Come on, producers......

I don't know WHY I thought it was possible, but I ACTUALLY believed that a competition that states you can vote and your vote counts and will determine the outcome was in fact TRUE. I should know better. I have a background in theatre. I even know someone who has worked in production on "reality" TV, so I know from his mouth that it is all a facade..... BUT I STILL FOOLISHLY BELIEVED that the America's Got Talent model was in fact real.....

They didn't even try to hide the difference from the British version. For those of you who may not know - last year, on the British version of this show, there was a goofy looking adorable cell phone salesman who knocked the judges and audience members off their feet when he opened his mouth and an angelic opera voice filled the room singing Nessun Dorma. It was phenomenal. He ended up winning that season. He then became an underground Internet sensation because of his you tube clip and eventually went on to making a CD - which is great by the way.

Fast forward to America's version this season. An overweight, down on his luck, good ole country boy comes up to the mic.... and what should come out of his mouth (oh so unexpectedly)?!? That's right, Nessun Dorma. And what, pray tell, was the audience and judges reactions??? Roaring standing ovation....

Wait a minute... haven't I seen this before??

Fast forward a little more - he has "humbly" made it through the entire season and it is time for his final performance ..... THEY DIDN'T EVEN BOTHER TO CHANGE THE CONCEPT OF THE BACKGROUND SETS!!! The background of the TWO (British vs American) songs, which again, were exactly the same, were almost identical down to the fire spark waterfall. (** Post Publish EDIT: I just tried to watch the below you-tube clips silumltaneously and I swear it is almost the same camera angles. It is certainly the same background tape/additional vocals, the same smoke, the same tux, the same concave vertical towers with digital blue bars projected on it)

I don't like being taken for a fool.... and so blatantly. Don't tell me I have a choice or a vote when I don't.... I might start suspecting you of modeling our government.


Paul Potts (British version - 2007):



Neal E. Boyd (American version - 2008):

Mental Zaps DO work!

Let's just say the journey of Max's school bus life has started out as a rocky one... first no bus, then, cars zooming past, yadda yadda.....

Well, there has been one thing that has been driving me crazy since the bus actually started showing up. He stops on the opposite site of our street. It is right in front of our house, but it is on the wrong side of the street, and where we are it is a very wide street (you could park 4+ cars across it). Then once he has picked up/dropped off Max, he does this 3 corner turn in order to be facing the direction he just came from. I have never made a big deal about this - it is no big deal to walk across the street to meet him, I am just glad he shows at all.... but... why not just do it in reverse and that way he is in front of our house when picking up/dropping off Max??

Well.... I have been mentally zapping him with this idea since, well, day one, and today - he got it. He told my husband that he was going to come this way every day because it was safer....

So I guess I will not need to take out Mike's shot gun after all!

Just for the record

It is gonna be awesome....

I mean, AWESOME awesome.....

I mean people slowing down and coming around a couple of times just to see it awesome.

And we have only JUST begun.

That's right people..... this year's Halloween decorations are on like Donkey Kong....

Will post pics of the final masterpiece, but I will leave you with these thoughts....

Six ghosts, approx 5 ft long, lighted and hanging from the front tree...
Lime green lights in the windows, that have been boarded up to look like the house is abandonded....
The graveyard.....

Oh yeah, baby.... bring on the trick or treaters....

I cannot find my tennis shoes....

Have you seen them????

I own upwards of 20 pairs of shoes but I can never find the pair I WANT...

Crappity crap....

This makes me so happy!

Dear Mr. I am in a Hurry for Work,

Hi, how are you? Did you get to work on time?

I'm sorry... you don't recognize me?

I am sure it was hard to get a good idea of what I looked like as I held my 5 YEAR OLD's hand as we crossed the street to load him onto the bus this morning and you came zooming past us.... you know... zooming right past that HUGE YELLOW BUS with BRIGHT RED FLASHING LIGHTS and A BIG RED SIGN that says STOP!!! I know.... you were going pretty fast to recognize a universal sign like that, much less the lives crossing the street to get to it.

Psst.... next time.... if I catch you zooming past our house in the morning and not stopping, I am gonna pull out my husband's shotgun and wait for you and I am gonna blow your tires out. I am not a very good shot, so I may miss, kinda like you may miss us crossing the street. But I may not miss..... that is a chance you are gonna have to take.

Anyway.... hope you have a great day!

