22-Easter Weekend

 

    What a wacky weekend! On Good Friday Robbie was off from his day program. Being off on holidays is always a problem. As you'll see in the video, by the time the night time came things were not going well. I picked him up on Saturday morning and had to take him home for the weekend. My mission? To make him smile!
    We went for a ride and ended up having a very nice day on Saturday. We went to visit a friend and he was so happy and content there that we stayed a couple of hours. I was actually shocked that he was so happy! My sister, who had a baby not too long ago, (You'll catch a quick cameo of her husband and baby in the background) does photography, and we had her come over and take some photos. We finally got a good shot (shown above) and used it for a Thank You card for our fundraising party. (Check out our last blog to see the party video) Boy, it took a while to get a photo because he doesn't understand that we want him to smile! He's not quite smiling in the photo, but almost. I still think it's cute.

 

 

       It's funny how he falls right back into his old routine as soon as he's home. He heads right up to bed when he gets tired, and woke up early Sunday morning, grouchy and full of energy. I had to "work" singing and leading worship for church on Easter Sunday so I had to run him around and boy was it a real fiasco! Watch to see what happened.

 

21-"Mom's Birthday Fudraiser"

   

    April is Autism Awareness Month. For a couple years I had an idea in my head to invite different bands that I knew to all come together and play music in the same place to each play a set and do it as a fundraiser. So for my birthday, I rented the local Italian American club, had food donated, and invited musician friends to come play music. In between sets I taught line dances. As I was reviewing country line dances on YouTube I found a couple new ones on line, like "The Wobble". My kids told me it's the hottest new line dance (Think "The Electric Slide" and "The Macarena") that they do at weddings and Sweet 16 parties. So of course I had to learn it and teach it. It was so much fun!

Are you ready to party?! Here's the video!

     

    The theme was "Light It Up Blue" which is the big campaign by Autism Speaks. We used blue lights, blue candles and of course had blue drinks! We had a blue Hawaiian drink at the bar, blue cupcakes and blue cake pops. It was just an all around great day. Robbie came and ate and danced. If you follow my vlogs you'll know how much he loves music. When we played "Wagon Wheel" by Darius Rucker I guess he recognized the song and  went out onto the dance floor all on his own and started to dance. It was so cute! I wish I had video but I don't. I only have a couple photos someone took with their phone.

       In lieu of gifts I asked people to donate to the Hope Autism Foundation to help fund a new day program. We raised over $3,500. It was so much fun I think I'll do it every April. This first one was a trial run. But next time I'll get more elaborate and charge admission at the door, and do basket raffles etc. to raise more money.

  

 

.If you're wondering

"Who the heck is this person who does these vlogs?" LOL

Here's the video I showed at the party, the story of my life.

 

 

 

20-"Time to move"

Well it's been a couple months since my last blog. We've been really busy, but there has also been a lot going on. Robbie had to move out of his new home and he is temporarily living in an assisted living apartment. I'll explain in the video. I felt like my vlogs were working against us and giving people ammunition to use against us, so I took a break for a while. Everything has settled down and things are going O.K. for now. So, here we go. We're back!