welcome to smashville

someday when i am old and my knowledge of parenting is infinite, i'd like to write a travel pamphlet about places that are good to take your special kids. our family can't go just anywhere. we try and push our boundaries all the time and every experience is exposure therapy, but some things simply aren't in our wheelhouse and that's okay. traveling with kids with autism is going to carry with it a range of altered expectations but if i've learned anything about anything, proper expectations and realistic adjustments are key to a happy life. occasionally there are even bursts of vacation glory.

for thanksgiving we surprised the kids with a short trip to chattanooga and nashville. because of autism, we didn't tell them until wednesday morning at 7am as we were hauling suitcases down the stairs. with autism there is often a lot of preparation for new experiences, but since we are now old hands at gauging proper autism practices, we decided to forego telling them beforehand so that i didn't have to hear any complaining or suffer through unnecessary anxieties from our special people. sometimes a bad day of reaction is preferred to several days of anxiety. this doesn't work for everyone every time, but it's how we chose to navigate this particular experience. naturally and not surprisingly, reagan was not thrilled about the trip and athena blythe was over the moon. please follow along for perfect captures of reagan's emotions through iphone photography.

we stopped at rock city and used the bathroom but didn't actually see rock city because it cost an arm and a leg and i wanted to save our time and money for bigger things. we kinda saw the lookout, on lookout mountain, where you can see 7 states. i'm content with kinda on that one. when thomas and i come alone, we will explore the battle of chattanooga and pay the $20 a pop for the lookout. 



the really big deal for me was being able to see ruby falls. it was amazing. a testimony to a divine creator. it was only discovered in 1928, because a guy decided to crawl on his stomach in a tiny crevice in a cave for 7 hours. we took the elevator down. 


not everyone was a fan. but he kept it to a minimum until the tour guide asked at the end, "who enjoyed this tour?"
"NOT ME!" said reagan.





from the tower at ruby falls

After chattanooga, we hopped in the car and drove to nashville. we ate burger king in the car, which i think is a good autism friendly trick, offer very familiar food in a trying or unfamiliar environment. we made it to nashville just in time to catch the nashville predators hockey game. it was absolutely sensory overload, for me especially because i was so worried about our specials after an already eventful day, but it went really well. sometimes reagan is able to tune out an excess level of noise if we're lucky. athena blythe happily talked to a little girl seated next to her and loudly asked why people we throwing their garbage on the ground instead of using the very easily accessible garbage cans located throughout the arena. i love that about her. for real, are you too prideful to help out the cleaning staff? i was surprised to learn that some hockey teams have cheerleaders. i just didn't think that was a thing, but it is. 

after a thrilling night sleeping all in the same hotel room, short one pullout bed because it was thanksgiving, we went and saw frozen 2. the best thing i can say about it was the was the kind of theater that serves actual restaurant quality food and i did enjoy my nachos. it appears they're just letting anybody write screenplays and music these days. there's hope for my music career yet. 

we were able to have thanksgiving dinner with thomas's BYU friend, heather, and her family. she is now a pediatric neurologist(which is right up my alley in case you didn't read the parts about having 2 kids with autism) and she had also invited one of her friends who is a plastic surgeon to join us so i was able to ask medical questions to my heart's desire. i learned a lot about botox injections being used to help celebral palsy patients deal with muscle stiffness and i saw a SLEW of post-breast cancer reconstruction photos using abdominal body fat and skin. modern medicine is incredible and once again, there is a divine creator in charge of all this. 

heather's husband is a firefighter so he took us down to the station and we were able to ask all the question and climb all the ladders. reagan thought this was way better than ruby falls. 

their were also live chickens in a coop, plus two cats and a dog so there was really something for everyone at this thanksgiving. 

fun fact, in the 1970s they started making fire trucks yellow so that they would be more easily identifiable in the dark but it did not catch on with the public so they went back to red. i said this once to someone and they acted like i made the whole thing up so this trip to the fire station was especially vindicating for me. 

another fun fact, scott stapp from creed and THE ALAN JACKSON live in this fire rescue district. 

friday was filled with the country music hall of fame, much to the delight of thomas and myself and much to the chagrin to everyone else, especially to the other patrons who saw us coming. 

