This is the drum that Luke can play...

So today was the big day. Dan and Luke hit the open road and headed to CID this morning at 7:45 for the 9 - 12 class. Thankfully Daddy remembered the camera (and humors me with this whole blog thing!) and snapped this pic of the St. Louis arch (on the right) as he was driving across the Mississippi River!
Luke is looking a bit nervous here, but he has his trusty Penguin with him! Dan said that Luke went right into the classroom with Ms. Beth, the Deaf/HOH teacher who comes to our home!
Luke's teacher, Ms. Natalie, agreed to take a few pictures of our big guy during class!!! Thanks to Daddy for asking Luke's teacher and thanks to Luke's teacher for taking the pics!
Notice above that Luke is saying "cheese!"

And finally, here is my favorite one! Maybe b/c of the whole "rockstar" theme we had for his "turn on" party back in April, or the fact that his new big kid bedroom is all rock star themed (more to come on this later!), or the fact that his very favorite song recently is the CID drum song...

This is the drum that Luke can play,
He can play it his own way
Play it fast....
Play it slow....
Make it stop
And make it go!
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la!
I honestly can't wait to get there on Friday!!! With more pics to come! :)

Update on Website

I actually clicked our picture and read the story! Here is the actual website, but check out Children's site. It is so cool to see Luke up there!

http://www.stlouischildrens.org/content/LukesSoundCelebration.htm

Unexpected Day Off...

I went to sleep last night (EARLY!) after work, a quick trip to the gym and the grocery store and was prepared for a typical day at work when I got THE call at 5:30 a.m. The automated voice explained that we had NO SCHOOL due to ice! What???

I got up, dropped the boys off as usual (they definitely need structure after these past 2 weeks) and headed to the gym. I also got some extraneous errands done that I just never have the time to do. I even did some major filing and I found more information on the Great Forest Park Balloon Race in which Luke was a cover story and I realized that I never have posted the fact that our very our Luka Buka (lovely nickname that it is!) is a feature story on the St. Louis Children's Hospital website. The entire family's picture plus our two fab cochlear implant audiologists is on there. Check us out at www.stlouischildrens.org. It has been up there for a while, so I'm not sure how much longer it will be there, but I'm a proud mom, so I just had to share!

And, tomorrow is another BIG day in Luke's life as he officially starts school at CID, Central Institute for the Deaf. We are so blessed in St. Louis to have 3 amazing oral schools, 2 hospitals performing CI surgeries and such great Deaf advocates, one of which is teacing us ASL. Anyhow, Dan is taking Luke there for his first day, from 9 - 12 and then my mom and I will be taking him on Friday. I can't wait to see all the great things he will do once he gets into this amazing class with Master's level Deaf and HOH teachers, great SLPs and tons of Grad Students! I can see another language explosion in my little man's future! I'll definitely keep everyone posted and will hopefully have some amazing pictures to share of our little guy's first day tomorrow. As for me now, it is off to pick up the boys, have a therapy session with our Deaf/HOH Teacher from CID, Beth, who has been with us from the beginning and then head off to our family's ASL class! Wow...I can't imagine how boring our life would be if we didn't have Luke! :) We are loving every minute of it though!

31 years and counting...

Since Uncle Steve's birthday was December 27, and we were out of town, we celebrated yesterday! Nana, Papa, Aunt Jackie and Uncle Steve all came over! We pretty much just hung out. We did play Match Mate again, that Newlywed-esque game. This time Dan and I did terribly! We weren't matching anything!!!

Nana and Papa had already given Steve his gift and ours, a fab new universal remote control, hadn't come in yet, so poor Uncle Steve only had a card to open up...it did have 31 cents in it though, to celebrate his 31 years!
We had a delish meal and ended with a great Peggy Brown cake. We weren't exactly sure what to get on it though. Papa and I talked it over and we decided to go with Steve's nickname, "suck-up" dubbed early in Jackie and Steve's dating days b/c he would come over to our houses and cook wonderful meals and do tons of odd jobs. After they were married though, we joked that "suck-up" had gone by the wayside. We are honestly just kidding though, as yesterday he traveled through our house and measured every window for our new blinds! He even went back and rechecked them! Thanks, Uncle Steve! I couldn't have picked a better brother-in-law! We love ya!
And here is just a fun picture of what our little Luke did to Papa yesterday. Luke has an absolute love for penguins. Neither Jack, nor Nick, really were attached to anything when they were little! Luke certainly has atached himself to his penguins! He decided to give Papa a few of his loved animals and I just had to snap a picture!
Now I'm off to get some coupons clipped (I have slacked on that this past year and write some reports for work...ugh, back to the daily grind!) Enjoy your day, all!

A "ROCKIN" New Year's Eve!

Ever since we have had the boys, our wild and crazy New Year's Eve parties have gone by the wayside. This year proved to be a bit different though! We had our friend Kristin, Kristin's friend Sam, and her daughter Maddie over. I tried to come up with some fun things for us to do so on the drive down to Memphis (photos coming later...I left my camera here so I'm waiting to get the pics from my mom!) my mom and I came up with an activity for each :09 at every hour. For example, at 6:09 we made homeade pizzas. At 7:09 we decorated the house with all of my 2009 decor! It made the night fun and exciting waiting to see what we would do next! While we were waiting though, we certainly weren't twiddling our thumbs! Instead we broke out our new RockBand game!

