Christmas is not a day or a season, but a condition of heart and mind.
If we love our neighbors as ourselves;
If in our riches we are poor in spirit and in our poverty we are rich in grace;
If our charity vaunteth not itself, but suffereth long and I kind;
If when our brother asks for a loaf, we give ourselves instead;
If each day dawns in opportunity and sets in achievement, however small----
Then every day is Christ’s day and Christmas is always near.
I can’t believe how different my Lil’ Monster is now compared to last year around the time of her birthday, or even now for that matter.
It was last September, the last week of the month that we took the family to Fallen Leaf Campground by our selves to camp out and have fun with the kayaks. It was also the week that Lil’ Monster said “Mommy” for the first time and I was so excited.
I place that magnificent milestone on her school that she started going 
My Lil’ Monster amazes me with what she says everyday. You never really know what will come out of her mouth. But you have to be careful for what you say too, she repeats or what they call echoes many of the words/phrases that we say.
Lil’ Monster is only four years old and yet she still goes to school and learns a lot there every day. Her schooling is a little different though than other kids her age. She’s receiving occupational therapy (OT) and speech as well as being mainstreamed for part of her day, everyday in Headstart so she can begin to get used to being in a regular school environment with “normal” kids her age.
What really is normal anymore?
She loves both of her schools and is doing so well at both of them.
My Little Terrorizer has been receiving therapy for his autism since March 26th. He first started with a BT (Behavioral Therapist) that DID NOT work for our family. All I can say is that my first impression of her I just knew she wasn’t going to work for our family. I had family and friends telling me to give her a chance but something in me was having a hard time with trying to do that.
But then on March 30th, a Friday, my Silly Girl was home from her charter school where we had lessons at home. That was the day that cinched my belief that this BT was not for our family.
While Silly Girl was here BT took all of her attention and gave it to Silly Girl instead of Little Terrorizer. The BT read books too Silly Girl, they played outside and played more inside. In all she gave her undivided attention to the wrong person for over an hour.
That was it I was done! I let her supervisor know. She ended up having to work about two or three more weeks while her replacement was being trained. I was very nervous though not knowing who I was going to get as her replacement.
Little Terrorizer’s BT (Behavioral Therapist) and I have been trying
to get him to touch his legs for months now. I am constantly working with him even when his BT isn’t here and last night he finally did it. And since then he has done three more times. He’s been doing so good.
I’m so proud of my little terrorizer.
I’m just now getting around to posting about this. I am so slow these days when it comes to blogging about anything. I just can’t believe it. But I guess ultimately better late than never.
My Silly Girl has hit another major accomplishment, a few weeks ago she gave her first talk in Primary. I did write it for her but she did say it with my help. She will be writing them herself soon enough though!
So here is what she said:
When I pay my tithing Heavenly Father blesses me.
Father in Heaven loves you and has given you many blessings. He asks you to return to Him one tenth of all you earn. The one tenth you give to the Lord is called tithing. Tithing is used to build up Heavenly Father’s kingdom on the earth. President Hinckley learned this helpful poem a boy.
What is tithing? I will tell you every time. Ten cents from a dollar, and a penny from a dime.
So if you have 10 dollars, you give a dollar, if you have a dollar, you give ten cents. If you have a dime, you give the Lord one penny.
Has anyone seen one of these? It’s a tithing slip. When you pay your tithing, you should fill out the slip, place the money in the envelope, seal it, print your name on the front of the envelope and give it to the Bishop or one of his counselors.
If we pay our tithing faithfully, we will be blessed.
I challenge you to pay your tithing. Even if the amount doesn’t seem like much it will bring blessings to you and members and nonmembers of this true church.
In the name of Jesus Christ Amen.
I have been wanting and imaging how I could make the best menu making tool ever. Finally it has come to me. Instead of having a bunch of papers that I have to collect all together all them time and then use to sit down and make my menu plan I decided to put them all together as a book.
I’ve made five sections: Menu Making Helps, Family Favorites, Recipes to Try, Weekly Menus and Monthly Menus. In my menu making helps I have:
Our Meal List
Main Dish Menu Planner from No Ordinary Moments
Menu Plan for outlining my most used recipes and listing out the ingredients so I can make an appropriate inventory must have list. This menu plan is from Food Storage Made Easy.
I used this inventory list so I can list out how much food I need. I put four of these sheets in my book. There’s a spot where it tells how much you need for three months. I changed this on each sheet to 6, 9, 12. This sheet is also from Food Storage Made Easy.
