Just do it! Please?

I wasn't going to post today. It's been another off day. I've been sleeping most of it away, I've been sleeping a lot, actually, since vacation. With all that's going on with me I think that the vacation kicked my butt. More blood work tomorrow...yippee...HA!

Then a couple of days ago something was revealed to us. There's nothing I can really say about it except that it involves a child in the family and Special Victim's Unit will be working closely with us to hopefully do a full investigation and help us see justice done. Just imagine the worst and I bet you'll be pretty close.

I usually love Independence Day. It's my very favorite holiday. I had a difficult time getting with the festivities yesterday but after a couple of Blue Moons, without orange I might add, I felt a little better as you probably saw on the video I posted yester-night, as Karli used to say when she was a wee one. (What a run on sentence!)

Anyway I was reading through my blog roll and came across a new post by  my autistic son, Joshua. His blog is A Sensitive Poet. I'd like to ask you to run by and maybe give him a comment or two. He's trying so hard to change his life. I read his latest post and I'm blown away by his use of language, especially since he's autistic. Mind you, he writes on an iPod touch. He's the only child in the family that's not allowed his own laptop for many reasons. One being that when something happens on anything of his he thinks he can take it apart and "repair" it and we end up with a useless piece of junk.

When he was small he broke, the kid actually BROKE, his highchair THREE times! It's never stopped. He's now made to purchase items he wants. We've stopped buying him all but necessities because he cares for his things much more carefully if he has to earn the money. What a novel concept.

We do have a triple damages rule in our house, thanks to the 25 yr old 12 yr old. If you're goofing around or being careless and break something you have to pay me for what I spent on it. You have to pay to replace it and you have to pay punitive damages. Sure stopped Cole from dropping and breaking the jelly on my travertine floors!

Anyway before I went off on some rabbit path my point was to ask you to help me encourage my autistic son. It'll be so appreciated by him and he'll be puffed up with pride and feel better about himself. He rarely feels good about himself at all. He beams with pride when he gets a comment and I think that it gives him the validation he needs to feel that he's accomplishing something in his life that others can appreciate. Thank you so much in advance.

Next I just wanted to post a few pics from last night. The video was fun, I love being in front of a camera, heehee, but there were some other pics I wanted to share. I hope you enjoy some of these and I'm not just being delirious with a headache and fever.

Michelle, CoCo and Madeleine

Learning from Pops the art of fire making

Anyone out there remember "cops and robbers?" Some things never change.

Jake and his "hot, not like a grandma" Nana

Josiah and Aiden

Someone STOLE Nana's Blue Moon.

Jeremiah. I noticed in the video that when he was speaking of having manners his face and hands were covered with whipped cream!

He's not looking so happy that I'm in his lap!

CoCo-roo and Aiden

Carnivores

Our "Special Olympian"

This is the army I cook for a few times a year. Now if they want to eat, they have to bring at least part of the dinner. If you add Cole and Taylor, neither showed or called, and Jeff's three boys with their wives and kids it's, well, it's a lot of people! Five of our kids aren't even married yet. No, we're not Mormon or Catholic, as my daughter swore she'd put on a tshirt as those were the first two questions she was asked when people learned of her family. We made the mistake of feeding a lot of these kids and they never left. They're like cats!