Saturday Storytelling...

It's 2011, already!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE !!!

We've been spending a lot of time on the road over the Christmas holidays.  I think everyone ought to log in a few hours on "roadtrips".  There are always some good conversations and some good arguments, just as there are good roads and bad roads along the way.

Special needs families can do the roadtripping too - it's just best to plan ahead and try and think of every contingency.  Now that sounds like something you just put on your to-do list for the trip... but in reality it is bigger than anything else with a checkbox beside it. 

Special needs parents will ask themselves a ton of questions about "what could possibly go wrong?", cover most of them by bringing along things or techniques to manage the possible difficulty, but there will be some things that just slip in with no advance warning... and no matter how experienced the parent is with the needs of the child.

Our last trip included travel through snowy weather which we don't usually see.  Snow came down, it blew around, and it stuck... to everything!  The roads weren't the biggest problem, the temperature was!  Brrrr!!   We were tucking everything we could find around our son with special needs, to keep him warm enough so we didn't have to run the heater on high and toast ourselves crispy!   The problem we didn't foresee was that if (did I say IF?) the son developed a leak in his protective-wear, all of these clothes and fleece items were going to get wet and need to be stored somewhere until we arrived safely at our destination... 

It all turned out okay, though.  We located a large black plastic trash can liner and used that for containing everything.   Never have I been so grateful for our family tradition of marking a black trash bag (filled with Christmas gifts ) with the silver-Sharpie words "NOT Trash!!" 

Friday Free Time

It's Friday. I normally schedule myself some free time on Fridays just because I'm not actually free on the weekends. All moms with children can relate, and those with special needs children can really relate. The weekend time schedule is usually more under our own control, but the actual events of the days are definitely not. But that's okay, as long as we schedule ourselves some free time somewhere else in the week. It's important.

Free time activities are really different for everyone, according to our personalities and personal tastes. Here are a few of mine:

• Dining out with my husband
• Talking with my sons, my sons' wives, and my grandchildren
• Reading (especially my Bible and stories about the lives of missionaries)
• Having a bit of quiet time, just to myself... for clear-headed thinking
• Looking at stacks and stacks of photographs of my family
• Planning those "never-gonna-happen" home remodeling projects : )
• Researching fun things to do "someday"
• Taking a walk with my youngest
• and most importantly, spending 'time alone' with God

Hopefully, we are all able to find some free time sometime... and make the best use of it! Which, of course, sort of contradicts the whole idea of "free" time, doesn't it?

If you have some unique ideas of how to use your free time that would be beneficial to parents of children with special needs, I'd love to hear about it! Comments are welcome...and monitored by me to be sure nothing crazy gets posted here to embarrass me or anyone. So, shoot me an email or post a comment here if you have anything interesting that other parents of children with special needs should be doing for rest/relaxation/recuperation! : )

"I will refresh the weary and satisfy the faint."

Jeremiah 31:25 NIV

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Free time, and freedom...

Monday night I went to a meeting that I wanted to attend. You may think this statement "odd" - especially if you don't know much about families with special needs. But to families like mine, it's understandable. Our ability to freely make plans (and our ability to follow through on those plans!) is somewhat restricted by the responsibility we have for our family members who have special needs.

My husband raced home from work Monday in order that I might leave our home in time for that meeting. We make these adjustments frequently and so do other parents of children with special needs. Of course, all families make adjustments in their lives while the children are young, and even continue making adjustments until the children are grown and have lives of their own. But, for some children with special needs - the growing up process and the moving out process are not automatic, and their parents face a much greater responsibility. I am so thankful that my husband and I face this responsibility together.

I did get to attend that meeting on Monday night, and was greatly blessed by going. My "free time" was especially fulfilling. And yet I was greatly blessed in my homecoming as well, for my husband was there with our son... waiting for me. There's a lot to be said for "family". Even with all of our different personalities, our individual quirkiness, and our special needs - we are a family, held together by love.

It's like that in God's family too! This body of Christian believers, varied though we may be, make up the family of God and are united by our love. We must remember to:

"Be good friends who love deeply;
practice playing second fiddle."

Romans 12:10 ... THE MESSAGE

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Two Babies

Newsflash! We're grandparents!

Our oldest two sons & their wives have entered the world of parenthood,
and we two old-fogeys have fallen head over heels in love with ...

Grandchildren!

AUSTIN DAVID ALLISON ..............MEGAN ASHLEY ALLISON

2 weeks old on next Tuesday.........2 weeks old next Friday. .

"Grandchildren are the crown of the aged,
and the glory of children is their fathers."

Proverbs 17:6
[ESV]