In February, we sold the house on Dunhill in Macomb and moved out to the country. Riley Township to be specific. It's a quiet little town that doesn't even have a main street its so small. The metropolis of Memphis is about 3 miles south of us. Memphis maybe has 3000 residents. It does have a nice little mainstreet. I've even picked out a little building that I'd love to open up a private practice clinic at some day. We'll see. Maybe one day when income doesn't matter...
We absolutely love the new place. I guess you would consider it a Cape Cod Colonial. The house sits on about 5 acres. The lot is about 5 times deeper than wide. Lots of grass. So much so, that I was able to purchase the coolest thing that every country living man needs...a 61" Husqvarna zero turn mower. I maintain about 4 acres of it weekly with the mowing. The awesome thing is that I can mow the whole thing in about 90 minutes, including trimming. No more push mower...ever!
About the same time we moved out here, I also started a new job at Residential Home Health. To be honest, I wasn't really sure about it when I was considering the offer. Something about going into random people's homes seemed intrusive. However, I fell in love with it quickly. It really is some of the most functional speech-language pathology intervention that you can provide. Think about it: in a clinic we talk about making our intervention functional when they go home for the day. If you're already at their home, the functional deficits that they may present with and have to deal with daily are staring at you in the face. You have no choice but to affect change quickly for them. You know every single session how functional the intervention you provided that day really is to them. Plus, when they got me certified in both the Lee Silveman Voice Treatment (LSVT) Loud program as well as VitalStim (neuromuscular electrical stimulation), it makes it very hard not to like the company you work for.
Kate's work has changed a bit lately. She is now part-time at Children's working on Tuesday and Thursday. She has taken another part-time position with Therapy Solutions Unlimited and is working at a charter school in Flint on Monday and Friday. Both positions have a good bit of driving for her to get to, but I think that's part of the trade-off with living where we do.
Emma and Carter are in 4th and 2nd grade now. Emma took piano last year and did pretty well with it. She decided not to do it this fall, but we are hoping to have her enrolled in a different extracurricular at the end of this grading period. 4th grade has been a little bit of a transition for her thus far - we want to see where she stands before adding something else. Carter has just started his 2nd year of CubScouts. This year he is a Wolf. He's super excited and already trying to convince me to start working on his Pinewood Derby car. He didn't like the fact that we came in 3rd from last this past spring...can't blame him.
Caraline is just growing and growing and growing. It's very cool being able to watch her developmentally now and know what I'm looking at. She's in that language explosion stage now and I swear literally learns and uses 5-10 new words a day. It's the coolest thing ever to watch. She spends 4 days per week with "Miss Nee-See", aka Mrs. Denise. Kate and I are thrilled that she has such wonderful experiences there. Denise is awesome and she certainly helps make our schedules a little less stressful because of her care.
