Cassee's Utah Birthday Party

We celebrated Cassidee's 4th birthday in Utah over Mother's Day with the Riskedahl side of the family. Cassee's cousin, Sam, is only 11 days younger. So as usual they got to share a party celebration!
They are pretty cute together when they play. Here they are looking a books together.

Here's Papa giving horsey rides.

They actually got leftover Kylee-baptism-cake for their cake.
Who cares as long as you can stick candles in, right?

Adam decided they needed a little help blowing out their whoppin' 4 candles.

What four year old doesn't love presents!

They were so cute. They actually took turns opening their presents one at a time.
Thanks for the new nightgown Ronda. She loves it.

Thanks for the other new nightgown Jill. She loves that one too!

And thanks Aunt Sally for the fun hat and other things.

Thanks Nana and Papa for your gifts too!
And Grandmama, who took Cassee shopping the next morning!

Eperanza Preschool

I started the process of having Cassee screened for preschool in Feb. hoping to be able to get her into a fall class. We found some hearing problems in the process and found she also qualifies for articulation speech therapy.
Instead of waiting until fall, the teachers at the school decided to start her immediately. She goes on Mondays and Thursdays.
This is Cassee (by the front door of our home) on her first day of preschool on April 12, 2010.

This in the front door to the preschool. Adam helped her get to school.

Here is Cassee at the door to her new classroom. Her teacher was actually sick that day.
She loves to go to preschool. She was supposed to ride a bus, but because of the distance and other schedules, she would only be able to ride if she was in the morning class, which she is not. So, for the rest of this year, I will drive her every time. Next fall they will put her in the morning class and then she will get to ride the bus. She is VERY excited to ride the bus!!!

Eating Noodles

Last night Mommy was lazy about making dinner, so the kids had one of those 'Cup o' Noodles'. There is broth in it, so they had a spoon to eat their noodles. However, the noodles are rather long and tend to slide off before reaching the mouth.
Cassee fixed that problem. At one point in the meal I looked over and saw this:
her method of fixing the 'noodle-falling-off-the-spoon-problem'.

It was so funny to us, we had to take a picture. Of course this snowballed into Emmalynn and Adam wanting to eat their noodles that way with a picture taken to accompany it.

Not the best of dinner manners, but it did make dinner more fun!

Watching and Waiting

This is a typical scene in the morning and in the afternoon. Adam and Cassidee love to watch for the bus. Also, they are very excited every afternoon for Emmee to get home from school. (If only that love and excitement would last for many more years to come!)

Preschool for Cassidee

Hurray! Hurray!!
Cassee qualified for the school district's preschool program! After Cassee's articulation screening, in which the lady recorded Cassee and her's conversation, she decided she couldn't understand enough of Cassee's words. (I'm glad she couldn't, because no one else can either.)
So, not only will we not have to pay for preschool for Cassee, she also gets speech therapy and they bus her to the preschool, I won't have to take her everyday that she goes! Bonus for mommy!!
We still need to see an ENT to find out what is preventing her eardrums from responding.

Cassee's Ears - Update 1

We went to an audiologist on Wed. She found the same results. After cleaning out Cassee's ears (which took almost an hour for both ears - thanks to Papa for having very small ear canals) the Audiologist did an ear drum test.
Cassee's ear drums didn't respond any better when clean vs. ful of wax. Therefore, we are now going to an ENT (ear, nose and throat doctor) to see what he has to say!
Hopefully this next week we will hear back from the articulation screening too.

Cassee's Ears

We've had a speech screening for Cassee done for preschool this fall. She didn't pass the hearing tests (she's now had two). It could be why she doesn't annunciate her consonant sounds when she talks.
Tomorrow morning she has her articulation screening to see if she qualifies for the district preschool (FREE!) and in the afternoon she sees the audiologist at the hospital. (We were scheduled for the 4th of May, but today they had a cancellation for tomorrow!!)
We'll keep everyone updated on the "Hearing of Cassidee" Saga.