Monthly Archives: October 2010

A Trip to Happiness

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This is an essay I just wrote tonight for my writing class.  It’s a description essay, and I chose to write it on my feelings of moving from Sacramento to Southern Oregon.  I’d love to hear any feedback you have as it’s just my first draft.  I also have to say that I’m having issues for some reason with editing my font on my blog when I’m on my home computer.  I have no idea why I can’t change it and make it larger.  So hopefully this small font doesn’t hurt your eyes 🙂

A Trip to Happiness

I threw the hung clothes into the back of my trunk and closed it, as I was closing another chapter in the book of my life.  The pollen was just starting to bloom on the beautiful, city trees that engulfed my neighborhood.  I felt my heart tugging towards that pollen that I once hated so much.  I was just adding that to the growing list of regulars in my life that I would soon be missing.

I took a deep breath, got behind the wheel and closed the door.  It was final; I was leaving my life as I knew it and taking one of the biggest steps yet.  I looked in the rearview mirror to see a perfect, happy, little boy smiling and ready for the trip.  I wondered if he knew how different life would be; how he wouldn’t be going to Grandma’s anymore.  I wondered if he was taking in the last moments as we drove through the big city as I was.  The things we once loved and cherished were falling behind as we drove, and in my heart it was like they were falling out of my life forever.

The first couple of hours were a blur to me.  Our family made a decision that we knew was best for us, and I tried to focus on that as we drove through a long, boring stretch of nothing.  I was lost within the thoughts of my homesick heart and trying to find the positive in the decision I was once so sure of.  When I felt the tears gather in my eyes, I’d look behind and see my beautiful son smiling and I would find my peace in that smile.  This warmth would flow into my soul ensuring me that we were giving this little boy the best life we possibly could by leaving the city, the drama, and sadly our families behind.

It was time to plant our roots, to watch our family tree grow and flourish, and to learn how to rely only on each other.  I slowly started to see change in my surroundings as I drove out of my blur.  I left behind the city and drove into a straightaway of nothingness, but as I continued on this journey and the more I pressed forward the more of a beautiful sight was before me.  I started to see mountains, and trees of beautiful colors.  I started to see beauty, and something about it started to make sense to me in a way that I didn’t think I’d be able to grasp so soon.

Leaving everything behind was not a sad thing, but a joyous thing.  The city was like a run down, harsh place that only signified our trials, our mistakes, and our unhappiness.  The mountains, the green, the breathtaking beauty offered me hope and excitement.  Just as the scenery was changing along my journey so was my heart.  As much as I loved so much the people and life I was leaving behind, I was traveling into a place where I would learn the true meaning of happiness; the true meaning of family.  I was about to add to this world another beautiful, green tree – my own family tree.

There is a big belly now!

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So I had to share with everyone my latest belly picture! I’m 34 weeks 3 days today and snapped this picture to show my very pregnant belly! Within the past few days I finally feel PREGNANT. So pregnant it’s hard for me to tie my shoes, pick things up off the ground ~ my backs hurting, I’ve had contractions…. nothing major, but a lot more than I remember w/the other 2 beauties of mine.

LOTS of movement! This little girl is having a party up in there. There’s only a little over 4 weeks until we get to meet her, and I am so nervous and so excited!!! I can’t believe our family is growing, but I love it. I love that we’ll have our big family that we’ve always dreamed of having. We’ll be able to create the family that we’ve envisioned having in our lives, which unfortunately we never got with our families. We don’t have the closeness that we want, so we create it within the walls of our home.

Holy Overwhelmed!

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I have a lot on my plate right now.  I have 2 weeks left of this job I’m doing, and going to school full time AND trying to get ready to bring Jayden home from public school.

I’m a tad overwhelmed and probably will be for the next couple of weeks.  I may or may not be posting on here until around 11/1/10.  BUT don’t be shocked if I do 🙂

In other news…. I don’t think I’ve announced this yet on my blog, but we have scheduled the induction of baby girl for November 29th if she isn’t here by then….

