Christmas eve...

As a child the best part of Christmas eve was getting to open one present before we had to go to bed.
This is one tradition that I have passed down to my kids, and because they spend everyother Christmas eve with their dad this is all I get sometimes like this year until Sunday.







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Winter

It is crazy cold 8* I am told and yet after school today I bundled the kids up and we went outside to play in the snow! Sleding, snow angels, snow fights! Fun!!!




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Santa 09'

My Little Buddy!

My Littlest Butterfly!!

Wow it has been a While...

It really has been a while since I have written, at least on my blog. I am constantly writing in one place or another, tweeting this or that, often tweeting in my head something that I want to get out in 140 characters or less that needs to be said but that I really don't want anyone to read.

I recently had the dreaded Flu and then pneumonia so all my writing was from my phone to Twitter, Facebook or texting to a friend just to make sure I had some kind of contact. So I have been limiting my contact to about 140 characters and in doing so I have felt disconnected.

I just realized this last night as I talked with a group of friends again in person for the first time in weeks, it took a while for me to open up as I unusually did, not that I wasn't sharing in the conversation but I was not fully sharing, I would stop mid-thought. Even now as I sit here typing I find myself editing what I say even more than usual.

Do not get me wrong I love tweeting and 140 characters is ofter more than I need but I need to keep my personal conversations to more than after all that's what it is really all about any way is it the personal relationships.

Update For the Summer...

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Well... Things have not gone as planned this summer. But the best of plans often don't always go as planned, well unless you have a really good committee and a lot of money and a contingency plan and well there just is not one for life, so things have been thrown off a little.

Our first service project got a slow start, but went over pretty well and I want to thank everyone that helped. The kids really loved decorating the bags.
The 2nd project was to be a the month of July "Kids helping Pets" we were/are going to collect gently used towels and old newspapers and pet food donation to take to the Humane Society of Utah. We still want to do this however we are running behind , because I was ill and still am.

Next month we will be doing are final summer service project "Kids helping Schools" we are starting now to take donations for school supplies, box tops or soup labels, the best part is you can tell us were you want your donations to go, (local Utah Schools) also if you are a Target stores customer/card holder and not registered online (I don't need to know this) you can sign up so when you shop the money you spend earns your kids school or a school that you feel deserves money.
So if you can't help one way you can help another.
Thanks again for all your help and support.

This summer should be fun!

I remember the anticipation of summer and all the fun I was going to have and all the things I was going to do and the time at the pool and with friends and then 3 days in I remember saying I AM BORED!
I don't know if I was really actually bored because I did not have anything really to do or because I was not taught how to think about what great things there was to do, other than talk to friends swim or go to the mall.
Know that I am grown and have children of my own and they are getting older, I want them to be able to think out side the boredom box. I want them to experience things that will help them become the type of people that look for more than one answer to a problem and know that there is an answer to every problem.
They were so excited to gather their friends together and color paper bags. They are even more excited to share with anybody and everybody they meet that they are doing a service project and that we have “groups” as my son calls them. Scheduled fun activities for them and their friends and my daughter giggled because she said she was being home schooled as we were studding math, she thought it was funny and fun. I reminded her it was just for the summer and it was just to keep caught up.
But all this fun they are having with all the planning is so worth it, with all the rain, I have not yet heard I am board once.
Of course it is only the first week of summer and we have 10 weeks left there is always a chance.

Summer Service Project...

Life is Changing...

Autism effects 1 out of 150 children... my 8-yr-old is one of them. He was diagnosed with PDD (On the autism scale) at the age of 3. I thought then his life and mine would never be the same.
I talked about his diagnosis in an earlier blog.

I keep seeing articles in the paper and hearing stories on the news that a small percentage of the children effected with Autism have "recovered" or are "cured".

After an extreme amount of testing that the school requires each couple of years I was told that Xander was one of the children that had seemed to make a significant recovery. As I cherish the thought of him fitting in better, my heart breaks for my friends that have older children that have not seen a positive change or have watched them get worse over the years.

I under stand the need for adventure!

My 8 yr old said he needed adventure...He packed a bag...and moved...into my walk-in...The bag was filled with a swim suit his favorite stuffed bear "blue bear" two pair of socks, I am sure because he is always leaving one sock somewhere, (my dryer never gets to eat socks, my kids socks never make it that far!) and one blanket. He said he was going to the Antarctic, I reminded him he might need another pair of socks. He thought about it and said okay, and then told me I could use his room for a guest room. Apparently he thinks while he is gone we are going to have tones of guest, based on what I don't know, since we have only had guest once and that was at Christmas. But apparently with him away the house will be an all out hotel and we will need the extra space.
So as I am getting Lily ready for school, oh did I forget to mention this all happened in the 30 min between breakfast and the time we leave for school, well it did.
So as Lily is finishing with dressing and putting shoes on, Xander roles his suit case into my room past us and into my closet and then closes the door. Lily just looks and my and we both giggle and then the door opens and he spits out with a very straight face "This is where I am living from now on!" and the door closes again. Then he proceeds to get dressed for school and then come out of the closet ready to go to school as if it were any other day and nothing strange or out of the ordinary has just happened.

The Last Seven Days....

