Everybody's working for the weekend.

So, I'm back at work, and thinking fondly of the weekend.

This weekend involved a Scout camp for my oldest, snow, and cold.

The oldest went camping on Friday. He didn't want to take a coat, he didn't think he needed too much winter gear, and he fought his mother every step of the way. When I got home, I didn't give him options, although while he was looking for his boots, he sat his backpack down, and we had to run out to catch them as they left. This would have deprived him of his change of clothing, and most of his supplies.

While he was out having fun, my wife decided we needed to go out to dinner. We don't do this often, so we packed the remaining children into the van and went out. It was a fairly mellow meal, with nothing too exciting to post about.

Saturday morning I got up to get a head start on the laundry. I also cleaned the laundry room. By the time I was done with that, we'll say about 8:30 a.m., I walked upstairs and saw the scouts out in front of our neighbors house.

From my experience, they usually are not home this early. I also knew that they planned to go shooting to finalize their rifle merit badge. When I asked the Scout Master what was up, he looked at me and said, "We had over a foot of snow, and your son collapsed the scouts' tent on their heads." It turns out that at about 6:30 in the morning, they woke up, and were concerned about the amount of snow on the top of the tent. Someone told my son to knock some of it off, and he hit the side of the tent. By doing this, he snapped one of the tent poles, and the part of the tent at the peak ripped, resulting in the tent collapsing on half the scouts. My son, and his buddy were on the side that didn't go down, so they enjoyed every second. After they got this sorted out, they decided they were wet and cold enough not to hang around, so they went and cooked breakfast at the Scout Masters house.

On Saturday we received an invitation for my youngest daughter to test for the "Spectrum" program with the school district. This is the advanced classes. I'm not sure what we'll do about that. When our oldest received the invitation we told him about it. When he heard he would have to change schools, he didn't want anything to do with it. He wanted to stay with his friends.

Saturday we just did our chores and shopping. My wife is going to make the youngest son a "sensory blanket" for church. Basically it is just a weighted blanket that they can lay over his lap when he feels anxious. We went and go the supplies, and I got some fabric to attempt to make some new work pants. It cost me all of $12. We'll see how they turn out.

Church was uneventful. We then went and had dinner with my in-laws. Enjoyable conversation and "Grandpa's stew". It did get chaotic, but one of my brother-in-laws started playing a patty cake like game with my youngest. To get any kind of focus out of him is great, so everyone had a good time watching them give each other high fives and yelling.

Eventually we found our way up to my parents' place. My oldest always feels ill right before going back to school for the week, or going to church. He started playing this game, and I know it's horrible, but I just don't believe he is ill anymore unless there is puke involved. And only if I witness it. He ended up falling asleep on my folks' couch (it was an hour later than usual thanks to changing the clocks.) I ended up taking over the patty cake game, and added in an additional overhead flip of my son. I would lay on my back, with him standing above my head. I would pick him up, flip him down onto my bent, raised legs, and he would role off onto his feet. He loved it. Shortly after that we headed home with the weekend over.

Now I'm back at work, just working for the weekend.

Our new family member

So this is Cocoa, the newest addition to our family. Cocoa is a lab mix, and not very big (around 30 pounds right now.) She is 6 months old, and loves to snuggle. She come house and crate trained (a huge bonus.)

We got Cocoa from my wife's high school friend. We got her for a few reasons. One is that our daughters have been begging for a dog, the other was to see if an animal companion would help our autistic son.

Our kids didn't know we were getting a dog, in fact my wife had the older kids baby sit while she came to pick me up from the train station. While she was out, we went and got the dog. Upon arriving home, we found our youngest crying, and the girls playing in the yard. The girls got excited and ran to see the dog, while the youngest just kept crying. The dog was interested in the youngest, which seems typical, and gave him one lick, then walked off. This helped calm our son down, and was the best thing the dog could have done. If she had acted all hyper and jumped around, he never would have paid attention to her again. The oldest had a friend over, and I think all he said was, "cool". This was mainly to stress how cool and collected he was. He wouldn't get over excited over anything with a friend around.

After we got everyone inside, the dog started exploring. Now the youngest is slow coming up the stairs, mainly because he likes to play on them (that should really say try to stand on his head on them, but that sounds dangerous so we'll leave it at play.) The dog walked down the stairs towards the youngest, and again just gave him one lick. The youngest just looked at her for a second, then put his hand on her head and walked up. This is a huge success, as he has really only ever interacted with bigger dogs, and Cocoa is much smaller than I expected.

The youngest went into his room, and the dog continued to explore. Eventually she found the youngest's room, and he was laying on the floor. The dog just went in and watched him, while he watched her. Again, looking at animals is not something the youngest always does, so this is good.

We took the dog out to visit, as our way of announcing that we have a new pooch. We saw my folks, and my wife's folks, then came home. We got everyone inside, and when the dog and the youngest reached the top of the stairs, the youngest just grabbed the dog's tail and followed her around. Major triumph. Cocoa handled it great, she just looked at him for a second and then went about her business.

The oldest finally showed some enthusiasm after his friend went home. The girls had been fighting over who got to walk the dog. He finally asked if he could have a turn as we were going into our house the last time at night.

I woke up this morning, and got out of bed. The dog jumped up and greeted me with a big tail wag. You gotta love the unbridled joy a dog can communicate with it's rear end. The dog then dashed out of the room, and jumped on my youngest daughter's bed. He gave her a big lick, and she thought this was the greatest way to wake up ever.

The girls even fought over who got to take the dog out to go potty this morning. We'll see if that keeps up.

This means a few more weekend projects, like dog proofing the backyard again, but I love it.

Current events

I've been reading through my blog, and realized that I don't talk about much besides the gym, which is okay. Then I thought about the reason, and realized my wife posts all the scoops on her blog (link opens in a new window).

Last night we went and had our follow up appointment at the U. Jason has officially been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. We are now seeing if there are any other programs that can help him, the U gave us some recommendation. I'll keep you posted.

If you want info on the family. Check out my wife's blog.

Anyway, I'm still recovering from my Saturday workout. We did a heavy leg workout, and my legs still hurt!