Christmas 2012

On Christmas Eve we met up with the Smith's to exchange gifts and get together one last time this year.

While gathering gifts to bring them Scott thought it was time to open gifts finally.

We walked to the front room to leave to find him opening one of Mark's gifts, two Batman movies.

Mark didn't want to leave after he saw that but I promised him it would be worth holding off on the movies for this breakfast.

Kneaders all you can eat French Toast.

I'm telling you it's amazing!

Afterwards we went home and did watch one of Mark's new Christmas movies.

Poor Scott, he didn't even open up one of his gifts.

That night we headed to my mom and dad's to spend Christmas with my family.

My Brother Josh came over from California to be with us and it was great to have him home.

He's not photogenic so I didn't get any good shots of him, dang it!

 Here's Trevor and Kate.

 Mark and Matt Sharing a moment.

 Matt and Sarah

 Natalie and mom (almost called her Grandma, I'm so used to saying that for Scott)

 Kate and Dad

 Scott got a dragon tube on Christmas Eve.

 Just a little excited about that.

 Scott got lots of dinosaurs from Grandma and Grandpa.

He was pretty much done after he opened those.

I made Scott and I matching P.J.'s about an hour before we left on Christmas Eve.

I also forgot to give him P.J.'s, what is wrong with me!

Here we are opening presents Christmas morning.

Best Christmas morning EVER!

 My parents live directly in front of a mountain.

While eating breakfast that morning we saw the big horned sheep on the mountain.

They usually aren't so low and it is really rear to see them.

Mark was so thrilled to see them that he put on his hiking boots that he luckily wore over and hiked up to see them.

The above picture is from our house.

The rest are from Mark's hike.

He said he got about 15 feet away.

 Here's a happy Scotty boy swimming with his Auntie Katie.

He put the goggles on himself and I'm amazed that he did because he has issues with things on his head.

How does he make even those ugly goggles look cute?

It was a wonderful Christmas for this family.

lazy morning

We had a great lazy morning.

I just love laying around in bed with my family.

Scott was loving seeing himself in my phone.

He is such a vain child.

Lights

We got to see A LOT of Christmas lights this year.

Scott loved it.

He has really gotten into Christmas this year.

I love it.

First place we went to was the zoo for Zoo Lights.

We have had a pace that past two plus years and we still haven't gotten around to going.

Well this year it was completely free and we were not going to miss out.

We had Brooke staying with us for a few days so she came with.

We also went with the Smiths.

Having good company was probably the best part.

Oh and seeing the reindeer, that was cool too but the lights were just OK and there weren't any animals to be seen and that was NOT OK!

 Glad we didn't pay for it.

It was also a freezing cold night, we came at the "warmest" part of the night and were leaving right when it was getting really cold and starting to snow.

All Scott wanted to do was play in the water and thus get more cold and all Brooke wanted to do was get warm.

Both fussing for the opposite reason.

Well that was on Tuesday.

On Saturday we with my family to Temple Square.

This is always free but I would pay every year if I had to because I love it so much.

One of marks biggest pet peeves is dealing with traffic and parking downtown.

We decided to avoid it by taking Trax.

So smart!

 We lost Mark for a bit while there and that's pretty annoying since it was the Saturday before Christmas and without phones it would have been impossible to find him. 

But he was off taking pictures.

He is getting so good at figuring the settings out on the camera.

I had the camera for a little bit and every picture I took was deleted because they were so bad.

Here are a few of what he got.

 There were so much more that he took that I was amazed at the way he caught the light but I already put too many pictures up as is.

Here is my amazing family.

I love the lights,

I love Temple Square,

I love being with my family,

and I LOVE CHRISTMAS!

Ready

There is something I wish to share that has been a long time coming.  It has taken a long time to get ready for this, probably about a year and a half.  It has been a hard time becoming ready for this but now that we are it has made all the difference.  Being ready means that I am not shocked, sad, confused, angry, or bothered.  Being ready means that I can look forward to our future, it means that we are optimistic, confident, excited, hopeful and better prepared for the challenges that this realization brings.
We have just found out that Scott has aspergers.
Over the past year and a half Scott's development has changed from that of other children.  It was hard for us to see that Scott might have issues.  We had so many questions.  Many of those questions we didn't want to know the answers to for fear of what the answers might be.  I have become a bit of a crazy person with all the worry weighing me down.  We have been so blessed with all the help and assistance we have received from family and friends and teachers and helpers.  It is so true that when life feels the hardest God sends his special angels to look out for us and in this case those special angels were many times people we already knew.  In other cases they were people that came out of no where to help a stranger and her sweet little boy cope.  We have been guided in so many ways by the Spirit of the Lord.  It has been such a stressful year and a half and I often felt like I was walking in the dark, but now, looking back I can see more clearly just how much the Lord was there and guiding me to the answers I needed. I was often angry at life and I feel so guilty remembering that.  I am amazed that the Lord and so many of you friends stayed with me while being so negative and quick to anger, often overly sensitive.  Mark has proven to be even more amazing then he was when I married him.  I would have been lost without him.  He is such an AMAZING husband and father.  Love you Babe.
For us, it took about a year and a half to get ready for answers.  We didn't know we were ready but the Lord found a way to give us the nudge we needed through a great doctor.  Scott's three year check up came and we got a new doctor for him since we moved.  After telling the doctor all that we were doing to get Scott help and telling him we weren't ready for a diagnosis of any sort he found a way to get me to commit to go see a specialist.  I didn't realize what I had done till I told Mark about it after he came home from work.  It took about three months to get in but the day of his appointment finally came around yesterday.  My mom came with me.  I needed support and I needed her to better understand her grandson so that I could have the support of my mommy.  I also wanted a second set of ears so that she could help me recall all the information that was given.  The appointment went awesome.  Scott had a few fits but did an amazing job.  I am also amazed at myself for not having a hard time.  Maybe it was my mom being there, or Scott being so good with everything, or maybe it was simply being ready.  It was a great experience seeing how smart Scott is and learning about all that he is capable of.  It wasn't depressing or hard, it was comforting and hopeful.  I know that we are going to have more hard days ahead, I know that it isn't going to be easy.  But one thing that was said at his appointment that is going to be our motto from here on out is, "the sky's the limit."  He is so smart and his issues may present some extra challenges but he can learn as much as we teach him, the sky's the limit.  This excites me.  I never thought I would feel so excited about the challenges of life but I am now.
Thanks again to all those who have been there for us.  We have been so blessed.

