Merry Christmas!

Hope everyone has a blessed Christmas!

Santa Picture

Let's take a trip down memory lane....

Santa picture 2006 (Stone just turned 1)

Santa pic 2007 (Stone just turned 2)


Santa pic 2008 (just turned 3) WOW!!! Who is this child and what has he done with my Stone?????
I took this picture today and scarce could believe my eyes! I was able to take several, but thought this was the cutest. I can't believe he actually got onto Santa's lap and let me take pictures and didn't freak out! He particularly loved the jingle bells Santa had, so that kept him occupied and he didn't ever really look into Santa's face, but hey, what an improvement over the past 2 years!! Yeah Stone!!

Aunt Kathy's Gift

Kevin's Aunt Kathy is one of the neatest ladies I know! She does all these cool things for her grandkids... some of which I wish I had the energy just to do with my own child! One of the many things she and her sisters like to do (Kevin's mom is one of her sisters) is to embroider... and oh how we love to receive personalized things from them! Aunt Kathy made this super adorably cute stocking ornament for Stone... complete with a fireman on it! LOVE it!!! Stone loved it too and loves to look at it on our tree all the time. Thank you Aunt Kathy!!!

Battle of the wills....

Will it ever get better? "This too, shall pass." says my hubs Kevin. Over the past few days, we have had the battle of the wills in our house. Ours against Stone's! We continue to win, but not without major drama, resistance (of course), and us feeling like we're gonna win the "Worst parents of the year award" hands down. I blame Stone's stubbornness not Kevin or myself, but my brother. Yes, my brother of all people! I'm not naive enough to say that Kevin and I aren't stubborn ourselves.. we are, and to quite a good degree I might add. But this stubbornness beats all... and reminds me of growing up with my brother! Seriously, love my brother, but I don't think I know another person on the planet that is more stubborn than him. Stone is a close 2nd at this point.

My SIL tells us all the time about stories with her M and her battle of the wills with her. I now am feeling her pain in first person! I truly think that it's a mixture of a few things though with Stone... and now we're trying to "fix" it as best as we know how. Some of it's enabling on our part (most of that falling to me as I'm with him the most--I acknowledge that and accept it), some of it is Stone's true stubborn will and being 3 and all that entails, and some I think is partially to blame on him not quite understanding everything we tell him. I haven't written about this before, mainly because it's all been in the works over the past few months, BUT, I guess now is as good a time as ever.

Before leaving SC and moving here, I had started the process of getting Stone evaluated... mainly on speech. We (this includes my hubs, me, my SIL, inlaws and Stone's preschool teachers) had started noticing what we thought MIGHT be a speech delay. None of us wanted to jump to any conclusions, so we watched it and then I finally was convinced I at least needed to check into this further. Anyway, did the speech eval and they determined that he had Auditory Processing Disorder, (or Receptive Language Disorder) which basically means that it usually takes longer for him to process oral communication than the "normal" kid his age. Also, we think he has the Expressive Language Disorder which kind of goes along with it and means he has a lot of trouble verbally expressing himself. Both are true of Stone. Since moving here and getting started in finding out if he qualifies for services in NC, they did some more testing and 'labeled' him as Developmentally Delayed as well. This, they feel, mostly comes from his speech delay and everyone who's met with him and evaluated him so far believes that once his speech gets going, all the rest will fall into place. So, communicating with him sometimes is a challenge. We have learned to keep things simple, rephrase words several times so he "gets" it, use visual cues for him and do whatever it takes for him to understand. Thus, some of the extra frustration on both our parts when it comes to the battle of the wills! Sometimes, it's a simple thing such as not even knowing what he wants or doesn't want to do... he can't communicate that like other kids his age. It thus presents itself as a "tantrum" and sometimes explodes even more from there. When really, he's wanting to tell us what he wants/doesn't want but doesn't know how.

Then of course, are the times when he does understand and just wants his way, like every other kid! Those are frustrating as well! And one of the biggest problems we've had of late has been his lack of eating real food. Again, this is partially to blame on us (me more so than Kevin). I have, in the past few months, have let him slide into eating what he wants, and haven't forced him to eat other foods, or try new ones. So, Kevin and I have decided to ban together for the common good of our son's eating health and crack down on this, as best we know how.

