As I have mentioned in previous posts, we live in rural Oregon. Just to make life a little more challenging, our oldest son has a lot of medical issues and frequent surgeries. When you live 2 hours away from your preferred hospital (the non-preferred one is still an hour away) and live on one part-time…
When I was growing up, we lived in an extremely rural place. Think 40 miles above the Arctic Circle with our nearest neighbor 40 miles away, the nearest town (our mailbox) was 90 miles away and the nearest grocery store was over 200 miles. Honestly, I don’t even know where the nearest school was. Needless…
One of the things that I looked forward to most about having kids, was celebrating the holidays. Holidays were always a big deal in my family. Holidays meant making decorations, making (and eating!) special food and of course, playing lots of games. When our firstborn son was born with disabilities, some of my grand schemes…
Ah, summer! Hot weather, family BBQs, camping, starry nights, and warm breezes. For my son though, summer is not a fun time. There is too bright sunshine, high temperatures that his body can’t handle, and breezes that throw his sensory disorder into high gear. If you have a child that has difficulty regulating their body…
My family has always loved to go camping. When my husband and I first got together, we usually went camping every weekend from April to October. We tent camped all over Oregon and had packing down to a fine art. As we have grown older and added two kids to the mix, one of whom…
My son was 3 months old when we took him on his first camping trip. He had only been out of the hospital for a month and, thank goodness, he didn’t have the medical complexities that he does today. But why did we take him on that camping trip? There were several reasons, such as…