Caterpillar.

I was dashing around the house today cleaning up, you know, sweeping, sorting, organizing, etc.....
I walk by Sammy's door and spotted her peacefully playing by herself with her ponies and dollies.  It just made my day hearing her soft little voice say "jacket", as she dressed her little pony with some baby doll clothes and "sippy" as she pointed at the dollies play sippy cup. I could have ate her up with a spoon.  She is growing up so fast, my little caterpillar, and becoming a butterfly way too soon!







I love this little girl!  She is the sunshine of my day.  The first thing in the morning she hollers is "Mommy" so I can hear her from the other room  and it just melts my heart and when I push open her door she just smiles from ear to ear.  Love you Sammy! Just keep being sweet ok! Spread your wings and fly pretty girl!

On a whim.

Don't you just love to do something spontaneous! I all of the sudden remembered I had some white chocolate and chocolate morsels and had to use them in something. 






It was much fun and the kids really enjoyed helping and then eating.


There is nothing like a rainbow of sprinkles left for Mama to clean up. That's what Mama's are for Right!!



Earlier before we played with chocolate and sprinkles I tried to capture some of the beautiful Fall colors. I was a little disappointed because I forgot how fast it gets dark in the evening here in North Carolina after the time change. Well, I got some good shots despite the darkness falling. We took a trip up our road to see what we could find.

















This is a big oak tree behind my house.  The sun was setting, it looked like it was on fire as goldish orange as it was.  I Love Fall!!!!! Going out in the morning to see if I can get anymore beautiful colors caught on camera.

Costumes, Food, and Fun.

I finally got around to uploading pics of the Halloween party we had Friday night. The kids had a great time.  Before we had people over I had to decorate and that took some preparation and most of all time. We made some homemade Halloween decorations which I believe turned out really cute! We spent the whole week making these.

Glittery Bats.......


A huge trash bag tarantula.........


Milk Carton Ghosts......... Which by the way look really cute at night.

Check out the scary cemetery




We had some really good food.


Yummy Halloween cupcakes.....


and chocolate covered marshmallow spiders.



We played games like pumpkin bowling.....


The kids wore some really cute costumes........






Let's see... We had a race car driver, a fairy, a butterfly, a princess, a punk rock star, bumblebee transformer, a policeman, a ninja warrior, a pirate, spider man, a cat, a skeleton, and think that is all, not sure. The funny thing is the kids loved the hay the most. When all else fails, get a bale of hay, lol! They love that stuff. They jump off of it, sit on it, jump from one to the other, and rearrange it. 

I will have to say it turned out pretty well and I was exhausted for like 2 days afterwards after all of the preparation, but it was definitely worth it.

Cheap Halloween Fun.

Ok, so I am planning this Halloween party. In my head I have all of these ideas zooming around and have been googling ideas and how to make this and that. So far we have made a trash bag spider http://familyfun.go.com/crafts/trash-bag-tarantula-665445/ and some trash bag ghosts http://www.ehow.com/how_4528099_garbage-bag-halloween-ghost.html. In our Halloween decorations/scene I am going to make a spider web out of white yarn and put a stuffed cat and some little black spiders, and some of those plastic jack-o-lanterns you can get for 50cents to $1 pretty much anywhere like walmart, dollar general, dollar tree.  We got ours at target. 

It is fun for the kids too, they loved wadding up the news papers to stuff the ghosts and spiders. We did a Mr. Potato Head Pumpkin too, those kits are $6 at Target, I couldn't pass it up, the kids loved those too. It's always fun to print off Halloween and Fall coloringhttp://www.kaboose.com/ pages and activity pages. We got ours from http://funschool.kaboose.com/, http://www.kaboose.com/,  and there are tons more. Just google it. There are Disney themed ones and so many more fun sites to print from.  I made coloring books to give out at our party. 

One last thing I did was go to our local library and get some Halloween and Fall books, Halloween movies, and Halloween Cd's.  If they don't have what u want at that particular branch, they can look it up in other branches affiliated with them and let u know what they have available. Our library has a courier who will deliver the items to our branch. CAN YOU SAY FREE FUN!

I will post pictures of our creations soon!

Halloween fun for everyone even ideas for our special needs kids.

So I came across a blog today that I thought had some really great links and ideas for either just playing with your kids or having a Halloween/costume party. I just printed a bunch of the Halloween  coloring pages/activity pages. The kids love them. Also started drumming up in my head about having our own Halloween party. I really enjoyed it because it has some great ideas for kids who are tube fed and/or not as mobile as their peers.  Enjoy and let me know if you have any other fun ideas! !

 (This is a re-post. Original post by Colleen of Finding Our Way Home.)

Kennedy has always enjoyed trick or treating and candy, up until last year. She is now totally reliant on tube feedings and does not enjoy eating, so the typical trick or treating is out! This year I would like to make Halloween fun still and found some great ideas I wanted to share.

Want to have a Halloween party, or celebrate with the family...how about some fun games!

