I knew on our first date that we would get married. We were engaged 2 months later and married 6 months after that. Start to finish, we knew each other 9 months.

My family LOVES the Bare Naked Ladies Christmas CD. The mix of songs are funny and interesting. The kids fly off the wall when Jingle Bells comes on. :)

:) I will probably make some popcorn balls and some candy. Although my last candy making session proved dangerous! LOL It will probably provide us with some comic relief at the very least.

This year has sucked for us in nearly every way possible. And to finish it off we are not having Christmas this year. We will still celebrate the holiday with a dinner and (maybe) some family and friends around but there will be no gifts this year for us. We usually do a very small gift giving anyway so I don't think the kids will mind too much. They have grandma who will give them every $1 store item anyway. I am sad because the loss of tradition this year, not the lack of gifts. We will keep things as normal as possible and make it fun. Right now though, I am just sad about it. Anyone else keeping it very very bare bones this year (for whatever reason)?

Julianna Grace Lia Sophia Mia Elle Adalaide Ainsley

My dad is in the Ogden area and he keeps calling me to lament the cold! ;) He claims he is headed to Arizona this year. School was cancelled here again today. Our high is going to be 11. Right now it is 9. Dh woke this morning to a freezing house at 57 degrees. That was with a fire going all night long!! I have a feeling it is going to be a long and very cold winter this year!! Pass the long johns please!

We have been all day. It supposed to go on until tomorrow. We have had a severe blizzard warning that basically said "Conditions unfit for humans". So we have staying inside all day, baked pies, played games, and listened to Christmas music. Basically it was a good day except when I needed the internet for a saved recipe. LOL this is the first time we have had internet all day long.

"Dude, you're dreamin'."

We changed our gift giving a few years ago. Now I kids get three presents each; one to read, one to play and one to wear. It covers just about everything they want in a year. I jot down reminders when they mention something and then come Oct/Nov. I go over the list and see what is still applicable. It works for us, simplifies the gift giving and the kids are much happier without to smuch stuff. This year we are also going to give a gift as a family and buy another family in our area dinner and/or gifts.

I totally understand. Everytime I am in touch with the ex it puts me in a funk for a while. I have no interest in him as an adult but it gives my young girl heart a tug every time. I agree with whoever said it, young love and innocence are powerful emotions to be reminded of.

If my kids were that old I would tell them, no question about that. However with my kids as little as they are I would simplify the situation for the time.

:lol: holiday vomit! I love it! (And such an accurate description!!) I will not decorate my yard with anything more than one strand of white twinkle lights. I will not EVER put colored lights on my tree no matter how many times the kids beg for the oh so beautiful lights. Nope not happening!!!! I will not let my kids stay at my moms house. I don't trust her with anything that needs to be fed let alone with one my children. THis breaks her poor heart and I say oh well! :) I play nice on every other account and am generally the peacemaker but I wont budge on that one.....not even for the kids.

I cant get mine to upload so here is a link...... http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SqoVLcKuwxE/TI6Fw4uXSpI/AAAAAAAABlE/pfI-1n-YENU/s1600/DSC_0402.JPG This was our family pics in August. That man still makes my knees weak after 11 years of marriage.

My avatar is me taken back a couple months ago. I try to stay behind the camera as much as possible! I felt so silly taking pictures of me the day I did this one. The things Facebook makes us do!! ;)

You will be in our prayers. May you find the peace and comfort you need.

5'2 standing straight! :)

A very good friend of mine gets married today. As a part of their gift I wanted to give them a list of important things to remember throughout their marriage. I can think of a few things but I thought I would ask everyone here. If you would give only one piece of advice to a newlywed couple, what would it be? (Funny and serious welcome!!)

I get the alone time! I must have me time to be a sane normal individual. I think it is very important for those like us to get a chunk of time to ourselves. If you are like me your toddler doesn't nap and the kids have insane levels of energy. This leaves me completely burnt out by the end of the day. I am not a good mom let alone a homeschooling mom when I am that tapped. In the end we did send dd to PS. We had multiple reasons for this (like we needed school assitance on diagnosing her LD's) but a big one was she was SOOOOOO draining. Because of her learning disabilities, she is on an emotional roller coaster ALL DAY, EVERY DAY. Or so I thought. Apperently the child is a dream at school and is adjusting very well. Her homework does take time at night, max about 1.5hr (this has to do with the LD not the amount of work assigned) but she is much happier to be around, the other kiddos are learning faster, and the whole enviroment is relaxed because I am not a raving lunatic!!! :) I say if you think that PS is best for your kids/you/family right now, then do it. No matter what any of us say on here, you have to be at peace with your decision. I can tell you if it weren't for the testing that is going on, we would withdraw DD and figure other ways to work. There is a reason why the saying "If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy." exists. It is a simple truth. If you are overwhelemed and have no options for help then do what you have to do to make your family work smoothly.

I read months ago that kids who have difficulties like my dd (ocd, anxiety, adhd, and whatever else) are chronically low on zinc and magnesium. For whatever reason their bodies utilize these quicker and differently than others. Whether or not that is true I dont know, however I do see a marked improvement when I supplement also.

