ChAnGeS......

 

Our little family is in the midst of some pretty major changes right now.  Lance and I like to think of ourselves as pretty even keel people, but every now and again we do some crazy things and it seems that usually when we do we like to do it big.  Well, I guess it is time again for a change and this one is pretty huge. 

Two weeks ago we moved out of our Las Vegas house that we have lived in the whole time we've been here.  It had a floor plan we loved with most everything we would dream of inside a house.  The only big negative we had with the house was it had absolutely nowhere for the kids to play outside in the front or the back.  Fortunately the inside was spacious and on super hot Vegas days you can't really be outside anyway, but we so crave a place for the kids to be outside and play.  We loved the house though and have lots of great memories in it from the last 3 years so saying goodbye to it was a bit sad.   

The real reason for the move however is that the kids and I will be moving back to SLC this Fall.  We feel very strongly that we want to put Rori in a program through the Utah School for the Blind and Deaf this coming school year.  We've done a ton or researching and we feel like we need to give her this opportunity.  Lance is mid stream in his PHD program at UNLV and has a great job that allows him to balance both so we have decided that he needs to remain in Vegas.  In addition to his full time job this semester he will be taking comprehensive exams for his PHD and he's been given an opportunity to teach a few classes which is somewhat unheard of at this point in the program.  It is a great opportunity that we feel he needs to take advantage of and should keep him quite busy. 

So our plan is to have Lance fly back and forth on the weekends.  We hate the idea of being separated during the week but feel like we need to try to make this work for a time.  Our goal is to give it a try this Fall and then evaluate from there.  Thus, when some of our friends from Church in Vegas were looking to rent out their place and it all came together so we could be saving a good chunk of money each month that we could in turn use on airfare we felt very fortunate.  So we have spent these last 2 weeks before we leave in the "new Vegas house".  We have actually been loving it as it is quite nice and it has a community pool that we are trying to use as much as possible. 

So the reason we are doing all of this is because Rori has an August birthday -  she is now of kindergarten age here in Las Vegas for this coming school year and can no longer attend the Deaf and Hard of Hearing preschool program she has been going to for the last 2 years.  We actually agree with this and feel like she has maxed out this preschool program and is ready for a change and new challenges.  However, after our experience with Kai being an older kid vs younger kid in his class it is a no brainer for us that we should have Rori (especially with her hearing issues) also be an older.  So, that leaves us in a situation of what to do with Rori this school year.  We also feel very strongly that this year needs to be a very strong building year and not a wasted one.  Our researching has told us that learning to read and write can be extra difficult for hearing impaired kids.  Imagine trying to sound out words when you can't even hear all the sounds.  We also know that although Rori has taken some great strides since getting her hearing aids just a little over 2 years ago she still has a ways to go in regards to catching up on some of her language comprehension and expression.

We had 2 options for Rori here in Vegas for this school year.  Our 1st option was to just send her to Kai's school which we would love, but we feel like it would be a sink or swim option and we really feel like she still needs some extra help and needs an opportunity this year in the right setting to get the therapy she needs.  The 2nd option was to put her in a school further from our home that has a program where there would be a few hearing impaired kids who would spend portions of the day in a typical K class and portions with a deaf ed teacher.  This option seemed better to us for this in between year, but we were a little concerned about the distance and location of the school and the added confusion that might come from getting pulled in and out of the classroom.  In the end we were just left wishing for a more intensive program to really maximize this year.       

At the new school in Utah Rori will spend 1/2 the day in a Deaf and Hard of Hearing class with 1 teacher and about 7 kids.  The other 1/2 the day will be spent in a typical 1/2 day kindergarten class.  We feel good about this because she will still be getting the more specialized attention, but we will also see how she does as just one of the kids in the typical K class.  What we are most excited about is that she will be receiving 1 on 1 Auditory Verbal Speech Therapy EVERY Day which means not only 1 on 1 speech but speech from someone trained to work with hearing impaired kids.  We have spent the last 2 years in Vegas battling the school district about speech as they will only let Rori have speech 1 time a week in a small group of kids with varying speech issues by someone that most likely does not have any official training for hearing impaired kids.  We would argue that teaching a kid to speak clearly and build vocabulary that has hearing issues is a lot different than teaching a kid that has a stuttering or whatever other issue.  The school in Utah also works closely with the John Tracy Clinic in LA (the place we have taken Rori to previously that finally helped us get things figured out) and many of the teachers have gone through an intensive masters degree program though there.  We think this is awesome! 

Our plan is to try it and see how it goes and then come December decide what happens next.  We know that the grass sometimes seems greener on the other side so we expect there to be issues and things that we don't love, but we feel like this is something we need to try.  We don't want to look back later and wonder if we gave her the best opportunity.  Our hope is that Rori can use this opportunity to get caught up and become well prepared with the fundamentals of reading and writing and then be on track to start Kindergarten the following year in our neighborhood school.  This experience should give us a really good picture on that which is nice.

Lance's Dad happens to live about 10 minutes away from the school which is amazing since some kids will be driving up to1 hour each way to get there.  So he has bravely agreed to let the kids and I take over his downstairs and live with him.  We know that it has to have been a very lonely long last year for him and he claims that he could use a little company.  We hope we can be a help to him and it will be nice for us to be close as it has been very hard to be away this last year.

It has been a whirlwind of activity and emotion over the last few weeks as we attempted to pack everything up and make these moves.  We pray that we are making the right decisions and can figure out how to make this all work until we can all be in the same place again.  School starts next week in Utah so we will be officially heading out this weekend.  Wish us luck!