People…. this is 6 weeks from today!

I have a million things to do to get ready for her arrival. 

Plus I have school…and for the next 2 weeks work.

I’m borderline going crazy here.

So, if you don’t see me on here, I’m okay… just have my head in the books.  Not only do I have deadlines in school that I’m struggling with right now, but I’m going to try to have the entire term completed before baby girl gets here ~ it’ll be a challenge, but I know I can do it!

P.S…. Motivating Monday will be back on 11/1/10 ~ but for today I’d like you to think really hard about this….

“You are what YOU think you are.”

So start thinking highly of yourself, and watch your train of thoughts!

The post that changes our lives forever ~ In the best way EVER

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Sunday I posted on my blog my frustrations with the social relms of public school and poured my heart out about how I was considering homeschooling.

I received amazing feedback from some amazing mamas that I can’t wait to learn more from.

Our hearts are set, the paperwork for Connections Academy is filled out….

We are choosing to homeschool Jayden.

This is a whole new adventure that I’m scared to the very bone about, but I know that God wouldn’t put it so strongly in both my heart and Gino’s heart if it wasn’t the best thing we could be doing for our son.

I never thought I’d be here, even a week ago homeschool really never even entered my mind.  At first the idea almost made me feel a little depressed.  It’s a huge change, and change and I don’t mix well together.  Change and Jayden mixes even worse.  The more I’ve contemplated this decision, and the more advice I’ve received from others who have been in my shoes exactly, the more I feel this amazing peace over my heart in regards to this.

The mama bear inside of me just can’t sit by while my son is mistreated.  The mama bear in me can’t settle for anything less than Jayden deserves.  I’m telling you, I never ONCE considered homeschool.  In my mind you just send your kids off to school and hope they turn out okay.  But I don’t want to hope anymore, I want to ensure.  I want to build my children’s character the way I want to, not the way society does.  I want my children’s examples to be from Gino and I, not other children at school who have horrible examples at home.

I want to set my son up for success in life.

I want to see his glowing smile as he learns something new.

I want him to learn more than just math facts and basics, I want him to learn from the world that’s in our hands.

As scared as I am inside, we’re doing this.  We’re diving head first and we’re going to open a whole new chapter in our lives.  A chapter than I know will one of the best chapters in our life, because Jayden and I will be learning and growing together.

Prior posts that lead up to this:

{My Out of Sync Child}

{He Knows He’s Different}

{The moment I pray for God to have some answers for me}

The moment I pray for God to have some answers for me

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I’m just going to pre-warn you all that there is probably going to be some MAJOR rambling with this post…. I’m upset, and I’m confused and it’s times like this that I wonder why God entrusted me with children…. what if I make a wrong decision?

Shortly after I posted my {post} on Jayden being an Out of Sync Child and then my {post} on him realizing he’s different, I received a phone call from a friend of mine.  Our children go to school together and she had something VERY upsetting to tell me….

Let me first give a little background on her daughter Hailey & Hailey’s friend Riley.  These girls have been going to school with Jayden since Kindergarten.  They have ALWAYS looked out for Jayden and stuck up for him when they’ve seen a problem with the way other children are treating him.

Hailey came home to tell her mom that there were boys that had Jayden cornered and was holding Jayden around his neck.  Hailey, Riley and another girl went over and told the boys to knock it off and basically saved Jayden from these boys.

I am heartbroken.

I am speechless.

I am utterly at a loss for what I’m supposed to do here.

My first instinct is I would like to pull Jayden out of school and protect him from the evil kids that are hurting him.  But I don’t have the confidence in me that I can do as good of a job as his teacher does.  He has so much help to help him succeed in academics, and I feel like I’d be at a total loss.  But I don’t want ANYBODY hurting my child.

