Does summer fun really have to end?

Last week Ashley attended her second session of Soccer camp it was fabulous even the second time around.  Special needs soccer camp was the summer highlight for Ashley.  It was top notch.  I blogged about this back in July when she attended the first session.  The august session was  just as wonderful. Up on her feet walking, running and scoring goals plus time with friends what could be better. 

These two high school girls  in green shirts were very sweet and received volunteer hours to help Ashley run and score goals.  YAY!!! 

 One of Ashley's new buddies...

 Ashley with all the boys .. there was a few girls but boys definitely out number the girls.  She does like boyfriends especially this little boy Sean in the chair next to her..

 Ashley has another medal and beautiful trophy. The girl needs a trophy shelf now! How great is that.

The boys even tagged along and enjoyed the beautiful park as well as cheering on their sister.

Getting ready for school with some haircuts all around, check out these new looks.

Too cool for school or what?  Miss Ashley is not a fan of hair cuts as you can see here.

 Our evening at the park was fabulous.  Even if we need to bundle up a bit now.

School starts in one week right after labour day and I'm so not ready for that.   Please tell me summer is going to go on for another month or so.   I  need to get into  that  daily routine of getting 3 of 4  kids up and off to school.  I'm trying to get the kids to bed early each evening which is easy for Ashley but her brothers would love to stay up all hours of the night.     Tell me are you ready for school?  What will Taylor and I do while Ashley and her brothers in School all day ever day?   Things are going to change around here oh my.  

Hanging out - video

and check this out Ashley also loves walking around with her iPad in her princess basket preferably while  Justin is singing  Never Say Never.

Why the iPad and Proloquo2go is a definite win win

Yesterday Ashley was not her usual self at breakfast not really finishing her toast, which she asked for using prologo2go or interested in other yummy options like berries or yogurt being offered. Since she was so unhappy eating I placed her on the floor with her toys and her iPad.  She got right to work telling mommy and her  brother, what was up she quickly went to the something is wrong, then something hurts message.  Then repeated pressing it until Mommy came right back over and her older observant brother Damon was telling Mom Ashley hurts hurry up.  Both Damon and I didn’t notice right away but we looked her over and her ankle was swollen.  Also present tiny scratch marks and little bug bite.  She had been bitten by a bug and bug bites and her don’t mesh well she was upset and crying.   I don’t know how I missed it when I dressed her just before breakfast either if it was there at the time. But I was very thankful she was able to tell me so effectively this would not have been possible without the ipad and this amazing app!   I would likely have thought she didn’t sleep well she’s constipated who knows what when your child is non verbal sometimes even Moms don’t have the answers which is painful for all involved and very frustrating for my girl at times.   As I see Ashley getting better and better with this new tool. I’m very thankful she has a way to express herself it is such a gift.

She was even trying to bum scoot with her foot in the air to avoid using it. Luckily after some Benadryl and a number of hours her ankle was back to normal. But I was very pleased with my girl, her ipad and amazing app proloquo2go for letting this mom know what was going on.     

At a  quick glance it's hard to notice a bug bite if your child isn't pointing it out you.   You can't see it too much in the pictures I took but she was holding it up in the air while bum scooting yesterday.   I'm pretty proud of her for communicating this to her brother and I so effectively. 

Mission iPossible - is raising funds to put iPads in some other very deserving kids hands so they can communicate just this type of thing or just the fact that despite being non verbal they sure do know their stuff.  So hope on over and read all about their mission too. 

Hot weekend at home

My little fisherman in need of the lake. 

We set up a pool and played some  soccer! 

Such a caring  brother making sure Ashley gets her super girl juice aka power aid.  Not a usually drink for our high cal diet girl but something her older brothers love. She managed to have a sip.

I wish she would get thirsty especially when it's this hot.

Hose water was a little too chilly to climb right in.

One other way we cooled down this weekend.  My new favourite place MARBLE SLAB yum!

Yesterday my husband shopped, prepared and cooked up  a fabulous bbq dinner. It was so yummy and sweet especially the Malibu Sunset cocktails all this to help me celebrate my 40th birthday last week.  I felt very loved.

My neighbour brought these over for my birthday too.  Such a nice surprise. I have the very best neighbour.

What's happening around here... photo blog.

My boys can't seem to get enough of fishing lately

 Damon's here hoping to reel in something big.

James was pretty excited about this catch.  Which he believes to be a small mouth bass.

My amazing husband thought our dock needed to be leveled.. this was the perfect make work project for  a heat wave.  He is the best husband in the world always working so hard to look after us, our home and cottage.