Best Regards,
Your Neighbor, mother of an adorable red head I would like to see grow up.....

Catching up

THE FOLLOWING POST WAS WRITTEN OVER SEVERAL DAYS WHILE I DID NOT HAVE INTERNET ACCESS:

So I hear we are in an economic crisis right now. I would have no clue as I am in an information vacuum. The only access I have to the outside world right now is through antenna that gets me the local stations that are in non stop recovery coverage. This morning there was a break in from the national affiliate to broadcast President Bush’s speech about the fact that we had a stock market 9-11 on Monday. Really? Didn’t know – too busy trying figure out how to get food and gas and praying the lights would come back on to worry about the fact the sophisticated game of banking on others to make money for you some how came crumbling to pieces. Besides, I really do not appreciate the term “stock market 9-11” as I don’t think terrorists purposely ruined people lives by taking their money on Monday, so let’s keep those witty little phrases to ourselves – those that were really close to those falling towers just don’t appreciate it, as I am sure many other feel the same way.
.
Sorry… I am tired and bitter right now. But I do want to try and document what happened in our Hurricane Ike experience before it all jumbles into one foggy memory. I am actually righting this in Word since I still have no access to the internet, a fact that I have to admit I am jones-ing for right now. Yesterday at work I needed to accomplish a couple of tasks that actually made my brain freeze because I didn’t have access to the internet. I am fully aware there were other ways to find the information I was looking for, but I am so used to using this tool as second nature that not having it made me have to stop and think, something I don’t do normally do – okay stop laughing…..

Wednesday was when things started getting serious – the storm was just not turning. It had shifted back north from Corpus, but not far enough to allow us to go, SO sorry Louisiana, this is your problem, again. Nope…. We would have to shoulder this one this time. I got home at my usual time which is earlier than most so I decided to head to the store. As I was wandering the store picking up water bottles and dry goods, my phone rings. It was my mother calling with the most recent coordinates of the storm – I pick up by saying – So I should put all this stuff back? And she said, Oh no…. it shifted North – it is coming right here. Crappity crap. You hear cell phones go off and whispers to other customers spreading the same news – and then people grab one or two more of whatever it was they were just grabbing off the shelf. I had forgotten the propane tanks for the grill and head back to the store and now EVERYONE is there. It takes me 45 minutes in the garden line to get 2 tanks of propane. Mike greets me at the house with “what took you so long?” and I give him the look from hell and say, “Are you kidding me? Are you KIDDING ME?!?!”

So Thursday – I spent prepping the office and getting our home care patients taken care of as best we could. We had quite a few that should have hit the road, but they just didn’t want to because “it is not coming here.” Get home late and Mike has already taken care of 90% of the stuff needed to be done at our house.

Friday – Wake up – try get as much laundry done as possible, clean up and change sheets because everyone in our family is hunkering down at our house. That is a total of 11 people – 5 kids under 8. I have the news on and I cannot believe the pictures of the waves that are crashing onto the seawall at Galveston and the storm is easily 15 hours away, still. Help my mother secure her big stuff in her yard and get her over to my house.

Karen’s family shows up at our house, we organize the supplies and start wandering outside as the breezes turn into winds – gusty ones at times. We played with the kids outside for awhile and even let them get into the pool to blow off some energy. It is around 5 o’clock and the first of many teases that night happens when our power flashes on and off – oh HELL to the NO….. we have not even seen one drop of rain and we are going to lose power this early!!! We rush inside to make dinner because what we had planned needed electricity – stove and oven – and we had air mattresses that needed to be blown up. The lights flash on and off several times through out the night. We went outside a couple of times to watch the whipping of the trees and took bets on which ones would no longer be standing in the morning. We were all going to stay downstairs so the kids were on the air mattresses in a main living area and we had put two reclining winged back chairs in my room – so between the big sofa chair already in there all 5 adults had somewhere to “rest” all night long. We were laying down watching the TV in my room when I say a huge lime green explosion outside my bedroom window and then blackness – our transformer was officially gone – 11:47 PM. No power – we had a hand held TV that we used as our info from then on.

Interesting point I will mention here – it is a good thing this storm hit PRIOR to the digital takeover because otherwise, we would not been able to watch TV at all during this time.

