Nickelle's dance recital, they did songs for all the months in the year

Nickelle did great in her recital. We were really proud of her. Here are her dances as well as Brinley dancing "with" the dancers. It was super cute. I also put on some video from her preschool graduation. It was so cute.
Enjoy!

Cute things my kids have said lately

As usual my kids always say the funniest things. I sometimes wonder if other people's kids are this funny. I mean don't get me wrong I personally think all kids are hilarious. When I taught preschool I had a poster on my door where I would write down the funny things the kids would say and do so the parents could read it while they waited for class to end. I kept those papers, they remind me of the sweet kids I taught. Anyways I taught at my church two weeks ago for the women in Relief Society on honesty and I shared some things the kids have told me. It was funny because since it was Mother's day all the women were in there instead of primary and young women's. Anyways they were laughing so hard, and it was so loud because they were all there. Then Nickelle's primary teacher pipes up and says that in class before she came in she asked the kids what they had done during the week and Nickelle said that I took her to the zoo and there was a baby elephant and she was able to get on the elephant and ride her. We all laughed again as I informed them that none of those things had happened. It was really funny how they responded. I think it brought back a lot of good memories for them. But afterwards I was laughing pretty hard when a woman came up to me completely serious and told me I should do stand up. I went home and I started to worry, I really hope they got something spiritual from the lesson to. I am sure they did, I didn't just share kids stories. Anyways back to the whole point of the post. I thought I would share some of the awesome things my kids have said and done lately. It is good to remember and write it down.

Bennett has been so sweet about my new Nieces and Nephew, we have had born the last two months. He has loved looking at their pictures and I try to keep pictures of them as my screen saver on my phone for him to look at. But he has really responded to Brielle. He will just look at her picture for a really long time. Yesterday morning he sat on my bed for a half an hour just looking at her quietly. Honestly he looks at her like he recognizes her. He loves her so much and talks about her all day. So this morning he was a little anxious about Brielle he wanted to make sure that she would be coming home soon, and I reminded him they have to wait until Virginia says they can head home. Anyways he was insistent that he call Paige and tell her she needed to give Brielle bottles because she is too tiny for food. He wanted to tell her to be really careful because Brielle is really tiny and cute but Paige cannot eat her. He also wanted to tell Paige that when she comes to our house she can hold Brielle on the couch and they can watch Strawberry shortcake and the boys can go downstairs and watch bumble bee which is the transformers cartoon. He also said that she is a really cute baby girl now but she is going to change into a boy like him when she grows up. I tried to explain that she will always be a girl but he replied by saying that I would be changing into a boy too.

Last night Nickelle had a dress rehearsal for her dance performance on Friday. She has a bunch of costumes that she changes into and she ran onto the stage in a costume. The song started and she did her first little move and her skirt fell straight to the floor. It looked like something you would see on AFV. Her reaction was so funny. Everyone was laughing so hard they had to start the song over.

As the performance is getting closer Porter keeps telling me that boys can sing and dance to. I tell him all the time that I know that and it is great for boys to sing and dance and yesterday he said that if I really thought that he would be in a dance class.

We had FHE this week at a really fun family's house in our ward. Their kids are mostly teenagers but they love the kids. They planned all these fun games for the kids and my kids got really into them. The best was when we played duck duck goose and their daughter went around to all the kids and when she said goose on Porter all of our kids got up and started running. That is what they do at home. It made everyone laugh. Whenever Bennett was it or had been tagged he would just keep running and running and the whole time he had his game face on. We also played red rover and no one could break through Bennett's grip. He is a really strong kid.

Brinley is really into high heels and dresses these days. She also loves head bands and jewelry. She almost always has a baby doll in her arms and a purse. She has also become really outgoing and sassy. She loves to sing and dance. On Sunday I sang a solo in sacrament meeting and I could not look over at her because she was singing so loud with me and I was trying so hard not to laugh.

Lately when I tell Nickelle she can't do something she will tell me later in the day that when she is a Mom she is going to let her kids do what I told her she can't do. She doesn't say it to me mean or anything like that she just tells me that is her plan.

Nickelle had earned some money because she had done a lot of work for me, so I took her to the store with her money and she picked out a little kids makeup kit. She had so much fun putting it all on and she does a pretty good job. She put some on Brinley and Bennett wouldn't let her put any on him. When Porter came home she showed him the makeup and asked if he wanted some. He said he didn't want any because he was a boy but he wanted to put it on her. She sat so still and he spent a lot of time on her. When she was done she had TONS on her face. She went to look into the mirror and said "Porter, what have you done to my face it looks horrible. Makeup should look natural and beautiful and you made my face look crazy." When she gets worked up her face gets really red and splotchy. She knows this and she will tell us when she upset not to make her face go splotchy. But her face started going red and she yelled out "Porter look at my face now it is splotchy everywhere do you really want me to look like this?"I told her to calm down and thank Porter for doing his very best and maybe offer to show him the right way to put it on. She calmed down and Porter let her teach her how to do it right.

