New beginnings...

Our new home!

About 6 months ago Mark and I decided that our life in Westlake Village was getting more difficult.  Although we didn't want to move Eric from all that he has ever known, we felt that now is better than later.  We really wanted to decompress and focus on Eric's health as much as possible.  We had been playing with the idea of moving away from Westlake for a long time.  We bought a house in a great neighborhood that we paid too much for.  With all of Eric's medical bills and taxes from owning our own business, we needed to simplify.  Desperately!  The stress of taking care of Eric, a huge mortgage, Mark working all the time as well as the $40,000 it cost for the lawyers to help us in family court back when Eric had his first seizure.  It was just too much.   Mark has been trying to get me to move to Lake Tahoe since forever ago!  He loves the mountains, I love the water.  I was always so closed minded about the idea!   Now...deciding we needed to make a change for Eric's sake...we entertained the Lake Tahoe idea.  I was worried because not only born and raised in Southern California, all of my family is there.  All of my friends!  This would be hard!  Mark and I decided to go visit and check it out in July 2010.  There was still a huge question of...what about our house here in Westlake?  Should we sell?  Rent it?  We ended up deciding to rent it so maybe, just maybe, we could not lose all the money that we put down to buy it.  We listed it on Craigslist and we had about 3 or 4 people in the first week look at it.  We picked a couple who seemed serious...and it was a done deal.  They wanted a 3 year lease!  Even better!  So, we rented our house and headed up with 2 dogs, 2 cats, Eric and a 16 ft Truck to Lake Tahoe, Ca.

We moved to Lake Tahoe the end of August 2010.  We had already been talking to the school district so we had what you call an IEP (Individual Education Plan) scheduled for the week we got here.  We were worried because we had heard and read that it could take a while to get all of Eric's services in order.  We were trying to make everything as smooth as possible.   We had about 3 IEP's before he got the services in order.  We definitely had to fight more here than in Westlake, that's for sure.  He now gets Speech Therapy 3 times a week, Physical Therapy 2 times a week, Occupational therapy 2 times a week, he has a individual session 1 time a week with an Adaptive PE teacher as well as a group session 1 time a week.   Let's just say, in Westlake Village, he was getting double!  At least he was getting everything though.  By this time he was on Keppra as well as Ethosuximide.  He has not had any seizures including the "lethargic moments" (paralizing seizures) in about 5 months.  We couldn't be happier!

So now it is January 19, 2011 and we have been in Tahoe 5 months now and we love it!  We love the slower pace.  Eric has been so great here.  Grown so much.  We say its the fresh air! =)  It is so hard being away from family and friends but it has made me a stronger person, that's for sure!  We are excited about the 4 seasons and I am excited to get a bit more outdoorsy! =)

FYI:  These last couple posts have been mostly our story up to now but I assure you, I will post about our daily life as well as go a lot more into things that I have already started writing about!  If there are ever any questions, feel free!

Til' the next time,

Shauna