John McGivney Children's Centre

Today was our last regular therapy day.  It's an exciting day but also a sad day as this centre has been a central part of our lives since Evan was a tiny baby.  He began working with Tonia Bryans,  his speech language pathologist, Bonnie Darbyson - his physiotherapist and Louise Henry - his occupational therapist.  I met Tonia in Windsor when Evan was still in the NICU and only a few weeks old.  Both she and Louise came out to the house for visits.  When we first started out with them they were working out of the old St. Anne's high school in Tecumseh as their building (on Matchette) was being gutted and rebuilt.  We switched over to the new building about a year into therapy.

Julie Bially came on as Evan's OT for a short bit when Louise's caseloads were shuffled and then he was permanently placed with Carolyn Goodwin for the remainder of our time there.  These ladies were instrumental in helping Evan meet his early milestones - raising his head for tummy time, getting into 4-point and then commando crawling which led to 4 point crawling and then walking.  His speech has always continued to improve from day one.  Miss Tonia and worked tirelessly with them to get his placements right and prep him for school.

This place was like a second home to us.  Every Thursday morning we were off to "therapy" to see our girlfriends.  Evan will be transitioning to new therapists (still through McGivney thank goodness!) once he begins school but I know it will definitely be a new chapter for us.  I will never forget all that these ladies did for us.  They are truly amazing.

Father's Day

Tanya's Shower at Mazaar

On Saturday night Tanya had her shower for her upcoming wedding.  She decided that rather than going with the traditional shower she would have more of a "girls night out".  Oh, it was so much fun.  What a great night.  It was held in downtown Windsor at Mazaar's Lebanese Restaurant.  This was one place Chris and I have been talking about going to on "date night" and we will definitely be going now.  The food was incredible, the staff were great and the whole night was so much fun!  Midway through the event between courses a belly dancer came out and had the whole group clapping and dancing.  Enjoy the photos!

Building a New Playset

Well we went off to Costco and bought the boys a brand new super duper playset.  I do not mind putting things together but Chris on the other hand has no patience for it so this was going to be quite a challenge.  Could we do it without going crazy?  Not so sure.  I read through the 80 page instruction book and watched the 52 minute DVD and was going to give it my best shot.  After a rough start with a few words exchanged we were off and running.  We started off on Saturday morning and took about 2 hours to lay out all the parts in order of assembly in the garage to be sure we weren't missing any parts and to help ease assembly.  So glad we did!  There were 6 boxes and what seemed like 10 000 pieces!

This was supposed to be a 2 man job that took 10-12 hours for the playhouse and 2-3 for the slide.  Yah, not so realistic for us but we did get in done in 3 full days!  lol.  In all fairness to us we did have 2 four year olds underfoot the whole time so I think we did just fine!  Tommy was a little helper with some parts.  He loved getting his hands on the tools and Evan, well he was getting into everything, even whacked his poor head off the front of the bbq.  As it turned out he was thrilled to play in the van.  Yes, the van.  So we pulled it into the backyard right in front of our construction area and he was entertained the whole time!  Although my Carrie Underwood CD did get destroyed.  Boo :(

Walls going up.  Progress being made!

Of course he had to have beer time, I mean, break time!

By Sunday night we had the main tower done and swing portion on.  All that was left was to do the slide and add on the rock wall.  Monday turned out to be a rainy day.  Great for the crops not so great for building.  We had to keep starting and stopping.  After 3 tries and 3 changes of clothes, we finally had it done!