A Newly Discovered Talent

Talents come in all shapes and forms. Thank goodness for kids who can think of creative ones that I never would've thought up on my own.

Ivy, "See? This is my talent. I can hold grapes in between my fingers"

I'm so glad when Daddy comes home!

Tom flew in late tonight from Kuwait--he's still collecting his things before coming home. We are so grateful to have him back & many thanks to all who've helped us in any way, big or small. It means a lot, even if it wasn't a big deal to you. We're looking forward to having family time this week/weekend & celebrating our anniversary next week.

I love this song. So appropriate for the final days of the deployment.

Update on Collin

Collin is starting to show genuine interest in engaging in more social interaction with me, siblings, and now the neighbor boy--whom I will address in a later post(can of worms). Anyway, I'm really excited to see this. I have spent many hours at the temple, and home (or wherever I am) wondering what's in store for Collin's future. It sounds bad, but for the most part, I did exactly what was described in a book "Special Children, Challenged Parents" about how the author basically let go of any dreams/expectations for his son's future so he could enjoy his son more instead of just focusing on things like "he'll never blah, blah, blah", etc. It does make things more bareable, in my opinion. And then when milestones are met there's more excitement for them. Even if they are years off compared to neuro-typical children.

A New Tradition

I am taking this idea off a downloaded epsiode of Tim Gunn's Guide to Style(downloaded, as we have local stations & pbs only on our tv--we both think that cable isn't worth it to us yet, as it'd be more channels and not that much more on we'd like to see).

As a little background, in this particular episode, a mom with 2 kids, a teaching job, and soon a new part-time job is getting the makeover. They sent her to a life-coach(?) type person to teach her an important object lesson involving a weighted vest being compared to the weight of guilt of doing things for & spending time on ourselves as mothers. The things she liked doing and felt guilty about spending time doing were written down on tags and then tied to the weights in the vest. She walked around a little to feel how the guilt was weighing her down. Towards the end of this scene, the tags were cut off the weights, and the vest removed. The tags were then placed in a clear jar and she was to pull one thing out a week, month, however often to "indulge" herself in.

Anyway, I will be starting up a similar thing in our home very soon. I frequently don't have that much time to myself. When I do, most of what I'd rather be doing gets put on the back-burner, and I've been feeling a little burned out lately(pun intended). Tom & I have both agreed it'll definitely be a good thing for me to get more "me" time.

Getting ready for Tom

Elder's Quorum came over today to help with last minute home-improvement type stuff that needed to be done before Tom's return.

Master Bath: touched up walls, baseboards, painted ceiling,

and patched small hole behind door with the mirror

Front yard: Put up nails & hung our Welcome Home banner

(though it'll still be a little while until Tom is back home)

Kitchen: What can I say??? We painted the dining room this green color about 2 years ago, and everything below the shelves in the picture about a year ago. EQ painted the wall above the shelves and fixed our broken microwave handle w/superglue.


Backyard: They pulled ivy vines growing in the corner about a week ago, and today de-weeded the back & trimmed everything along the bottom of the walls. (The kids love it as now the lizards who crawl on the wall have no where to hide)

Ivy has named the new plants. The bigger one is appropriately named "Fluffy" and the smaller one is "Mr. Plant"