About a boy named Joel....

This week has been a week of joy for my son Joel.  This weekend started out with him losing his first tooth!  Now, Joel has a sensory processing disorder.  He was dismissed from Occupational Therapy this last year, but he still has some sensory difficulties.  His teeth being a little loose have bothered him for some time now and we have been SO afraid of what would happen when the time came for a tooth to come out!  Well, this past Monday, at a lovely picnic with some neighbors, his tooth went one way and then the other and he yelled to us that it was really loose.  I thought to myself that we were about to have to take Joel home and let him calm down.  Instead, Joel reached into his mouth, pulled out the tooth, and with a bloody grin showed the tooth to everyone!  I was so proud of him and everyone cheered for his tooth coming out!










There is is folks!  He was eating ice cream at the time and bit into the cone and it came right out!  Speaking of eating ice cream, I got the cutest picture of Connor as well.  It was one of the last days of Summer and this picture just reminds me that it is GOOD to be a kid in the summer time!

  Little Boo Boo, standing on a slip and slide, taking a HUGE bite out of his ice cream...now THAT is finding the joy folks! 

So today was another wonderful day for Joel!  I woke up this morning with the words from Finding Nemo in my head "First day of school! First day of school!"  Joel got up, got dressed, and allowed this Momma to take some cute pics of him.  Now, if you have been on Pinterest at ALL in the last few months, there have been moms pinning like CRAZY trying to get ourselves as creatively ready as possible for that first day of school photo.  This morning, I took two of the cutest ideas I have seen on Pinterest and combined them.  I took a picture that I hope will lead to many more like them in the years to come.  So now, I give you the "First Day of School" shot....
  A picture of Joel, holding a picture of him on his first day of Kindergarten.  Next year it will be a picture of him holding THIS picture...and so on...FUN!  It was fun navigating my way through the parental trenches of first grade this morning.  I think we did pretty well and Joel had a great first day.  I even made some home made chocolate chip/coconut/peanut butter/cinnamon/Iwentcrazywiththeingredients cookies!  Joel gave them three hundred thumbs up, so I will take it!  I am so thankful for this week of Joel and how much joy he is finding.  Between getting tooth fairy money and a certificate from Nute the tooth fairy, to being able to play on the bigg-ER kid playground, it has been a week of fun things for us!  I am so thankful Connor starts school next week!  I am going to need a weekend long nap! LOL

Same idea, different blog

So I have decided to post some happy moments from my week onto this blog.  It has been up for a while, but I didn't blog too much before because I didn't LIKE blogging, and I didn't know how to work the page very well...well...doing it for a year, I have come to understand this blogging thing and I am much faster at typing than I am writing in a journal.  So I guess I will write on here, post it on facebook when I feel like it, but have the moments to savor in scrapbooks that I can make out of these.  So I will do some moments in bullet form for the week.  I probably won't post everyday like I did in the Happy Challenge, but there have been so many things that have filled my heart with joy this week and I don't want to forget them!

• Ginger jumped up on the couch this week for the first time.  She was so happy when she did it and her little ears were pulled back into the "proud doggy" pose.  She was wagging her tail and licking me and I was yelling "good girl!"  It was such a happy moment and so precious!
• This was the last full week of our summer.  We did a lot of fun things and made so many friends this summer!  I am so excited to look back and see how much fun and how productive we were this summer!  Last summer I was in bed almost all three months, so it was great to get out, get swimming, go to the beach twice, and play with friends!
• Joel learned how to ride a bike!  He has been working on it for a year now, but he has had such a mental fear of falling off.  Well, my brother came over and I begged him to teach Joel.  I just KNEW someone other than a parent could do it! LOL  In about 5 minutes, my brother was running along beside Joel as he rode his bicycle without training wheels.  He then rode over to his friend's house and has been riding every day since then...so proud of him!
• This past week I saw my rheumatologist and I am officially back on my chemo treatments (methotrexate) for my rheumatoid arthritis.  A lot of damage has been done to my feet over the past few months, and there is a good chance I will need some cortisone shots in the top of my feet (let me just say OW! now)  But hopefully I will not be gimp walking for much longer...time will tell!  I am just so thankful that my arm has healed enough so that I can be on my treatment once more and stop any further damage from occurring.  It has weighed heavily on my mind as I woke up each morning, barely able to make it down the stairs, that all of the pain was permanent damage happening to my feet.  I am so thankful ALL of the symptoms of my RA should fade with the next few months.  Exhaustion, fever, and severe pain...be gone!

I am really looking forward to this week and Joel starting school and going into First Grade and hanging out with my mom and niece while my brother and sis-in-law are on vacation.  Here is to all the joy that will come this week!  Have a fantastic Sunday Night!