Rivers Ripple for 2022 (which was originally scheduled for August 2022)

 As we close out 2022, here is an update from the Rivers house.

Dan has continued in his job with Gray Communications. There have been a few rough patches this year with management but he continues to enjoy the flexibility of working from home and is providing many quality projects used by stations across the US. The Llew Brown Band has played a lot of gigs this year--we got to hear them at Exploration Place in June. 

Sarah finished her last day at ViaChristi Rehabilitation Hospital in December. It was a difficult decision to resign her position, especially after 17 1/2 years with them, but having the weekends back in 2023 with the potential for some new opportunities makes it worth it. She continues with TheraPlay Spot working 1 1/2 days a week seeing kids and doing evaluations. New opportunities for 2023 with a substitute OT position for the Maize school district which will be covering a maternity leave in April/May. She continues to volunteer with both PTO's and the Down Syndrome Society of Wichita and church Sunday school time. Her taxi service is busy most days in the new 2022 Toyota Sienna we purchased in January.

Olivia is now in 6th grade. One of her teachers this year shared that Olivia is just a good human. We tend to agree. She finished her 5th grade year and has really enjoyed the Intermediate School. She plays clarinet and loves band. She continues to take piano lessons. She has found her activity in swimming and has participated in meets throughout the year. Her favorite stroke is butterfly, but she swims all of her strokes well. 

Kinley is now in 4th grade. She finished 3rd grade and continues to have a sense of humor and different personality than Olivia (which is good, but also surprises many of her teachers). Kinley has continued to dance--focusing on ballet and lyrical this year. She set a goal to audition for the Nutcracker and loved that experience this fall. She performed Thanksgiving weekend as a stuffed animal in the battle scene. She has done swimming lessons and joined academy swim, but stopped that to be in Nutcracker. Kinley also takes piano lessons.

Emily is now in 1st grade. She finished Kindergarten and we had a tough decision to make--move her forward with her KG teacher who was moving to 1st grade and also with a class that she has several friends in OR repeat Kindergarten for the academic and maturity piece. We decided moving her forward was the right choice. She has done very well this year, being able to hit the ground running with a teacher that knows her and that Emily knew the routines and expectations. Last year much of the year was spent learning these. Academically she is making gains at her own pace. But continues to surprise us with some things she picks up on. We continue to set the bar high for her and she works hard toward it. She gets therapies at school and twice a week we pull her early for private speech therapy. She continues to make gains with her speech. She also did some private OT the last half of the year with hopes to make some fine motor skill gains. It is a lot of work for her to write, so we try to work on that just a bit daily in addition to her other academic things and whatever else they are working on in class. Emily started swim lessons this summer and loves having her own thing to go to.

Nora is still a high-energy, barking part of the family. We added two guinea pigs, George and Peppe' to the family in July. And we have Delta the guinea pig. They provide much entertainment...George has played violin on his cage rooftop...they've been dressed up...they are all good sports.  Bob, the fish, had been with us for many years--we think he was probably between 7 and 9 years old having adopted him from Grandma. He died in October. 

We took several trips this year--one to Branson, MO with Kinley's friends' family. We went to Minnesota in July to visit Aunt Lynne. Both were great trips that we used the new van for. In October we took a trip to Universal Studios (for Harry Potter World) with Dan's parents.

Many day to day activities filled our time, fun little experiences sprinkled throughout the year--a goat in February, Sloth painting in April, seeing the Wizard of Oz, the Down syndrome walk in October, swim meets, Nutcracker, Botanica--lots of fun memories were made. Enjoy a few pictures below from our year. :)

Happy New Year!