Here's Ashley hanging out .. we really need some cushions for these chairs.

Taylor enjoys golfing especially if his brothers are going to retrieve his balls.  See how far he got on the dock. He will have this finished by the end of this weekend I'm sure.

Taylor is not a fan of the water despite the soaring temps. It's 100F / 38C in Canada today wow.

Moonsand was a hit.

These pictures are from  last week but I had to post them.  My girl with her trophy and medal she is a soccer super star!!!

Lastly one way to handle the heat a water table.   This pick taken when the grass was still green. Now after a week of extreme heat it's a nice shade of yellow. So lovely. 

How's your summer going?  Love to hear how your surviving the heat. 

Ashley Scores!

Today something very good happened Special Needs Soccer Camp.

Ashley was full of giggles the entire time.   She loves to be up and about she was on her feet for nearly 3 hours.  Walking, running, chasing the ball and scoring some goals.

The camp was first class it was hosted at a beautiful artificial turf field, lots of volunteers to help the kids Ashley had 2 or 3 helpers at times.  Everyone was so friendly talking to Ashley, encouraging her and cheering for her on.  The coaches were great at keeping the kids laughing with jokes too.  They had a nice tent and chairs and lots of cold  water for breaks.  Ashley got a great t-shirt. All the kids and parents had a great time.  It's was just so cool to see her playing soccer. She  goes again for the next two mornings it's just a 3 day camp but it runs again next month and they are still looking for more kids to attend so as long as we are not away she will be there for sure. Another really nice thing this camp is free for special needs kids all the cost of this camp are covered by corporate sponsors. The many helpers are also volunteer. It's really sweet.  Thanks YRSC.  There is so much good out there which was refreshing after this past week in blogworld and the never ending saga of the non-exsistant ipads.

Still feeling bad about the whole ipad thing but I took my warning post down as felt I was very hard on him and that's really not my style honest.   If your interested in this drama  please read about this on these two blogs they have much more grace and writing talent.  

Ken - Blogzilly - mission iPossible

&

Ellen's  LoveThatMax

Spent the day watching  my boys fish this weekend.  We stopped at Canadian Tire and picked up two new rods - turns out Taylor really needs a fishing rod too so I'll have to see if I can find a toy/rod for him no hook for sure.   Ashley prefers to sit lake side  and read or play barbie with mom.

This is what Taylor and Damon did for an hour while Ashley was inside doing physiotherapy.  It was fun for all as Ashley enjoys PT and the boys had a great time on this trampoline the hour which went  by in a flash.  We survived the first week of summer break nicely.

These two are too cute for words.

Can't wait to see what fun we have this week .. Ashley is attending Special Needs Soccer Camp.

Turns out there will be no ipad!

Well I learned that Ashley is not going to get her iPad this week and  I should have known weeks ago it was way to good to be true. I was foolishly  blogged about this ipad win here and here.   This person was very questionable and blogged for three years about his special needs daughter and used many giveaways and even guest blog posts on famous bloggers sites to generate traffic.   Then he asked for small donations with chances to win expensive products to get people to CHIPIN to a fund for his disabled daughter.  I noticed he was frequently reseting his CHIPIN back to zero over the last few months. Another obvious clue I over looked but thought was strange at the time.   He would tell the ipad winners that if he just collected $200 more his bosses would include extras.  He was very subtle in his requests for funds from the winners never asking too directly for money. He  was also always telling us sad stories of his child's suffering epilesy and needing brain surgery.      I reported this person to the  RCMP here in Canada but we have no way of knowing who he is except by his email address.

Please be aware  if you don't know someone in real life and they are looking for your money beware.  I won a few prizes on the internet from legit sources and real people they never ask for money even to ship across the border and always send the prizes right away.  They also never ask you to even blog about your win you just do to thank them once the prize arrives.

I never personally donated any money to his CHIPIN but I feel sick to my stomach that I promoted it here on my blog and posted in FB and retweeted some of his tweets.  He would ask us to do that stuff for him.  The iPad winners were being used to help promote something that's so questionable.  Which makes me upset that I took so long to realize this.   There will be more posts about this on the other winners blogs I'm sure.     One of my FB friends made a small donation to his fund to apply to win an ipad in his second round of ipad giveaways.  I feel very bad about that.   I should have been a blaring clue  he was planning to have a second round of ipad giveaways and charge a small fee to enter  weeks ago before sending  out this first round of ipads.  Not to mention the value of the package he was planning on shipping to 40 people I feel very foolish.

