Chore.....

Okay I usually LOVE to quilt because lets face it I find it easy! But this quilt, I am FORCING myself to get through. It was suppose to be smaller but "me" thinking oh I can add something to it, which I could am now dreading my decision because it is so HARD to quilt. I have new respect for all of the the lines that I see quilted on quilts. Just the bulk of the quilt and then spinning the quilt to turn and everything makes it hard. So the quilting on this is offically "wonky" where it's suppose to be off!! :D

Maybe in the future I will get used to the quilting larger size quilts I can try it again, but for now. NO!!!

Helping Hands

Last night after I made dinner my boys wanted to "help" me. Travis and I thought okay, you can go ahead and do what you want to "help" mom. We turn and see them doing this...They were so proud of themselves. Even though not one dish was cleaned....and there was a big mess on the floor....I appreciate all that they did for me. They wanted to help me and for that I am grateful! I must do something right if they like to help mom and know that mom hates to do dishes.

I am very blessed to have my beautiful boys.

Normal

Some would say that there is no "normal" and that every child is different and that is okay. With that being said, is this normal??

-Punching a fellow student in the eye for calling Mr. Robles by a silly name?

-Kicking a new student in class?

-Become so obsessed with not sleeping that we can't sleep because it is "too dark".

-Insist on doing any type of word puzzle even though we have no idea how to do it.

- Has a new favorite show, the Monk? We like it because he solves things and has a cool song in the beginning.

- Is on the "girl's team" that "fights" with the boys.

These are just SOME of the things that Brandon is doing right now. Some would say that this is just Brandon, and I agree. This is Brandon and his quirks, but normal? I would say no. What is it? Asperger's Syndrome. Is it fun having this? No. Would I wish any other child have this? No. Do I know what to do to help Brandon? No. What can I do right now to help Brandon? Love him and try again to help him understand rules at school and encourage him to do different things.

As a mother of special needs children I have stopped judging parents long ago. Realizing that I don't know the situation and they are probably handling everything the best that they can. But today I realized I still do judge, I judged parents that had children that hit or hurt other children. What do I have now? Children (both Brandon and Nathan) kicking and hitting kids at school. Whether they are bugging them or annoying them, or what Brandon says "bothering me", my children are reacting with violence. Do we encourage this at home? No. Do we do everything we can to stop it? Yes. Do I know what to do to stop it? No. Have I tried everything that I can think of? Yes.

I think as a parent the hardest thing is trying to protect your child the best that you can. You love them and do everything that you can for them. I love my boys with all my heart and do my best every day to make them happy and teach them. At times like this when they are doing things that I know they have been taught not to do, I feel like a failure and feel lost.

I used to look at thing in a very black and white perspective, but not anymore, I realize that there are a lot more gray areas. You never know what is going on with someone unless you have been in their shoes.

My only hope is that we can resolve the issues with Brandon and Nathan hurting children at school soon.

Blog Hopping

Have you ever noticed how many aweseome blogs there are out there?? I find myself blog hopping more and more each day and have liked so many that my list of blogs has grown!! I have found another cool one, Sibling Craftery. They also have some nice tutorials!!! And because they are so awesome they are having a giveaway! So head on over there and check it out!

FHE and Projects

For Family Home Evening last night we had a lesson on being thankful! We did this last year where we had a tree that we added leaves to with everything that we were thankful for. We did it again last night and the boys loved it. We will add more leaves to our tree through out the month at our other FHE's. They all thought it was fun to put the leaves on and liked coming up with stuff. We still had a lot more to be thankful for, but we explained that we can thank Heavenly Father in our prayers for those! Nathan wanted to pose for me this morning when I took a picture. He is such a cute boy! Then last night after our ice cream desert, Nathan made a picture of himself and put it under the tree. He was very careful this time and told me he used "tape" instead of "glue". And can you tell that he is thankful for Spiderman?


Then about a month or so ago I finished a project that I have been working on for about a year. It is my scrap yarn from other projects that I made into an granny square afghan for our bed.

It keeps us super warm at night! And I love the different colors and the random of the squares. I am currently working on a slipcover for my lazy boy. I am crocheting a cover for it, but with all the quilting I am doing, it is on the back burner and is up stairs next to my bed, I work on it a little each night (or so).