May 15

Okay, it's not actually the 15th, but that's what happens when Dad is in charge for a week.  :)  Anyway, Lizzy had another great week, although it was a shorter one.  Lizzy's therapy is still going well.  Her walking gets better everyday, and she is more confident with it.  She is still working on grasping and releasing foam balls.  She uses the softball size nerf balls and the smaller water balls that you play with in the pool.  This weekend, though, the balls were left in KC so we used stuffed animals and socks instead.  The stuffed animals were challenging because there were so many different sizes, but Lizzy claims that it was more fun to do it with the animals.  In speech she is still working a lot on word recall.  To do this they show her pictures of everyday things-- a bike, an apple, a coat-- and she has to come up with the word.  She does pretty well and works hard.  Her goal is to get 40 in one minute.  Her current best is 35.  So, that's coming along.

The biggest news this week is what happened at the end of the week.  Lizzy came back to Maryville a couple of days early to attend the awards ceremony at her school.  She was excited to come back and had wanted to attend school a little bit in the morning, but in the end she didn't feel up to it.  Still, she went to the awards ceremony and had a really good time.  Before the stroke, she had already qualified for a number of awards and was able to receive those. One of the awards, though, meant quite a bit to us-- the Extraordinary Reader Award.  In order to win this award, students have to read a number of different books in a number of different genres.  Lizzy had not finished working on this award before the stroke; she was 3 books shy of fulfilling all of the requirements.  After her first week in the hospital, she wanted to ask for an extension on the time and wanted to finish the requirements.  We got the extension and the librarian helped us find the right books.  Julie and I read them to and with her over the next few weeks.  In this way, she was able to fulfill the requirements for the award.  Then, on Friday, we went to the Omaha Zoo as a family.  We had been planning to go the 25th of March, but then the stroke happened.  So, we took this opportunity to go.  Lizzy was a real trooper. She hiked all around the zoo and only rode in her wheelchair a little.  We got a great picture of her with her grandparents-- the three caned Musketeers.  What a group.  The whole family had a great time.  It's funny how all of us (even the kids) are much more aware of and appreciate to a much greater degree time when we can all be together as a family now that we have so little of it. 

We are so grateful for all of our blessings.  They are too numerous to list, but we are especially grateful for our friends and neighbors here.  We are so glad that we can call Maryville home.  The town members, our friends, and our church family are the absolute best.  Thank you to everyone.

Tom and Julie and Lizzy, too.