Back home, but no slowing down

After traveling 4 out of 6 weeks we are home now for a month and half. But we're not slowing down at all. Andrew actually traveled to Denver from Saturday to Thursday to go to a conference for work. He spent his time golfing, rafting, schmoozing clients and running around like crazy! He's back home again now. My mom and Dave have been here all week helping with the kids and visiting. We went to the Mall of America and the MN Zoo. Ella has thoroughly enjoyed the multitude of people available to "go play in Ella's room" with her.

Ella also started "summer school" which really is a speech therapy session but through the school district. It is located at the school where her preschool is though so she will be well acclimated by the fall. She had no problem saying good-bye to me and then simply said, "Hi Mom." when I returned. Hi MOM. What, is she 8 years old? She'd never said Mom before, always Mommy or Mama. My little girl is growing up!

She also started a feeding program with an occupational therapist. It's once a week and through Capable Kids where she gets her private speech therapy. It is designed to help introduce her to eating new and different foods and get her to move outside of her comfort zone with textures and colors. She is borderline with sensory issues and her food intake seems to fall into that category. She pretty much only eats white or yellow foods and meat (unless it involves sugar than it doesn't matter what color it is, of course). At any rate, our first session was very interesting and I think this will be very helpful.

Ella has had a busy week, she also tried out a gymnastics class at a place called My Gym. She had fun and it was good for her to be in a group/teacher session. She had to follow directions and I think she had fun. She's never done anything structured before so it was new for her to not just run in and play.

Lily was lost without Ella. She just doesn't know what to do without her around to play with or watch. When we walked in the door, Lily came running saying, "Ella, Ella, Ella!" all excited and gave her a big hug! It was very cute. Lucky for her Ella's preschool is pretty much during her naptime so she won't even miss her!

In other news, our digital camera broke on 4th of July. Someone (ahem, I won't mention who) dropped it and it finally broke (this was probably the fifth time we've dropped it so it took a lot for it to finally go). However, I did get a fancy schmancy new camera out of it. I'm still learning how to use it. But I'm very excited about it and will probably be even more camera happy than I already am (I know, you're thinking, how is that possible?). And we will have lots of photo opportunities coming up in the next few weeks! Next weekend we are hosting the first annual Isaacson Golfapalooza event for Knox alumni golfers and families. Their other events are mostly for the guys so we thought it would be fun for us to all get together with wives and kids too.

The following weekend we will be having Ella's birthday party. Then my cousin Cindy's annual pig roast and Ella actual birthday the weekend after that. So like I said, we're home, but we're not slowing down! :-)

Hope you all are having a great summer so far!