Tonight, it began, and did not end pretty. We had a really good day today.. ran a lot of errands and he was really good for all of it. We seemed to have fun and when we got home, it was soon time for dinner. We asked him to eat at least 2 bites of a hot dog and then he could have some cheese and other "snacks" which is food for him. I mean, we're starting off a lot nicer than a lot of people would!! And we know that he actually likes hot dogs, so it's not like we're asking him to eat liver or something. He refused, so we gave him a bath and sent him to bed WAY early for him (it wasn't even quite 7pm and he usually doesn't go to bed until 9). We made sure he understood our wishes and his consequences before following through... again, a much longer and exhausting task to make sure he does understand before just punishing him for something he doesn't understand. After MUCH wailing on his end, during his bath, trying to brush his teeth and putting on his pj's, we put him in bed. Then, there was much more wailing going on from inside his room. Agghghgh! This is hard for me to sit through, so after 40 minutes of it, I go in to calm him down so he could go to sleep. Still, we did not let him get up, or eat anything else. Small steps to hopefully what will be a success in the future.

Another battle is helping him help himself... for some things, he only wants to do it himself. For others, he'd much rather you do it for him than to struggle to learn himself. Example: putting on simple clothing. He can do it, and still needs some help, but most of the time doesn't want to. He wants us to do it for him. So, thus the battle begins again!

As Kevin's Aunt Kathy has stated and I'm sure others as well, "Parenting is not for the faint of heart!" But it sure does wear you down! No wonder my own mom seemed tired a lot.. she had me, along with 2 other children to deal with on a daily basis. Yes Mom, this is payback for my behavior as a child! Thankfully, my mom allowed me to live to see the day when I'd have my own child, just so I'd one day know what she lived through! Love you Mom and Dad!

So, we continue on... TRAINING our child, as Kevin's mom has said on numerous occasions.. and she is right. We're not just raising him and taking care of him (and also being able to delight in him as one of the perks), we are training him to be who God intended him to be.. and hopefully, we are teaching him to love God in the process!

Kid sayings....

A fun little story to share... I posted this on FB, so if you've already read it, it's old news! This just cracked me up so much, coming from the child it came from. My kids at least feel the freedom to say whatever is on their minds....

So, in my preschool class this past Thursday (I teach 4's), I told the kids during our snack time that Malu (her family is from India originally) was moving back to India during Christmas break and that tomorrow (Friday) would be her last day with us. I also told them that we'd have some special snacks and have a little "good-bye" party for her as well. I also mentioned that we might have chocolate pie. The kids started to process all this information and ask questions and try to understand that she wasn't going to come back. Then, one of them pipes up and says, "I sure am going to miss Malu, but at least we get to have chocolate pie tomorrow!" ha ha ha ha ha... so, i guess love IS related to chocolate after all...

THEN, today (Friday) this same little girl (Kristin) brought Christmas gifts for everyone. As Cole unwrapped his, his comment to her and everyone who was in earshot was, "This is not a very fun gift." Just as dead-pan and serious as you please. I kind of jumped on him, maybe a little too harsh, but I at least wanted him to say "thank you" to Kristin for bringing him a gift in the first place! Knowing his mom like I do, if she had been there, she would have been mortified! Later, when it was time for pick-up, he wouldn't even say good bye or Merry Christmas to me, as I'm guessing because I tried to correct him about his comment about the gift.

Sometimes, I overhear the kids saying things to each other such as, "You're not my friend." or "I don't want you to sit beside me." It's amazing the brutal honesty that comes from them! Of course, I try to help them find ways to say what they mean in less offensive ways (many feelings get hurt during these honest moments). But it's made me realize that I sometimes wish adults were that honest (with some tact thrown in of course)... it might surprise us what might come out... honesty instead of fake, meaningless words...

Some Christmas Pics

(Be sure to check out the couple of posts below this one.. I've been trying to be better about blogging more and have lots to catch up on!)

I love Christmas! I would love it more this year if I hadn't been so sick and remain to be so sick! It seems that I have caught the cold bug around the end of October/first of November and haven't really recovered since! I've had "better days" than others, and this crud has gone between the 3 of us mercilessly, so I ask prayer for better immune systems for the 3 of us.

Anyway, here are some fun Christmas pics with descriptions above the pic.

Kevin and I are all dressed up to go to his company's Christmas party this past Friday night. It was a pretty big deal, and a dress-up affair to boot. We had a lot of fun, but left around 10:15pm as we were pretty tired and it was still going strong! Gourmet food, open bar, NICE door prizes, recognition of those who had been there 5, 10, and 15 years, as well as entertainment acts. Seriously, they poured out the bucks on this party! AND, we have another party to go to that is for the families this Wednesday night!! Pray that he can stay with this company for a long time!!


