Puppies

So we moved into our new house and not only did we bring our four guinea pigs, rabbit, two small dogs, three turtles and an oscar (fish), we brought the neighborhood alley cat.  Tommy (or Ninja as I call him) is a remarkable little feral cat.  Our neighbors befriended him and you would never know that he was ever just an outside cat.  Ninja is the most loving little cat I have ever had that was a street dweller.  He has taken to our family, plays with the dogs and the rabbit and never tries to harm the guinea pigs.

Sara with her best friend and Tommy the Ninja.

 Then last week we adopted two precious little lab mix puppies.  They have brought so much laughter to the house.  The kids adore them and they adore the kids.  I have seen such a change in Kristofer.  I have read many articles about how dogs help children with autism but to see how he has responded to these two babies is amazing.  He cleans up their potty accidents, takes them outside, feeds them, plays with them and never complains.  It was the craziest but best decision we could of ever made.

Our new babies...Chloe and Molly

We Bought a House...

and are making it a home!  It's official, we are home owners.  WOOO HOOO!  What's even better is that our mortgage is $225 less than what we were paying in rent.  Which is such a blessing.  As I sit here in my living room listening to the kids play and I look around I can't help to be overwhelmed with emotions.  Owning our own home has always been a dream of ours.  To be sitting in that dream is a bit over whelming at times.  This broken house that we bought, a diamond in the rough as I call it, has transformed into a beautiful home.  We have more space than we have ever had.  When we got married the first place we lived in was a shoe box, literally 3 rooms and barely that.  You practically could touch both sides of a room by standing in the middle.
 Sixteen years later here I sit in this remarkable home.  It's a 70 year old house that has all the updates a new home has.  It is just wonderful!  We truly are in love.  We could never of done to this place that we did in one weeks time without my parents help.  We ripped out flooring in the kitchen to stabilize the floor (it was sagging, the home has all wood floors) and then put it back together. We took out the nasty carpet in one room and replaced it with new wood flooring and totally redid the walls by putting up new drywall.  We did the same thing in the living room to another wall.  The whole house was resurfaced as well as repainted and it has turned out beautifully.
 At the end of that week, a group of wonderful church friends came and helped us move into our new home. All within 2 hours we moved from one place to another and we could not thank them enough for all of their hard work. What a wonderful church of servants we have.

   The unpacking, decorating and settling in has come to an end.  We are settling back into the routine of school during the week, play during the weekends. Our children did wonderfully well with all the repairs and painting.  Each one of them have learned valuable tools and watched my parents as well as my aunt and uncle work on the home.  They take great pride in their new home and love it just as much as Sean and I do.  With all the unsettlement  taking place the last few weeks I was truly worried that Kris would have some meltdown.  He took it in stride.  He has changed so much that sometimes I have to remind myself that he is autistic.  Oh we had moments where he asked us the same question repeatedly, he would go over the plan of what was happening each daily repeatedly, and then there was the constant need to organize what everyone was doing and he had to know why and when it would be done.  Many times we could answer him and it would settle him other times not so much.  He has settled into his new routine and home very well.  In the past when we have moved he has gone 8-10 weeks to adjust.  In that time period we would have behavior issues, attitude issues and lots of insecurity.  This time around he has adjusted quickly and really loves it here. Which is such a huge blessing to us as a family.  You see autism does just affect the person who deals with it, it affects the whole family!