NL_2003

2003 The Year in Review

Dear Friends,
     Well here we are at that most wonderful time of the year again! We hope this finds you and yours happy, well and of good cheer! We had a busy and full year. Our family enjoyed going to the zoo, the Nature and Science Museum, a visit from Grandma and Grandpa Moncher from Ohio and a week at cub scout day camp.   We added some new �family� members this year. Grant got �Bob the Frog� for his birthday in Feb., and brought home some newts from school that his class has raised. Their names are Clark �Super-Newt,� Carl and Goddard.
     Jim is still a senior engineer for Oracle Corp. He started playing the saxophone again after a 12-year hiatus. In July he started running sound for a local R& B band called �Phat Daddy and the Phat Horn Doctors.� It is great for him to have something that he enjoys doing besides laundry! Jim was also an assistant coach on the boy�s baseball team this summer. What a Dad!
     Garrison is a big 8-year-old, weighing 70 pounds now! He is in Mrs. Webber�s 2nd grade class at Grant Elementry. He is a wolf cub, played baseball this summer, and recently won 1st place in the Literature division of an art contest for his poem entitled, �I am really happy when�� Garrison loves to play on the computer, Bionicles, building with Legos, Kinex, and ect. and watching cartoons. He has quite a sense of humor.   As most of you know, Garrison was diagnosed with Autism (Asbergers) and Pervasive Development Disorder when he was 2 �. About this time last year he started having a hard time with school, so we started back in private occupational therapy and speech therapy in the spring. Garrison also started in a feeding group based on the research findings of Dr. Toomy. He was placed in the group because there were less than 20 foods that he would eat. He has made huge strides and we are so excited about his progress! The only sudo-meat that he would eat was hot dogs, and now he will eat chicken nuggets, meatballs, and hamburger and now loves scrambled eggs! We�re still working on veggies and fruit, but he is willing to try foods and that is great. There is a wonderful team at Memorial Pediatric Rehab that we just love and feel so blessed to have them working with Garrison. It is challenging a lot, but the work they have done with Garrison is a huge help and we are seeing results, which is great!
     Grant is a budding �star.� He is 6 years old and in Miss Nash�s 1st grade class at Grant Elementry. She was Garrison�s teacher last year, and she became a great friend, so we are so happy Grant is in her class. Danine sometimes refers to Grant as �Mini-me,� especially last winter when he stole the show as the Troll in �The Three Nanny Goats Gruff.� He had a solo and really shined on stage. He loves people and easily makes friends. He likes to help out around the house and even has chore of taking out the trash and gets an allowance for that. Grant is now in Tiger Cubs and had a great time playing baseball this summer. He is doing very well in school, he likes to read and write in his journal, but he�ll tell you math is his favorite subject. Grant loves animals. He likes to read books about them and just treasures his stuffed animals and plays with them all of the time. He is great about playing with Griffin, which we really appreciate. He is very active and likes to play outside and ride his bike.
     Griffin is 4 years old, and started pre-school this fall 4 mornings a week. He has the same teachers that Grant had 2 years ago, so it was great leaving our youngest in trusted hands. He loves school and his friends, and especially likes show and tell. Griffin likes to do anything that Grant is doing and the two play together very well. Griffin loves �Dora the Explorer� and �Blues Clues� on Nickjr. He likes to play computer games and draw. This summer, while reading The Out-of-Sync Child, by Carol Stock Kranowitz, a book recommended to us to help with Garrison, we noticed that several of the things talked about in the book jumped out at us about Griffin. So we had him evaluated at Memorial Pediatric Rehab, and they diagnosed him with Sensory Integration Dysfunction. So we started him in Occupational Therapy this fall. They feel that it will only be short term, but we want to help get him organized so he is ready for Kindergarten next year. He is still pretty hard to understand, so we might be doing speech, too, in the new year. He is such a sweet boy and he will come up and tell us that he loves us about 20 times a day. It is a joy!
     Danine is still a full time mom and taxi driver. Most of her week is spend in her mini-van picking up the boys and going back and forth to Memorial Pediatric Rehab. We are there twice on Tuesdays and 2 more hours on Thursdays. Danine is the co-craft coordinator for her MOPS (Mothers of Pre-Schoolers) group. They meet twice a month and she wields a wild hot glue gun. In April she started working at the Iron Springs Chateau in Manitou Springs, CO They do an old time melodrama and Olio in the summer and a holiday review this time of year. Danine led the sing-a-long intermission this season, where she celebrated birthdays and anniversaries, sang about 5 solo numbers and lead the sing-a-longs. Then she also sang and danced in the roaring 20�s Olio. It was a lot of fun and a good part-time job, doing 4 shows a week through the end of September. She started the Holiday Review Thanksgiving weekend and is doing that until New Year�s Eve. It is all singing, dancing and silly jokes and skits. It is a lot of fun and gets her away from the grind of motherhood for a while. Last Jan. she had the chance to take an acting scene class again and work on the craft again. It was great fun and she hopes she can do one again, soon. Danine still loves to scrapbook, watch �Survivor� and read sci-fi fiction.
     So that is our up-date. We�d always love to hear from you. Our phone number is 719-268-0834, and our e-mails are below We wish for you much happiness and joy in the coming year. We hope your life will be full of blessings!

Danine, Jim, Garrison, Grant and Griffin