So – we drifted to sleep somewhere in here and got woken up by something around 2:00 AM – this was when the major Hurricane winds were here – it was dark so it was hard to see, but there were lots of limbs down and something very black at the bottom of the pool. Speaking of the pool – the winds were causing our own little flood surge – all the debris on the top of the pool was in one corner and the pool water would splash up over the top of the pool as the winds pushed the water in one direction.


I went back to sleep for awhile, and got up early. It was still raining and gusty, but the bad stuff was gone. We had cereal (to use the milk) for breakfast followed by an ice cream party at 8:30 AM – if we had waited much later there would have been ice cream soup. Mike took the melting ice cream as a challenge at ate 8 chocolate ice cream bars in one sitting…. not a proud wife moment.




We went outside to survey the damage. We lost 3 major limbs on some trees and countless other minor limbs, but no MAJOR damage – just a lot of clean up. The pool was so full of debris that Mike finally just jumped in with goggles and a rope tied to a milk crate. He would shove debris into it and we would haul it up and dump it out. The kids helped out too – they had nothing better to do and they pretended the sticks were swords.


This was a tree from one of our walks in the neighborhood:


We got power back sometime that day, only to lose it later that night. But miraculously we got it again the next day, so it was kind of a off and on tease for 2 days until we got power back completely. We did not get cable, phones or internet, but at least we had food and air conditioning. The kids were on DVD overload – they were going crazy in between killing each other in free play time, organized play around something ( like the trains) and the movie time.





By Saturday, a week after the storm hit, I am not sure if my sister was racing out the door or if I was pushing her, but the kids definitely had had enough extended family time.

So…. all in all…. we did great… the neighbors across the street didn’t have power for 10-12 days… I just tried to keep my blinds shut tight so as not to rub into their misery.

4th Blog-o-versary

Oh sweet sweet blog.... I wish to thank you for being here for oh so long. I cannot believe I have actually kept up with you for 4 years. I don't think I have done anything for 4 years.

I am so sorry I fell off the face of the Earth there for awhile, but I lost access to the internet both at home and at work and let me tell you.... the detox was very similar to that of heroin.... luckily I didn't have to start breaking into strangers houses to fill my fix. I did write emails and blog entries and just save them in the "out" box until the access was back up, just to get relief from the shaking.

I will be posting my backed up posts soon, but today I want to leave as a special day to mark this my 4 year blog-o-versary.

Post Hurricane Ike

Holy Pattooters Batman..... I cannot believe there is internet and power at my mother's but alas.... here it is... it has been a bit of a tease, power on and off over the past few days, but right now it is on, so the AC is low in anticipation of the power going out again. We are fine.... lots of down limbs and debris, but mostly ok... curfew about to start, so we need to get home before we get arrested on the way back to my house. Will post pics and more details soon!

Ike

I am not sure that we have enough granola bars and spagettios in the pantry for this bugger of a storm.

Wait for it....

Wait for it......





Wait for it......












And yes.... I cried... and Mike got teary eyed..... such a big boy.

I am a stalker

I have officially become a stalker.

Two days ago, I stopped after school in hopes that I could meet the bus driver and find out why they won't stop at our house in the morning.

Yesterday, I am advised that there were issues, but, bus would show tomorrow.

Today - no bus.... at least I hope there was no bus, because if it was that asshole who zoomed pass our house and didn't even hover his foot over the break this morning, I don't want my kid on that bus.

So we wait - no show - of course - take kids to school.

Mommy - why are you stopping(parking) the car?
Because Mommy wants to wait for the bus to come here.

I walk Max to the front door, then I head around the corner to the bus drop off. I walk up to a very nice PE coach with an official looking clip board and pen and some sort of form with numbers that he checks off, that I can only assume would be the numbers of all the different routes that have come in that morning....

Excuse me.... has the ### shown up this morning???
Uhm, ... (consults clip board officially) no, ma'm - the ### has not shown up in the AM or PM ever.
I see... well, I am trying to do everything in my power to make show up.....

I get on the phone to the transportation department immediately.

Black hole.... blah blah blah blah, leave a message at the beep and I will return your call at me earliest convenience....

Yes, I would appreciate a call back at ***-***-****. The only time I have every spoken to anyone at your office is when someone accidentally picked up the phone. I am trying to get answers to resolve this issue. PLEASE CALL BACK!!

I am pretty sure there was even some stalker like heavy breathing in there because I was really pi$$ed and frustrated at this point.