Please do not donate money on-line if you don't know the people in-real life no matter how long you have been reading there blog there is lots of this going on I'm so sorry to say.  Never enter internet contest where you have to make a donation.  There are lots of legit ones you can enter that just ask you to leave a comment or Like them on face book or tweet about them

 Please spread the word to your  blogging buddies.  It's too easy to donate a few dollars for the chance for a wonderful prize that could be just imaginary and there are all kinds of wonderful legit charities that need our donation funds.   When I reported this it to anti-fraud police in Canada they said it was very important to spread the word. It's also import to report anything like this stuff to the police.   This  makes me want to stop blogging which I love doing.

updated 07/10 with latest email from.

I thought I should add this last email from Mike to my post that went out to all the winners yesterday.  I truly hope he is on the up and up and this is just a series of unfortunate events but my faith in him is dwindling.  If the ipad does show up I'll be sure to post a photo and apologize about this post however I don't really believe one is on it's way at this point. 

From: marissasbunny
Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011 22:06:03 -0400
Subject: Update 7/9 10:05 PM

When we selected the final 40 awardees back on March 21st from a pool of 311 applicants and provided them to the selection committee, we had no idea that all the finalists would be awarded at that time. We were originally expecting 5, then 10, then 20, then finally 35. During the determination of the awardees, the entire selection committee was so touched by everybody's stories, they decided to tell me in early May that they would award all 40 finalists the ipads and applications. The winners were publicly announced on May 11th. Through the rest of May and through June 22nd we collected iPad application lists to pre-purchase for the winners, and other than some surmountable legal issues we were informed all was proceeding reasonably smoothly.

Through all the escalations of awards, this has proven to be a monumental task, much more than anybody expected initially and we probably didn't have adequate consistent manpower available. We live in Northern Virginia and I telecommute to North Carolina. Application purchase, box packing, and shipping of the iPads with accessories was supposed to have been handled at the North Carolina location. We've recently discovered that many mistakes were made by a variety of employees and not reported to us even after we became directly involved with the principals. We were informed the iPads had shipped, and given our family's ongoing health concerns, perhaps we didn't supervise the situation as well as we could have. On the night of July 6th, we received an anonymous threatening email related to the giveaway and promptly informed the awardees of the email.

After consultation with law enforcement and legal representation, the decision was made to temporarily halt the iPad shipping process based on the threat. Since then, we have received some information as to the origin and nature of the threat and it has been provided to members of law enforcement. While we haven't been supplied a timetable, as soon as the threat evaluation is complete we fully intend to closely and in person supervise future shipping of the iPads to the awardees as long as they had no involvement in the threats. Verifiable tracking information omitting awardees' personal information will be provided to any interested party during the shipping process. When the evaluation is complete and shipping recommences, an announcement will be made at marissasbunny.com.

While my goal has always been to help the special needs community, I'd be remiss in my duties as a husband and a Father to not take care of my own family's safety first due to the still unclear nature of the threat at the time of this post. That said, we remain committed to the cause, and anxiously await reports in the not too distant future of iPads arriving and photos of their first use.

Summer time is here! Photo blogging

 A walk around the block.

A fun Dance class our city and CTN put on  but Ashley was wishing a few more friends were there to Dance with.

Taylor's new favourite place

Our favourite visitors...

Kindness of strangers - Helping my girl

Ashley's Voice is getting a big upgrade!    

I’m not even sure where to begin with this post as my girl has been blessed by so many totally strangers this past month who have heard her story and wanted to help.   On Mothers’s Day we learned Ashley won her very own iPad2  + Apps in a merit based giveaway from MarissasBunny.com  Infantile Spasms Awareness blog.   Mike Marissa’s Dad and his employer not only gifted my special girl with a iPad2 but another 40 families with iPads and they have set up a foundation to carry on doing the same thing for  many other families to help make  kids lives with disabilities  better.

Good news keeps coming…

Late last week I found out I won a Facebook Contest I entered from FortZed Challenge for a $50 Otterbox gift certificate.  Ashley is my lucky charm I think but I was shocked that I’d win her an iPad2 then 50 towards a fantastic cover!

Otterbox iPad2 Defender case 

This story gets even better, Ariana from FortZed challenge loved Ashley’s story and shared it with Otterbox.  Kristen from Otterbox PR contacted me and said she too was amazing by Ashley and wanted to send us their super tough iPad Defender Case free of charge and suggested we use the gift certificate to order the Otterbox Utility Latch.  WOW!  I’m totally blown away at all this kindness and generosity of so many others that are totally strangers and want to see my girl have a voice.  This iPad will be be Ashley voice and travel everywhere with her she didn’t qualify for funding for dynamic speech equipment in Canada as she would first have to prove she could use it. Which she definitely can but needs lots of hands on practice to learn to move from screen to screen and locate her choices. She need to show them she can do that before the gov't would fund one.  They were not going to give her a chance not yet anyways.


