Maddie got tired of walking and decided to catch a ride on the wagon.

Daddy lifting Lexi up into the apple tree to get the best one.
One of my favorites of the day - daddy looking on as Lexi shows her prize.
Nate picking his favorite.
Grandma Sandy & Grandpa Butch with the kidlets.
All 3 kidlets on their first hayride. They loved the tractor.
Maddie sitting in the apple tree.
The kidlets picking apples with Grandma Sandy.
Grandpa Butch, Daddy and the kidlets (wish I hadn't blurred Joe on that shot)
My mom and her new guy enjoying the hayride too!

Grandpa Butch and Nate

A place called the Yankee Siege. They do pumpkin chucking. :) This is the castle that the "chuck" the pumpkins over. The trees were just turning so not a lot of vibrant colors yet.
The trebechet - the thing that chucks the pumpkins.
This was the crew at breakfast on Sunday morning.

Maddie enjoying her breakfast.

Maddie's Dancing Skills

Maddie has shown on several occasions that she just loves to dance. I recently Tivo'd the new Little Einsteins Firebird Rescue show and there's one part in it where they do a lot of dancing. I finally managed to grab the camera tonight and caught a short video of it. Lexi gets her dancing self in there as well, but she was putting on a show for the camera. Lexi's normally not the one up dancing.

Anyway, here she is...

Autism Speaks Video Gallery

When it was first brought to our attention that Nathaniel wasn't developing normally, Joe and I were kind of at a loss. We'd never known anyone or seen anyone with autism, other than "Rainman". It was difficult trying to determine what was normal behavior and what wasn't. We did a lot of reading and talking with doctors and eventually figured it out. My FIL sent me a link to a news story this morning and as I read it and viewed the video gallery, I realized how helpful this would've been during that time. The videos in their gallery are priceless. They show NT behaviors at certain ages and then in comparison what an autistic child is like. It is spot on. SPOT ON. Every video clip of the autism behavior I viewed was like looking at my Natey.

There were a few clip in particular that really stood out to me. One was of the kids looking at books. A NT child will look through the book and want to share it with his/her parent or really any other adult that's there. But when you see the autistic child, he/she will look through the book too but he/she HAS to hold the book AND turn the pages without help or input from the adult. I remember trying to read to Nate from an early age and all I got was him fussing and slapping at the book. It finally got to the point where I just quit trying because it was frustrating. Nate loved looking at books but it had to be on his terms. He chose the book, he held it, he turned the pages and we could NOT read the words...he turned the pages too quickly.

The other clip that stood out was one of the communication clips. It showed the difference in the babbling of a NT child to that of an autistic one. The autistic child's babble was lacking definitive recognizable sounds. It sounded like the child was speaking a different language. Nate STILL does this at age 4.5. He doesn't do it nearly as often since he now has quite a large vocabulary, but when he can't find the words he needs, he'll flip into the foreign language mode as we call it.

Anyway, I thought I'd share the link to the video gallery as it's an invaluable source.

Link - http://www.autismspeaks.org/video/glossary.php

"Pongebomb banaid peeze"

That's what made it all better for Maddie tonight. It was bedtime and the nightly ritual of Nathaniel "hiding" in the corner in the hallway, followed by one of the girls "finding" him ended in disaster tonight. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but poor Maddie hit her head on a door or a doorjam and ended up with this monster. But the Spongebob bandaid made it all better (sorry no pics with the bandaid though). This is gonna leave a nasty bruise!!

Round 1

Well my mom and Bob left this morning so I figured I'd start with the first round of pics. These were taken yesterday afternoon. Sorry for the blurred pics! Joe's the photographer in this family and he was at work yesterday afternoon!! :)

More to come....

Vermont

We took the kids to Vermont yesterday. We stumbled upon a toy and train museum that had a miniature train that you could ride. The kids loved it! They also loved the horse/pig rides while we waited! Lexi is wearing the stripes!

Scenes From Vermont

We decided to take a day trip to Vermont yesterday to check out the foliage. Unfortunately, the leaves have just started changing colors so we didn't get a lot of the foliage shots we wanted but instead scoped out some of the covered bridges. Here's a sampling of Joe's scenic shots.

Schnitzelfest Booth

Joe had a booth at our local Schnitzelfest this year selling some photos. He also took some cards that I'd put together and sold those as well. We did pretty well for the first time. Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of his booth.