Where would we be without Change?
It is the end of February, which would normally mean the beginning of craziness for us for the next 8 months. We have had some MAJOR changes over the past few months! Jeffrey made the decision to retire from baseball on November 1, 2010 after 11 years.
We as a family don't know anything other than our baseball lifestyle. We have been used to packing up, moving, road trips, time away from Daddy and BASEBALL GAMES! The past 9 years have been full of traveling, meeting tons of people and pure craziness, but it is hard to fathom that all that has ended.
We have spent the past few months adjusting to the idea that Jeffrey wouldn't be leaving for spring training this year. The first thing we did after Jeffrey retired was adopt a puppy from our local Humane Society. We had promised the kids that they could get a dog once baseball was done and we definitely didn't waste any time. Cullen Shea Ridgway arrived November 7, 2010 at 5 months old and a whopping 32 lbs.
Jeffrey's retirement didn't last long at all, after 2 weeks at home he decided he wanted a job. We had "talked" about waiting until after the holidays but agreed to have him put a resume in to a local Dairy company. We had no idea that he would be hired on his 15 minute drive home after dropping off the resume.
Jeffrey got his CDL and had his own delivery route, however after 14 to 16 hour days we decided that this was not the job for him. I truly think we saw him less than when he played baseball.
Jeffrey did have another job lined up before he left the dairy, but we took some time to enjoy some much needed family time! We took the kids for a very quick trip to Disney. We had a blast! All 3 of the kids are at the perfect age to enjoy being there!
This was actually taken as we were leaving, so we had already created a whole day of memories!
Monday, February 7, 2011
This picture was taken on Main Street USA at Disney World
We had such a great couple of days all together with no worries of work or school. We will now be like other families who take time off of work to go on vacations. There will no longer be an offseason for us to do whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted to do it.
Jeffrey began is new job February 9, 2011. He is doing an apprenticeship at an electrical company with a goal of hopefully owning his own electrical company with his brother in the next few years.
We are also adjusting to Cade's vision problems. 6 weeks ago I noticed that his left eye was beginning to cross and took him to see a pediatric eye doctor. We was first diagnosed with Accommodative Esotropia, which means he has difficulty focusing and aligning his eyes at the same time. This was a result of him also being diagnosed as being farsighted. He will have to wear glasses to correct the problem.
We then followed up with his eye doctor after a month of wearing his glasses, which also came with his diagnoses of amblyopia. This means that he isn't using his left eye (the bad one) to see, so we are needing to train his brain as well as his left eye to be used. This is done by patching. We will be patching his right eye (the good one) for 2 hours a day to help train both his eyes and his brain to work together. Today was the first day and it didn't go well at all. The poor guy gets frustrated that he is unable to see and just takes off his glasses and gets upset. We shall see how it goes!
2/25/11
Cade trying out his new eye patch that he picked out, he took off his glasses right after I took this picture. I am thinking this is going to be a LONG treatment process.
I will say it has been a blast watching Cade experience seeing things clearly for the first time. He doesn't give us a hard time about wear these at all. I guess he realizes that he can see things clearly and likes what he sees!