.... next step.... we go to the transportation distribution center directly.....child, meet bus driver... bus driver, meet child... bus driver, please see key map as highlighted here..... "X" marks where child and parent will be at 7:10 awaiting your arrival - as we have been for a week!!!

Black holes do exist

I know they do.

They are at the transportation department of our local school district.

I have been leaving messages in what appears to be bottomless pits that lead to lack of responsibility and no ma'm that is not MY department.

I have finally sucked myself out of one of the black holes to receive an answer.

Well, ma'm - no students were there to be picked up so the route was suspended.

Uhm, no --- we were informed of the arrangement on Wednesday afternoon - we were on the curb Thursday morning... (I have the pictures to prove it!!)

Well, the bus will be there tomorrow.

So will we, I guess.

On Tuesday, Max in all his 5 year old wisdom said - Well, mommy, life just doesn't work out that way - school buses don't come all the way over here for just ONE kid.

Oh yes they do baby - and they will - Mommy will see to it!!

The bus was a no show

Today was supposed to be the first day that Max rode the bus to and from school. We waited from 7:00 until 7:30 and no bus.

Needless to say "we" were devastated.

Maybe tomorrow.

It is such a MOM thing

We are trying to get into our new schedule of school time. One thing that has struck me very hard is that this is the first time our family has been apart of something really cliche and stereotypical. So far, I have felt like my young family has been trucking along on the outskirts of life, minding our own business, doing our own things, our own way. This is the first time we have joined the rank and file of a system when it relates to our family. Dropping Max off and picking him up from school... waiting in the "car rider" pick up line for half an hour, car after car, kid after kid...everyone knowing their part.... I felt like such a MOM. Not Becky, not mommy, not a wife or a friend or whatever... a MOM, doing a MOM thing, in a MOM way.

Day 2

So I didn't think I would cry on day 2... but I did.

I was dropping him off this morning and I asked if he needed me to walk him to his class.

Nope... I don't need anybody following me, I know exactly where to go.

Okay, so when you go in through the doors which way do you go.

(Roll eyes) To the left.

That's right. And then you walk down, down, down, down....

Mommy... if I walk all the way down, I would be outside.

Uh, okay... well, then I guess you know where to go.

Yes.

(KISS)

Bye mommy

Little red head rolls into the crowd of bobbing heads and backpacks.

I almost get into a wreck craning my head backwards to make sure he gets in the door okay.

I cry to the stop light.....

1st Day of School

Oh my, my, my.......



First day of school... my sweet, baby, angel, first born had his FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL today!!! Needless to say I was all vklempt!

The early rising was a bit rough, the lights were slightly brighter than usual, but we managed to rub the sleep out of our eyes and get dressed for school. We had picked our first day of school outfit the night before (we even picked out Mommy's outfit).




I took Ben to daycare school so that we could have the morning to Max, and when I returned, he was dressed for school and helping daddy pack his lunch box. We combed his hair and he saw that mommy and daddy's bed was made, so he was determined to make his bed - so upstairs we went to make his bed. Then down to the breakfast table... which we ate maybe half of our usual.

Then .... time for pictures.....

Obligatory pic with daddy:


Obligatory pic with mommy:



Time to load up into the car:

Cool Transformer backpack? Check!




Cool Batman lunch box? Check!



We head to school, mommy driving, mommy loses it for the first time at the 1st light out of our neighborhood! I quickly turn on favorite rock and roll song ( I like to move it, move it!) to keep things up beat. We head to the school - too many cars, no where to park - okay, Max, you are gonna have to show daddy your new classroom - (start crying again, me that is).... NO WAIT!! Some one is leaving... park.

Head into new school:




Max is about 10 paces ahead of us, which is great, because I wanted to make sure he knew how to get to his classroom.



And here we are..... big smiles, big excitement... big hugs from our teacher! No kiss goodbye, just a wave.... and mommy turns quickly so he doesn't see me cry.... again.




I cry all the way home.....

My baby......in kindergarten.

Alien encounters of the elderly kind

So I am dropping the boys off at school today and all of the ages are in one room watching a movie together.... ET. I tell all the kids, "I saw this movie in the movie theatre when I was YOUR age!!" One kid then proceeds to say very loud:

"MAN! This is an old, OLD movie!!"

Another big change....

This year will be a year of big changes for this family. We are completely revamping how our family works, and I am hoping this is for the better.