Decorations in our home....

Our shelving cove... the first time I've been able to display our happy snowmen (up top) and on the second shelf, our ceramic Nativity scene. All of those items were painted and glazed by a good friend's mom (from my Memphis days). She loves to do that sort of thing and first made me a snowman before Kevin and I were together. After we got married, she made one for him and then the biggie gift, the ceramic Nativity scene. Once Stoney came along, she made another one for him! We are thankful for all of them, but I have to say, that the Nativity scene is especially dear to heart, as I grew up with seeing one that was similar that my parents had. I always LOVED that Nativity set and now I have my own! As I stated before, this is literally the first year that I've been able to set both of those items out, as we've not had room in the past! I was pretty excited!!

Our beautiful tree (with gifts below from my SIL) and our mantle.. also, our first mantle of our own to actually hang our stockings! In the past, we've had to use a bookcase!!


Stoney and our tree! His PJ's say "If Mommy says No, go ask Santa!"
Our cool Advent calendar we read each night....
The advent tree we add a sticker to each night to countdown to Christmas day. We fingerpainted it together and he's loved adding the stickers.

Santa's helper....

Fun with Mercy!! Gini, Mercy, and Wyatt came for a visit the first weekend of December. These 2 are so fun to watch reuniting and playing together! Here are a few highlights...

All dressed up for the Christmas program at Pop's interim church. This was taken at Aunt Martha's house...

Tried to get a picture of the 3 of them, but that proved to be more difficult than I thought! Of course, everyone was tired, and Wyatt was super hungry, so this is what we got!

The kids outside playing... Stone learning to ride a tricycle and Mercy already knowing how to work the scooter!!!


Love this pic... looks like 2 old people just catchin up on gossip or something!! (Yeah, I know Stone has a pink hat on, but it's all we could find last minute!!! It belongs to his grandma and I do actually have a boy cap for him, so no worries!!!)
Stone loving on Wyatt!! Stone loved holding Wyatt during this visit and we thought that was just cool!!

Cute little man Wyatt!! I loved hanging out with this little guy during their visit... got to feed him and even put him down for a couple of naps!! He's such a sweetie!! (and of course, such a cutie!)

Thanksgiving and other pics

Here are a few pics to update my blog. The first two are of our first "snow" that we had... notice it's not much, but had to document it anyway. Stone decided to help me scrap the snow off the car!



A picture of the Hallquist men....
Grabbed a quick pic of Stone all dressed up in his engineer outfit... a rarity!

Thanksgiving pics... Kevin reading to Stone and cousin Nate. Notice Stone "shhing"

The boys contained in a rental shopping stroller at the mall the day after Thanksgiving. They loved the fact that it was a firefighter truck.

Cousins having fun playing with Grandma's pillows and blankets.

Picture with Grandpa...

Stone's new thing is that he likes to go grocery shopping with us now that he's discovered the "future customer in training" cart that he can push around the store with us and help us shop. Had to grab a pic.

Fun Christmas Light Displays

Since we've all been too sick to go out and watch Christmas lights in person (well, it's been me who's been the sick the latest), came across these fun light displays online. The first one came from Kevin's Aunt Kathy, and once I clicked on there, I found this other cool one too.. I'm sure there's many, many more so explore yourself if you want. Have fun!!

Aunt Kathy's link: Amazing Grace

One I found: God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

Catching Up

Time to update my blog! Happy Thanksgiving (late)!! Ha... so, I'm really behind. Thanksgiving was a lot of fun this year! We got to go to WV to see my family and just enjoyed the time together. Stone and his cousin Nate played non-stop the whole time we were there... no lie! They always have a great time together, even though they don't get to see each other that much. We even ventured out on Black Friday (in the afternoon, mind you) to a mall but didn't even buy anything. Just wanted to get out and about! It was good to actually spend Thanksgiving with my family.. the first time in many years... since before I moved to Memphis in 2000. It was always too far to travel and never had the extra money since I chose to go home for Christmas, so I enjoyed a Thanksgiving with my family for once! Will post pics later... Here's a sad thing to admit: I couldn't even remember what we did for Thanksgiving last year and actually had to look on here in my archives to figure out what we did!! Thank goodness I do actually blog, so I'll actually remember these things in the future!

