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The ABCs of my sticky brain
Hello friends, It has been a while since I have written a new blog post. I guess I’ve had a bit of writer’s block and couldn’t think of anything that I thought would be of interest to others. But someone asked me a question on Facebook, and it has given me some new ideas. So, thank you to that person who reached out to me. She wanted to know how I learned to spell before I knew how to express myself with typing. I didn’t start typing until I was around fifteen years old, but my relationship with letters goes back to almost the beginning. I was between two and…
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Hawaii: The activities
Hi everybody. This is my last post about my trip to Hawaii. Today, I want to talk about some of the fun activities that we did. It was a good mix of things. The first fun thing was my favorite one, and that was just to spend most of a day at the beach. I really enjoyed swimming in the ocean, and it was fun doing it with Ben and Becky. I’ve talked about this before, but the rhythm of the ocean waves is soothing to me. I feel more comfortable in the water than I used to, so I really enjoyed just being out there. We swam some over…
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Hawaii: the place
Aloha everyone. This is my third post about my trip to Hawaii last month. In this post, I want to talk about just what I thought about the island that we visited, Oahu. I live in the mountainous state of Colorado. I love the cool, dry air and all the fun things there are to do in the mountains, but if I had a second choice, it would be on a beach. It was kind of rainy when we were in Hawaii, so it wasn’t exactly a lot of “fun in the sun,” but I still loved the 70-degree weather and the mild humidity. Being outside is my favorite thing,…
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Hawaii: the people
Hello everyone. I am back home from my trip to Hawaii and have been thinking about how I can describe my great experience. I have decided that I will divide it up into themes: the people, the place, and the activities. Today’s post will be about the people that made my trip wonderful. First, a shout out to my own family. Of course, I have to thank my mom and dad for making it happen and for giving us the chance to go together. It was fun to spend a week with my brother, Ben, and his wife, Becky. It was really the first chance to hang out with them…
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The state of Aloha
Aloha everyone, Today I am feeling lucky because I’m writing this from Hawaii. I have wanted to come here for a while, and we were able to make it happen this spring. So many cool things to write about, but today’s topic is about the Hawaiian word “aloha.” It has multiple meanings including “hello,” “goodbye,” and “I love you.” “I love you” as a greeting and a send-off is super cool. I wish that we mainlanders would adopt a similar culture. From what I have seen and experienced here so far, it isn’t just something to put on a tee shirt but is truly how the wonderful people here live.…
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Easter SUNday
Hi everyone. Today is Easter Sunday, and I have a few thoughts that I wanted to share about the Savior. Every spring, when I can start going outside without bundling up, I love feeling the warmth of the sun on my body. It makes me look forward to summer hikes and seeing everything turn back to green. Colorado is a great place, but the winter doesn’t want to let go sometimes, so in between spring snowstorms, I appreciate the warm days. Anyway, as I was outside enjoying some sun and pondering in the quiet, my thoughts went to Christ. He is the light that warms us all and changes our…
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My bookstore dream: check!
Hello everyone. It has been a while since I have written a new blog post. Don’t worry, I’m still writing! I’ve just been working on other things including the sequel to my novel, I Never Get Lost in the Woods. This week, we went to our local bookstore, Covered Treasures Bookstore and met the owner, Tommie Plank. Someone from my church had requested previously that she buy some copies of my book and so we wanted to go check it out. It was really fun to walk in there and find a book that I wrote on the shelf. A nice man was in there shopping and when he heard…
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Radical Acceptance
Dear friends, I hope you are all doing well. My thoughts today are related to a lecture that I just wrote for a neurodivergent advocacy conference that is happening this week on-line (The Nurture Programme). The conference theme is “radical acceptance” of those of us whose minds function in a different way than the majority. My topic was about how easy it is for those who have limited verbal language skills to be overlooked or ignored in our society, effectively making us invisible or anonymous. I love the term, “radical acceptance.” My understanding of the word “radical” is something that is dramatically different from the norm. How cool would it…
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Teasing or excluding?
Hi everybody. Today I have been thinking about how I felt when I was young and going to public school and I wanted to write a post about it. I remember being in a line at lunch one time when some of the other kids in line were making jokes about those of us in the special needs class. The teacher who was with us quickly shut it down and we got our lunch and headed back to our classroom to eat instead of with everyone else in the cafeteria. I thought that was the wrong choice, just like I think contained classrooms are the wrong choice in most situations.…
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New friends and bright futures
Hello everyone, Today is the Motormorphosis conference in Herndon, Virginia. For those who aren’t familiar, it is the flagship conference of the International Association for Spelling as Communication (i-asc.org). This is a wonderful organization that help people with limited verbal language communicate by spelling. I was supposed to be at the conference but got sick with Covid this week so we had to stay home. But my older brother Ben and my sister-in-law Becky are there on my behalf. They showed me what it was all about over a FaceTime call. It was fun for me to see other people with autism like me who are using their talents to…