if you say you don't love country, you're not giving the right kind of country music a try. i have a visceral reaction with someone calls "florida/georgia line" country music. NO. that's bro country. give chris stapleton a shot. the high women! the highway men! do you want to cry? try johnny cash's "hurt". do not put THE DOLLY PARTON in the same company as luke bryan. sorry luke, i've heard you're a nice guy but your music sounds like you need to blow your nose and your lyrics are about as inspired as the directions to make instant ramen.

athena blythe with kacey musgraves met gala outfit:

thomas with his favorite, eric church. 

reagan finally smiled with he saw taylor swift, and that's all i have to say about that.

outside the country music hall of fame:

outside the predators arena and an accurate name for our trip:

 Want to see something really cool ruined with a few eye rolls and licks on the display glass? bring your kids. sometimes you muscle through activities your kids don't want to be at like any old family and realize it's not autism, it's having kids. 

and reagan is DONE:

europe is probably never going to be in our cards, but i'm not completely writing that out of the possibilities. maybe we can coordinate it with a firetruck ride outside of the sistine chapel. 

we had dollywood planned for saturday, but we were all harboring burgeoning illnesses and it was going to rain all day in pigeon forge so we tabled that trip until next year. that's my last bit of autism travel advice for today. acceptance is key. you have to play the cards you're dealt and not wish for different cards all day. flexibility is a two way street. this is who my family is. some exposure therapy and practice and social stories aren't always going to work. sometimes you just go home. thomas and i need to be as flexible as we're expecting the kids to be and canceling things can be a gift. we needed to get home not completely exhausted and sick and by skipping dollywood, we were able to have a good fast sunday.

the flu didn't hit until sunday night.
the. end.

personal progress gets personal

 long story longer, six months ago i was called at the personal progress leader for our ward. a few months after that i was called as the laurels(16-18 year old girls) advisor and just a few weeks ago i was called as young women's(all girls 11-18) president in our church congregation. from the minute i was called as personal progress leader, i experienced an overwhelming level of spiritual promptings that continued to build and grow as i worked hard and transition from calling to calling. this past week was our young women in excellence program. since everyone in the previous presidency was released the week before, i was feeling incredible pressure to put together this program with my new presidency. thankfully, some sisters who are incredibly talented at event planning stepped in to help as we scrapped 90% of the previous plans and went super simple with the new event direction. my new presidency accomplished incredible things and i'm incredibly pleased with how it turned out. about 10 years ago i went to a relief society conference where the theme was "make is lovely, make it simple" and that has been my mantra ever since. 

no one likes when a meeting goes over time and so i promised everyone that it would be only and hour. we started at 7:06 because of terrible evening traffic and we ended at 7:56. no one high fived me but i believe that many people wanted to. aside from herschel pulling the fire alarm while we were setting up and one cake getting dropped on the floor by a bishopric member, everything went off without a hitch. everything was cleaned up at we were all out of there by 8:30. 

i was one of the speakers and this is my talk:

Oftentimes our society confuses achievement for worth. We are a society of recognition and awards ceremonies. That’s part of why we are here tonight. We’re all in various stages of progress and achievement. Whether you received a ribbon or medallion tonight or if you aren’t participating in personal progress is irrelevant to your worth and actual progress in life. Larry Shaw of the Grayson ward once said in a meeting that, “women have worth upon arrival”. I wrote it down and I try and remind myself of that often. My dad would always call football a game of inches, meaning that the difference between success was often the smallest thing you could do to win the game. That is true for our lives. We set large goals but the best way to achieve them to make sure you are moving forward every day, even if it’s only a few inches. When we are continually turning to Christ, we are able to make that daily progress.