The kids were inside napping and I was working out in the back yard weeding. I had opened up the window a little bit in the girls room and it faces the backyard. All the sudden Nickelle started singing her heart out, out the window. She was going on and on about how much she loves her Dad because he bought her an ice cream cone. She was singing SO LOUD! I tried to laugh quietly but the song kept getting funnier. We she realized I was out there she got all embarrassed and said "oh hi Mom, I am just in here singing very quietly".

I am sure there are plenty more awesome things they have done that I am not thinking of but those are the ones that come to mind. My kids are great.

Playing catch up!

The kids were so funny on Easter, we tried so hard to get good pictures of everybody and these are what we got. Here are my handsome boys.


The girls



Brinley, so cute!



Bennett.


Nickelle what a goof



Mr. Porter

These next ones are all my kids. Trust me these are the best we got. Oh boy!





Bennett turned 3 last week. It was a fun day and he was so cute that day. He was really excited and it made the day so fun. I made him a race track cake which made him so happy. When he saw it he kept jumping up and down saying "it's amazing!"




Nickelle working on her dancing. So cute.

We moved the girls room a bit ago and I moved Brinley into a big girl bed, which she loves. We have been painting and removing wall paper. I am almost done. All that is left is for me to put up bead board and I will be done. Pretty fun.



She loves hats.

Sorry for the lack of pictures lately. I really haven't been taking any. I am really a slacker Mom.

G and B's wedding, bustin a move

Yesterday was wonderful, my brother in law got married to the sweetest girl. We love Grant and Becky and could not be happier. At the end of the reception they had a little dance that my kids were more than happy to join in and they were killing us with their sweet moves. You have to watch for about 50 seconds before Porter comes in but keep watching because Bennett comes in with something extra special. Are my kids shy? You tell me. I am just so glad we got some video of this. Also I am not sure how it happened that Porter did not have socks on, but what can you do.

Enjoy!

I will post later and give come updates with some cute pictures but I just had to share this.

Too funny!

I was upstairs in my room and Nickelle gave me this whole story about how she needed to keep my camera safe and so she needed me to give it to her so she could put it somewhere. I then explained to her that I was really smart and because I was so smart I could tell she was lying and that really all she wanted was the play with my camera. She looked at me amazed and said "how did you know that?"

A few minutes later I walked downstairs and I see Porter eating a string cheese that he did not ask to have. He looks up at me and totally straight faced says "Mom, this is so cool, I just found this in my ear". Once again my kids have planned their own FHE lesson, we will be talking about telling the truth.

These Kids!

Learning all the time!

Sometimes I feel like I spend a lot of time learning and educating myself. I have been doing that a lot lately. I have lots to learn and so I work at it. Last night I was able to attend an IEP class. It was much needed. But I left feeling just as clueless if not more so than I came. I realized that I know less than I thought and it is a little intimidating, the good news is that I did leave feeling a little more empowered and that I did know my rights and how I can advocate for Porter and Bennett's rights. The rest will come in time with experience I am sure. I also get to attend a special needs conference on Saturday that I am really excited about. It was hard in Idaho not to have any of these resources there weren't even support groups. I really hope that some programs will begin there for the families in Idaho they need this.

I met a woman last night who is really at the beginning of the autism journey. She came up to me after the class and had a lot of questions. I sat down with her and just listened. She shared a lot with me and ended up crying and telling me how overwhelmed and exhausted she was. I spent some time sharing with her my own story and letting her know that it was going to get easier. I was also able to share some of the things I wish I would have known. I told her the importance of getting breaks and finding a release. I was able to give her some advice in how to include her husband and how to understand him more, I hope I was able to give her some tools to help her on her journey. The teacher from the class was with us for quite a while. She had a son with special needs who is an adult now. She was really funny and said she was really impressed with me and asked if I had ever considered working for the Utah Parent Center to help educate and support other families like mine. I laughed a little and told her that she was very sweet, but she went on and said that she was really impressed with my advice. I told her that right now I am really in the thick of things with my own kids but that down the road I would love to do something like that. I get that a lot from people in the special needs community. I don't think I am special or that I have all the answers, I think I am just open with what I have been through and I am comfortable sharing about it. When you go through something as painful as this it is so personal that it makes it hard to share. I have never really had a personality like that and I am grateful that it has been able to bless other people in our same boat. But at the same time what you are going through is not something most people can relate to, or understand. It means so much to have someone who has felt those fears, shed those tears, and struggled every day with your same battles. We laughed for 5 minutes about the nightmare of cutting hair and nails. Honestly it is one of the hardest things for me to put my boys through. She kept asking me my age which was really funny. I told her that a diagnosis of autism automatically ages you 15 years. She is 52. She got married when she was 49 and got pregnant, which was not planned. In a way it was nice for me to see that someone a lot older than me and who has had a lot more life experience is just as lost as I was. She shared with me how hard church has been for her, she told how most Sundays she ends up in the Mother's room crying. I told her I spent a lot of time early on in the bathroom on Sunday's crying, every once in a while I still do. But I told her how to include her ward in her son's life. I told her how she can educate the kids, and I told her that in time she will feel like she fits in with the sister's in her ward. I was able to remind her of all the ways her ward is showing love already to her son, and she agreed. I told her that in time when she sees all the primary kids it will no longer be a reminder of what is lost, but it will be replaced with a love for the children who are blessing her son and leading him along. I told her that in time she will no longer sit next to her relief society sisters and feel different and that she can't relate. I told her that she will recognize suffering and that she will understand suffering and that she will gain a deeper love and compassion for those sisters. She will understand that suffering is the same for everyone, no matter what causes it. That is what makes us the same and what makes us sisters. She will discover that she can be someone they can lean on and that she will be able to bless them because of her experiences. I left her with my contact information and told her that I would be more than willing to listen if she needed to cry or if she needed advice or if she just needed someone to bounce off ideas for her son. I left realizing that I was able to do something for her that she really needed and I was grateful I was so open with her. I hope she went home and was uplifted. I hope she went home and allowed herself to rest and slow down. I hope she went home and was able to forgive and love her husband more. I hope she went home and realized that she is not alone. I hope she went home and was reassured that she is loved, and that she would be able to carry this burden, and that her life would be full and happy.

