Dear Deniz

Today I find myself thinking of you, not surprising since it's your birthday! I'm finding it hard to believe that it's been 6 whole years since you've been gone. They say that time heals all wounds and I guess in a way it does but I still catch myself thinking I've got to tell Deniz about this, and then I remember. I remember that you never got to meet Frank or sing at my wedding like we planned or meet my boys. How is it that my boys are going to grow up not knowing you! We never did get to take that trip to California or go back to Istanbul together. I feel like I never got the chance to say goodbye. Once I get pst the remembering comes the anger- why didn't you get the chance to meet Frank or sing at my wedding or meet my boys? Why didn't we have the time to go back to Istanbul or take that trip to CA? Why were you taken from us so young? I don't have the answers... but today on your birthday I was there as we brought 4 new lives into this world. And I'd like to think that each one of them has even a fraction of your spirit!

Do you know that everytime I read a Mercedes Lackey book I think of you. I still remember the very first time we met- me hiding in a corner with a book and you stopping to say hello and "I love that book." Everytime I watch the X-Files I remember those Sunday nights spent in the students lounge. I remember you and Brenda fighting for a solo in glee club singing for like an hour and Mr S still not being able to decide so you had to split it. Lighting firecrackers on the roof of your apartment in Montreal. You greeting me on crutches and saying Surprise! Touring the Botanical gardens. Hanging out in the library. Skiing in those horrible hot pink snowsuits- what were we thinking?!?!? Your smile. Trapeze school. Shopping in the covered bazaar. Singing.

After the sadness and the anger come the good memories, still tempered by sadness, but I find myself smiling as I think of our teenage selves. God we were so young! On the way to work tonight I listened to the Concert Choir cd that you made our senior year and I like to think that I can pick your voice out. We were so proud of you when you finished your engineering degree but I will always remember you best singing. And I know that even if my boys never get to meet you in person they can meet you through my memories and through your voice recorded on that cd.

Punxsutawney Phil says spring is going to come early this year- I'm taking it as a message from you! I miss you so much my love. Good Night, spoons.

In loving memory of Deniz Sarikaya, 1978-2005

Visit to Playtown Express

So this Wednesday we went down to Hopkinton MA to Playtown Express with Reba and Naomi. It was a busy day to say the least. We left the house early and I took the boys into Keene for their Swim and Gym class at the YMCA. Xander loves the gym class- he is so funny trying to climb the climbing wall and hang from the monkey bars. James particularly likes the ball pit- he's too little I think for most of the other stuff really. All in all I think gym and swim is better suited for Xander than James age-wise but he'll catch up! Xander is like a little fish in the water although mostly he seems to want to play rather than learn how to swim so... we'll have to work on that. He is really good at kicking his feet and staying aflost with the help of his swim vest but he hasn't really figured out the reaching with his arms yet. I think I may remove one of the float pads from the back of his vest to force him to tip forward a bit more-then maybe he will

learn how to use his arms more. James hasn't figured out the whole swimming thing at all yet- he just clings in the water. Anyway after swim and gym we grabbed some lunch and headed south.

Luckily the boys slept the whole way down to Hopkinton so they were well rested when we got to Playtown. I don't think they knew where to begin! Basically Playtown is a large open warehouse space that is full of bouncy things and toy cars and there is a whole row of play shops. Xander of course was mostly interested in the cars and the slides and James just puttered around. He enjoyed going down the big slide but poor mommy got tired of hauling him up it! Thankfully after the first few times Xander managed to figure out how to get up it himself! We spent about 3 hours there until they closed. By then it was snowing so instead of going back to Reba's for a bit we decided to head straight home- which turned out to be a wise decision since it took us over 3 hours to get home! James slept most of the way and Xander entertained me with his singing until he fell asleep. It was just very slow going home because of the snow. I was very ready to be home!

Preschool here we come...