All that being said, I want to share with you an experience I had last week that is based on our theme for the evening, turning to Christ. One morning last week at the gym, as I was finishing up my workout, a man that I have seen almost every morning for several years, but had never spoken to before approached me. He asked me why I was doing certain lifts a particular way and before I could even answer, he told me I was doing it all wrong and he pointed out everything I was weak at and that I didn’t know what I was doing. He then proceeded to tell me that everything I did there wasn’t making a difference and that I should be doing other exercises if I wanted to be “doing it right”. Because he was an expert and this is what “he did all the time”. As I attempted again to politely explain my methodology which is actually based on research and experience, he continued to cut me off and berate me on the gym floor. This is where I am going to tell you some things that I do every day at the gym. I listen to a conference talk and I pray that I will be kind and patient with everyone I interact with that morning because being kind and patient at the gym can be hard for me. Ironically, the talk that I listened to was “And nothing shall offend them” by Elder Bednar. At this point in my workout I was trying to not be offended by some of the vile language I hear on a regular basis there and I was extra patient as I talked to another gym patron who seems very lonely and lacks a lot of social awareness. I felt like I was doing all the right things! I don’t know why this man singled me out, but perhaps he thought I was weak or would appreciate his rude comments. I was very surprised that I was being subjected to this barrage of insults and my mind was quickly loading up all my best comebacks to put this man in his place. Imagine a giant sling shot being pulled back very tightly. Then, I had the Spirit come to my heart and tell me to be polite and simply walk away. It was really hard to do because I am good at saying mean things but I walked to my car. As soon as I got to my car, I burst into tears and cried all the way home. I got home and I cried to Thomas and he said all the right things and reassured me that I do know what I’m doing at the gym and that my studying  and practice was paying off. Then he said the words that every girl wants to hear, “I’m going to go beat that guy up right now!” And I said, “No, let’s not be like that. You hold him down and I’ll beat him up!” Then we laughed and I felt better and I considered everything over with. It was an upsetting experience but I had done what I set out to do. I was not be offended and I was kind.

However, later on that day though, the cracks started to show. I started feeling really down on myself. I consider myself to be someone who doesn’t really care too much about other people’s opinions but unkind words can still affect me. What started out as a really uncomfortable experience bloomed into negative thoughts about myself which spread to questioning whether I should just quit going to the gym altogether because I’m clearly terrible at it and my very presence was bothering people. Of course it spiraled into what a terrible parent I am, how bad I am at keeping my house clean, nobody actually likes me and various other forms of negative self-talk. It all snowballed into, “I’m not worth it!” Because I struggle with anxiety and depression, I call this type of hurtful thinking, the darkness. And when the darkness shows up, it can envelope me quickly and tightly. If you study pathology, you know that an opportunistic infection is an illness that can kill you when you’re already sick with something else. Satan is an opportunistic infection. He saw my struggle and took the opportunity to make it so much worse.

Now girls, if this happens to you often, you should definitely talk to someone and get help. There are many people here tonight who would love to help you with that. But also, you need to know that when the darkness starts to envelop you, you can turn, like a sunflower, to the Savior. Jesus Christ is the light in ANY darkness and all we need to do is seek Him out.

So before I went to bed that night, I knelt in prayer and poured out my heart to Him, that He would help me overcome this darkness that I was feeling. That I would wake up and feel like myself, the person who loves the gym and is doing her best to be a good parent and if my house is messy it actually doesn’t matter because a messy house is inevitable with creative, high-spirited children and my infinite and inherent worth is NOT BASED on anything temporal! No award of achievement can change my worth! And you know what! I did! I woke up on time, I walked in the gym like I owned the place and the Savior placed very kind people in my path. And that old, lonely man who talked my ear off the day before because I was practicing kindness told me what I great job I was doing. 

my testimony is that we can always turn to Christ and that our quest for personal progress doesn't end here but that we will always be choosing to progress inch by inch, day by day. i say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. 

a song in a minor key featuring thomas with the upbeat hook

i posted this entire post on saturday, while i was crying into my protein shake and feeling sorry for myself. then i went to church yesterday and realized i needed to make some serious edits. edits will be in RED. 

note, while i do believe that everyone should be able to cry about their first world problems and feel some validation, i would be utterly remiss if i also did not record the BLESSINGS that occurred with the struggle. 

i have been struggling the past few weeks! mostly over things insignificant in the eternal perspective but nevertheless things that drag you down in the dumps!

i'm still struggling with photo download drama, but here's a list to illustrate my dumps:

 a gym bro was really mean to me last week and i cried. i came home and thomas was the perfect gym therapist and reassured me that i was using good form and i am working hard and that guy was probably intimidated that i know what a zurcher squat is and he didn't. people are threatened by confident, well-educated women. 

i pulled one of my lats and now it's hard to do anything, especially make right hand turns or open the dishwasher. so that's oddly specific and dumb and it makes basic things i enjoy hard to do. thomas has made sure i'm doing exercises to stretch and rest and foam roll at appropriate intervals. 