You are probably wondering why I am sharing all this. I am really hard on myself. I get frustrated all the time with my inadequacies. I constantly feel like I could be more and be stronger. I have always struggled with recognizing my own worth. It is so easy for me to love others, but so much harder for me to love myself. This has been a big struggle for me. When Bennett was diagnosed all I could think of was how inadequate I was to be able to handle two autistic sons, I was convinced that I was going to fail miserably. It was really hard to put my faith in the Lord that he somehow knew I could do this. One day I was really down and struggling with these types of feelings when I got a phone call. It was from a member of the seventy, Elder Alan Packer. He had recently returned from North Carolina he had been out to see the mission and to see how things were going, he was able to spend a lot of time with my in laws. Through talking they shared with him about all their children and mentioned us and our two boys and mentioned that our younger son was just diagnosed. Long story short he called me and he said a lot of really special things to me that day, but the thing that hit me the most was that he told me that the Lord was qualifying me to do this work. He didn't say if I read my scriptures or if I prayed or anything he said to me that already the Lord had qualified me to do and that he would continue to. The Lord has made me strong to carry this burden and that he would continue to do so. I was so uplifted that day. I have not had a single hard day since and this was a few months ago. Ever since then my self confidence has grown so much. Instead of feeling like I can't do this, I realize that I can, and that the Lord was providing so many ways so that I could. We all have things in our life that are painful, that everyday we work at, that we grieve about, that we struggle with. I am no different than anyone else. My trials may be different and unique to me, but so are yours. I left last night so grateful for the lessons I have gained and so grateful that I can share that with someone else who is at such a trying time. I hope that you will share your experiences with people you never know who needs your help. You will be so surprised at how much personal healing comes when you share with someone else what you have been through.

There are times when I feel angry at autism, that I wish it would leave my boys alone, that is would not cause them so much suffering. There are times when my heart breaks as new milestones aren't hit, and may never be. There are times when I watch other kids and wish that my boys could have that, and be apart of that. There are times when I am so exhausted that I am not sure if I can make it through one more melt down, and one more battle. There are times when I feel defeated, and discouraged. There are times when I feel so alone, and wish more than anything that I had a friend or someone I could turn to, who has been through this and could give me advice. There are times when I wish we could do normal family things like vacations, and disney land. There are times when I wish my girls did not have to give so much for their brothers. There are times when I wish Dallin was able to have typical father son experiences. There are times when I wish we could make it through church and not have screaming, crying and melt downs. There are times that I wish I could spend more time with Dallin and that we could get away just the two of us. There are times when I wish I could just go to the store and it not be such a big event that leaves me so exhausted. But there is never a day that I don't feel loved, and that I don't feel the love that is there for my boys. There is never a day that I love my boys less or that I would want them any other way. There is not a day that I am not grateful for the special needs community that I am apart of. There is never a day where the Lord's tender mercies are not so vivid in my life that it would be impossible not to recognize them. There is never a day that I don't love the Lord and all that he has given me, autism included. There is not a day that I am not grateful that right in my home is the gift of eternal perspective. I know where I want to be and who I want to be with. There is not a day that I am not grateful for how close to the Lord I have become from my experiences. There is not a day where I am not grateful for how close Dallin and I are because of what we have been through. There is not a day where I don't laugh and celebrate my children. There is not a day when I don't look at my girls and wonder how they could be more special and able to handle their burdens. There is not a day that I don't marvel at my boys and what they are accomplishing no matter how impossible.There is not a day when I am not grateful for autism and what is brings to my life. After talking with this sweet woman last night I was thinking of all I have learned and am still learning and I am truly grateful for the journey. Next month is Autism awareness month and it is one of my favorite times of the year. There is so much educating that is going on and it all goes towards a more loving world for my boys. I am truly grateful for my life, and the journey it has been. I hope this finds you all well and happy in your life and in your own challenges.

With love,
Season

Ever wonder why when you call it sounds like something crazy is going on at my house?

The kids wanted to give us a puppet show. I guess you can call this the pre-show. All I know is my kids know one volume and that is LOUD!!!! But it is pretty cute to hear Brinley just belt is out like that. Her personality has really been coming out more and more lately and it is pretty cute to watch.