A Piratical Weekend

The past few weekends have been pretty slow around here...and then we got to this weekend, where it seems we are a bit over-scheduled.  Funny how that works out.

On Friday, we had our first halloween event (I think we have 3 or so scheduled?)--a Halloween festival set up by the city of Fremont.  Savannah chose to be a pirate this year, and she made a rather adorable pirate, if I do say so myself.

At the event, the children could go around to different "houses" for trick or treating.  Local high school students were in each one, distributing candy.

Then, there were arts and crafts, and some carnival games.

A lovely time was had by all!

Yesterday, was Savannah's gymnastics class and her first visit to the optometrist.  She's getting pretty good at her somersaults:

The visit to the optometrist went well, too.  She's got her daddy's perfect vision, so that's encouraging.  We'd talked with her about this visit for some time--what would happen, what kind of tests the doctor would do, etc--and she seemed fairly accepting of the visit (though, for a while, she thought she was going there so the doctor could get the hair out of her eyes...I *might* say this to her every once in a while...).

Today, though, is our biggest event--Disney on Ice! Savannah doesn't know about this yet, so, hopefully, she'll be super excited about her surprise.  I'll include photos of that in my next post.

Love you all,

Ashley

SCI Frustrations: Ballet Edition

Savannah has been taking ballet at school, so I thought it'd be fun to surprise her with a family outing to see "The Nutcracker" danced in December.  Originally, I wanted to go to the San Francisco Ballet, but they very politely request that no child under 5 attend their performances...sooo...I turned my attention to Ballet San Jose. As per usual, you can not book accessible seats through the online ticket purchasing system (this is a big frustration in and of itself, because it turns the purchasing of tickets into a drawn out affair, and ensures that I have to plan any outing like this several weeks in advance--getting our tickets for next week's Disney on Ice performance took one week start to finish...thanks Ticketmaster!) Anyways, no go on the online tickets...so I called the box office yesterday, only to learn that you can buy only one "companion" ticket with each accessible seat, so...either Jason would have to sit on his own, while I tried to get tickets for me and Savannah close by (the lady on the phone thought she might be able to get something across the aisle from J's seat), or Jason and Savannah would sit together, while I was on my own elsewhere.  Neither of these fit my idea of a family outing...I want us to sit as a family, which really shouldn't be so hard to do.  I didn't really handle this well, and was not terribly kind to the lady at the box office--I think I went off on some rant about how it's hard enough to make sure that J is not simply a spectator in Savannah's life, without the ballet making it nigh impossible to sit as a family...obviously, these are bigger issues that I'm grappling with, and the poor sales person was just the unfortunate person to set me off.

When I talked with Jason about this last night, he seemed unfazed--he doesn't really let any of the "minor" inconveniences that come along with disability bother him (though, it must be noted that J was not exactly jumping at the chance to go to the ballet--the last time we went, I looked over at one point in the performance to see him passed out asleep in his seat...).  Perhaps I need to be more laid back about it all, and not let righteous indignation overtake me at every small bump in the road...because there are lots of bumps in the road with SCI and I'll be all out of fire if they all enrage me.

I'm not one to let things go too easily, though, so I've spent this morning with seating charts for the ballet, and I've found four spots at the theatre that would allow us to all sit together.  There are only 14 wheelchair accessible seats in the whole place (out of 1,122 seats mind you...but that's another rant for another day), but four of them appear to allow multiple people around them.  These are all in the orchestra section, so heaven knows what they'll cost, but, this time when I call to inquire about tickets, I will ask for these specific seats.  Hopefully, out of 12 or so performances, I can find open seats for us.  And I'll be nicer to the person on the other end of the line this go round, to atone for my not so nice behavior yesterday...

Anyways...thanks for putting up with this rant...I'll end with something happy: our sweet girl dressed up for her ballet class!

Love you all,

Ashley

Feeling Nostalgic

We went to a local harvest festival this weekend--something that has become a tradition with our family over the last few years.  As I was flipping through the photos at the end of the day Saturday, I decided to look at photos from previous visits to see how much our girl has grown, and then it hit me: she's really not a baby anymore.   While that simple fact makes me happy for a lot of reasons--I love seeing her character and personality develop and evolve, and I think she's grown into a pretty spectacular little girl--it also makes me a bit wistful for Savannah's babyhood.  [Though, as I remind myself, particularly when this nostalgia has me thinking we should have another baby sooner rather than later, babyhood wasn't all rainbows and butterflies--Sav was a pretty easy baby, but there were some periods where she thought sleep was for the weak and/or wanted to nurse round the clock and/or would only cease crying if she was carried that definitely pushed me to my limits] I imagine all parents feel this as they watch their child grow up--it's so incredibly bittersweet...  

2010 Festival [7 months old]

In general, not a big fan of pumpkins at this point.

2011--Still not digging the fall activities.

2012--She is finally warming up to the idea of Halloween and Harvest time!

And now, our photos from this year....

She looks like she's the same height as last year, but she's just slouching--she has, in fact, gotten very tall this past year!

I hope you are all enjoying the fall weather and the abundance of the harvest season.

Lots of love,

Ashley

Lions and Tigers and....Sharks (And dolphins, too!)

We're (me and Sav, that is...J is on his own back in CA) still happily enjoying our time here in Las Vegas--we've had a nice mixture of relaxing by the pool and seeing the many sites of Vegas....there are loads of photos, so I figured I'd share some now.  Enjoy!

Savannah was very excited to see her Grandma!

Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay

She was a little anxious about going into the tunnel at first.

Sharks!

Such an exciting day!

New York New York--note to self, try to avoid walking out and about on the strip at night...Savannah got to see all sorts of interesting costumes, though most folks were very respectful once they saw her.

Savannah's happy place...M&M world!

Choosing the colors she wanted in her baggie.

Breakfast of champions.  The refrigerator in our room decided to become a freezer...so all of our nice breakfast food was frozen when we woke up.  Starbucks and loads of sugar to the rescue!

The Venetian

Exploring the balconies

One of my favorite photos ever of Sav...she was watching the gondolier who was taking us around the canal in the gondola.

Our gondolier...who sang lovely songs to us (and spoke in a Mickey Mouse voice, which Sav LOVED)

At Sigfried and Roy's Dolphin Park

Sav got very close to the dolphins.

Lions and Tigers, too!

More dolphin time

Our pool

Savannah is super happy to spend the afternoon in the pool.

Lovely girl.

Tomorrow, we plan to spend the morning at the hotel pool and, post-nap, we'll head to watch the pirate show at Treasure Island, and maybe catch a few other fountain/light shows along the way.

Hope you are all well (and for the Berkeley folks, hope you're recovering from the explosions and outages on Monday).

Love you all,

Ashley