i hit a car in front of the school. damage was minor but there was still damage and i'm embarrassed because it was such a small mistake that's still going to cost plenty. thomas was super calm and laid back as i laid out the details and offered nothing but support and reassurance. 

i got my hair cut and instead of a following the example photo and explicit instructions to not mess with the length, my stylist chopped off 6 INCHES and made my hair look like a stereotypical mom haircut. i've been going to the same stylist for 4 years and she's now fired. she stopped listening to me two haircuts ago but the color was still good so i stayed with her. thomas is the best though because instead of convincing me the haircut looked good, he and i commiserated about how deeply i was wronged by a stylist who thought she knew what i would like better than me. it is just hair and it will grow back but i still don't want to hear you say that to me. 

look at that hack job! 

mood:

bang bang sauce that fell out of the back of my car as i was unloading  this has become a thing. i need to figure out a system for the back of my car. i had a laundry basket back there for a while but that was simply facilitating the dumping of larger quantities of stuff on my driveway. "you're murdering a lot of liquids these days." thomas

 

the end. the end. 

momtoberfest

the fact of the matter is that i need a new computer. i only have a few pictures from the past month because my phone and computer don't like talking to each other. much happened. hersch did a season of soccer. athena blythe had field day. scarlett did math tutoring, swim team and theater. i got some really great pictures of reagan at his school halloween party and a football game with his crush/pe teacher, coach brenner. let me tell you about the day that i dropped him off at school and reagan almost jumped out of the car shouting, "i love you, coach brenner!" but no one will see the photographic evidence.

 alas, here are the photos that did download:

i made frankenstein guacamole for general conference weekend.

 herschel really wanted a truck cake so i whipped one of those up. 

scarlett and i watched the women's session together on saturday night. i loved it. i'm looking forward to the new program that is starting in january. big stuff is in the works and i'm glad to be part of it.

this is the section of the month where i have pictures on my phone but not on my computer:

scarlett's district honor's chorus festival(not really a festival) in athens where we ate crepes for lunch

our ward's fall festival(also not really a festival) where yet again there was no trunk or treating. i will mention this every year until it changes.

athena blythe staged a fake mini wedding between two teenagers at church. she planned out all the details down to the lacy handkerchief wedding veil and everyone went along with it and it was ridiculous and fun and no one can resist going along with athena blythe's plans. then a few days later i made her a little wedding cake because i'm an enabler. then this week at church she kept pestering this same poor teen bride whether she was pregnant yet. athena blythe knows  a little too much about the biological process and length of gestation for comfortable conversation in the hallways at church. 

i hit some big weightlifting goals:

thomas makes the difference on my big lifts. if your spotter loves you, you can communicate better on what you can handle.

i wore my darth vader shirt to the gym on halloween. 

 athena blythe wore this to school on halloween to help celebrate the day of the dead. it was 74 degrees at 7:15 that morning.

i went to hersch's school for their "book character praise parade" which is the evangelical way of saying halloween without being accused of loving demons(it's a thing, yo). no masks so hersch was just a hairy little boy. 

scarlett and a darling friend were dorothy and the wicked witch. i hate that i didn't get a picture of them together. i bought a pair of fuchsia nike cortez to stand in for the ruby slippers because i've really been wanting a fuchsia pair of nike cortez for a really long time. scarlett and i both wear the same shoes size now so we're in a win win shoe situation. comfort on halloween and i expanded my sneaker collection, on sale no less!

athena blythe wanted to be violet beauregard because of her current willy wonka fascination. however in the past week, she declared that she wanted to be a yodeler instead. i don't know how to create a yodeler costume so i cajoled her into wearing the violet beauregard that i had already put effort into acquiring. we used blue eye shadow for her face. we simply sprinkled her face with a bit of water and used a large blush brush and voila!

 reagan as buzz lightyear. he had the best time again because he loves halloween every year.

pretty much the cutest little chewbacca. he was a trooper. by 6pm,we'd had a day of thunderstorms. when we started trick or treating the weather had dropped down to 50 degrees and he was the toastiest out of all of us.

reagan's teacher lives one street over and we were able to trick or treat to her. reagan pretends he doesn't like her, but he secretly loves her. not like coach brenner but there is plenty of high regard. 

