A New Low...

I have mentioned before the difficulty we have with our last name in public.  Well, here's the latest story we have to share.  We got a pretty good laugh about it...hope you do too!  Chad wrote the following to share with some of our family, and I will share it with you as well.  Brace yourself for this one...

I was at a tire repair shop after church today to drop off the car to fix a tire. The nice man behind the counter asked me my name. I said, "Chad E-I-G-S-T-I" (spelling the name instead of saying it of course). He studiously wrote down each letter as I spelled it out for him. After I finished, he stopped and looked over at me as if expecting me to keep going. I said, "that's it". His look began to harden into total confusion. I peeked over the counter at the piece of paper he was writing on so I could understand where we had gone wrong. As God as my witness, this is what I saw:

E-I-D-S-G-5

Don't adjust your lenses folks, you are looking at the NUMBER 5! It is hard to remember what all went through my mind as I looked over his interpretation of our family name. My first thought was pity for a man who had obviously forgot to listen when his mother told him not to stick the the Q-Tip too far into his ears. If you go in past the second knuckle, you have gone too far!
 
Have a wonderful day.
 Sincerely
Chad Eidsg5 

Use What You Got {A Lesson from Adam}

As a speech therapist, I won't deny that my wee one Adam is a wee bit behind in developing his expressive language skills.  However, the boy understands everything and daily finds ways to use the skills he has to be a part of the action!  Here they are putting on a concert for us:

Christmas Joy

Christmas brings lots of joy...and lots and lots of pictures!  So to reduce my picture anxiety, I decided to focus on just a few things that brought our children the most joy this season.  One would certainly have to be helping decorate the tree!  We cranked up the Christmas music, did some dancing on the living room floor, and made our tree beautiful.

 It was so nice, we did it twice!  This year, we also let the boys have their very own Christmas tree, which they were extremely proud of.  And, because they were allowed to play with and rearrange their ornaments (shatterproof from the dollar bin, thank you Target) as much as they wanted, our tree was left untouched for the most part.  Clever Mommy, thankyouverymuch.

 Luke's Papa works at a retirement home, and each year they have children/grandchildren of staff put on a little show for the residents.  This year, Luke was a shepard and he did a great job!

 While we try very hard not to make gifts the focus of Christmas for our children, there were many gifts that made them excited.  Here I picked the ones that have seemingly been the favorites for the boys.  When people ask Luke what he got for Christmas, he usually mentions the legos he got from the Ayottes, or the remote control truck from his Mimi and Papa.  But for Luke, the unmentioned favorite would have to be Berenstain Bears books.  My brother found him some of the old classics (the ones I grew up with!) from a used book store and he was thrilled.  He has asked to read them every. single. day. since he received them and "reads" them to himself during his quiet time in his room. 

For Adam, it would probably be his John Deere tractor he got from his Grandpa and Grandma.  You can see him waiting in anticipation here as Grandpa helps get the tractor out of the box.

Adam still doesn't have a ton of words, but "tractor" is one most people can understand!  He plays with it daily.  And when he's not playing with them, he likes looking at pictures of tractors in books!

We hope you all had a very joyful Christmas!