Family Night Message

I (Wendy) got a job recently at Spectrum Academy as the lunch lady. Hopefully this will only be for a couple of months until the REAL lunch lady, miss Carol, is recovered from her stay at the hospital.

When I get home from being on my feet in the kitchen at 3:45 p.m., the last thing I feel like doing is being in the kitchen some more and cooking a big dinner. I am resolved that my family needs a home cooked dinner so I do it anyway. Last night I made these things where you put biscuits in a muffin pan and fill them with BBQ meat and top with cheese. They come out this little pie looking thing filled with meat. Jason and I liked it. The boys wouldn't even touch it to try it. The whining and complaining was phenomenal.

So when it came time for family home evening and it was Jason's turn for the lesson, is it any mystery why he chose the story of the ten lepers? He had each of the boys bring out five star wars action figures. (These guys are used frequently in our acting out scripture stories especially the battle scenes.)

He told them the story of the lepers being healed and only one returning to say thank you to Jesus. He explained how mom worked hard on her dinner and that they didn't even say "thank you." The next part I have to quote exactly because it's better that way.

Jason: So what do we learn from this story boys?
Hyrum and Porter: That if you don't say thank you to mom, you'll get leprosy!
Jason: That's right. So tomorrow are you going to thank her for dinner even if you don't like it?
Hyrum and Porter: Yes!

The boys ran off to go play and I was sitting stunned looking for the lightning bolt that would surely come and strike Jason for his liberal interpretation of the scriptures. I bet we don't get complaints about dinner for at least a week.

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Family Rocks!

Looks like a bunch of rocks on the outside but inside they are beautiful sparkley!

We spent Saturday in the desert by the Dugway proving grounds hunting for geodes and lizards with my brother, Aaron, his boys and Papa Buddy. It was my one last farewell to summer and the heat. We saw wild horses, antelope herds and lots of cool rocks!

Porter and Jacob at the Pony Express stop at Silver Springs.

If you can't say something nice......

You've heard that saying from Thumper's mom, "If you can't say something nice don't say anything at all." Well, that applies to this summer. We've really struggled with Hyrum being home.

Since school starting especially we've had a hard time with the transition from home to school. My sweet neighbors have had the chance to witness Hyrum tantrums and it doesn't make me feel better that he is only 8 and on the radar of the Bountiful Police. (no record just notes on him in case)

He's attending Spectrum Academy the premier charter school for children with autism spectrum disorders. It has been a life saver! If you talk to Hyrum, he doen't think that he belongs there but a visit to the class would tell any observer differently. He's in good company with the sweetest, cutest kids!

We're hanging in there a day at a time.

"Tomorrow is a new day, with no mistakes in it."
-from the T.V. show Annie

Apparently I'm just full of T.V. wisdom today.

Feelin' Great and Sailin into Summer

Hey the recovery from the surgery was great! I was only down essentially four days. I was just a little tired for the week after. I don't consider myself and amazing healer or really in shape or anything so I consider this a miracle.

I have so many fun pics to share but I'm having trouble with the memory card downloading to my computer.

We had Hyrum's school field day today at the South Davis Rec center and Porter's is tomorrow at Rocket Park. Life is just a party lately and my house looks like it. We had 7 boys over this afternoon and I loved every play dough, dress up, wild minute of it.

Historectomy is finally happening.

We've known the day would come for 4 years now and on Monday, April 10th it's happening. I'm cautiously optimistic that this will take care of the hemorrhaging. I'm also nervous as heck that my home will fall apart. And no, I don't mean that the dishes won't get done or that beds won't be made, that is a given. I mean that the kids and dad may not survive without mom to intervene in the fighting. They have a terrible time when mom is just sick for a day. I'm going to be out for at least a week. Oh well, better now while the kids are still in school than in the summer when they are home all day. At least I hope they both get to school. Hyrum is still fighting it.

Today he had a dentist appointment because he had a pain in a tooth. Good thing that I saw the x-ray showing the abcess or I would have thought that he was just making up pain to get out of school. On the way back from the appointment, Hyrum informs me that he is not going back to school today. I went through the begging and pleading and ordering and threatening him to go to school when we reached the parking lot but to no avail. So I take a break and go sign him into school in the office. I can see him doing push ups and sit ups on the lawn outside while I'm doing so. The secretary pointed out cheerfully that at least he wasn't wasting time. I sarcastically thanked her for her optimism. Then I went out and attempted to bodily bring him into the school. I'm sure we would have been comedy gold for anyone watching. Finally someone had pity on me and called the principal. He is wonderful and together we were able to get Hyrum to march down to class with very little resistance and only two escape attempts. Someday we'll laugh at this right?

Jason and I replaced the breaks on our car after the kids were asleep at 9:30p.m. It was perfect temperature outside and it was nice to have some just Jason and Wendy time. It doesn't get more romantic than that folks!

Don't Worry "Bee" Happy

We have received our bees! 15,000 new pets for us to love! Hyrum and Porter are dancing the day we introduced them into the hive. Nana got some too. They are thriving so far and are already making honey and having babies. :)

Hyrum is HOME!!!

I'm happy to announce that Hyrum has been released from the Utah State Hospital and is home full time now. Boy is he giving his mom and dad a run for their money!

He is challenging any and every limit he can. Tuesday he decided to be done with school. He informs me in a cheerful voice that he is not going to school anymore "it's boring." I pull out the usual parent rhetoric and he just smiles and sits there on his bed. So I take a deep breath and relax, I'm not going to make this fun for him. I take all of his toys and close the door telling him that he is only allowed out to use the bathroom.

I call Jason with my initial idea of taking all the toys from his room and making him grounded to his room. Jason says something like, "heck no that kid is going to school even if I have to drag his lifeless body." He says he is on his way home to help deal with this. Hmmmm..... I can see a confrontation coming. Next I call our guy from the Families First program of the Utah Youth Village.

His name is David. So if you hear me spouting about the wisdom of David that's who I mean. The state and county want to reduce the likelihood of having Hyrum back at the State Hospital. We were lucky or blessed enough to qualify for the Families First Program where a therapist comes to our home and observes and helps us come up with solutions specifically developed for Hyrum. They stay on call for your family anytime 24-7 for a full 18 months. This is usually a $5,000 program but it is covered for us thank heavens!

So, I have never met this David guy but I call the number he gave us in case of emergency. He immediately told me that Jason and I need to be a united front before confronting Hyrum. Also that he has had kids decide to quit school and so he told them that they needed some vocational training. And since the only kind of job you can get if you quit school is manual labor, that's what they do if they are not in school.

I called Jason and since he had time to cool off he decided that forcing Hyrum to school physically wasn't a good idea. So we went for the vocational training. We just happen to have a lot of manual labor to do around our house. We had Hyrum dig a ditch in the back yard.

Jason sat out with him telling him to keep digging and no, he couldn't use the bathroom until his break at 10am. Pretty soon we decided that Hyrum was liking all the adult attention. So Jason came in where we could see him from the window. Then Hyrum decided not to work at all and just lay on the ground. This was about lunch time and so Jason offered to take Hyrum on a ride. Hyrum got in the car and asked where we were going. Jason told him that they were going to the police station since not going to school is against the law and that the police would be happy to tell him what happens to people who don't obey the law. He decided that he would like to go to school after all.

This was not the end of the school fight and I don't think that it will be over for many years but at least he won't catch us unaware again. We've got rewards and punishments in place now. Hoo boy yeah I love having him home but that boy will be the death of us.

-Wendy