We came back and hit December and the Advent season. With my preschool kids, we are counting down until Christmas with our own Advent Calendar and of course, doing tons fo Christmas crafts! (Lovin it!!) Likewise, we are doing that with Stoney as well. And, I found this neat Advent Calendar that has little books, one for each day until Christmas. He has really enjoyed reading those each night, and actually takes the day 1 each time and pretends to read it. It's pretty cute, cause it looks like he's preaching a little bit! This year, Christmas activities have been especially fun, cause he's starting to understand things a lot more. We always (save for few exceptions) read from his Bible every night, talk about Jesus and pray with him regularly, so he's sort of got a concept of who God is. But it's really fun to talk about baby Jesus and you can tell he's really thinking about all this. He's loved getting the tree up, the lights, decorations, and nativity sets. And this week and weekend, I plan to bake some sugar cookies and rice krispie treats with him. Other plans include driving around to look at lights, another trip up to WV, and then celebrations with K's family, including his grandmother who is flying in from Shreveport, LA a few days after Christmas. She will be 80 on Dec. 31 and wanted to see as much of her family as she could, so she's coming up for a visit. We'll also get to see K's cousins and families and Gini and fam. In addition to all this, we're having a few friends over this weekend, a baby dedication to attend, and we have 2 company parties to attend through K's work! One is for the adults and the other is for families and is kid-focused. We also have a friend's 4 year old birthday party to atttend. We look forward to all these activities even though we'll be super busy!

Then, we got to enjoy a visit from my SIL Gini, Mercy and Wyatt this past weekend. So much fun to see them and spend time with them and then it makes me remember just how much I miss them! Of course, Stone and Mercy are beside themselves when the first reunite and Stone cried just about every time we had to leave to come back home for the night! So sad! I got to play with Wyatt a lot and he's growing, growing, growing!! We even adventured out Saturday night to go look at this massive light display and drove in my MIL's van with K, me, Gini, and all 3 kids about an hour to get there. Only to spend more time sitting in line and not even getting close to getting in! We finally found a way to turn around and leave and drove up to the next exit (back towards the house) and stopped at a CFA so the kids could get out and play and take a break from being in the car for so long! Thank goodness for portable DVD players!! That at least kept the older 2 pretty occupied but poor Wyatt, he was fit to be tied after a while and so tired, poor thing! All things considered, he did well though. I was disappointed that we didn't get to see the lights, but even more irritated that we drove all that way for not. Oh well... I guess we tried! Then, Sunday night, we went to watch the Christmas program at the church where my FIL is an interim worship leader. It was fun to go and listen to some great Christmas music, especially since we're not members of a church here yet. Anyway, wish I could talk my SIL and her hubs to move up this way... we miss them so much!!

Oh, on top of all this, literally, one of the three of us have been sick during the whole month of November! I actually caved and went to the doctor right after we returned from Thanksgiving in WV and discovered I had an ear infection. I went in actually because I couldn't get rid of a nasty cough and was afraid that I either had bronchitis or pneumonia. Neither.. but an ear infection. Nice. Stone and Kevin finally got better, and now they both have colds AGAIN. Not enjoying all this sickness!!! Thankfully, it's not worse, but I'm pretty tired of it all.

And as always, will try to post pics soon... got lots to do.. put more decorations up, clean, work on pictures for a calendar, AND get out Christmas cards! Until later...

HodgePodge

I actually, believe it or not, uploaded these pictures about a week ago, but just now getting to posting them and writing about them. It's a hodgepodge of randomness over the past month or so...

Painting our pumpkins for Halloween.

Sharing Fall Festival with some friends.

Having a play date with our good friends Matthew and Rachel.
Matthew, being influenced by Stone, dressed up in his firefigher's costume too!

One of my favorite shots of my little man.. loving the Fall foliage behind him.
(Notice the "I voted" sticker on him... he wore it for me!)

Aunt Kerri came to visit the first weekend of November. We loved having her around!

Playing with GiGi in his big black truck.

Stone in a firefighter truck at a consignment store. He would have LOVED to have
that at home, but we don't need another bed!

Baby Vitoria (see more info after the pic).

This is a horrible picture (that I took) of my friend's baby just a couple days after she was born. I'll have to get some better ones on here. Anyway, this is the friend whom I helped paint the room pink stripes and my MIL helped get the furniture ready etc. Her daughter, Vitoria, was born on Oct 28th. She is cute as a button, but I actually haven't seen them since the day I took this picture... been so busy and I also know how you need time to adjust to having a newborn in your house. Plus, her parents are here to help, so I am trying to be mindful of that. Anyway, it was fun to see her and we are all thankful that she and her mom (Alcidea) are doing well.