There’s been a lot of talk about bullying lately.  I just read a fantastic {post} by Single Dad Laughing regarding bullying, and if you have read it I HIGHLY suggest that you do.  It’s long, but heart felt and something EVERY parent & teacher needs to read.

2 days after writing the above:

Jayden finds everything to be a game.  He doesn’t quite understand what a bully is.  To Jayden, it’s a game and he doesn’t see the severity of it.  To Jayden he’s actually getting some kind of attention from one of his peers.  He’s been more effected by kids who call him weird than kids you have threaten or done physical harm.  But how many times of some kid telling him he’s weird or gay or sucks balls {yes, that’s one of the newest ones} can I allow to happen?  Eventually with so many times of being told you’re something you eventually begin to believe it right?

My friend’s husband is a special education teacher and recently had taken my kids along with his daughter to Jayden’s school one evening to let them play while I got some homework done. Jayden was telling him that he always plays by himself at recess, and Jeremy asked him why he would play with himself when there’s so many kids to play with. Jayden said that because the other kids think he’s weird.  This does things to my heart that I can’t even begin to describe.

I do not want my son to have his “social” time that is so important for children to be negative like that. I feel like I can create a positive social atmosphere for him. Why should I have him somewhere where people are continually putting him down?

I’m not going to lie, making a decision of taking your child out of school is a VERY hard decision to make.  I don’t want to completely shelter my child from society, but at the same time I do.  I don’t want him to graduate, go off to college and be completely clueless to the world.  I don’t want him to miss out out on playing sports in school if that’s what he wants to do, or going to prom, or the thrill of having a crush on a girl at school.

BUT I don’t want him to learn ways from other children whose parents don’t care about them and treat them horribly.  I don’t want my son to have to deal with people putting his self esteem down because he’s “different”.  Then comes the academics side of it all.  Budget cuts keep happening, programs I find beneficial for children are being taken away…. example: MUSIC!

I am really starting to think that trying to do homeschool with Jayden might be the way to go.  There’s an amazing FREE program available in our state called {Connections Academy} and it just seems like the perfect thing.  I can create a positive social atmosphere for Jayden, which I just really feel like he needs.

I really would love any and all advice from anybody out there will to give it to me.  Please share with me why you are homeschooling, your successes with it, if you’ve done Connections Academy your thoughts on it….

This is such a scary decision for me.

He knows he’s different

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Today we were watching Horton Hears a Who and Jayden says about Gordon, “Mom, he’s different or unusual huh?  I’m unusual aren’t I?”

I’m telling you that it seems like this past week with Jayden has been a roller coaster of emotions.

My reply to Jayden was simply this, “Jayden, everybody in this world is different and unusual, because if we were all the same how sucky would that be??”

Yes, I said sucky.

Tonight I just felt this heavy heart with things going on that I haven’t quite finished my blog post on regarding him and I just had to grab him and hug him.  And I told him, “Jayden I hope you know how special you are and that you are so loved by everybody in your life.”

“Mom, why did you tell me I’m special?  Is it because…. you know… I’m…. you know…. unusual like in Horton Hears a Who?”

When they say parenting is hard, you don’t realize quite how hard it truly is until you are a parent.  I know God doesn’t give you more than you can handle, and I know Jayden was placed with us, because God knew that we’d be the best parents for him.  So I need to have a little faith in myself as we embark down this road together.  I won’t have all of the answers for him, but I sure as hell can try!  And if anything, I will make sure that he knows that his mom is ALWAYS here, ALWAYS loving him, and ALWAYS accepting him for who HE is, because HE is everything to ME!

My Out of Sync Child

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Yesterday I was on a twitter when I saw a tweet from a dear friend that I absolutely adore! Miss Cindy from {Get Along Home} tweeting a tweet about her being an Out of Sync Child. It quickly caught my eye as I have an out of sync child.

I bought this book, which I am actually embarrassed to say I haven’t completely read called the {Out of Sync Child}, because Jayden has always been “different”. I hate to even use that word in regards to him. Jayden to me is perfection. Jayden to me is a sweet soul that literally lights up the hearts of everyone he encounters. Jayden’s different, but he’s different in what I would call the most positive way.

