Summer Vacation, Football and First Grade

A lot has happened since our 6 day stay at Doernbecher's. We hoped for a quick recovery, but we weren't released until Wednesday morning. He had a few complications that we were saddened to see him go through, but he is now all healed up and I couldn't be happier. It's a relief to have great doctors and nurses taking care your child, but it's even more of a relief to be home and to be able to move on with normal life. William has since leaving the hospital we've done quite a few things. The first thing we did after he got the OK from the surgeon to resume normal activities was our vacation. We spent a week in California. William had a few new experiences and got to meet a bunch of new people. We spent the first days of our vacation with Ron's parents. William also got to go into a Bass Pro Shop for the first time since we don't have them up here. He loved it! We spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday with Frank and his family. William and Braden became friends fast and we had a lot of fun. We spent time at the park, dinner out with another friend of Ron's and then the beach on Wednesday. Monday while we were there Ron went to check on his mom and we finally got to meet her. She even gave William a ukulele. We spent Thursday and Friday at his parents house. Thursday we took William to go see Transformers 3 (3D). He loved that too. As he said it was the best one so far. Friday we all went to one of the many fairs that were going on that day. We had a great time. William really enjoyed going around on the golf cart at the house and looking for the deer that were out on the golf courses. We drove to Medford on Saturday. It was a long drive, but we spent that evening with Ron's grandparents.
After vacation there were a few small events that were pretty exciting, grandma's birthday, 4th of July, our very first sunburn, and dad's wedding. While he enjoyed all of those, but the sunburn, the most exciting thing after vacation for him was football starting. We missed football certification because he was down at his dads wedding, but we did make up certification a week later. Outside of the enormous line and having to wait for helmets because they ran out of small helmets it wasn't too bad. The weather was at least cooperative and not overly hot. We started practice just a couple days later. Practices to begin with were 5 days a week. We've since dropped those to two days a week with games on Wednesdays since school started. It was rough going and still is with a few kids. They just don't wanna listen to what the coach wants them to do all the time, but they have gotten pretty darn good. William was the first child to have a position assigned to them. He is center (the person who hikes the ball to the quarterback). They have now assigned offensive positions to all the kids on the team. He is part of the white offensive line. He has done amazing. He has already informed us that he wants to play next year. They are the Huskies. They have been part of a lot of fun things so far this season. They had a PPK kick off weekend at Silverton HS and had an opportunity to play a short game there. They were invited to come down on the field at the high school game back on 09-23-11 and have their names announced there as well. They were all super excited about that. They won their first two games, tied the 3rd, but unfortunately lost the 4th. We've been very lucky to learn that in November they will be able to play at Reser Stadium in Corvallis. They get to play 3 games down on the field and will have their names announced. He is super excited for that. I'm just super happy that he's loving the sport, making lots of new friends (he's friends with all of them), and learning lots of new skills. Ok, I have to admit I love seeing him in the uniform too... He's just too cute!

He started First grade on 09-07-11. He already knew several kids going into his first day in Mr. Taylor's class. We had heard nothing, but good things about him. So far I'd have to say we really like it. He's doing well in there and he loves having a male teacher. William's got a pretty packed schedule for the day, but the part that takes up the biggest chunk of time is the reading groups. They spend about an hour and a half in reading groups every morning. They have several smaller spurts of math throughout the day, but the reading is a big deal. We recently got a notice back regarding their evaluation of him for where he should be and we were very pleasantly surprised to find out that he is reading at a second grade level. They have started him off at level 2.1 of the program which is the first half of their second grade program and they are reading chapter books or small novels. I am very proud of him. They haven't sent home much homework yet, but we are working with him on numerous things. They have sent home vocabulary and words to watch for. He is good about finding those and reading for 20 minutes every night. He also has been very honest about what he needs to be doing and I haven't had to do much interrogating to get information about his day. The best part of this school year is that even though Austin isn't in his class his best buddy is back in school with him. Austin suddenly moved away last year right before William ended up in the hospital and in August we drove by the park and saw him. We surprised William by taking him up there and we learned that he was going to be back for school. He was beyond excited.

I can't wait to see where the rest of this year goes. I'm glad to say that we're happy, healthy (keeping my fingers crossed that continues), and super busy. I hope that it just keeps getting better from here.