Wow, what a fall it’s been. I can hardly believe winter is almost here. Seems like fall has flown by, where does the time go.
We started off the fall with the kids eye surgeries on August 30th. Both have a condition called strabismus which we tried to correct via eye patching and glasses. After a few months of that there was limited improvement. So, the Dr’s we were seeing recommended surgery. Brayton and Lauren were champs all through the process. We tried to prepare them for it as much as we could. They were not at all nervous going in for surgery that day. We had told them they were just going to go take a nap, dressed them in their PJ’s and away we went. Lauren’s eyes turned out a little better than Braytons, although she still has to wear glasses. Brayton’s right eye shifted a bit to the outside now, opposite of what it was. Although he has perfect vision and no longer needs glasses. We are still being instructed to do eye patching 2 hours a day, but that is a vast improvement over the 8 hours we had to do previously. I pray we’ll get this condition fixed in both kids. The good news it’s highly correctable if caught early enough, and everyone tells us we’ve got plenty of time.
In September, Colette and I traveled to Aspen, CO to play in the annual Aspen Ruggerfest rugby tournament. We had a great time with lots of friends. I think we’ll be making that trip again next year.
We spent lots of time doing out door activities this fall. The weather has been amazingly mild here in Iowa. Brayton got to play soccer on his 4 yr old team for the first time. He loves it. We are now spending more and more time playing 1 on 1 soccer in the back yard. Lauren really enjoyed going and cheering on her big brother in his matches. We met lots of new friends too. I have to say I’m very impressed with the level of organization of youth soccer in West Des Moines. We’ll certainly be back to play more.
The weather also allowed us to spend lots more time on our bikes together. If you read my Facebook posts you probably know I’m a avid bicycle commuter. Well, we spend lots of time together on our bikes as a family as well. We feel really fortunate to have such a well developed bike trail system in West Des Moines. This gives us the opportunity to do other things as well, like go fishing, visit the various parks around town, or fly kites. The kids just love being outdoors, and I have to say Colette and I do as well.
In early October, we woke up on a Saturday and I taught the kids how to make paper boats. They had a ball constructing their own boats. After the first few they really didn’t need that much instruction and did the majority of the work themselves. We then traveled downtown to the Western Gateway Park and floated our boats down the river. You’ll have to see the video to get an idea of what this really is.
Brayton turned 5 years old on November 8th. I cannot believe how quickly he has grown. He is a whiz for his age. He reads his own books, not memorized either. The other night Colette brought home 2 new books, ones he’s never seen before and he read both of them to his sister. I only had to step in to help on a word a couple of times. A couple weeks ago we were at the dentist waiting for Colette to get finished with her check up. We were in the waiting room, and Brayton was counting the spare change in my pocket. He could add up all the quarters, dimes, and nickels in his head. I remember the ladies in the office were shocked when he got to 95 cents picked up a quarter and said “$1.20″…They were a little taken back a boy his age could do this. He sure loves his numbers and loves adding and subtracting. He is also becoming quite the card shark, we play UNO all the time as well as other board games. I think I’m going to try to teach him Chess this winter. Lastly, he loves punching the heavy bag I put up in the basement, except when it swings back toward him…that 80lb bag can bowl him over if he’s not careful.
Lauren is a 3yr old spitting image of her mother. She is very artsy and loves to paint whenever she can. She’s very trendy and loves to pick out her own clothes for the day. She seems to have an opinion on almost everything, although that probably makes her more like me than Colette. She is really enjoying the 3yr old preschool program at St. Francis. We were a little worried about her starting this fall because she has a tendency to be a little shy around others (the opposite of her brother) but she has done just fine.
We’ve spent alot of time going to the zoo, parks, bike rides, my friends pizza joint, the sculpture gardens, pumpkin farms, and just about everything there is to do we’ve tried it. Next up is to do some heavy duty sledding this winter.
