Yamboree!!

Before I get to the biggest celebration on earth, I have another celebration to tell you about. About 88 days ago, I mentioned we had some friends have a little preemie. Addison was born at 28 weeks and after 80 days in the NICU, we celebrated her homecoming last Monday! What a great day for the Briscoe family. Here is the family of 3 as we welcomed them home.

Stroller gang waiting for Patrick, Holly, and Addison to arrive.
klp and his buddy Blake chattin' it up.
Here is Kanyon doing double duty on therapy. I had him in his standing frame AND restrained his right arm. It wasn't long before I heard a scratching sound and he had squirmed his arm out the bottom of the brace thing and was scratching the bottom of the tray. That right arm is a powerful force!
Just a little Baby Gap commercial.
OK OK OK NOW for the Yamboree. If you play your cards right, you'll find several other Yamboree posts out there in blog land. The Yamboree is Upsher County's festival celebrating yams...yes sweet potatoes. I don't like to eat them, but I love to celebrate them!

klp with cousin John David.

Great Aunt Mary Lynn brought the walker so we could have it in Gilmer. Of course, Kanyon loves to lick the toys.

Here he is trying to teach Uncle Clint how to do that. Or is Clint just making fun of him????
ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!!! How cute is nephew Nolan!!??!!
Our first big family pic since Nolan hit the scene.
Kory getting beat up by Roselyn. Notice her shoes. Avery's dress up shoes were a HIT with Rosie!

klp, Marty, and Clint visiting after the parade. I guess Marty didn't know how much Kanyon LOVES to eat hats.

I think Marty handed Kanyon over to Clint pretty quick. Cassi and I weren't there, we were busy standing in the MEGA LONG corny dog line.
Paw Paw carrying Kan to the parade...Kan eating paw paw's shoulder.

I didn't even think about sun screen, but once again, the bandana proves to be a very useful item. klp livin' the thug life with his do-rag. (and also being too tough to smile for the camera)
Here is part of our crew watching the parade. We were at the end, so there were lots of gaps...plenty of time to run in the street and take our picture.
The Yamboree has a Queen (as well several other "Ladies in Waiting" aka runners up). In case you're wondering, here is this years Queen.
Us with the next generation of yammers.

Ok, so one of my FAV part of the Yamboree is at the fair grounds where they display these decorated yams. They are done by kids and they are decorated to look like Animals (yaminals) or people/things. Some classic favs from the past are Yammie Fae Baker, Dorthy Yamal, and Yamson and Delila. There are always lots of good animals too...seals, always seals.

SOOOO, the Spencer Family decided to have their own contest. I grabbed my box of craft junk from teaching, we split into teams, and let the creative yam juices fly. Here is our lineup. The Great I Yam, Mi "yam" i Ink (complete with tramp stamp and lots of other sweet tats), and Yammie Lou (my grandma's name is Nanny Lou) were the big winners!


Avery and Roselyn were SO much fun this weekend. They played and played and played! Lately, Rosie has been obsessed with punishment (usually other people's). Here she had put Kanyon in time out. I'm not sure what he did to deserve it, but Super Nanny would be proud that he sat on his naughty spot until Rosie and Avery let him up.

klp with Cousin Robin
klp and Spencer chillin' while Dad shot his bow.
klp with Aunt renee, nathan, and robin.
We had a great weekend, but guess what???!! We have ANOTHER COLD! This one is a nasty cough that has kept Kanyon (and therefore me) up the last 2 nights. We didn't go to Dallas this week for therapy. The Dr. said his lungs sounded clear, so we're just going to have to get through it. UGHH!!! Cold season is HERE!! Speaking of, stay tuned for Phillips Phamily House Arrest Sophomore year.

My son is an animal

I love getting to know Kanyon and his unique quirks. We all have them, but because he's too young to tell me to stop, I get to display Kanyon's on the world wide web. It occurred to me the other day, that Kanyon is an animal. Not just one animal, but a nice mix of several animals:

1. I've lovingly mentioned this one before. Mostly the physical resemblance and the way he clings to his mommy while she carries him.........

