Autism

So I'm fairly certain everyone has come in contact or known someone close to them with autism. It has been increasing in children over the past decade, or so it seems. Sometimes I think we are just advancing our knowledge on what autism really is and what we didn't know how to diagnose before we are finding the truth in it now. I wanted to post about this because of some amazing photo stories I found on CNN.com contributed by Time magazine that brought me to tears, and yes I'm totally aware that I cry for just about anything, ha. But I'm sure once you see these photos and the descriptions you will do the same.

When I was 13/14 I did a lot of baby sitting around the neighborhood. One neighbor had a child with autism who was extremely high functioning, to me (not having an understanding of what autism really was) he just had a few weird quirks that most children didn't. The neighbor on the other side had a child who was severely mentally retarded. For me, when I think back on it, he was such a learning experience and sometimes I think both these boys lead me into what I'm doing with my life now. The child with MR was very difficult to take care of and sometimes at such a young age I'd say it was a bit traumatizing. I remember having to put him to bed and locking him in his room, sounds terrible right? But the parents had to, otherwise he would wonder out of his room at night and they might never know. Anyway back to these stories from CNN!

The first is about a child named Daniel, he lives in Austin, TX with a caregiver who is devoted to his every need. She ran a daycare before taking Daniel into her home full time, now her ever action revolves around Daniel's autism. Read the story here.

The second story is about the Dragonfly camp for children with autism. See the photos here. Everything they do is to enhance the child's confidence and specialized to deal with their autism. They still completed activities most children would in a normal camp, it might be a bit slower, but no one gives up on them. I would love to go to this camp and volunteer as a counselor. The photo above is part of the series and made me cry, the young girl in the wheelchair had to leave the camp the second day and the boy beside her was trying to comfort her. UGH! again the tears! It is amazing that compassion and being able to relate to another persons emotions does not stop with something like autism. I also really loved this photo,

autistic children have lower muscle tone than most children, so they can't do strenuous work like most and require frequent breaks. Here the child just decided to plop down and rest on top of his counselor. I can only imagine how amazing the counselors are, they must have so much patience, compassion and a real drive to work with these children everyday.

what I've been up to...

So since Jason and Deanna got married I was feeling a bit lost in the craft department. I mean come on! There was nothing else I could think of to make that didn't involve weddings, I blame it on myself really, it was all the wedding blogs I just couldn't tear myself away from.......and still can't! But now I have a reason to read them because both Gretchen and Sissy are engaged!!!!! I'm very excited about both and now I have little something to work with. Although Gretchen and Chris's wedding is basically planned and ready to roll, I'm not doing much crafting for that wedding, just helping the week before with the handmade touch. I'll be helping with arranging flowers, carving pumpkins (which all flowers and pumpkins are coming from our family farm!) and general rounding of decor and goodness. I'm hoping for sissy's wedding I'll be doing more crafting, I'm sure that she's got a list of things she already wants to work on seeing as how she is an amazing quilter.

Anyway, the point of this was to tell you that in between weddings Jason's sister Brianne married her boy Mike. I was really surprised when Brianne asked me to make custom table runners for the even. I thought it would be awesome so I said yes! Let me just tell you making 17 custom table runners from scratch and then monograming each twice started to make me fucking crazy, but in the end I finished! And the most important part was that both the bride and groom really enjoyed them! I also make Brianne's garter from V-tech colored ribbon and I have to say it turned out to be the best garter I've ever made, sadly it'll have to remain a mystery because I don't have a photo.

After all that work you can imagine that I was thrilled to hear the buzz around the reception room about the runners. The guests were very kind! So after that it was time to get down on the dance floor! Deanna and I love to dance so I will leave you with this:

Doesn't it look like I'm trying to fight Deanna?! Best darn photo ever!

And then this one is very precious! It's Deanna's mother, Sue, then Deanna, Her mother-in-law Kathy and then Me! We were a bunch of party animals, let me tell you. All of the photos were taken by the amazing Jason Collins of Delirious Photography...you should hire him!

Ok, so I know I've been gone for a while, but come on Deanna is the only person who reads this! Also Deanna I hope this morning when you are going through your blog roll that you get a smile from this. Anyway, the point is I'm making an effort to come back and actually post about something worth while! Although I haven't been posting do not mean I haven't been all over the internet myself, trust me is it currently 3am, so you know I've been surfing.

So in my attempt to share with the world something meaningful and possibly useless at the same time I found these ladies.

It is new and not much to the website, but the gals are precious and I'm hoping that it will develop into something as meaningful as they have described on their site. The music video is amazing and I'm jealous of all the beautiful vintage dresses.

Hopefully one of these days I'll attack the world with something as inspiring as these ladies!