Lydia - An Angel In Our Midst

Here's some pics of Lydia this year. She just turned 2 on July 1st. Most of you know our little Lydia has "tetrasomy 18p". Because of that, she is developmentally delayed (she's more like a 1 year old). She started crawling in April, and still cannot walk by herself. She just got leg braces (shown in picture) that help support her legs and ankles. She cruises along the couch, and every other surface she can hold on to. She's very close to learning how to walk by herself. She also uses a reverse walker to help her walk.


We are very blessed that Arizona has wonderful resources for special needs children. Besides all the therapies she receives in our home, we are part of a group called "Raising Special Kids", and they had a huge picnic at this railroad park in Scottsdale for our entire family. They had bounce houses, pony rides, free food and ice cream, etc...It was a lot of fun, but very hot, even though it was in April. Becky and Taylor (David's brother) and their boys came with us.
A day at the park in January (I'm really backtracking now). I just thought these pics were too cute not to share. Lydia LOVES being outside. If the front or back door is open she speed-crawls to the door as fast as she can to get outside.

In January we took a weekend trip to Flagstaff (only 2 hours away) with David's sister Michelle and her family. We stayed in a condo, and enjoyed the snow for a change. We took the kids sledding, and sat in front of a warm fire. Lydia was all bundled up, and she never once complained.

Summer Fun

It's super hot here, so luckily we have a pool to swim in everyday. Collin, and his cousin Isaac are inseparable (though they fight like brothers sometimes too). They play together several times per week.

And we've discovered Lydia LOVES water! She gets so excited when we take her swimming. She kicks and splashes, and doesn't mind the water getting in her face.

We have been so blessed to have David's sister, two brothers, and their families, living within 20 minutes of us. Emma, Julia, Collin and Lydia each have a cousin their age. We had a "girls only" play day, and the girls swam for hours. (From left to right: Layken, Jaidyn, Haylee, Julia, Taylor and Emma).

Day at the Beach

While we were in California visiting Disneyland, we also went to the beach...I think this was Huntington Beach. It was cold and windy, but when we asked the kids what their favorite part of our trip to California was, they said it was going to the beach! The beach was better than Disneyland! We could have saved a lot of money had we known that before. :)

David and Emma exploring the beach for crabs, sea urchins, etc....There were crabs everywhere between and under the rocks. For any of you who know David well, he was in heaven (he loves creepy-crawly things).

Vacation to Disneyland

To all our family and friends reading this....we finally got "sucked" in to the blogging phenomenon. I swore I wasn't going to do it just because everyone else was doing it, but my sister-in-law, Melody, "forced" me to do it! :) Actually, I'm glad she "made" me, because I'm now really enjoying it, and I hope you all will as well. So I'll have to kind of backtrack, and update our pictures from earliest this year, to most recent. So first of all, in March we took our first official family vacation to Disneyland. All our other vacations have consisted of visiting family, or going somewhere with family (our parents)...but this was our first, "just us" family vacation. We got to spend an entire week at Disneyland in California. The kids thought they were in heaven! David and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves as well, though after the 3rd day straight of going to Disneyland, the novelty of it began to wear off for us (though the kids were going strong). We rarely stood in line for more than 10 minutes, and were lucky enough to get "dream passes", which they were handing out to only a few people in the park. That enabled us to go in the "fast lane" on all the major rides. It was a week of fun, tons of rides, family bonding, churros, churros, and more churros. Collin was even brave enough (and tall enough) to ride the "tower of terror", which I highly recommend riding if you get the chance!