Well it is a Friday night and all feels as it should be. Ellyn is rubbing my ear, Sawyer is sleeping, Jane and Sadie are dressing up, Mike is playing the PS3 and I am blogging on my new laptop. If only this was our normal life, it is so wonderful. We are having such a great time all together. The weather has been horrible, there was four inches of snow on the ground this morning, but we really haven't cared. Next week is supposed to be fairly nice and we are all set to go to Disneyland Paris for four days. Of all the things we thought about doing Disneyland with the kids sounded like the most fun. We will stay at the Davey Crockett Ranch again, which means we have our own little cabin, a kitchen, an indoor pool down the road and DISNEYLAND!!

As I mentioned, Mike just bought me my own little MacBook. Jane and Sadie will have the old lap top for schoolwork and play. I am so excited with everything this thing does. I wasn't really sold on the idea until Mike had me watch an apple presentation of everything I can do and now I can't stop smiling. I swear they said "who is the stupidest person we know who wants to use a computer but doesn't have the time to figure everything out? Brooke? Let's make it for her." I am really excited for all of the features that I had wished I knew how to do on a normal computer, things that I had wished were available on my computer already, and things I had never even thought of that are going to make my life easier. It is hard to believe I would ever openly embrace another electronic device into my life (it is pretty much always a "discussion") but I am jazzed.

I don't know that I have given much of an update lately. Life is wonderful with Mike home. I can't tell you how good it feels to have him here, I don't quite know how I'll handle sending him away again. I try not to think about it. We have played games, eaten a lot of yummy food, played rock band, watched movies, done a little sightseeing, and it has been great. Sawyer has already really bonded with his daddy. They have a great time together. Ellyn was great with MIke but was getting really upset much more than usual and having a hard time sleeping. We made a bigger effort for me to give her more attention while she is awake and things are smoothing out.

Speaking of Ellyn, I'll give you that update. All of the therapists, her teacher, and the principal put together all of their recommendations for Ellyn based on our meeting. It was sent up the chain on the 12th and we should hear something within the next few weeks. They told me when they called to tell me it was going up that they did not anticipate DODS being able to make it work. Mike will put in for a compassionate reassignment as soon as it is a definite. I would move probably this summer and Mike would follow after the deployment. He has started talking to the people he needs to and we have been looking at possible assignments. We are going to try for Ft. Leavenworth Kansas. We think that there we would have the greatest possibility for stability. We could stay there for 5 years or longer if we worked it right. That's where the Major Course is and if we could work assignments around that it would be ideal. We just have to have faith and pray that a path will open that will be best for Ellyn and the rest of us as well . Oh, the schools there seem to be great as well from what I have read.

I am also going to start researching getting Ellyn an autism service dog. I told the girls that whenever we got back to the states we could maybe get a dog, this was when it was going to be a year and a half from now (Sadie still thinks Bailey is hers). Of course I can't possibly train a dog at this point and I don't want a dog that sheds. So I was googling GoldenDoodles, part retriever part poodle, just out of curiosity, thinking it might be a comfort to the girls if we moved. I kept coming across info. about these dogs being trained as therapy dogs and autism service dogs and I started to read a little bit more about it. These dogs are trained just like seeing eye dogs. They can be trained to track (this being my biggest incentive) if a child gets out of the house, trained to keep them away from hazardous things, disrupt bad behaviors-stimming-(since most of the time you just have to say "no", or "stop" the dog lays a paw on the child or whatever it is trained to do). The child can be harnessed to their dog and they can walk together, the dog keeping the child safe when crossing the street, etc... All the things that would be HUGE helps at our house, especially with Mike gone as much as he is and could be in the future. Not to mention the therapy part, a constant companion, many kids have begun saying simple words after having their dog, it is unconditional love. Can you tell that I'm a little fired about this idea? I am going to start looking into it further after MIke leaves. It isn't cheap but I guess there are grants and some insurance companies are helping. Like I said, I have to find out more about it, just went off on a tangent.

Oh, that reminds me- Tom and Tracey, are you able to take your Odyssey or are you going to sell it? We have been contemplating a mini van vs. the Pilot. We haven't come to any final decisions. We are just trying to make life work more smoothly. We will be doing a double jogger for longer than we had anticipated when we bought the Pilot AND we tend to need more supplies with Ellie Boo when we travel. Yeah, and we can't put her next to Sawyer until he is old enough to defend himself and so we have some seat juggling going on. We are fine when Mike isn't home but we are wondering how long we'll need to worry about seating and storage issues. I was thinking, if we do decide to get the van, I could maybe sell the Pilot over here and have a van waiting for us when we got home, then I wondered if you would be having the same issues that Dave and Adina had with trying to get yours sold. Like I said, as with just about EVERYTHING right now, it is all in the discussion and brain storming stage. We don't want to make drastic, expensive decisions if it is only a temporary issue.

Well Soy Bean just woke up and he is actually too tired to be awake so I had better go get the little one back to sleep. We love you all. Congratulations Marnie, that is awesome. Brent and Buffy, we can't wait for the news. love, Brooke