The Past Week has been a mad house around my house. Xander who has always been very much a boy, in that he has a new scrape or bruise or hurt daily. He hit even his quota this week. It started of with a stuffy nose and a simple case a clearing the throat and a few spiting incidents, this turned into strep (but at least we avoided the swine flu that he had been worrying about all weekend, I have never seen an eight yr old who was not OCD was his hands so much.) Then just as he was getting back on his feet he was knocked off again literally by the tire swing that decided to use his head as a ping pong ball between it and the metal pole that it is perched on.(I am sure it did not decided to do this all on it's own but with a little help from the girls outside.) No he did not crack it open but yes there was a concussion. Apparently 3 and a half hours in the ER and this injury was not enough for him. And the fact that it was after midnight and we had just returned from the hospital and he was not walking all that straight did not even phase him. And certainty if he had been old enough to drive they would have told him not to do that, but all this aside he immediately tried to ride his bike! I say tried because of course you are getting the point here that he could not. And now he lye in the drive with a gash in his leg and road rash up and down his leg and arm. I know You asking your self were was I? right! I had gone in my mothers house to retrieve my daughter to go home. Xander had followed me in, kissed grandma and then returned to the car, or so I thought, until I heard the scream.
Xander's concern was that we had to go all the way back to the hospital. We did not, His dad got him cleaned up and bandaged and returned home.(Yes his battle cry even woke his dad and step mom.) Needless to say he made it through the night and another whole day with out getting hit in the head again with the same tire swing. (Maybe it does have a mind of it's own and it is out to get him?)
He did manage to make it back to school and finish out the week, with 100% on his spelling test. But he did get side tracked at the Zoo while taking a restroom break and was gone for over 25 min so I had to have security help track him down. (Every place needs those FAMILY restrooms, so single mom's (or Dad's) don't get that look when they take there son in the restroom with them or stand outside the men's waiting for their CHILD!) But today is a new day and so far no calls from school, and other than eating three times his normal breakfast (growth spurt, I knew you were thinking it) things seem to be going smooth. Thank God.

My Mind is becoming mush....

There are so many things out there that I have decided that I want to write about and that I think need to be discussed that my mind simply just turned to mush in order to protect itself and you from my ramblings, because honestly if I had the time or the right form I would be going off on everything.
Okay I have to talk about this.
Take for instance I was driving on 300 west near McDonald's and turned in to get a drink, there was a man hold a sign that said something to the effect that he was homeless and hungry, my first thought was I could afford to by this man lunch, I went through my wallet and decided that I would have to for go my drink but I have food at home. Before I could get out of the car he had walked away. I thought okay he made enough to buy himself lunch, but then I notice he met up with another man in similar attire (they could have been in uniforms, blue sweatshirt that zipped up, blue ball cap and dirty jeans) gave him the sign and sat down outside McDonald's and took a smoke break. I guess the union of the unemployed panhandlers association even allows 15 min smoke breaks.

From the mouths of Babes....

My Daughter, Lily is Six and has noticed over the last ten months the new construction of a now complete and completely vacant building that sits at the end of our block.
She ask yesterday as we drove by it why nobody is "living" in it. I said well they probably have not found a use for it yet.
"Well" She said "I am sure the homeless people could find a use for it, we should write to them and tell them they could use it."
I was completely taken back by this comment and the only thing I could think to say is "How would we let them know?" She of course had answer to that.
"The same way we let them know there are toys for them at Christmas." She said.
She had it all figured out in here head.
"Dear homeless, We have a building in the Cottonwood Heights area that is not being used that you can use. Thank you. Lily.
If only it were really that easy. and the answers could all be solved that simply.

Well It has Been Eight Years!

I can not believe that eight years yesterday I was giving birth to my son Xander. It seems like a dream. I took cupcakes to his class so they could share his Birthday with him and they were able to ask all kinds of questions, things that I had not thought about in a long time. Things he has not seemed interested in as of yet but I am sure he will one day. Events, names, times, he knows where he was born that all that he seemed to care about, and really whether he had hair then or not does not matter he has it know.

I was watching video of him on his second birthday and he does not speak very much at all, one maybe two words, I knew he did not talk much but I did not realize how little until a comment I made in the video about his infant sister babbling more than Xander spoke. You would never know it by the way he uses words know, he still does not talk a lot but he uses them when needed and they are correct and he reads out loud so he has a very large vocabulary but he still uses his words sparingly.

What am I thinking?

Have you ever walked in on a conversation and just caught the end, or read something that was not intended for your eyes and immediately thought that what was being said or written was about you? It is horrible to feel like the earth totally revolves around you and that everyone is talking and writing about you at all times. Not to mention a bit self centered and CRAZY! And I hate when I feel that way. The instant sickness in the pit of my stomach or the pangs of pain in my heart. Ahhhhhhh.... (me screaming)
I work hard on not letting those crazy emotions in but sometimes I can't help it. I know deep somewhere that my life is not the center of every body's thoughts but some days I can not convince my head of that...

The New Year Has started off with a bang!

So there are several people from my past that I have not talked to or seen in years, not because I did not want to but mostly because of moves or changes and we have lost touch. Well the last two months I think I have seen more of my old friends than my recent friends, or at least I have talked to more of them, through varies forms of contact, facebook has been a real conduit of most things remembered.