#ShannonStrong2020

 It's been a long while, I know. There are multi reasons for not posting recently, but rest assured that all is well. Shannon is doing great!! I've been focusing on what I am thankful for and I can't do that without acknowledging my gratitude for 2020. It's been a long hard year. Fantastically hard, actually. I would love to say things got hard with all the shut downs, kids home, work stuff shifting for my husband. I would love to *just* have wondered what to do with the kids to keep them entertained, and what school options we should do, and how long can this thing honestly go on. I know no one *just* endured that. I know there is much, much, more going on in everyone's households. We have certainly had our share and then some of difficulties. So here is my list of things I am grateful for, that probably doesn't look quite like it should.  I am grateful: That the country was shut down and we had to learn to live differently That my kids got in an accident That

Well, here we are in September. I have misplaced the year, as easily as I misplace my phone. After all the hubbub of August, September is a welcome quiet to our storm. School started- as much as "school" can start, anyway. Austin & Katie kidnapped Jake and absconded to Utah with him for a week and a half. That means Scott was on 6am duty the whole time. Scott misses his sleep, but is ever willing to step in when and wherever needed.  The house has been blessedly quiet with only 6 people here. I've been worried a bit about virtual school schedules and our other schedules, and how they would flow together. It's been pretty easy. The first week was a lot of making sure K was able to get into her zoom classes, but otherwise we've had a lot of free time around here.  Shannon has switched to therapy only 2x/week, which is great! That gives her another day to do what SHE wants to do. Mostly it's because our insurance company doesn't like to pay for things. So

  The last several weeks have been so crazy busy. In the middle of it all, Shannon went on a PANDA-MIC!! She and her giant panda Po went shopping, went for drives, went all over. She took Scott along as well. Someone had to drive..... Therapies have been going great! Shannon's been doing a lot of core strength building, memory work, and flexibility. She's still working wheelies-- BUT she can wheelie her way out the front door now! She also transfers herself from her wheelchair to the leather sofa in our family room without any help. We are still nearby just in case, but she doesn't need us.  Some other fantastic things that Shannon has mastered this month are: Dressing herself; you recall, it's hard to dress yourself if you can't control any muscles below your chest. It's a workout, for sure. We've gotten her shower time and night routine down to less than an hour. And Shannon doesn't need almost any help with car transfers! She' getting really stron

  Well, this week we have had several adventures! I love adventures, they teach you new things. This week our first adventure was called Isaias. Not our first tropical storm, but it threw us some new twists and taught us cool things such as:  How to build a dam out of an inflatable kids pool. How to keep water from continuing to flow into a basement during a storm.  What happens when your shop vac filter is clogged while trying to clean water up in your basement.  How to clean your lawn with a push broom.  We also sharpened our water diverting ditch digging skills, and confirmed that the builder of our house had no idea what they were doing. (This has actually been confirmed about 100 times now, not that I’m counting) The good news is that Shannon enjoyed a waterfront view without leaving her bed or opening any curtains. She almost had an indoor pool, but we couldn’t afford that AND a dry place to live, so we opted for the dry place to live.  Other adventures:  See that white pipe stic

Newsflash! We are in a great routine and everyone is thriving! Gone (for the moment) are the days of merely surviving. On the 21st, I picked up my youngest- K from the airport (with no problems with Unaccompanied Minor this time) and we've had a pretty uneventful time at home. If you don't remember, she was off on an adventure with some friends for the past almost 5 weeks. My hope was to have our act together better so when she came back I could actually spend time with her. So far, so fantastic. She was in AZ, so of course we are self-quarantining her here. Social distancing as well......  It that doesn’t stop us from enjoying her amazing baking skills....and feeding the raspberry lemonade bar addiction. The week of July 20th we didn’t have any therapies, which I was pretty frustrated about the weekend prior after my constant tug-o-war with the insurance company, and also trying to get all the right therapy Rx codes sent from the doctor to the rehab center. But since Heavenly

This weekend was great! Austin and Katie were in town and Austin spent it with us while Katie was hanging out with her fam across the lake. It was so good to have him home and with Shannon. It’s been a hard road for all three of them (for all of us), and having time together is such a blessing. This was the first time Austin has been with Shannon since the car crash. Reunions these days are a little rough, but we are tackling this as a family and I can see so many ways that we are becoming stronger and closer because of it.  We also celebrated another birthday this weekend. When you have 8 kids (plus some spouses) and 5 grandkids, there are a lot of birthdays to squeeze into the crazy.  In other news- no therapies for Shannon this week. So she’s living the luxury life. Well- as luxury as it can be when you live at our house. Sleeping in until noon.....watching movies all day......and night. People making your food. ‘Farm boy, fetch me that pitcher’ ‘as you wish.....’.  Shannon is alway

Today is four months. Four months since the car crash. It's hard to believe. Even less believable because it seems so far away, and just yesterday at the same time. I'm not sure how that works. This past weekend was eventful. We all went to the birthday party of our oldest grandson. Super fun! He's a one-man-show. If you take the energy of the entire circus and smash it all into one small human-you've got HIM. Daring feats, acrobatics, animals, juggling, clowns, *IT ALL*. Plus, he travels. On his balance bike. And now, on Aunt Shannon's super cool lap that is attached to an awesome wheelchair with a motor. So TRAVELING CIRCUS. And if that's not enough, he has two twin brother side kicks, and they try to steal the show. So there is nothing boring going on at that house. After that- **I** went on an adventure! Rachael (the great) and Lancer decided to kick me out of the house. It was THE BEST! Lancer and I checked into a local hotel where I proceeded to tak

Something fantastic happened today! (July 7) Something so fantastic that we were told about it over two weeks ago. On that fateful day, over two weeks ago, I was on a call inquiring about Shannon's shower chair- or lack thereof. At the end of the call I got some news. SUCH news, that I had to tell Shannon about it right away. She was minding her own art business in the dining room, I walked in and said "SHANNON!!! ARE YOU SITTING DOWN??!!!" She gave me an 'I'm in a wheelchair, so clearly that was a rhetorical question', look. (It was.) She then turned off what I was saying next. CLICK. Not listening. I said "Shannon, I was just talking to the wheelchair vendor about your shower chair and guess what they told me!!!!!" She responded automatically, with mock enthusiasm in her monotone voice: "WHAT did they tell you, MOM!?" I said "your wheelchair won't be done in 2-3 months, it will be done in 2-3 WEEKS!" She looked up to giv

There’s a lot of good stuff to share, so I’ll get right to it! Shannon got something in the mail she’s always wanted (just not for legitimate reasons). There are a couple of perks to having a Spinal Cord Injury. This is one of them:   And Rachael decided it needed eyes....so.... We went on an adventure one evening to the lake! Scott and I took Shannon down and we just sat on the shore and people watched for a while. There were SO MANY PEOPLE on the water for a Wednesday night. We watched the ranger give some tickets, some salty guy taking social distancing to the extreme (he wasn’t happy we were sitting on the bank where he needed to pull out his kayak- I guess he needed more than 20 feet of space) and a lady and her daughter trying and almost failing to load her giant two person kayak into her truck. (First time out on her own and her husband ‘said I can’t do it alone- so thanks for helping me load it up’) Your secret is safe with me.  I also have fa