Jayden has something called Sensory Processing Disorder. He has not been officially diagnosed, but I did just get a call from the the Child Development Rehabilitation Center confirming that they’ve received our paperwork…. now we wait for the appointment.

I have a son who is constantly confused in life. Things that I can’t quite understand how they’re confusing… he will find a way to make it confusing in his brain. For a long time I was frustrated and confused as to why my kid didn’t “get it”. He didn’t get what other kids clearly understood.

Then came in the food. This is definitely one of our biggest struggles with Jayden having SPD. He rarely will try anything new, and if the texture, smell or taste is too much for him… he will gag, and he will throw up. I thank God everyday that my child loves fruit. I just wish he would love some sort of veggie. I can name on 2 hands what my child will eat. And that’s hard, because I am a short order cook at home, because I cannot force my SPD child to eat the things that he honestly cannot choke down. My child is okay with sitting alone in his cafeteria at school, because he’d rather sit alone than get sick from the scent of another kid’s lunch.

My biggest struggle through all of this has been wanting to know how my little man feels inside. I want to be able to understand and to help him. I want to be able to grasp my mind around how he is constantly confused over things that my 3 year old isn’t even confused about.

I want to help him.

I want him to be able to succeed in whatever he sets his heart to.

I don’t want people being mean to him.

I want to shelter him.

I just want him to always know that he is so, so, so loved.

I feel so much gratitude in my heart for being blessed with him in my life. To me… Jayden is {perfect}.

My Blog is ME

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The one thing I like to feel in control of and a place of order is my blog.

Lately it hasn’t been like that.

And it saddens me.

I was just looking at the majority of the posts I’ve written since starting work and a lot of them are missing pictures. Which I don’t like. I  want my posts to be full of visualness…. because I’m a visual girl.

My son’s 1st of day of school hasn’t been blogged about ~ pictures still waiting on the memory card to be edited.

My son’s 9th birthday still hasn’t been blogged about ~ pictures still waiting on the memory card to be edited.

My kids and I went on a picnic on Friday {scary story to come with that} and I took pictures of the beauty around us for a blog post…. still not done.

I need to cut myself slack. I knew things with my life would be like this once I started working full time while being pregnant…. and now I’m going to school full time…. oh boy!

The one thing I never want to neglect is my blog. It’s my mark in this life not only for me, not only for you, but for my children as well. My words come from my heart and I want them to see that when they flip through the books I’ve had made from it.

My blog is me.

Motivating Monday ~ Gratitude

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**SORRY ABOUT THE SMALL FONT… HAVING ISSUES W/IT TONIGHT ~ WILL TRY TO FIX TOMORROW**


I LOVE inspiring things to motivate me and I thought what better of a day to read inspiration than on dreadful Mondays. If you would like to write something you think will inspire or motivate others PLEASE link up!! I’d love to read your words and I’m sure that others would as well!

Every 6 months in our church we are so blessed to hear from the leaders in our church along with hearing beautiful, inspiring words from our living prophet. If you are curious as to what Mormons do believe in you can go HERE.

I didn’t get to watch all of the sessions of conference, but lucky for me I have them all recorded on my DVR, so throughout this next week I’ll be soaking up the words and be INSPIRED! Which, as most people know is my all time favorite thing.

For today I wanted to share a quote with you that touched my heart ~

“If ingratitude be numbered among the serious sins, then gratitude takes its place among the noblest of virtues” ~ President Thomas S Monson

I have lots to say about a lot of the things that inspired me this weekend, but another quote that inspired me this weekend was this…..

“Love in home and family is spelled t-i-m-e” – President Dieter F. Uchtdorf

and this beautiful Sunday evening is about to be spent with my family so I hope these words touch your heart like they did me… I can’t wait to share more with everyone.