So, now that Max is off to big kid school and Ben has transitioned to the new daycare school, Mommy will be changing her work schedule. Mommy is going to be going to work very early in the morning, dropping Ben off on the way when daycare first opens. Daddy will then make sure Max gets on the school bus and off to school. After school, mommy will be home in time to be there to receive Max from the school bus and we will then go pick up Ben. I am slightly torn as to whether or not we will work on homework and then go get Ben or just go get him. Part of me knows homework time will go so much smoother with Ben not there, but part of me knows it will also be very hard for Max to come from all day at school and head straight into homework, a little transition time would be good.

I am hoping these changes help to roll into even greater changes as a whole for our family. I am hoping more time in the afternoon will allow us to better schedule our rituals, allow me to get more stuff done during the week - thus allowing for more free time on the weekends. The extra money we will save from not having to pay daycare for Max will be... well.... amazing.

I am just so happy, I am teary eyed right now. This is the first time I have sat down and really thought about all the choices we have made in one sitting and it is very happy and very overwhelming. I fell like a huge weight has been lifted off of my shoulders and I am just so hopeful right now.

I just love the fall..... most people experience renewal at the beginning of the year or in the spring bloom, but I seem to renew best in the fall. What a discovery!

We are just gonna see....

Oh so much to say, such an incredible, difficult, long journey to get where we are today, but we have made a decision and this is for documentation purposes since this is my archive for our lives. Please note, since this is public, some of this may be quite shocking to some of you, but please know we have researched, thought, talked with friends, counseled those involved, and we are very confident that the decision we have made is the best for OUR family. I am open to comments and opinions (as I know there are quite a few out there on all levels of this spectrum), but clearly we have to do what we think is best for our family.

Earlier this week we received a call from the school district. They were inviting Max to be tested for a new program (this is the second year). We later would find out that that this program was only being offered to the incoming kindergartners of 3 elementary schools and if accepted, he would be going to a different elementary school then the one we are zoned. It is a bilingual academy. The program is a duel immersion curriculum with the goal of biliterate and bilingual students by 5th grade.

Side note here: When Mike and I were registering Max in the Spring, I read about this program. At the time, I thought... HOW COOL!! I was a little disappointed when I found out that it was not going to be offered at Max's school. This is one of my 3 genie wishes.... to be able to speak and communicate in any language. I took 10 years of Spanish and 3 years of Russian and other than very conversational Spanish and veeerrryyy little Russian, it is all gone. So the idea of Max getting language development this advanced this young was very exciting to me.

Okay... back to the phone call. I was very overwhelmed. I told the person calling to forgive me, but I was going to have to think about this and call her back. I was so taken aback that I couldn't even think of questions to ask.

I immediately started to research on the Internet. It was a little difficult because this is still a relatively new concept in America and there is not a lot out there. Everywhere else in the world, learning two languages at a young and very advanced pace is normal, but not here. Part of my problem was that I was researching bilingual classes, which led me to Spanish speaking children in English speaking classes or English as a second language (ESL) research. This is not what this program is about. It was not until I got to the term Dual Immersion, where I was finally able to get some solid answers to my questions. My biggest concern was how this was going to effect his overall development. Would so much effort be spent trying to teach the language that he would fall behind on the concepts? I mean, it is great that he would be able to translate the concept, but I want him to UNDERSTAND the concept and excel at it! If he can do it in 2 languages, he is ahead of the curve.

That night Mike and I talked and we left it with, we will allow him to get tested, and see what happens. He may not even be accepted into the program so no need to jump the gun.

I made an appointment to get him tested. I explained to Max that we were going to go and meet some teachers at the new school. I said they wanted to see what he already knows from his other school. He was very satisfied with that. When we parked the car, it was a different school than the one we have been driving past as "his new big boy school", but it was the same school we had to go to register him since the other school was being built, so he was familiar with the school. He asked me, "Mommy.... is this my new school or is the other school my school?" and I answered, "Well, we are not sure yet, that is why we are here." We went inside and the coordinator gave me some forms to read and fill out and turned to Max, "Are you ready to come talk with me?"

