Happy Halloween!

This is our first Halloween to live in a neighborhood where lots of kids will go trick-or-treating. So, the girls really wanted to have fun decorating our house for Halloween. We went to our church Trunk-or-Treat first tonight and then went trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. The girls really had a fun time! Steven went to a church Halloween party and he let me take a picture of his costume before he left. Mom, it looks like Steven found an excuse to wear that suit that you just love! Ha Ha! ;) He can't wait for you to see the picture! Here's some pics of our Halloween night and of our house decorations. Natalie was such a beautiful Medieval princess. She made her own head piece and choker in her Art class at school. They turned out really pretty! Lily was an adorable Aggie basketball player. Sorry Aaron M., but it's a lot easier to find an Aggie uniform around here than a UT one! One of Coult's patients got a basketball signed by some of the Aggie women's basketball players and their coach and gave it to Coult to give to Lily to go with her costume.

Camping trip

This past weekend, we went camping at Lake Somerville. It's a lake at a state park about 45 minutes from our home. We had never been camping as a family before, so we weren't sure how it was going to go. We were especially worried about how Lily was going to do. She did great! Natalie has never slept all night in a tent before either. She has always chickened out in the past because she was scared. She did great too! Coult even taught her how to build a campfire. We got to see some raccoons while we were in our tent Friday night trying to go to sleep. One of them even unzipped our empty tent bag which I had left out on the picnic table! The girls were really excited to see the raccoons. Just our luck, we ended up being the only campers who weren't Boy Scouts in our whole camping area. Which meant that we were serenaded by "revielle" early Sat. morning. Actually, Lily and I were the only ones still asleep at 6 am because Natalie and Coult were already up trying to start our morning camp fire. Coult got up super early because he woke to something pulling on one of our tent poles at about 5 am. It turned out to be a 30-40 lb raccoon trying to get to the bags of food in our tent! Then, after the raccoon ran away, a skunk walked right across his feet while he was sitting in his chair! He was so scared that it was going to spray him! Coult and the girls went fishing for awhile, but didn't catch anything. It was fun for them anyway. We also waded along the lake shore for a while before we left. We had so much fun! I'm not much of a camper, but since it went so well, I wouldn't mind going again. Here are some pics from our camping trip:

A memorable night with our girls!

A few nights ago, Lily was in such a great mood and really wanted to participate with the family! It was awesome! She was so connected with us and we just didn't want the night to end. She played "ring around the rosy" and "duck, duck, goose" with Coult, Natalie and I for over an hour. She is dangerous with "duck, duck, goose" though! LOL She wouldn't let us get past the first few words before she was pulling us all down onto the floor! Eventually, Natalie asked her if she wanted to attack Coult and they ended up rough-housing with him and playing "evil scientist plastic surgeon". Natalie has such a fun imagination and she is great with helping Lily to use her imagination too.I know he really enjoyed that since it doesn't happen often. They were being so silly, so I took a couple of short videos of them. And yes, those are Lily's pajama pants that Natalie is putting on Coult's head! Natalie said "Mom! She's actually playing with us! I don't want this to ever stop!" I wish I could have gotten a video of "duck, duck, goose", but it was hard to video and play at the same time. It made us so happy to have fun like this with our girls. The night before this happened, I had been praying to be able to understand Lily better and to be able to be more patient with her challenges. She is having a lot of anxiety issues that have us really worried right now. That night was an answer to my prayers. It was Heavenly Father's way of letting me know that Lily really does love to be with us, but it's just hard for her to show loving emotions and really allow herself to connect with others. There have been a few other times that this has happened. But never for this length of time. I'm really trying to hold onto this experience to remind myself that even though times can be challenging with a child on the autism spectrum, that they are truly fun children who just need those around them to try to understand what they have to cope with everyday. Enjoy the videos!

Happy 6th B-Day Lily!!!

Lily turned six years old on the 30th of September!!! She wanted to have a Batman themed b-day party! I'm not sure why, but that's what she wanted, so that's what we did. Coult almost always makes the girls birthday cakes. He did a great job making a milk, egg free Batman cake for Lily. We all had yellow and black teeth by the time we finished eating! LOL Here are some pics of Lily's party and of her playing with some of her gifts: