My Christmas Letter :o)

Happy Holidays from the R's!

WOW! What a busy year we have had! We started out the year with A in Kindergarten and W in preschool. P was, and still is, attending ECSE to get her PT, OT, and Speech Therapy and also started Aqua Therapy, since water is one of her favorite things. And J had just started home based Speech Therapy for his language delays.

In March, over Spring Break, I tried out homeschooling A and W because we were going to see if it was something we wanted to take on in the fall. They both loved it so much that they decided to start right then and finish the year as homeschoolers.

On April 10th we finally were able to finalize on the boys’ adoption and what a wonderful day that was! They had been with us almost 2 years and it was a long time coming.

In August, after waiting for a year, I went and got Ashley from Texas. After much agonizing and the realization that her needs were way greater than we had been told, we decided that she was more than we could handle. She went back to her previous foster home in October and they welcomed her with open arms as she’s lived there for over 2 years. She needs a home that can give her constant one on one attention and we can’t do that with 5 kids. We have decided to do foster care again, and if we find more children along the way to adopt, we will do that at that time.

In September, the kids started homeschooling through Connections Academy. It’s basically homeschooling with a set curriculum and a teacher to mail various assignments to every month. The kids are both doing great! They both have straight A’s and W is almost done with the Kindergarten curriculum and will be starting the 1^st grade shortly.

On December 9^th we finally got a diagnosis for P! We had all thought that she had Angelman Syndrome, and she still might, but she was diagnosed with a duplication on the short arm of her 8^th chromosome. It’s called 8p23.1 duplication syndrome, and is VERY rare. It’s pretty much the same diagnosis as Angelman, except that she might actually talk someday when her mental/developmental age gets far enough to as right now she’s still like a 10-12 month old.

A is still in dance and W is doing gymnastics. P is SO CLOSE to walking and that’s VERY exciting for us all. She’s such a hard worker! J is a little wild thing and will be starting ECSE in January when he turns 3. We still can’t quite figure that boy out :o)

Hubby and I are doing great! Loving our life and our kids! We bought a camper last fall and are all looking forward to spending lots of quality time in it as soon as it gets warm enough.

The R's