Who Is Ryan?

Ryan is my youngest child. He is a joy most of the time, a challenge some of time and a blessing to have in my life all of the time. Ryan or Bug as we affectionately call him has severe mental retardation and severe Autism. This has left him unable to speak more than a few words and with a mental age of about 2? This has not stopped him from teaching me a lot of things. Patience and appreciating the small things in life most of all. He is satisfied with so much less than the rest of us. He expresses his joy without worrying about what anyone thinks of his skipping and laughing. He likes being with his family but is not always comfortable around people he does not know well. This  does make it hard socially. People don't really know how to interact with him and rarely visit or invite us to visit them. This is understandable because Ryan does a lot of unusual things like flapping his hands or making sounds. These are actions that help him deal with his world. It does make life a bit lonely at times but we do all right with it. Ryan also likes to stay up all night at times. This just comes out of the blue. We have tried medication and it seems to help some but every once in awhile he just does the night owl thing. So our life is not normal to the rest of the planet but is still a good life .  Ryan loves art and music. He is often with me in my craft room, stamping or painting or cutting. He is a great companion and I am lucky to have him!

The Day After

Uh Huh, still full. How about you?  We had a good day. Grandma and the kids all here and no one went hungry thats for sure. I love having my family all here.

I have had much leaner Thanksgiving days. I had a few in my late teens that I spent alone. I had many that I neglected to even think about being thankful. Those years when the kids were little, everyone worked and I had no idea that the years to come might bring some challenges I had a hard time meeting.

Life has more challenges now but somehow I find it easier to deal with them than I once did. I can only say that having the Gospel and the guidance of the Holy Spirit are the difference. When I chose the right, when I chose to listen to the promptings of the Spirit I do allright. Now......................If I can just make those right choices more often.

An Inspiring Woman

This is a post from Nie Nie's blog. Do You See Me? She is a beautiful Mom and wife from Utah who is recovering after a horrible plane crash. She is brave, honest and the kind of person I think we would all like to be more like. I first saw her on Oprah a few weeks ago and then read her story over the next few weeks from her blog. If you are feeling down or discouraged I promise you it would be worth going back into her blog and reading forward.

The Results Are In!

NO Lung Cancer!!!!!!!!!! The pep scan showed some weird thing in my neck that the  Doctor advised I check out eventually. It is probably arthritis as I do have trouble with my neck quite a bit. I can deal with that! For now he advises we just watch the mass to make sure it does not grow. That means another cat scan in a couple of months. I still have a lot of other health problems but nothing I cannot handle. I feel so blessed! It has been an emotional rollercoaster the last few weeks, but I learned a few things. Most important of all is to trust my Heavenly Father with all things. I have also learned to take less for granted the people in my life and to be content with what I have.

Thank you to all of you that have been there for me through this!

What a Mess

My birth Mom always uses an expression that is common in Indiana, I think.  She says " This house could walk"  of course meaning it was a mess. I think mine could run the Boston Marathon today. One and half weeks of being pretty much ignored has taken it toll. My son is a great cook but housekeeping is not his bag. He did do a load of dishes or two and was proud of that but the rest of the house ...............well like I said it has it's running shoes on. So I supose instead of being on the computer I better get busy. At least I feel needed. Very needed............