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!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Austin Project - Waterwise Landscape

Dearest Family,

Sorry it has taken so long to post! I kept thinking I would have a picture of the finished product, but I'm realizing that transitioning my front yard to a Waterwise landscape is going to be an ongoing project :). The winter storm two years ago was really hard on our ash trees in the front yard. They were ending their life anyway, and with the harsh (for Texas) winter conditions they never recovered. Without the shade from the trees, our St. Augustine grass was dying off. 

The city of Austin has a rebate for homeowners that turn their turf grass into Waterwise landscape, so I applied and received approval to start the project.

First, we covered the grass with large sheets of plastic to solarize (kill off the grass and weeds). Ideally, we would have done this in the middle of the summer, but the rebate program has specific date requirements. We left the plastic on for four weeks (wish we could have kept it there for a few more weeks, but we didn't have much time left before the completion deadline).

A friend helped me till up the remaining grass one weekend, and we had some dirt and mulch delivered from a local landscape company. I slowly worked on putting down weed barrier and then the mulch. Thankfully, the city gave me an extension until the end of November to finish getting the mulch down. I planted two trees and some of the plants and will plant (or transplant) the others in the spring.

Spencer is enjoying the new path and walking around on the mulch is giving him lots of opportunities to practice his balancing skills. He still loves to be outside and sometimes sat in the stroller while I was working (he wasn't feeling too good at the time). I'll include a few pictures of him so you can see how much he has grown!

This weekend I'm planning to add a metal border to the side of the front yard that we share with our neighbor. Eventually, I'd like to have a border all the way around. I look forward to sharing updated pictures with you as I get more plants in.

Happy Holidays to everyone! May you and your families be healthy and have lots of occasions to laugh and smile this Christmas and New Years!

Sending love from Austin,

Hannah

Givan Update

Not much to report from SoMD. I've started looking for other jobs since my grant wraps up in April of 2023. We've been pet sitting a lot. My coworker's cat, Mango:

Mad face because she's tiny and you can just scoop her up when you want. She was purring though

Dog sitting for an ex coworker:

"Mapache" watching The Rings of Power

"Max," a 124lbs husky. He's on a diet, but he still gained 6lbs since we last pet sat him.

"Morbo", a husky-German shepherd mix. He loves me

We went to the National Aquarium for Theresa's birthday! They still have some dolphins as they prepare a real sanctuary for them. Even though they don't make them perform anymore, they do work with them when they feed the dolphins and we just happened to be there at the right time.

The puffins were also a lot of fun!

Theresa just got back from a trip to Las Vegas, courtesy of her sister and her sister's very generous industry. She really enjoyed The Mob Museum and attended both a food science expo and the Las Vegas Comic Con.

It's bald eagle season here! I'll see 2 or 3 a day as I commute and at work. Here's a (slightly icky) picture of one taking advantage of some roadkill (I'll spare you the picture I took of the only copperhead snake I've seen since we moved here because it was, thankfully, dead):

Christmas in July

Peanut Clusters

(Microwave or conventional)

1 (1 lb.) Bag salted peanuts

1 (12 oz.) Pkg. Chocolate chips

1 (1 lb.) White Almond Bark

Melt the Chocolate chips and white almond bark in a pan, then add the peanuts.  Spoon out on wax paper and let cool.  

MICROWAVE:  Melt chocolate chips and white almond bark in microwave, 3-5 minutes (depends on your microwave how long, start at 2 minutes and go from there) or until softened, then add peanuts.  Spoon out on wax paper and let cool.  

Enjoy!