At Home in the Mountains

 We had a great Christmas that flashed by before we knew what was happening. My parents came to Dallas this year. They arrived Saturday night, stayed with Tammy and then went to Mansfield for a couple days On Monday, we went to Mansfield for Baby Jude's 1st birthday party and then my parents came home with us that night. On Christmas eve, the Hall clan (minus Brad who had to work til ridiculously late :( ) came over. We had one of our favorite Eckstein family Christmas meals--TAMALES! Yum!  After dinner, we opened gifts. The kids had a great time. Maddy and Bethany both made gifts for each other. Maddy got a play dough bead necklace from Bethany and Maddy made Bethany a little door hanger/ornament with lots of pink and purple and the intial "B". (She has been watching Mommy work.)  On Christmas morning, Maddy got her new kitty, Genevieve. Maddy LOVES this kitty. Now the trick is to get her to treat the kitty right so the kitty loves her back. Maddy has had fun ...

Holding her favorite kitty, "Genevieve"  We had a lovely ice storm over the weekend that started late Thursday night or early Friday morning. We were keeping some kittens and a momma for a friend for a couple of days and that turned into all weekend because of the storm. Good thing we had them to entertain us since everything else imaginable got cancelled this weekend--church, craft fair, Dallas Marathon, school, etc. Snuggling with James  Fortunately Aaron is a pretty good driver on icy roads so we were able to get out quite a bit to do errands etc. On Friday we went over to some friends and Aaron and Maddy went sledding with them. On Saturday we went out and did our Christmas shopping. Great day to take care of that and don't think we would have had another time to do it anyway. Lot's of businesses were shut down because of the ice and I would say Saturday was the worst day for the roads because it was so cold we never got any thaw that day. Tammy and Jeff ...

Wow! Where to start? We are going along at blazing speed it seems. I am so ready for the semester to be over and enjoy a few lazy days before Christmas hits full blast.  I will just give some pic and some news blurbs about what is going on. News blurb #1: At my last doctor's appointment (30 wks) I hadn't grown or gained so they decided to do a sonogram to make sure baby was growing correctly. I was very nervous, even though I suspected that all was fine, given our past history with Maddy. Sometimes you just can't help those bad memories coming in and nagging at the corners of your brain. Fortunately they had sono appts available that afternoon and Aaron was able to get off work and come to the appt. The sonogram went great. Baby was 3 lbs 7 oz and 15 in long--two days ahead of scheduled due date. We also found out for sure that we are having a GIRL!! Now to finalize a name.......... News blurb #2: Maddy is starting to read. After the sonogram we picked her up at scho...

I always stop and remember this day as the day that completely changed my life. No one but me remembers now, but this is the day that we had Maddy's 20 week sonogram. This day is not sad to me anymore; it is just an important day to remember. On that day I was not ready for my life to change so dramatically. I didn't want to have to be challenged or deal with the difficult circumstances that we were dealing with. I just wanted out...but there was no way out. Looking back I have to laugh at myself. There was no way to see it on that side, but God had an amazing plan for our family. He had a plan to give us more joy and more understanding of who he is. Many of the times in the last five years have not been easy, but they have been worth it. We would not trade Maddy for anything and love every part of who she is, even when sometimes part of who she is drives us crazy, like doing the exact opposite of what the photographers tell her to do when trying to take her picture (event f...

Look, Mom! I'm a walrus! We had our first parent teacher conference for Maddy yesterday. Maddy's teacher, Miss Zohra, is a very nice lady and seems to really like Maddy. Having never done a parent teacher conference, I didn't really know what to expect. It was informative in some ways, but since we have no past performance to compare how she's doing in school now, it is hard to tell what all of the evaluation actually means. I felt that there were several things as far as fine motor skills that we need to watch, and if we don't see improvement, it may mean re-admitting into OT. They do a really comprehensive eval sheet for every aspect of learning. They don't just focus on academics, but also evaluate life skills and social skills. The score 1-3 in all of the different levels. 1 is above age expectation, 2 is age appropriate, and 3 is needs work. Maddy got 2's and 3's on everything. One of the things we found from the evaluation, something we...