So today we met with the preschool teacher at Winchester Elementary School. Xander is currently receiving speech therapy from early intervention and once he turns 3 he will be receiving services from the school district, assuming that he still qualifies anyway. So the teacher came to our house to meet him and to discuss preschool with us. Frank wasn't able to make it so it was me, the preschool teacher, and Xander's speech therapist, Emily. Basically she just explained how the whole process of transitioning him to the school's care worked. So in February Xander will have his yearly evaluation to determine his eligibility for services. At this point I think he will qualify without difficulty. Despite some very significant progress these last few months, he is still pretty delayed when compared to his peers. Then in April we will meet with the school for a Team Meeting with the teacher, the special ed director and speech therapy to determine whether or not the school agrees with his Feb evaluation and whether they agree to provide services. Assuming this all go according to plan Xander could start preschool as of his 3rd birthday in May. We'll see if we decide to start him in May or wait until the beginning of the new year in May... I feel like starting him in May might be almost disruptive but given how much snow that we have had they may be going to school into July! In any case even if he doesn't still qualify for services he is on the wait list for preschool so come September my little man will be going to school- well at least he'll be going to school four 1/2 days a week! The advantage to him needing speech is that preschool would be free, whereas if he goes as a normal "peer" then we have to pay tuition but at least the tuition is very reasonable. Gosh school already... I'm still processing this!

Busy, Busy, Busy....

It's been a very busy week here in MO. We had a pretty good trip down, getting in late but stopping at Steak and Shake on the way to the farm...yummmm! Our first day in town was pretty busy. We had an appointment with the chiropractor, then Frank had to go and get his tux fitted, then I needed to get a few things so we ran to the mall- can I just say that I really enjoy the Columbia Mall- needless to say with all that going on we didn't make it back to the farm before we had to be at the wedding rehearsal. Luckily grandma and grandpa were watching the kiddos so we managed to do all this unencumbered by kids! So we headed form the mall to the rehearsal, where I chatted with the other wives and Frank rehearsed! Then we went to the rehearsal dinner, which was a very fun evening! We had delicious food and even better cake- Jason was very proud of the cake choice and rightly so! Then we had a very nice evening of conversation and laughter and story-telling, where we stayed up WAY too late.

On our anniversary we slept in- the best part about our trip was having the boys stay in the main house with grandma and grandpa while we stayed in shed, so we actually got to sleep in more mornings. On the 31st we had family Christmas with the immediate family which was fun- the boys got some really nice gifts- and there was plenty of candy to go around! The boys stayed with their grandparents again while Frank and I went out to the movies. Our original plan was to do dinner and a movie but we ended up eating leftovers at the house and then going to the movies and coming straight home and going to bed- the joys of having several late nights in a row! Can you tell we're still the sleep deprived parents......

The 1st was the big day- Jason and Donna's wedding! Frank had to be there early- 11am to help decorate, rehearse some more blah blah blah...so off he went and the boys and I hung out. Xander was very excited to help Grandpa "feed the cows"- he still talks about going outside with Grandpa and "feeding the cows" which is hilarious seeing as he does the same thing with Daddy almost every day at home! The wedding was really beautiful! It was actually the first wedding I have been to where you sit at the reception tables while the ceremony is going on- so that was interesting. Luckily we got a table closer to the front so we had a pretty good view of things. I was afraid the boys would try to run to Frank during the ceremony but all in all they were pretty good- luckily it wasn't a very long ceremony but if it had gone awry we had a quick exit strategy- run for the door! Very smartly as soon as the ceremony was over they brought out the kid meals and then since Frank was in the wedding party he showed us the back route to the dinner buffet! After dinner we got to cut into all the fabulous cakes- I think there were 8! They had the traditional wedding cake and then 7 other cakes in various flavors from a bakery in St Louis- the Black Forest Cake was to die for! By the time we had cake the kids were running all over the place- luckily there were plenty of other kids for them to run around with! The stage was particular fun- there was a lot of climbing up, running down it, and then climbing back down. At some point the kids and grandparents went home and we stayed and danced until we couldn't dance anymore! All in all it was a very fun night!

