New York City

We were in New York City for 5 days this past week (pictures above). We went with my sister and brother-in-law, who won their trip from a Pepsi bottle cap! The trip was quite an experience! It is a whole different world there! Crazy people and crazy traffic everywhere. It was fun to visit, but I definitely wouldn't want to live there. The buildings are amazing. There is so much to see there. We went to the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Times Square, Rockefeller Center, The Today Show, Central Park, South Seaport, and China Town. We also drove by Ground Zero. It was nice to get away, but I missed my kids like crazy!!



Austin and I got back to our school work as soon as I got back home, but um....he seems to have forgotten several of his reading words. So, this week was pretty much reviewing things we've already gone through.



Tak, the tadpole, didn't make it past a week. We now have two more, Austin named them Donkey and Diddy (after Donkey Kong). If these two don't make it...I think I'll just buy a little aqua frog.



Amber put Josie (the hamster) into her ball to run around in last week. After awhile she decided to put her back in the cage, but when she went to take her out of the ball she jumped. She landed on the dresser and scurried into the back of Amber's stereo speaker. Amber said she tried to shake her out, but she wouldn't come out. Pretty soon she heard chewing sounds. She was afraid Josie was either going to get hurt or the stereo speaker was going to get hurt! She pushed the stereo "on" button and twirled the volume on full blast. "Thump kaboom kaboom thump." Josie came out. Amber was telling me about all this, and I said, "Um...Amber...does Josie seem okay? Can she HEAR you when you come in the room now?!" She said, "MOM! Don't say that! You don't think she is deaf do you?"

Bubble Ho-ho-ho!

The kids have gotten a little too big to put the bath bubble Santa beards on in the tub and go "ho-ho-ho." So our dog Sammy gets to be the pretend Santa. :) ! Actually, there are rubber duckies in the tub with Austin, and Sammy is trying to get them out.

Our City

Austin and I have been studying about our city this past week. We went to the library and picked up some great books on Council Bluffs. Some of those old pictures are just amazing. It really caught Austin's attention when he saw an old picture of a church that was around in the 1880's that still stands close by our house today, and all the old cars and stores that were near it.

Since the railroad helped to establish our city, we took a field trip to the Railroad Museum. It was a lot of fun. I think Austin really enjoyed it. They had one section that was like a train simulator. You sat in the engineer's seat, and looked out the train windows and it looked like you were really driving the train through a city! After we left there, we went to Bayliss Park and sat by the new fountain.

The first picture is Austin working on the keyboard with his eye gaze system. I think he is getting a little better with the smaller targets. He has just started typing out some of his reading words.

This kid likes games, games, games. Board games, computer games, online games, video games. He even likes to watch GSN - The gameshow network! We've been playing bingo with reading words and Roxie's Reading Fish, Willie Watchdog, and some Math computer games. He LOVES these all!

Couple New Additions to the Family

Within the last week we've had two new additions to our family. Austin got a grow-a-frog tadpole by mailorder, and Amber got a hamster for her birthday.

Austin named his tadpole Tak after a video game that we have been playing.

Amber named her hamster Josie, after a song she likes. I don't have a picture of Josie yet, but she is cute. Much cuter than Tak I must say.