Riley County Fair

I will apologize in advance for the amount of videos and pictures in this post, but I can't help it.  We went to the fair last night.  When we mentioned it beforehand Tyson said, "No, I don't want to go.  It is too loud!"  Not a good start.  We wanted him to do the tractor pull.  He said, "No thanks, I'm good."  Usually when he says these things we can talk him out of it, but in this case we couldn't lie to him.  The fair is loud and it was 100 degrees out and there are tons of people and it stinks.  The odds were stacked against us.  But being the stubborn parents we are, we made him go and said he needed to just try.  And he did.  And he was awesome.  And Charlie thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.  Joel even said today that one advantage of having two boys with autism is that little things to most people can be the greatest things to us.  We had a blast. 

When we started talking about the fair I remembered the cowboy hat in Tyson's closet.  Well, Tyson refused to wear it but Charlie LOVED it.  The kid won't keep a baseball hat on but wanted that cowboy hat on almost all night.  When we first put it on him he said, "horse" right away.  I thought it was pretty cute that he associates cowboy hats with horses. 

Both kids did the tractor pull, rode some rides, went down the giant slide, and rode on the ponies.  If Charlie's hat would fall off he would yell for it.  He had to wear it.  By the end of the night Tyson decided that he wanted a cowboy hat too.  We are going to go get him one today so they can both wear them tonight at the rodeo.  Yep, we are going back.  They had so much fun we think we are going to try it again!  I love it when we can find things to do that the entire family enjoys.

Here are all the pictures and videos I promised.  Watch what you want! :)

YEE HAW!!!!

Here are the videos:

Tyson on Slide

Charlie on Slide

Riding Horses

Tractor Pull

Skinny Tyson

I just thought I would quickly share with you what Tyson ate last night after camp.

6 chicken nuggets
2 mozzerella sticks
1 banana
1 clementine
1 mini bag of microwave popcorn
3 mini cinn/brown sugar bagels
1 stick of string cheese
3 small packages of raisins

Can you say great metabolism or what?

Father's Day Weekend

We spent Father's Day Weekend doing exactly what you should do, boating, fishing, and camping!  We camped on Saturday night and then went out on the boat all day Sunday.  The boys LOVE camping. They LOVE sleeping in the tent.  They try to love fishing but it really is quite boring.  We took along Tyson's friend Cadence so was really in heaven!  Those two are really big buds and it is just too cute to watch.  Cadence caught three fish and the most disgusting crawdad I have ever seen.  It was a great weekend!

The gross crawdad

Aren't they so cute?

Boy, how I wish I could hear what they were chatting about.  So cute!

Baseball

Tyson loves baseball.  It really is one of the funniest things to watch.  He enjoys it more than any kid I have ever watched.  He also gets the crowd more involved than I have ever seen before.  He cheers, he bows, he slides every chance he gets, he does thumbs up from across the field, he tells the crowd to clap for him, and he runs over to his dad to give him a high five everytime he touches the ball in the infield.  He doesn't care if he strikes out or if he wins or loses.  I think his only goal for the game is to be the kid with the dirtiest pants.  I promise to add more pictures and videos of him playing but these were taken before his first game.  He wanted to get dressed, so I let him.  He sat there starring at the clock, just waiting for the time to go.  You can see the clock in the pictures.  His game was at 8:30.  Seriously one of the cutest things I have ever seen.

Summer Fun

Our summer has not really been a summer yet.  June was filled with summer school and KSU speech for both boys and camp for Tyson.  I spent about 4 hours every morning in the car driving them around to all of their stuff, it was quite crazy.  July is slowing down a little since we don't have summer school anymore, but our alarms still go off every morning at 6:30.  I have a hard time making the decision between letting the boys have a "normal" summer or filling it with speech, school, and camp.  But I do know that the boys benefit so much from all of it that I have to give up the normal summer.  They don't know any better right? 

We do try to have some normal summer fun when we can.  I think they are enjoying themselves, don't you?

 

The Autism Walk

This one is always a hard one for me to write.  We are so thankful for all of the support we get from our family and friends.  We are not sure how we would get through everything without them.  When we show up for this walk and see all of these people wearing bright green shirts all in one place it hits like a ton of bricks.  Our team grew even bigger this year and hope next year is even bigger!  When Team Tyson & Charlie is able to raise $4034 and get 7th place out hundreds of teams it is beyond words.  $4034, wow!  When people we barely know, our friends, and our family donate money it feels so amazing.  So amazing that I can't even put it into words.  What an emotional, crazy day for us.  We wish we could do something special for everyone who walked and everyone who donated, but it just simply isn't possible.  To all of you that read this blog we say thank you from the bottom of our hearts.  Go Team Tyson & Charlie!  I could not be more proud of those two amazing boys!

  

Charlie Loves Bathtime!

Seriously where did June go?  I cannot believe that it is past the Fourth of July!  So I have a ton to catch up on so I am going to start on a really quick blog about how much Charlie likes his bath. 
Here's how is goes: 
     I say Charlie it's bathtime. 
     I start the water. 
     I turn around and he is butt naked standing right by the tub. 

It is truley amazing how fast that child can undress himself when he wants to!  He also loves bubbles and really loves when he gets to take a bath all by himself.