In the next section labeled Family Favorites I put these pages:
Favorite recipes list is an editable PDF. I put this in the list for new additions or old favorites so I would know where to find my recipes. No more adding a recipe to the list and then wondering where that recipe is. This page is from Life Your Way
The next page is one that I created. I wanted a really cool page that I could write down new recipes. I used this template as a guide to help me. A printer version will be coming soon.
In the next section labeled recipes to try I put in this page where I can list out new recipes.
This awesome page is an editable PDF. This page is from Life Your Way.
The next section is the Weekly Menu Planner.
The weekly menu planner has a place for you to write the breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack for each day of the week. A PDF version will be coming soon.
The last section is the Monthly Menu Planner.
Monthly Menu Planner from No Ordinary Moments And on the plus side is that it’s an editable PDF.
I can’t wait to start using my new menu book and see how much it helps our family.
In my earlier post I wrote about the process it took to find out Lil’ Monster has autism. She was diagnosed eight months ago now. Our family has learned within the last couple of weeks that we are blessed with all kinds of awesome critters.
The Little Terrorizer was also diagnosed with autism, 
no shock this time just relief and Silly Girl was diagnosed with ADHD inattentive. Both of these diagnosis came just days apart and neither one of them came as a shock to us.
First of all let me get a few things straight right here. We do not see this as a bad thing or that our family is in any way looking for your pity. On the contrary we see it as a sort of blessing, now we know how to help them and move on from this.
This also made me remember and gave me another opportunity to hold strong to our faith and beliefs. That you are only given the trials that HE thinks you can handle. I guess this means this too is all part of our plan!
This is one post that I have been putting off for months. That’s probably one reason why I’m just now updating my blog again after so long. So here it goes I guess I will get right to it.
We happen to have the best little critter family out there at least that’s what I think. I didn’t think much of our little critter family, you know that we were different or anything. But one day when we were in visiting our new Pediatrician she asked me about Lil’ Monster and if she was talking yet. I said no off handed and shrugged my shoulders like it was no big deal but to the Pediatrician it was a big deal because at that time Lil’ Monster was already approaching the three and a half mark. Her concern made me to start thinking more about it. One day while we were out visiting with our neighbors – one of which happened to work with special needs kids at the time – I asked her what she thought of our Lil’ Monster not talking yet. She too suggested that it would be a good idea to have her looked at and get her some speech therapy help. For Papa Bear and I that was enough concern from two great people that know what their talking about and have Lil’ Monster’s best interests in mind when they told us they thought she would benefit from help. That was when I decided it was time to look into finding out how I could go about getting her some help.
Our Pediatrician first referred us to our local hospital and their speech therapist. At the time of the referral Silly Girl was also referred to the speech therapist at the hospital. At the end of their assessment they agreed that our girls would benefit from speech therapy help. But the price to have it done by the hospital made it the wrong option to go through them.
Back to the drawing board I went to find a place that would help our girls.
It was several weeks after that initial assessment and I was still looking for help when I received a flyer from Silly girl’s preschool advertising a preschool readiness assessment being put on by our county so the parents for our area could see how close our kids were to being ready for Kindergarten.
After I called the county and made arrangements for the Little Terrorizer to go stay with grandma I took the girls for what I hoped was another assessment so the girls could finally get some help. It ended up being the right place for Silly Girl but the wrong place for Lil’ Monster but they did send me in the right direction to get her started.
I finally had a place to turn to for Lil’ Monster.
I gave our local Regional Center a call and started the process on the way for her. Then about two weeks before she turned three – the age in which she moves from being part of the Regional Center to the County – we received the formal diagnoses that she is mildly autistic.
That initial diagnoses and denial was the hardest time of my life, at least since my gorgeous critters were born. I just couldn’t believe it and thought they were crazy and they saw I child in her that we have never seen. And in reality they did. But for us she was just our beautiful little girl that is always so curious and into everything. But they saw the little girl that didn’t have words or didn’t know what to say, has some problems knowing what are acceptable social skills and other signs of being autistic. Once we were able to get over the initial shock and disbelief (and finding a great friend’s shoulder to cry on) we embraced her diagnoses and were ready to find out all that we could do to do our part to help her.
Since she was diagnosed back in June – eight months ago – she has grown and excelled beyond our wildest dreams. She has so many words now, is using sentences and and even answering questions when we ask her and she can tell us when she wants something too.
I still remember that day back at the end of September when we were camping near Lake Tahoe when out of the blue she looked at me and said, “MOMMY” for the very first time ever. I grabbed her in my arms and gave her the biggest bear hug ever and then and there I knew everything really was going to be all right!
Some of you might think that I disappeared, but I’ve just been busy between the kids, house work and the holidays. I’ll have lots of stuff for you again in the next couple of days. Yay, I’m back