Here Nick and Kristin are singing "Should I Stay or Should I Go!" I was so impressed that Nick was singing so well into the microphone...he is a natural!
Daddy and Jack rocked out on the guitars! Dan has gotten amazingly well at the guitar as he is staying up till 1 a.m. every night playing!!! You can feel the base coming out of the basement! (A big thank you to our friend Bob who installed our fantastic surround sound system last year....we are definitely putting it to good use!)
Maddie was amazing on the drums, but that girl can sing too!
And here is the group shot! Notice Jack's feet are on Luke's drum set that Santa brought him. He also got a little microphone to sing into, which he does beautifully!
We did have one scary moment of the night when Nick accidently kicked another one of Jack's front teeth out...he is now missing 3 on top in front with no "big" teeth making any appearances. The situation was scary because, well, we couldn't find the tooth! Luckily, Kristin found it! Jack was thrilled!
Jack and his missing front teeth...
CUTE PICTURE ALERT!!! So, Luke was being kind of quiet in the living room while I was making the pizzas with Jack, Nick and Maddie and when Dan glanced over to him, he found our little dude playing with this water bottle. Go figure, all the great toys that Santa brought him and this bottle keeps him busy for a good 15 minutes! The fun was over when he dumped all the water out though...and to think I was just beginning to think about getting new furniture! Not yet, I guess!
Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season. We certainly had a great one, likely the best ever, but I'm happy to get back to my day in day out schedule, which will be changing a bit. More to come on that...

Happy Birthday Jesus!

After we finished opening our presents from Santa, we had breakfast with Nana, Papa, Aunt Jackie and Uncle Steve. Then it was time to exchange our gifts. We always pick names. This year I had Dan (he got TONS of movies!) and Steve had me...he did a whole "red" theme...a red crock pot, red wallet, red pashmina (love it!) and even Big Red gum! Thanks Uncle Steve!!!

We got Dad 2 new DVD players and this fab Dunkin' Donuts, candy filled mug! He looks like he likes it!
Nana received this cordless kettle. Dan and I saw it at the Beale Mansion that we went to and immediately thought it would be perfect for Nana, a tea lover! Hopefully she likes it!
Aunt Jackie and Uncle Steve gave their handmade presents to Jack and Nick. They got these great fleece blankets that even have their names embroidered! Luke unfortunately didn't get a great blanket b/c of all the possible static that they bring and we all know that static and his cochlear implant don't mix! Instead they got him a container full of pens, markers and notepads. I think we have a little writer in the mix! Here the boys are posing with their blankets!
We then welcomed my Aunt Joy (my mom's twin sister!) and Uncle Gene...
...and their children, Laura (and finace, Paul)
...and their son, Ed
And of course they came with gifts. My uncle is a great wood worker! Every year for Christmas and for the boys' birthdays, he always makes them an awesome handmade toy! This year was no different. He made the boys these awesome tractors!
They also bought them these cool hand held games! Luke even got one...perfect for our trip to Memphis!
Ever since we had Jack, Dan and I decided that we wanted to make sure that he and all of our future children would know why we celebrate Christmas - the birth of Jesus! And so began the tradition of buying a "Happy Birthday Jesus" birthday cake. This year was no different as we got our cake from Peggy Brown and enjoyed after our dinner!

Santa is too good!!!

Tis the season for late posts! Now that it is officially the new year, I have my long list of resolutions...one being keeping up with this blog. Since today is a "Sunday" feeling day with football on (go Penn State!) and we are all home, hopefully I'll start the year off right!

Santa certainly showered the three boys with lots of presents! Here are the boys first thing on Christmas morning...they slept in to 7:30!!!
Jack's number one gift on his list to Santa this year was a light saber. He did receive one, but this was the first gift he opened up (the camera kind of got thrown by the wayside once the bows, ribbons, and wrapping paper were flying!) ~a Star Wars figurine that matched his light saber! Maybe he should have asked for his two front teeth!
Nick asked Santa for Spike the Dino, a huge remote controlled dino and he certainly did receive a big one! He must have been really good this year! Here is Nick's first present that he opened...Kung Fu Panda! Hopefully we'll break this out during a cold and snowy winter's night!
Here is Nick opening his dinosaur! Jack received one too and they are cool!!!
Luke was thrilled to open his cool drum (so he can play along with the rest of us with our ROCKBAND...woo hoo!!!). Here he is with the best "binky" smile I've ever seen!
Here are the boys opening ROCKBAND! I LOVE Nick's face!
Luke was jumping up and down when he opened this toddler race track!
But even after Luke received all his neat new toys, he still loved his binky and penguin the best!
Daddy, along with the rest of the courntry I think, received a Garmin! I also found this awesome statue of the ASL sign of "I love you!" for him too! I think that was his favorite!
Santa brought me a cool new touch screen phone! It is amazing! I can watch TV, surf the internet, use it as a GPS and it is an AWESOME camera too! What more could a girl as for? Hmm... perhaps some diamond hoops and a necklace? Thanks SANTA! I had a little helper the whole morning too! Thanks Luke!
Our family had such a wonderful Christmas morning! Here's hoping your family had the same! A very late but true, MERRY CHRISTMAS to all of you!