PICTURES BY JCM PHOTOGRAPHY!

Yesterday, my good friend Carmen and I took the boys (Cadence & Jaemen) to Quail Lake and Carmen took some shots of Cadence. Needless to say, they are gorgeous! And I highly commend Carmen, as Cadence is NOT an easy one to take pics of. He is not normally fond of the camera in his face, so you mostly have to get candid shots of him. Carmen and her husband Judah have a photography business- check out their website at http://www.photosbyjcm.com/.

A Birthday Tribute to Cadence

Five years ago today, at 10:20pm, Cadence Thomas-Lee DeYoung came into this world. Little did we know that he would be such a blessing to us and to many others. He has changed hearts and brought out the best in most people who have had the pleasure of meeting him. His 1000 watt smile lights up the room and he makes quite the impression everywhere he goes. We love you little man!
Love, Mommy, Daddy & Skyler

PS- Turn up your speakers!

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

In the months after Cadence's birth, this poem helped me to realize all the wonderful things about him, what he could do instead of couldn't and the new world that we were about to be introduced to:

WELCOME TO HOLLAND
by Emily Perl Kingsley
©©1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley.
All rights reserved

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disabilityto try to help people who have not sharedthat unique experience to understand it,to imagine how it would feel.It's like this......When you're going to have a baby,it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy.You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans.The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice.You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives.You pack your bags and off you go.Several hours later, the plane lands.The stewardess comes in and says,"Welcome to Holland.""Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."But there's been a change in the flight plan.They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.The important thing is that they haven't taken youto a horrible, disgusting, filthy place,full ofpestilence, famine and disease.It's just a different place.So you must go out and buy new guide books.And you must learn a whole new language.And you will meet a whole new group of peopleyou would never have met.It's just a different place.It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy.But after you've been there for a whileand you catch your breath, you look around....and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips.Holland even has Rembrandts.But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy...and they're all bragging aboutwhat a wonderful time they had there.And for the rest of your life, you will say"Yes, that's where I was supposed to go.That's what I had planned."And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away...because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.But... if you spend your lifemourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy,you may never be free toenjoy the very special, the very lovely things ...about Holland.******

Catching Up & Starting School

I really do not know how people do this blogging thing every day. It's all I can do to post about once a week right now. Yesterday, Skyler had her first day of school. She is now officially a fourth grader! Initially, she was not too happy about starting school (and neither was I- I think they start WAY too early) but when I picked her up yesterday, she said she had an "awesome" day. She really liked her teacher and some of her friends from her third grade class are in her fourth grade class this year.

Cadence will continue in preschool this year and will turn 5 this weekend! We will be having a pool party for him with of course, a Finding Nemo theme. He is obsessed with Nemo. So today, after he visits the doctor, we will go shopping for party supplies and most importantly, balloons!