The Little Elf

Scott had his last day of school for 2012.

Meaning this is his first Christmas break.

He came out wearing this adorable hat.

He has major head issues that we have been trying to get him to kick over the last few months

sometimes I'll look in his back pack and see a hat that they made in school.

I'll try to put it on him and he freaks out.

Well they must have paid him pretty good this time because he came out wearing it with a big ol' grin.

He wore it for the rest of the day even while shopping and every said how cute he was.

He still has a hard time with social situations and attention so he screamed at the people for telling him he was cute.

Oh well, one step at a time, right.

Hey Four Eyes

Mark has really bad eyes.

He's been getting by without getting glasses all this time but with the coming of the end of the year and also the end of his eye insurance he decided it was finally time.

We all headed over to Walmart for his exam.

We have been watching Brooke while her mom is helping her sister so she got to come model glasses with us.

Mark didn't end up getting glasses, just contacts for now.

Since he's had them he likes to tell me how different he sees things.

Like how at night when he drove he couldn't see the lines he would just try to stay to the right of the lights coming at him. 

Kinda scary!

I'm glad we survived to get you to see how beautiful the world is babe.

Love of My Life

While Mark is the true love of my life I have another that I knew long before him.  This person taught me what love is.  This person has been there for me through all of my breakups and through all of my relationships.  I still love this person to the nth degree.  Before you all start calling me a cheater I will tell you that I have never officially met this person although I feel like this person knows me better than anyone and I feel like I know this person better than most of my closest friends.  This person is a woman who has been dead long before I was born.

Her name is Jane Austen.  She is my favorite author and I don't know if you all know this but she has written me into almost all of her books.  I am Elizabeth Bennet, Elenor Dashwood, Anne Elliot, and Emma Woodhouse all rolled into one.  I love everything about her books and have dreamed of falling into one of her books.  Her stories of love are enchanting but it's not just the romantic in me that loves her.  I love the way she describes all her characters and have met people that are exactly like them which leads me to her amazing ability to see the world around her.  The people and the choices they make and the results of their choices still exist which makes the novels timeless but in some ways sad considering she wrote some of those stories as things that needed to change in life.  I find it so depressing that she never married and although all of her heroines received happy endings with their loves, she and her sister did not.

My love affair first started when I was home sick (or faking sick, I can't remember that part) and I was watching movies.  My family had recently discovered the $.99 area of our local video rental store (that's right kids, they used to be stores and not just vending machines).  The movies that were that price were all these old time movies.  My mom started renting the ones she loved while growing up and my sisters fell in love with them too.  I found the old black and white version of Pride and Prejudice.  I remember my little sister Kate watching this story on the kids show Wishbone.  I loved it.  So I moved onto the 70's version of P&P then the Colin Firth version that was 6 videos long that we had to pay $2.99 for each tape to see, that was a big commitment.  Well I eventually moved onto renting the newest Gweneth Paltrow movie.  The very night I rented it my parents rented the older version of Emma.  I watched just a bit of it thinking that it was another one of lame movies my parents got (Mr. Knightly was bold and I tend to judge movies based on how cute the guy is).  I honestly had no clue that the movie they rented and the one I got for my friends and I to watch was the same story.  I also realized that it was the same story as the movie Clueless.  From there I put together the pieces of Jane Austen.  I started to pursue her works as my guild.  She had made two great stories; maybe the others would be also.  Sense and Sensibility came next.  My brother bought me the book of all her books and so I finally started reading the literature.  I have since read all her books and seen every one of her books turned to movie.  I own every version of Pride and Prejudice including the LDS and the Bollywood version.  P&P is my very favorite and Elizabeth is my favorite heroin.  Mr. Darcy was once all I could dream about just like Jane from Austenland and it may have given me a similar problem as Jane's in the book had I not met Mark.  Mark is no Mr. Darcy, especially since from the moment I met him I thought him to be a great example of a modern gentlemen.  The more I learn about Mark the more I am convinced he is just like Mr. Knightly and I in turn find myself to be so much like Emma.  Mark being so calm and collective and logical and me being so not those things.  One person’s weakness is the others strength and so we help each other become better people all round.

Jane Austin believed in true love.  She believed in good people getting a happy ending.  She believed that money and class, although and obstacle at times, not a reason to prevent two people from being in love.  She believed in strong minded women who should be appreciated and respected.  She believed in kindness and charity.  I just admire her forward thinking and creativity so much.  I wanted to take this time to thank her and wish her happy birthday.  Jane Austin you are the creator of the love of my life.