Engineer Stone

Isn't he the cutest thing ever? My SIL Meredith got Stone this train engineer dress-up outfit for his birthday and somehow my MIL got him to put all of it on AND take a picture! He'll wear the hat with no problem, but doesn't particularly like to put the scarf or "overalls" on. (Thanks Aunt Minnah!!) It came with a lot of "extras" like the walkie you see in his hand, a pocket watch, wrench, and tickets to board the train, along with the hat, scarf, and overalls. Anyway, I was quite amazed at my MIL's ability! I can barely get him to put his regular jacket or firefighter's jacket on before we head out the door now, much less anything else dress-up!

So, as usual, I've been a blogger SLACKER. Maybe it's because I'm so addicted to Facebook, but that's still no excuse! What's going on lately with us:

Kevin's job continues to get crazier and crazier, but not bad like it has been in the past. It's all actually good, just so much thrown at him at once that he's been working LONG days just to try to catch up. However, we are thankful!

My job as a preschool teacher continues to be pretty fun. Stone is doing great, although his teacher recently resigned to take another job as she needed a bit more money for her family and found something that she has more of a background (and degree) in. She's now a marketing director for a local CFA!! This means free food for me!! Ha ha ha! She LOVES Stone however and misses him and he misses her! We plan to keep in touch, as we became pretty good friends since working together. Our director continues to search for another teacher and she thinks she's found someone. In the meantime, the director has been filling in, so Stone and the other kids have done quite well adjusting.

As for me, even though I do like my job, I also continue to look for either another part-time job or something full time. Nothing yet, but we know God will provide.

We finally have found a church that we like well enough to continue going to. I don't think either of us are "sold" on it yet and we might not ever join it. I say never, but really, we are just leaving it open for now. We've only been there for a little over a month, so we want to continue giving it a chance. Stone has actually adjusted well to his class and miracle of all miracles, gets excited to go in when we drop him off. Wow... We like the worship and even the SS class we visited, which was "okay." However, neither one of us are convinced this is the place we're supposed to be. So, we just take it week by week and continue to pray about it.

We continue to have fun hanging with K's parents on occasion.. Stone LOVES being able to visit or them visit us and it's so nice to have family nearby. We are thankful!

I think that is all for now.. we continue to stay busy with friends, work, etc. and for now, are trying to continue settling in to our "new life" here. Might post more pics later, whenever I get to downloading them!

Halloween Fun

Trick or treat! My little man Stone will be a firefighter tonight as we plan to head to a friend's house for a light dinner of hot dogs and then go to a Fall Festival at a local church. Hope it will be lots of fun!


Here's a couple of other fun pics... the first is not all that great, as I was taking it with my cell phone and I was driving on the interstate going about 70mph. I happened to look over and see this truck with 2 HUGE pumpkins in it! Had to try to take a picture, so this was the best I could do. I'm guessing whoever had these pumpkins were taking them to some fair or something... wow! I wonder how they lifted them into the truck???


And a friend actually sent me this picture through email... it's supposed to be titled "What happens when pumpkins drink." Thought it was pretty funny and that some people have WAY too much time on their hands!!!

Oktoberfest 2008 Update

Finally, some time to download pictures and post about some of what's been going on this month with our birthdays. We've had a lot of fun, and it was especially great to have family come to visit. Seems like we have opened gifts and cards all month long! (No complaints!) First my parents came to visit the weekend of the 9-11 and we had a great time. Thanks to my parents for all the wonderful gifts and yummy food!!

The next weekend, we not only had Stone's little birthday party, but we got to have a visit from Aunt Gini, and cousins Mercy and Wyatt... so much fun!! We still miss them terribly and are grateful for any time we get to spend with them. We also got some great gifts from them too but more importantly enjoyed the time spent together. Stone was NOT happy to see them go.. :( And neither were we!

And in between all this, we've had lots of fun with friends and good times at school. There are a few highlights below, but to see all the pictures, please click HERE.

I had to make a special website because I had taken so many pictures and didn't want to bog down my blog. Also, especially for family, you can actually order prints right off the site. Enjoy!!

Family Pic taken on my birthday

Stone and firefighter Mercy

At the pumpkin patch with my parents

Lovin' Ma-Ma and Pa-Pa

Fun with friends Matthew and Rachel

And the fire station down the street

Birthday party at Chic-Fil-A