Here's a peak at Otterbox's  Utility Series Latch it allows you attach iPad to many things.. I'm sure we will put this to very good use.      

We did set aside some funds to purchase an ipad just  a week before we found out we won one from Marissa bunny so Ashley been practicing and doing really well with choice making.  However with 3 brothers there is a lot of demand for the iPad and it’s getting used by her two year old brother the most.  When Marissa Bunny iPad arrives (there has  been paperwork delays due to Apple concerns with giveaways but it’s on it’s way this week)  It will be dedicated to Ashley and at her side at all times.  Her brothers will have the other one to play with.

I just had to share all this as I feel totally thrilled that my girl is benefiting from all this generosity.  Raising 4 kids and having therapy bills  is not cheap so all this is greatly appreciated.

Don’t miss Ashley's graduation video I posted this week too.   I’m so proud of this girl we purchased her walker for her just before she started JK and I remember standing outside with her at the walker  on the first day of Junior Kindergarten we needed to assist her to balance and move the walker in the door that first day. Someone had to hang on to her and the walker.    I’m sure a few would have thought she's  not ready for that.  However with daily practice she learned to use the walker totally independently last January and just the other day she  led her class in to the gym for graduation. It was so incredible.  I know with her new iPad she needs hand over hand direction right now to navigate the speech device but with time and daily practice I’m sure she will get it.  She can independently make her own choices on pages but can’t quite navigate page to page due to the fast speed.  I’m so confident in her and super excited and pleased so many strangers are so happy to help her gain her voice. My husband and I are so humbled by all this generosity.  

Be sure to check out Otterbox's amazing cases, like and share FortZed Challenge facebook page  and  read all about Marissa at MarissasBunny.com .  Just today Marissa's Bunny is launching there next iPad giveaway so if your child needs one be sure to jump over there and check it out.  If your so lucky you will be blown away by this families kindness and eagerness to help others despite all they are going through with there sweet little girl.

Our Graduate - Amazing video!!

What  a special day this was.  Our girl WALKED in and led her entire class up to the front to graduate from senior kindergarten.  She just learned to walk with the walker this past January.  Her teachers and peers always knew how to support, encourage  and allow her to shine.  This day was no exception.

I will be forever grateful to Mrs G. Ms F and Mrs L for how very far she has come over these past two years.  She's  grown in leaps and bounds and has made gains in all areas.  I couldn't have pictured her walking up just this past december with out someone holding on to her.   I'm truly sad to see kindergarten end but I know she has so much to look forward to in grade one.  Inclusion at it's very best!

Area track meet

It was hot out today and James was on his game. I used to run track in school too so this brought back a lot of memories.  James won his heat in the 100m dash.  James is  wearing black and is in lane 3.

it was a very hot day to be hanging around outside but Canadians are not suppose to complain about the heat so I'll stop there.  Not to spoil the video but there was 8 heats and only the top 5 times went on to the final so James didn't get run the final but lots of fun was had and he was pretty pleased with his results.


100 m dash - check this out from Sherry C on Vimeo.
James in Black wins his heat in the 100 m dash at the area track meet today.

June already and lots has been happening around here.

Last week my oldest turned 11 I have a preteen.  We had some very special visitors Grammy and Grampy to celebrate his birthday.

Pancake breakfast for my 11 year old. OMG almost a teenager.

Check out this cake my mom made this for him it has boiled icing, tons of candy decorations, best of all according to my boys it was a money cake with loads of toonies ($2 coins) hidden inside.

Yummy!!!   Thanks Mom for making this it was a big hit!

Are you wondering what you get an 11 year old with loads of energy well?

A new POGO stick which he loves and gets a real work out on it too.  He also received some money which he used to buy a spy gear watch and the new Alex Rider Novel.  He was pretty happy with his presents.

Last week I also received these beautiful flowers for being a super mom from these ladies I adore.

I wish I had taken more pictures when Aunt Colleen and Aunt Betty dropped by for lunch which they even brought with them. I was totally spoiled for the day. Their visit was such a treat for me and the little ones look how happy Ashley was to see Auntie Betty and Taylor loved playing with Auntie Colleen. 

Unfortunately my older two were at school and husband working but it was short oh so sweet.