The day after the wedding we had the open house at the new shed and Linnenbringer extended family Christmas. We sang a whole bunch of Christmas Carols, ate a lot of yummy food, and had a very fun yankee swap. I got a singing snowman and a beautiful stained glass angel and Frank got the board game Othello (which I have informed him that I will never play with him so if anyone wants to take him on... be my guest). After family Christmas pretty much everyone in the community came to visit so we spent a lot of time talking. The boys luckily took a nap in the afternoon so they were in pretty good form and not too cranky. Uncle Gary and some others managed to put together an entire puzzle that afternoon despite being "helped" by Alexander. And for all you naysayers the project that I was working on did become a sweater! (now if only I had the pictures to prove it....).

So tomorrow we head back home and despite having a wonderful trip I am glad to be getting back to my own bed and home. But now laundry beckons....

New Teeth!

So James has new teeth- which I found out when he bit me with them! 2 new molars cutting in on the top gum- must be his one years coming in! He also cut the bottom middle right tooth in the front- so now we know why James has been a cranky git!

BTW- brownies makes the world look a whole lot brighter!

Christmas....

So I am just going to say that there are going to be a flood of blog posts following this one. I have been writing them but without a working computer at home it has been slow going and then when we were travelling things weren't getting done AND I somehow lost my brand new camera! with all the pics from Christmas on it! And since then I have been crippled by a undesire to take pics with crappy old camera! Somewhere along the way coming home from MO my new camera got lost and I kept hoping that somewhere by some miracle it would turn up but it has been missing for a month now so, alone with the airplane puzzle piece, I have given up hope of finding it back and thus must post must lameness without pics! And I had such an adorable pic of the boys with their kitchen wearing their chef's hats! Luckily my mother took pictures so I can mine her camera for some good ones and I downloaded all the pics I took onto my MIL's computer before we left MO so they exist- I just have to find someway to convince my BIL he wants to copy them all and send them to me...hint hint! As I recover pics I will probably add them into these posts. It hasn't been a good picture season b/c previously mentioned not working computer suffered a massive hard drive failure and we lost absolutely every single thing that was saved on there! Luckily I have been pretty good about have back-ups of pictures but there are some gaps...oh well. It wasn't as severe as losing our complete address book or the big one: all of our financial documents for the last year- 2010 taxes are going to be super-fun to recreate- please note the sarcasm dripping heavily from my written voice!

So back to Christmas. We had a very nice Christmas Eve quietly celebrated at home. And Christmas day went much the same way- we hung out, we opened presents, we hung out some more. The boys, aka Alexander, were up early so we opened some presents and about 1/2 way through he kinda melted down a bit so we stopped opening new presents and just focused on playing with what had already been opened. We had breakfast- mum made kippers- blech- but bottomless pit James dug right in! And after some food present opening continued (can you tell that the boys had maybe a few too many gifts!). We saved the kitchen for last and it was as big a hit as I had hoped for. They dove right in- and very promptly learned how to scale the darn thing! James had quite a bit of fun sitting in the sink! So after pretty much playing only with the kitchen after it was revealed James started to get pretty cranky so he and Xander went down for naps, Daddy headed off to church, and mum and I cleaned up some. That didn't last long before we decided that we were going to nap too. So I took a nice LONG nap- somewhere in the middle of which, mum headed out to go visit her other grandchildren. We had a nice rest of the day just hanging out, watching TV and the kids playing with all their new toys. Tomorrow I head back to work for a few days and Wed we leave for MO.

Christmas Eve

We had a lovely Christmas Eve at home. The tradition in Frank's family is to open family presents Christmas Eve so we decided to follow his tradition b/c who doesn't want to open some present but also b/c we thought it would be best to spread the present opening around a bit for the boys. That way they wouldn't get too overwhelmed and they would have chance to play with their toys as they opened them. So on Christmas Eve we opened a few presents each. I got a new camera- whoo hoo it's so tiny and light and fancy I can't wait to explore all the new options. Frank got a wireless controller for his PS2 so that we don't have to worry about the boys tripping over the cords. The boys got some new books and the all important new train set! Xander was pretty excited to rip into that one.

We had a delicious dinner of shrimp and then mom made cornish game hens and asparagus- yummm. We all went to bed too late but it was a very nice quiet evening at home!