Back To School!

I know it's been a while since I posted. The boys are done with football and only Jarrett is playing basketball. I should have time to post more.

Today Jason and I had a meeting at the school with the IAT(intervention assistance team). It was for Brandon. We had to do this once before in 2nd grade. You can read about that here. His 4th grade teacher is really concerned with his handwriting. Duh! She also noticed that he seems really distracted and she is having trouble keeping him on task. I explained to her that he has never had attention trouble before and it's probably that he is so frustrated with how hard he has to try to write. Here's an example.

That handwriting is actually pretty good for him. Remember he is in 4th grade. Anyway, the team decided that he needed to be evaluated by this guy that was in the meeting. He determined that Brandon would probably get a low score on his test and that would lead to the occupational therapist reevaluating him. She saw him last time and determined there was nothing wrong with him other than the bad hand writing. I think she's wrong!

Last time I went to the meeting I didn't know what to think. This time I did my research and found something that might explain Brandon's hand writing. It's a learning disability called Dysgraphia. The motor dysgraphia fits him perfectly. I think it all started when he nearly cut the tip of his ring finger off in kindergarten. His hand writing in preschool was better than it is now. According to my research a cure could be as simple as some physical therapy to strengthen his fingers and hand. Something about the muscles being so weak that the brain can't properly communicate. I'm not the expert so we will have to wait till next month to see what the tests reveal.

I feel bad for Brandon because he is such a good kid and this is affecting all his grades. All his teachers since he started school have been great about all this. They've made exceptions for him and try not to signal him out. I just make sure to keep reminding him that he has done nothing wrong. He tries hard but it gets him nowhere. Poor little guy. I'll keep you posted!

Sunday's Browns Game, Through My Eyes!

Last Sunday we took the boys to the Browns game. I wasn't too thrilled to get up at 6 am to go sit in a parking lot full of drunks and weirdos. I was told it was all part of the "experience". Uh, ok whatever. I guess also part of the "experience" was driving through the ghetto. And I mean real ghetto. Not Kristy ghetto. I'm talking "I locked the doors ghetto"! This was Jesse's super secret shortcut. So anyway, after the ghetto drive we got to "experience" paying $25 to park like sardines in a dirty parking lot, littered with already half drunk people.

We got out set up chairs and whatever and the boys started to play football!

Of course they got in a big fight and started hitting each other. So......

Jarrett went to the truck all pissed off and ate doughnuts......

Brayden and Brandon sat around bored. ( aren't those cute little eye thingies?)

Then it was time to eat....

Then just as we started to eat, Brayden had to go #2 really bad! There was only 1 port o pot in the whole lot. My idea was to have him go in a Ziploc bag in the back of the truck but no one went for that! Jesse took him to wait in line for half an hour only to have the thing almost full! Gross! Then there was no toilet paper so Jesse had to get half a napkin and do his best! Right about that time Jesse's friends also showed up.

Right before we went up to the stadium one of the girls attempted to pee in between Jason's truck doors where the guys were going. Let me tell ya.....there were yellow rivers flowing everywhere!

On the way to the stadium the boys and I stopped to people watch! What a bunch of freaks! I should have gotten better pictures of some of these people but I was afraid to get shot! Even though they thoroughly checked us for weapons before we went in!

At the game they handed out breast cancer pins and even had one on the field.

During the game it was pretty exciting.......People were getting thrown out left and right. There were Bengal's fans everywhere!

This guy

And this guy

were going to fight right in front of us! It was great! There were F-bombs flying everywhere! The guy sitting next to us yelled at them and told them to watch it because there were kids right here! Yeah, like my kids have never heard that before. I wanted to see a fight!

Oh, remember those cute little eye thingies? They came in handy later when we had a Bengal's fan sit right in front of us. Brandon and I laughed forever!

I did actually watch some of the game...

Oops! What I meant to say was, I watched Brady Quinn on the sidelines!

There was one point in the game where I got really excited! I wanted to run out onto the field...

Yep! That's right where I was going to run! I wanted to cut this guys hair off soooo bad! It was driving me nuts!

The kids had a great time! I think they really like the game, freezing butts and all! Oh, yeah. We lost 23 - 20 in overtime. :(