Festival of Trees and Such!

This week started out cold and as it warmed up the air quality worsened so the kids weren't able to go outside much(due to Elizabeth's asthma), luckily on black Friday for around ten bucks Tony picked up the funnest little ball pit EVER!  So I don't even think they noticed they were being kept in so much!!  They had sooooo much fun in it together!  Tuesday morning Devin had OT and Feeding therapy, both went pretty well, OT was mostly testing as Devin has been in therapy for a year...a whole year now can you believe it?!  And oh how very far he's come!! And how much he's changed!  Tuesday night Tony's mom came down to watch the kids for us and my parents picked me up and Tony and Eric and Jen met us at the opening night for Festival of Trees.  It was a really great night!  Nothing gets you into the holiday spirit like all those amazing trees and so many other things!  At the gift shop we bought a very cute magnet that says "Are you one of the INN crowd, or one of the STABLE few?" It really stood out to me and for just a few dollars that helps a hospital that has done and still now does so much for my children, it was well worth it!  And it is a nice daily thoughtful reminder as I see it on our fridge multiple times everyday, especially at this busy, usually stressful time of year.  I also pitched and sold my family on the idea of doing a large tree again next year...an Autism tree in honor of Devin.  Our very sweet often misunderstood boy, he has a lot of services through Primary Childrens Medical Center so it's only fitting we give something back, and what better way than a pretty Christmas tree?!! And we didn't see a single one there this year so I believe it's needed.  I found a saying all over pinterest and such that says, "if you've met one Autistic kid, you've met one Autistic kid." And I love that! A lot of people have a very media skewed standard of what "Autism" is and that it's as simple as that wrongfully put mold.  So also with this tree I hope to create awareness that Autism has many faces and is as vastly different in each child as is each falling snowflake...they're all snowflakes but no two are exactly alike.  Sorry got off on my soap box(there are two things you will need a long time to talk to me about 1. ADD 2. Autism, as I have extremely large soap boxes on both) ;) Wednesday Devin had his yearly therapy review with the nurse and DDI Vantage coordinator, which went well.  "Wow, big head buddy!....Wow you are one tall boy, buddy!!...Huh, you don't weigh very much buddy"(25 1/2 pounds, same as he was at 18 months :(  But he passed the hearing test, and did so much better on the development tests, she was even tempted to do a version of an IQ test as he was such a smart tack, but his temperament didn't last so she opted not to.  All in all he's amazing ;)  Still behind in certain developmental areas, but doing better in others so I'll take it!
Friday my mom came down and took a very excited Elizabeth with her to Festival of Trees!  On Wednesday and Thursday we discussed what the Festival of Trees is all about, which wasn't hard as Elizabeth knows all too well about Primaries, what it is and what is done there.  We looked at pictures of her hospital stay when she was a baby and talked about all the ways the hospital has helped her since, and she also wanted to see the pictures of the couple times Devin stayed in that hospital as well and talked about how they helped him get better from sicknesses. We also discussed other reasons kids go to and stay at Primaries.  Then I told her that some kids have to stay in the hospital over the holidays and she got the most sincere sad/concerned face ever, and said " that must be hard for them!" We then discussed how it might make them a little sad to not be able to be at home for the holidays and that Elizabeth might get the opportunity to help cheer up one of the children at the hospital by making a bear for them.  She remembered a picture of herself in the hospital with a little bear we brought for her, and that it must have made her happy cause she had fallen asleep with it :) So she was very excited to make a bear for one of the children in the hospital to make them happy.  My mom said when they walked through the entrance doors and Elizabeth saw all the trees, she was in awe and giddy all at the same time...Elizabeth's reactions can be totally priceless sometimes!!  They went right to Santa as the line got longer by the second, and she was apparently very cute with him.  She reported that he liked her dress.  She told him that she would like him to bring her a stuffed Rudolf , and when he asked if she could be good til Christmas she said yes.  I've gotten bits and pieces of their conversation since and it sounds like they had quite the good little conversation!  My mom reported that Mrs. Clause just couldn't get over how adorable our little Elizabeth is.  After that they went right over to making the highly anticipated teddy bear, apparently she though she was going to get to give it to a child in the hospital and was kinda disappointed when she had to just leave the bear on a shelf, but she recovered quickly...the fun things in the kiddie corner I'm sure helped!  My gorgeous girl made a pretty(colored sand)necklace "for me"(though she's since wanted to wear it quite a bit), and she made a "wallet"(little coin purse)for Devin, she even put his name on it!  She of course got some things for herself as well!  They ended the outing with bread and jam and watching some of the performances, then got lunch and brought it back on their way back here.  Needless to say Elizabeth had tons of fun and was very glad to have gotten to go do such a fun thing with her nana!  That afternoon after I packed us an overnight bag and my mom took us up to their house to spend the night so Saturday Tony and my dad could build one of Elizabeth's Christmas presents (from my parents).  Saturday evening we went to Downtown, took the train and had a delicious dinner at the Lion House Pantry then attempted to look at the lights at Temple Square but there were just WAY to many people....we couldn't even handle it so we couldn't even imaging how Devin must have been feeling!  So we bagged it, got back on the train which Devin loved, on the way back the kids were giggling like crazy, it was adorable!  Came home had some ice cream and called it!  We plan to go back during the week so it will hopefully be less crowded.

Here are some pictures of the kids playing in the little ball pit(on Tuesday my parents brought down some of their balls and now it's filled up to the max...hence the balls all over in the last picture!)

Here are a couple videos of the kiddos having a blast in the ball pit!



Here are the pictures of Elizabeth with Santa at the Festival of Trees with my mom

And pictures of some of the other fun things they did!(thanks mom for taking pictures with my camera!)
Elizabeth with the teddy bear she dressed for a little girl in the hospital! I'm so proud of Elizabeth for being so willing to give to those in need and so mature about it too!

Here are some pictures from our train ride and the cool candy display windows at Macey's!

Pictures from our delicious dinner!  And we at least let Elizabeth look at the many Nativity scenes they had set up before we deemed it way too crowded and crazy and left.