Vegas for another job on Sunday or Monday for a week :(. But we get to go together with Stephanie and Alan on the 2ND of October with no kids, what will we do with our selves for 4 day. I'm sure we will think of something ha ha. Well I thinks that is about it for know. Love lots Janie

Our Family In Ohio

We love and miss you very much!!!

Kandace and Kensington

I took these pictures off their blog :) thanks

Kris and Kensington (Lu Lu)

Kort, Kramer and Kassey

Having a little fun.

Kensington (Lu Lu)

FRUITS OF OUR LABOR!

9/15/08

Brinlee wanted to hold her grass head instead of a veggie.

Our tomatoes, bell peppers and

squash did pretty good this year.

The eggplant, cucumber and pumpkins

didn't do so well maybe next year.

This is suppose to be a straight neck squash.

Looks like a pear. HUM!!

This is the biggest zucchini we

have picked this year.

And the strangest straight neck.

The kids wanted to help pick tomatoes.

See how helpful they are!!

We asked them to wait until they are

RED, next time.

9/15/08 10:45am

Another Grant update. Mike called his teacher today and we are going to be meeting with her on Thursday. Its is the soonest Mike can work it out with the job he is on. Not real happy we have to wait. I wanted it yesterday. She said they had separated the boys and had taken some other action. I'm not sure what that means. I guess we will find out. Shelly, my cousin called me this morning with some concerns and advice that really helped. We are going to have them add some new bathroom goals to his IEP. We hope by them working with him, he will understand what should and should NOT happen in the bathroom. Also to work on helping him with his pants and other things he struggles with. Keep him in your prayers.

Thanks again for all your concern. Love Janie

9/15/08
New update.... for those of you who read the post below about Grant and had concerns like we did. After talking to family and my good friend Thalea (her and her husband are school teachers). We decided it was best if we went in and talk to the teacher. Mike and I both. We are not sure what will come of it all , but we will let you all know what happens . Say a prayer it will go well. Thanks again for all the love and concern for our little angel.
Love Mike and Janie

Dinner at our house with

the Stringham clan, to

celebrate Grants Birthday.

9/14/08

Craggie loves to help his big brother.

One of Grants favorite things is........

presents!!

He loves books.I find him all the time

sitting on his bed surrounded

with books. Its GREAT.

Steve, Cindy, Lindsey, Scott

and Natalie Stringham.

Watching the wrapping fly.

All the Stringham Grand kids.

Thanks for all the great gifts!!!

Jason, Dad and Sunny.

Brinlee, Courtney and the

back of Spencer.

Cute little Antalya.

Cake time!!

Triceratops Cake.

In case you couldn't tell:)

Happy Birthday to you!!

still singing.... they sound great!!

Make a wish buddy!!

Latest New's

Hello today is Sunday the 14th of September.

It is my cousin Shelly's Birthday today, Happy Birthday.

And my cute little niece in Ohio, Kenzington (Lu Lu) is turning one on Friday the 19. WOW!! Happy First birthday. Save us some cake!! We miss and love you!!