MONKEY!
2. His uncontrollable urge to eat things! Unstoppable and mind blowing. No matter what it is made of (unless its food...stuff meant to be eaten) he will eat it....

GOAT!!!!
3. Though in the animal world, the death roll is used to kill prey, Kanyon's death roll isn't so deadly, just EVER PRESENT! He rolls all the time. It is his answer to everything he is trying to do or anywhere he is trying to go. Even when he's being held, he's trying to roll. This also reminds me of when I was teaching and I would teach the kids something new in writing like apostrophes and they would be so excited that they finally knew how to do them that they would put an apostrophe in EVERY SINGLE word. Much like Kanyon who can finally roll so he does it all the time...but this post isn't about punctuation, its about animal's (see..that is what a student would've done....put an apostrophe "s" there). .................

CROCODILE!!!!!!!!

4. Notice the fist while sitting........

GORILLA!!!!!!!!!!!!
We're still waiting to report that he's eating like a pig!!!

New Cousin and Last Week's Therapy

Kanyon finally has a BOY COUSIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Clint, Rachel, and Roselyn welcomed James Nolan Spencer to the family September 25th! He is a great lookin' guy who Kanyon can't wait to play with!

Here he is the night after he was born.
Check out that sweet hair!
Loving on our new nephew
This was Kanyon's first time to meet Nolan. They loved each other, it was plain to see....well maybe not plain to see, but they DO love each other!
Uncle Clint took klp for a ride on Roselyn's horse.

Lots of good rodeoin'
We had the best time with Roselyn! She is a fun big sister and enjoyed Kanyon so much! Mama Rach never missed a beat with all of this!
Rosie was crawling through her tube and showing klp lots of her toys and telling him all about them (this girl talks like a 5 year old!)
"Hey cuz! Where did you go?"

Aunt Nancye came to town to meet Nolan and play with klp

Kanyon FINALLY got to meet my lifelong friend Ryan. He was trying to look extra cool here with Ryan.

Here we are with some of klp's greatest friends The Kerbys (owners and operators of the popular hangout "Club Kerby") and Preacher friend Patrick! Our friends in Paris have been so faithful, encouraging, and loving to us!
After meeting Nolan, we headed to Dallas for our weekly appointments at OCH for OT and Speech. Our OT made a breakthrough discovery! I've mentioned before that we try to get Kanyon to use his left arm. It is uncoordinated and he almost never uses it. When he does it is really batty and inefficient. SOOO, the only way to make that better is to use it. Well, we've had a hard time finding things that will motivate him enough to use it AND we hadn't been able to keep his right hand out of the way. Well, the solution to the right arm thing was to wrap it up in a back brace so that he can't get it loose. The solution to the left arm was BEANS!!!! He LOVES them. He will reach out and up and over to play in the beans. It is GREAT and we see that he has good "potential" with that arm. Yes, it looks like we're torturing him, and I guess we kind of are, but if you've followed the blog, we do a lot of that in the name of therapy and helping this boy develop.

You can tell by the look on klp's face that he has to really concentrate to use that arm!

And yes, that is his right arm peeking out the top. He eventually worked it up and almost out.
This is just a picture of us helping him get into crawling position and hold himself up. He wants to keep that left hand in a fist so this paddle like thing keeps his hand open so that he can hold the weight. Yes, torture. Yes, a must.
Then we were on to Speech where we worked with the spoon. He is beginning to open his mouth for the dry spoon. Here is proof!! Yeah!! It is our first tiny step!

My mom came along for the trip this week so we could do some shopping and it was so fun! She was LOTS of help and it was fun to do fun Dallas things with her!

Here we are in the hotel, I am trying to figure out what time our next appointment was. Despite fighting a cold, no naps, rigorous therapy, no bouncy seat, crazy amounts of being taken in and out of his car seat, a different bed every night for almost a week, miles and hours in a stroller, and missing his daddy this is what Kanyon looks like at the end of the day! I was DEAD and he was still goin' strong!