This was one of those moments - the first time I had ever had it with Max. He walked away hand in hand with the coordinator and I could do nothing to help him. I couldn't sit with him, I couldn't help him, I couldn't answer for him. I can't teach him this information, I can't make him think. All I can do is lead him to the tools and sit in the sidelines hoping, praying, loving, and supporting.....this was a very new feeling for me... and I got to feel it for an hour. Over an hour. And then he came around the corner again full of smiles and energy and right into my arms. I sat with the coordinator, while Max, bursting with nervous energy, fidgeted. It was clear we weren't going to get a lot of time to talk, and she needed to grade his scores before we met again, so we decided to go look at the classroom and meet the teachers. The classrooms were beautiful. There are 2 classes in this program 16 students in each class; 8 English speaking and 8 Spanish speaking students. They were very clear to advise me that this was not an ESL class or just another bilingual class. The goal here is for English speaking children to learn Spanish fluently and for Spanish speaking children to continue developing that language academically, not just conversationally at home - but reading, writing, etc.

We agreed to meet again that afternoon to go over his scores and talk some more with out Max present. We left the school and I walked Max over to the playground to allow him to get rid of some of his nervous energy and to talk. On the swings I started to lay the ground work. "Daddy and I think that it may be best if you go to this school for big kid school." All of a sudden my happy go lucky kid shifts 180 degrees..."NO!!! I don't wanna go to THIS school!! THIS school is LAME!! I want to go to a NORMAL kindergarten!!!" Oh my.... clearly he has understood waaayyy more than we have let on. We had purposely not spoken about any differences in the kindergartens and yet, he picked up immediately that this situation was special. We talked some more and the more we talked the more it became clear that he was worried about leaving Ben behind. This was where we had to have another big talk about how he was a big kid now and how Ben would be going to "daycare" school and he would be going to "BIG KID" school, no matter which school was decided. This seemed to turn a light bulb on for Max and calm the situation down.

So I called Mike, told him how it went, and even though we hadn't gotten the results yet, the tour and the talks made it pretty clear they were going to make an offer for him to attend the academy, so what did we want to do. I also talked with my mother and good friends and the last thoughts that kept settling in my brain were, he is already advanced for kindergarten. He has already learned the basic kindergarten curriculum at his previous school, so even if we decided this wasn't for him, we could always transfer him to a regular 1st grade and he wouldn't be behind. He would still have his basic reading, writing, and math skills developed.

Here is where my peacock feathers come out in pride and I toot my son's horn a little. This is my blog, and I do this for him to read later, so I want him to know how very proud we are of him. Mike met me at the school and the coordinator sat across from us and said, you truly have an exceptional child. She pulled out the test scores and proceeded to go through them. To qualify for this program, they are looking for children to score a minimum of 50....Max scored 98. She said the moment they walked into the room he was all over the place checking everything out, but the moment she asked him a question, he stopped, and gave her his complete attention, answered the questions correctly (and then some), and then would go back to investigating the area around him. She asked him to draw a car, he drew it then proceeded to tell her what the parts of the car were, how they worked, why they worked, " 'And this is where the human, you know the person?... this is where he drives the car.' All I asked him to do was draw the car." He was asked to say the alphabet, then write it, he wrote it all out, checked his work, realized he had missed a letter ("Oh, I missed the "S"), he corrected his work and then turned it in to her.

She continued to be very complimentary and Mike and I just sat there and got teary eyed. You always think your kid is great, but it sure is wonderful to hear a complete stranger tell you he is too.

It was wonderful that he is smart, but I wanted to make sure that we were heading into this with a stable head on our shoulders. I realized this was going to be a transition for him - and I know it will be hard emotionally at first to grasp this, but I wanted to make sure it was clear what was transitional emotion versus, I am just not getting this. The coordinator assured us that this is why they test. Children who score high on these tests tend to be better equipped to learn this way. Some children did not qualify.

So.... Max is going to learn Spanish... alot of it.... very quickly. Then his curriculum will be taught in Spanish. It is the exact same curriculum as all Texas kindergartners, his will just be in Spanish. Mike and I will be required to go to workshops as well, and there are guides for us. I am fully aware that this is going to be more work for us, but if that helps Max in the long run, bring it on. And if this works, Ben will attend here as well.

There really is so very much more, but this post is long enough as it is, so I will break it down into future posts.

Please feel free to leave questions here. I am forever grateful for all the questions I have bounced back and forth with my family and friends so far, they have helped to create more questions I need to ask and also have helped me to reasure ourselves in our decision. I am going to try to document this journey as best I can for our own sake, and maybe for others later down the line who may be thinking of making the same decision for their family.