 i made a pathetic costume attempt this year and after i realized that neither reagan's storm trooper nor reagan's darth vader costume could fit over my quads(weightlifter problems), i found this sad little never worn hamburger costume. i hugged it close to my body all night for warmth.

thomas won halloween with his RunDMC costume he wore to work. he missed the costume contest because he was actually doing work that day but the consensus was that he would have won had he been there. he's a winner in my heart.

this most recent saturday, scarlett and i helped with the middle school theater work day, painting sets and noticing that several kids had way nicer phones than i will ever own. note the length of scarlett's mane. it's crazy long now. 

 finally, this is how reagan does fast sunday. he puts the bowl of grapes, his favorite thing to snack on, on top of the cabinets. it's a good game plan.

the end. i hope everything is spelled correctly because i'm not going back to check. 

middle age road trip

thomas surprised me with an overnight trip to nashville. he bought tickets to a music festival, booked a hotel, arranged to have my mom fly out here to watch the kids and did it all without my knowledge. in 17 years, overnight trips are a bit of a rarity, so this was very exciting for me. 

we left on saturday morning. we ate junk food in the car and the drive without kids was so fast and easy that i felt a little cheated. 

after no one threw up in the car, no one fought with anyone about seat space, no one made a mess with crumbly food or asked to stop for the bathroom 43 times, we arrived in nashville feeling better than okay about life. we ate at hattie B's and no one spilled water all over the table. we also had some of the best friend chicken ever. very spicy but so juicy. we had to wait for about 30 minutes for a table and neither of us complained about it. we just chatted and enjoyed one another's company. 

then we went back to our hotel and took power naps. quietly. with no fanfare or debate. after our naps, we put on comfortable, weather appropriate clothes with sensible walking shoes and a hat for sun protection and joined all the other middle age fans for an evening of music in the park. we paid extra for closer parking because sometimes that's what middle age and a good job affords you.

the show we really wanted to see was the killers and they did not disappoint. 

after the conclusion of the show, we rushed over to our more expensive and conveniently closer parking spot and arrived back at the hotel in time to watch the second half of the Georgia-Notre Dame game. this is also when my cold that i had been heavily medicating  up to this point took a turn for the worse and i curled up in bed and no one touched me or talked to me. the best way to be sick. 

sunday morning we got up early and found a ward building that shared a parking lot with the nashville temple. the nashville temple is tiny but packs a full measure of the Spirit in it's small size. 

as we walked in the chapel for sacrament meeting, thomas and i looked at each other knowingly as we heard a family with several small children declaring their presence. we were on the front row of one side of the chapel and the family was on the front row of the other side. it appeared to be a family of 7 and two of the children had severe handicaps and were confided to wheelchairs. i had a clear view to watch the interactions of this sweet family. i watched as the mother lovingly held the hand of her wheelchair bound daughter as the daughter squealed with delight during the meeting. the mother seemed to be constantly smiling as she listened to the truly wonderful youth speakers(neither of whom complained about or repeated that tired story of avoiding the bishopric member and trying to get out of giving a talk in church). she adjusted tubes and appeared to prepare a liquid to put in the feeding tube of her daughter. i was overcome watching this beautiful interaction. i had to stare at the floor and think of poopy diapers to keep myself from openly sobbing. getting away with thomas and sleeping in and having lots of fun was supposed to be the most recharging part of the trip. attending sacrament meeting, feeling the Spirit, watching a mother lovingly care for her two special needs children was in actuality the most recharging part. my motherhood teammate's example buoyed me up. the intermediate hymn was one of my favorites and the same part of the song in all three verses struck me as especially profound that sunday. 

i am grateful we went to church.

after church we drove around music row and downtown nashville before we headed back home. the drive home was like sunday night before the first day of school on steroids. i love my kids. i really love not spending time with my kids once in a while.

surprise! thomas didn't want to be in any pictures! shocker!

my new favorite picture of myself:

the next day, athena blythe was super sick so i took her to the doctor but by mid-morning she had made a miraculous recovery and she was able to enjoy lunch with grandma and mama. don't tell scarlett, because she BEGGED to be allowed to stay home from school. maybe next time.

sweet it the peace the gospel brings.

the end.