Yesterday, when she got home from school: Maddy: Hey, Mrs. Mom. Mrs. Mom, I love you! Me: I love you too. Maddy (walking away): Okay, Mom. Good talk. Last night, before bed (listing some things to pray about): Maddy: I'm thankful for pancakes every day. I'm a pancake machine. I 'splode pancakes! Me (in a confused tone at first): You.."'splode" pancakes?......HA HA HAHA HA AHA HA.... (several minutes of uncontrollable giggling between the two of us follows) As my Dad would say, it was after 9.............................................................................................

Here is a not very good quality, slightly odd picture of baby at 26 weeks. I keep forgetting Aaron to take a pic so had to do it while I was thinking of it. Sadly this is the first pic of this sort I've taken. I wasn't very good at remembering to do them with Maddy either, but I do have few more of her. Maybe I can get a few more shots in in the next 3 months so baby 2 won't feel too left out.

So, Aaron and I haven't finalized any names yet, but Maddy has a few suggestions. Here are her top three picks: 1. Sleeping Beauty  (or as she says it, "sleeping doody") 2. Cutie 3. Bethany Sleeping Beauty is by far the favorite, most often mentioned name choice. Once, I ventured to suggest that Sleeping Beauty could be the baby's nickname because she will be a beauty and it would be great if she slept all the time. Maddy quickly countered with, "No, her real name can be Sleeping Beauty and her nickname can be Cinderella."

Last weekend we went to York for homecoming. On the way home, we stopped at the rest stop with the memorial for Grandpa's army division in Gainesville. The memorial lists all the soldiers from that division that died. Maddy was asking why Grandpa's name wasn't on the memorial and then she wanted to know about WWII so we gave her a very brief overview. Ever since she has off and on been asking about Hitler, Grandpa fighting Hitler, why Hitler was a bad guy, etc. Well today she wanted to see a picture of Hitler so we looked it up on the internet. Then she wanted to see a picture of Grandpa so we looked him up on the internet too. If you Google images for Stephen D. Eckstein Jr. he is the first one that pops up. Pretty impressive! Then she wanted to see a picture of Grandpa and Hitler fighting. That made me laugh. Then she asked, "Mommy, why didn't God protect all of the soldiers that died? Why did he only protect Grandpa?" Wow! What a question. My answer: "...

Fall is zipping by. With the three of us all having different school schedules and all of the fun, random activities thrown in, I haven't had time to breath until this week, which is fall break at DBU. Aaron still has to go into the office everyday and Maddy still has school this week, so I'm the only one fully getting to enjoy the fall break benefits. I do have some grading waiting for me, but let's not ruin the day by talking about that. The Halls stayed with us from end of July until mid September as they worked out all of their transitions from the house in Denver to their new house here.  Maddy enjoyed having Bethany time everyday, but I know everyone was ready for their space by the time everything was over. We ran down to Mansfield a few times that weekend helping them get stuff moved. The next weekend was Bethany's birthday party. Cindy did a great job on the Mickey and Minnie Mouse cakes (which I have no pictures of because I forgot to take my camera. this wi...

Maddy started Pre-K at a Montessori school on August 26th. That was back to school for all of us since DBU started classes the same day. This school has uniforms. Maddy was supposed to have a jumper but the order didn't come in on time so she ended up wearing one of her uniform shirts with some khaki pants. This picture does full justice to how cute she looked for her first day at school. A lot of people have heard of Montessori schools, but don't really know what they do. Some misconceptions about Montessori are that the teachers never tell the kids no, the kids do whatever they want all the time, there is no structure, etc. This couldn't be farther from the truth about well-run, certified Montessori schools.  Because Montessori schools aren't regulated by one governing body, anyone can claim to be a Montessori pretty much. So if you do choose a Montessori school, it's important to closely check where the teachers get their certifications, credentials and trai...