#ShannonStrong2020

  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 adventur...

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 ...