I am going to try to give a quick run down of the past week. I realize I am not really good at making things short. Here are a few funny things Brooklyn said this week. I was folding laundry and she said "I want to wear one of those" pointing to my bra, I said oh soon enough. She said "look mom (she had it on) I have big elbows mom" ha ha. She looked at me for a minute and realized she said it wrong. It was so funny. She used to call her boo boos pumpkins. She was playing dolls on her bed and I kept hearing her say "oh no you spit up let me get that." Then she would say "burp", I asked her what she was doing she said "I am playing I am Aden's mommy". It was so cute. Then I was in the basement cleaning up the toy room and I keep smelling pickles on Craig. I thought oh the girls must have given them one of their pickles, but it keep getting stronger and the floor was wet. Then I realized the girls gave him sippy cup full of pickle juice, yuk. They said he wanted a drink and it juice. ha ha. We took the kids to the State Fair on Thursday night. Steph and Allen got us free tickets. We had a really good time. We called Nat on the way to talk to her about some stuff and she was already at the Fair with her friend, so we met up with them and saw the animals and, we went to the Little Hand on the Farm. The kids really liked that. Mike and the kids rode the big yellow slide and the kids rode the train. Check out the pictures below, they're fun. On not such a funny note Grant had some trouble at school that has left me upset, worried and uneasy to say the least. I got a short note from the teacher say Grant had a card pulled on him for looking at other students in the bathroom. That had me a little worried what she meant. I thought oh Grant pees sitting down ( I'm sure you all wanted to know this) so he was probably wondering what the other boys were doing at the urinals. I know it was innocent because Grant is not aware of what is appropriate staring and what is not appropriate staring. So I wrote a note back explain this and that we had talked to him but I was not sure if I got the just of it all and asked her to call me. I had called Kandace in Ohio to help give me some advice and we thought that was probably all it was. The teacher called me and said well that was not the case. Some kids in the regular 2ND grade class came out and told her three of her boys where in the bathroom comparing the size of their fellas. I said Grant does not even understand that he would even know who to bring that up. She agreed. One boy understood what was going on and two didn't. I was so sick to my stomach I didn't know what to do. So I got off the phone with the teacher with a bunch of more question that just flooded me. I called Kandace back and told her what the teacher said, between crying. It helped so much to talk to her. But I am so worried about what happens if someone does something to Grant, because he doesn't understand what is OK and not. I don't know how to explain this to him. I tried to tell him what to do if someone tried to touch him. He thought I was angry at him. It just breaks your heart when you don't know how to protect your kids even at school. I don't want him thinking something like this is OK and doing the same to someone else, totally innocent in his mind not thinking he is hurting someone. It is hard to have a child with special needs and to have to trust he is going to be safe when you can't be there. Even why I am writing this I have been crying. The teacher says he is such a sweet boy, but how do I keep him that way. I have decided to write the teacher. Sorry Kandace I know you said to got talk to her but I am afraid I will back down on everything I need to say. I don't want him going to the bathroom with all the kids. I need to know he is going to be safe and nothing can escalate from this incident. To some I may be going overboard. But it would kill me if anything like that happened. We're prepared to have kids bully him, we can handle that, but I don't want him to deal with something like this. I know the hurt it brings with it. Sorry for my drama, but please just keep him in your prayers. Back to an up lifting note, I went to the Time Out for Women Conference on Saturday. It was just what I needed. My friend Steph invited me to go with her, her Grandma and Aunts. Kenneth Cope sang and spoke. Mary Ellen Edmund spoke along with Merilee Boyak, Amanda Dickson from KSL radio, Sharon Larson and Camille Fronk Olsen it was great. We stayed at Steph's Aunt Linda's house. We stayed up way too late talking but had a great time . Then of course we had to stop at the DI in Logan to check it out. We got stuck in the Logan Canyon behind the football game traffic and the construction for about 45 min. It was crazy! We met up with her hubby in Bountiful ( he was up there for a wedding reception). We were starving so we stopped at Village Inn. We had a not so helpful waitress. Then I came home and stayed up late trying to get the blog updated why the kids were sleeping. The Stringham Family is all coming to dinner tonight and to celebrate Grant's Birthday with them. It will be nice to see all of them and the new baby again. Love ya lots, till next week. Janie Sorry! I just can't keep anything short.

Dad and Mom Neve's New

house in Bloomington Hill,

Utah.They close the 2ND

week in October.

It is really nice we took a tour online

we are so excited for them.

The kids are really excited to go swimming

and have a sleepover.

TIME OUT FOR WOMEN IN LOGAN UTAH.

9/13/2008

These are the cool bags they gave us at the

conference.My friend Stephanie invited me to

go to this with her,her grandma, her aunt,

and her great aunt. We had a great time.

This is a cool wall at her Aunt Linda's house. I

want to do this to one of my walls.

I had to take a picture.

From left to right: Grandma, Aunt Linda,

Stephanie, Great Aunt Marie.

Stephanie and I.

We caught you laughing!!!

Steph's grandma is so cute. She reminds

me of my grandma.It made me really miss her.

She said I could adopt her as my grandma.

She told me to come visit her

with Steph sometime in Idaho.

We stayed at Aunt Linda's house Friday

night.Aunt Marie went to bed at 10:00pm,

Grandma made it until 12:30am the rest

of us went to bed around 1:00am

Sisters by chance friends by choice.

I feel so dumb, someone come stand with me.

Thanks grandma!

This is not a very good picture I was to far

for the flash and it was so dark .

We didn't like any of the pictures we took of us

but I found the better of the 10 or 20 we took

ha ha.

Why is it that the other person always thinks

you look good in the picture, and you

always think they look good in the picture,

but you never think you look good

in the picture. hum!!