~ Pass the pumpkin is a musical chairs type game involves passing small pumpkins and gourds and when the music stops the person without a pumpkin is out. Play until there is a winner. This sounds like such a great idea for kids that are in wheelchairs vs. the traditional musical chairs. You could play some spooky halloween music.

~Eyeball bouncing by decorating ping pong balls like eyeballs and having the kids try to bounce them into plastic pumpkins...give out small prizes for getting the ball in.

~Halloween Bingo ~make your own bingo pieces with halloween pictures...you could find pics online or have the kids create some themselves.

~Print out some halloween puzzles, games or coloring pages

More Halloween Activities:

Paint/decorate pumpkins ....cutting and painting too hard...try some cool Mr. Potato head kits

(here is one we did)

~Watch a halloween movie

~Read some Halloween books ~We found a cute one that is a sticker book, Skippyjon Jones Costume Crazee. You can dress Skippyjon Jones in different costumes. It is very cute! Need to practice counting...check out A Happy Halloween.

~Visit a pumpkin patch, corn maze, or go on a haunted hay ride.

Have your own costume party, scavenger hunt, or trick or treating with non candy items:

~pencils

~crayons and coloring books

~temporary tattoos

~playdough

~hair accessories or jewelry

~bouncy balls

~plastic animals

~bubbles

~stickers

Want to enjoy some tasty treats? Try tastes of lollipops, spray candies, and Fun dip, cinnamon sticks, and popsicles.

Whatever you do try to remember that Halloween is about having some spooky fun, not eating candy! Does your tube fed child still want to go trick or treating....Trick or Treat for Unicef! Help kids in other parts of the world get the things they need to survive and grow!

Ahhhhh!!!!

Oh my goodness. I was going to do this post with some really cute pictures, but for some reason, the memory card in my camera is not recognizing them now. I don't know what happened.  I looked at them over the weekend and now they are gone.  I also put the disc into my computer yesterday and it pulled up a couple and then today Nada!!!

Oh well, it was going to be of us going to a zoo last Friday. It is called Lazy 5 Ranch. It is crazy! You can drive thru in your car or go on a wagon ride. They have lamas, zebras, water buffalo, giraffes, ostriches, crazy looking animals that i don't even know what they are.  It is so cool because they r so tame. I mean I wouldn't get out of my car or anything in the middle of them, I've seen to many horror stories of people getting attacked by what they call pets. But we always take our car,  and the lamas and zebras and all stick their head in your window because they think u r going to feed them. It is sooo funny. I mean a real live zebra wanting to be petted.  So cool!!! They have those little dancing animals from the Madagascar movie, i forget the names of them.  They sing "I want to move it, move it!" Sammy screeched at the top of her lungs and was soooo excited, she thought they were hilarious.  They have camels, donkeys, sheep, different kinds of birds. It is crazy what they have.  I wish I had pictures.  Sometimes technology drives me crazy!

Oh, hooray for Worldwide Day of Prayer, Sb kids!!!

In the back of my mind.

This has been a very interesting past couple of days.  I wonder why people do or say some of the things they say. Did their parents not teach them manners or is just one of those things people attain making it a habit to say very disrespectuful and hurtful things.  I wonder how they would feel if the role was reverse. Maybe they were treated with disrespect and they say and do those things because they want to fit in and be "cool."  Maybe they are just heartless and just don't care.  I have learned to make negatives into positives throughout life. Some things are just beyond me, I just don't see how people can be so mean. 
I have a daughter with spina bifida (Myelomeningocele is a birth defect in which the backbone and spinal canal do not close before birth. The condition is a type of spina bifida.)

This is her


I get on a forum with other parents of kids with spina bifida and posted a picture of Samantha with her walker. Evidentally I posted it to my profile and left it public and also posted in on the spina bifida group i get on.  It is a great support system.  Unfortunately, somebody, not in this group of people, but in this particular online community(there are other groups), felt the need to post a very disturbing term under my beautiful child's picture.      "Haha Retard."
Isn't that just lovely.  I just love putting up with idiots.  It stabbed thru my heart like a knife just twisting around in my chest.  I probably got flushed because not only was I shocked, but angry.  I thought to myself "Is this for real." "Is someone joking." If so "Not Funny." Most people use the term "retard" for mentally handicap people.  Doesn't that word just bother you, it does me! It just isn't pleasant. 
That word just stings I think because everone knows it is used as a generic insult.  Nobody can help the fact that they have a particular disability whether it is mental or physical.  It is sad that people can be so mean.  Needless to say I emailed the person to let her know she can back off of my kid! She emailed me back and acted she leaves her computer up with that particular community on it and it must have been someone else in the house and that she would never say anything like that to anyone.  She said she didn't know if it was anyone else or what. Acted like she didn't know who it was, what! You don't know who lives in your house and gets on your computer. Figure it out lady, and teach them some manners!!!!! 

Ok, so i got this off my chest and my angry blog out of the way and I am not going to think about it anymore.  I refuse to let rude people drag me down!