For a reference point, DD is nearly 8 and weighs about 38 lbs or so. She takes 1000mg (I think that is the unit of measurement) at least, every morning. At lunch she takes a smaller dose. I can not tell you what a difference it has made!! If she is have a rough day with multiple outbursts and breakdowns, I will make wild alaskan salmon as a way to help. I buy the Child Life brand oil from vitacost. I use the oil in the morning and pack 4 soft gels in her lunch to get her through the afternoon.

My dd is obssessed with horses, in fact I have her do math problems in the car using horses I see in the fields. Horses she gets, numbers not so much! We have considered getting her a horse as a way to encourage her to have responsibility, help with fine motor skills, and as a way to boost her self esteem. She does incredible with them and I notice some of her obbssessive behaviors diminish when dealing with horses. It is also the one time she can memorize things at the drop of a hat (like muscle names), yet recall months later. Thank you for the post, I dont think I would ahave considered horses as a form of therapy even though they work for her.

Is this test part of the normal dyslexia testing? We have a Mason sponsored learning center 30 min from us. When I called to talk to her she said the dyslexia testing was 3 part. We have an consultation in a few weeks where we can spell out all the issues and they can help us figure out exactly what testing we should do and possible diagnosis. I meet with her teacher tonight so go over everything. I want to get her opinion on the matter since she does have the experience of dealing with more kids. Once we have everything nailed down better I do plan on bringing her back home for school.

She can not read a clock with out major prompting, analog or digital. Most times she sees things mixed up, ex. It is 10:54 on a digital and she will say answers like 5:14, 50:4, 4:10, etc. She has just mastered tying her shoes but will still ask us to help from time to time. She does not know right or left no matter what fun tricks I have come up with. She can not follow simple directions that are more 2 part or more, so following directions for an assignment is nearly impossible. Everything must be given one step at a time (this is most likely the ADHD since she has both they hyperactivity and the inattention). Her maturity level is definately lower than her peers. She prefers to crawl around playing games like horse (where she pretends to be a wild horse) than play kick ball or the like. She gets along with her peers to an extent but she is often overly silly and it makes it hard for them to relate to her I think. She has always been behind in her fine motor skills, never mastering the pincher grasp until closer to 18 mo. I know this could effect her handwriting as it may be painful to her. However we have done a lot of different things to help her with handwriting. So far her writing has not improved over the last 2 years. In fact ds who is in Kindergarted has more legible handwriting than she does with few mistakes present. I know, I know, don't compare, they are different people. The thing of it is I know there is something different about my dd. Most people can see it within moments of meeting her, we just don't know what it is. To say she is quirky is an understatement. The ADHD feels right based on symptoms however I agree that it is such a catch all and possibly symptoms are presenting because of another issue (one of the reasons we have been looking at aspergers).

I posted a while back about the issues we were having with dd and the eventual diagnosis of ADHD. Our doctor listened to our concerns about medication (dh had reactions to it as a child as did my brother) and gave us alternate route to follow (high doses of cod liver oil and minor diet restrictions). These changes really helped her out. She was/is a very different child behaviorally (sp? its just to late to think tonight!!). However her school work was still horrible. After much debate we enrolled dd is PS to get anothers opinion. I have been concerned that school issues are more personality clashes between her and I than anything else. I wanted an outside influance to see if that would change to results. DD brought home her spelling test, reading test, comprehension and math tests today. Everything she did is sitting in the 50% range. Her comprehension is poor, her writing is horrible, and apperently her reading level is 1.3 (on the AR scale, she is in 2nd grade). So I sat here looking at all of this work wondering where in the world she got some of these answers. I started to notice some consitencies through out the work. She is still forming letters backwards, her letters form all over the place, letters are misshapen or unidentifiable, numbers are backwards, etc. The more I looked at this work the more a sinking feeling came over me. Aren't these the signs of dyslexia?? I googled around and found the www.dys-add.com site that listed the symptoms of dyslexia by catagory and she fit all but a (very) small handful! And it wasn't just in the handwriting catagory, it was across the board! Really the only major things she didn't fit was learning to talk (she talked very early but did not walk until 2!) and handedness (she has always been right handed, to the extreme in fact!). Dh sat down to do math homework with her this evening and said she struggled to remember simple addition facts from one row to the next. She has always struggled with math memorization so I never questioned it. Anyway I meet with her teacher tomorrow to get an opinion and go over all her testing scores. No matter what there is an issue present above and beyond the ADHD and it breaks my heart. We have an appointment scheduled with a 3rd party tester to have her tested for whatever and another appointment with our family doc. Does anyone have any advice on this? Does it sound like dyslexia? Another diagnosis? We have been concerned about aspergers (which was the original reason she was going to see our fam. doc) based on some of the behaviors we have seen. Anyone see these traits in their Aspie? I am so sad right now that anything will be helpful. I feel like I have failed because I had this idea of what a perfect education and child were. I fear I have been blind to what was going on because we had to stay on schedule, meet these expectations, etc. Maybe she never learned anything and we were just getting by.......

:D Love it! That brought a smile to my cramming session. (I obviously am failing at perfection if I am watching youtube instead of studying! ;)