I've been loving the music of NEEDTOBREATH lately.
"Let us love" is especially is my favorite to listen to while i'm running. My favorite line from the song is " every heart has an hour of existence, ever breath brings a chance for redemption". I like the beauty and truth in that statement.
So here you are, I'll post the lryics and at the bottom of the post you can listen to the song if you like.

"Let Us Love"

We were born to embrace, not accept it
We were given nothing more, and so we kept it
As the colors of our boots keep fading
We live a life that we hate without saying

Who would listen to the cries of a poor man
We’ve never done nothing
How could we be something
Every heart has an hour of existence
Every breath brings a chance for redemption
If somehow we could wake up

Let us love
Like we were children
Make us feel
Like we’re still living
In a world I know that’s burning to the ground
Give us time
To beat the system
Make us find
What we’ve been missing
In a world I know that’s burning to the ground

In the crowd of the dead and disappointed
We’re ashamed, giving up on what we wanted
Take a chance on a long shot this time
Aren’t we all just at least worth another try

I’m a king in a land of abuses
Undermined by the promise of excuses
Who’s to win if we know that it’s not fair
Who’s to fight when it seems that no one cares
If somehow we could wake up

Let us love
Like we were children
Make us feel
Like we’re still living
In a world I know that’s burning to the ground
Give us time
To beat the system
Make us find
What we’ve been missing
In a world I know that’s burning to the ground

It’s hard to stay here, but where do we go
I know we can’t feel it anymore
It’s true that time is wearing us down
We fall further and further away
Waiting for always to change

Let us love
Like we were children
Make us feel
Like we’re still living
In a world I know that’s burning to the ground

Leave your hurting on the road behind you
Let the wind go with you ‘til the morning comes
Yeah your sorrow, it can’t save you
It won’t answer for what you’ve done

The view from here

This is a common sight to see out of our bedroom window on rainy days. It probably doesn't make your heart as happy as mine.. but i love it!

I had a lovely mothers day and a terrible weekend. I won't go into it but i had terrible stomach pains that knocked me out for most of the weekend. Matt was so loving and great. He took great care of the boys and even gave me good times to nap. By Sunday i was feeling a little better, so we did our favorite thing for mother's day... EXPLORE!



The boys were fascinated by the waterfalls.. i love that my boys can learn so many things about nature hands on in the area that we live.

Church

After 2 years of not being able go to a church service, last Sunday i got to enjoy a little bit of worship and a message and even baptisms at our new church! :D
Daniel loves it.. he was so excited to go to church last week! The best part of the service last week was the pastor telling the congregation that he knows there are families with special needs children and that it can be tough to worship with the extra needs so he was saying how they would love to step up and help out the families with special needs kids... A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! Seriously... I feel comfortable there... there are a lot of families with boys around our boys age, so I'm excited to get to know people and become a part of others lives in our community. I'm also excited that the boys don't mind sitting in service with us during worship and also that Joshua actually sits with us during the message, though they are going to try a children's church during the message time starting this week, so we are going to ask him if he wants to go to that or sit with us. Now i just need to be outgoing and open to new relationships... it feels so good to be moving into the direction of community again!

And here we go...

After Joshua's unofficial diagnosis of Autism I was drained. Emotionally and physically drained from working with doctors and therapist, drained from bearing the loss of my dream for him, and drained from just him. Please don't get me wrong, i LOVE my son, but it is physically and emotionally draining to have a special needs child. So after going through emotional ups and downs with Joshua and hoping and praying Daniel would not end up the same as his brother, i felt defeated when Daniel too exhibited signs that something was not right. Again i fell into feeling emotionally drained. I was not emotionally stable enough to sit through doctors and therapist telling me how delayed my child was and what he couldn't do. So i just focused on loving him and taking a break from all that "therapy". Late last year i decided to jump in again to the doc. therapy world with Daniel shortly after he turned 4 and he still had no verbal words of communication. I endured testing with the local special needs school and I.E.P meetings. They told me that on a test they did on him a typical child scored anywhere from 4-10 points and he had scored -5. Yep... he scored in the negatives. He qualified nearly on all levels for help and they were ready to get him into the school for every therapy that was available. They commented on how much money they would get for him because he was so delayed. Deep breath... it's more painful in person.. trust me. So now it's 6 months later... Daniel's only word that he can verbalize is "No", so it sounds more like a 1 year old saying naaa for no. I'm ready... though i didn't want to go through official diagnosis with Joshua and put him through the hearing testing and all of that, I'm ready to do it with Daniel. Though there is a difference between Daniel and Joshua. Joshua improved within the few weeks when we started healing up his physical issues. Daniel is on a strict gluten and casein free diet just like his brother and he has only shown improvement in mood, not so much in the talking department. So i am ready to move on and even though i didn't feel like getting Joshua officially diagnosed was the right move for him (and i am still thankful that we didn't go that route with him), i am comfortable doing it with Daniel. The boy is so intelligent and gets so frustrated that he cannot communicate and i want to know EXACTLY why he can't. SO here we go... diving into the great big world of specialist and people telling me what my son is not and what he cannot do. I feel stronger this time... i feel ready... though i know that it will be the beginning of many tears and worries, i feel more at peace this time. It will all start in two weeks.
sigh... i can do it!

Special Delivery

look what came in the mail today... all the way from Iowa!!!!






I'm excited about this little guy or girl... i LOVE ducks!!! Roxy was pretty excited that we got new farm animals too.. she had fun smelling them!

All i want for Christmas.. oh i mean... Cinco de Mayo is my two front teeth...



What's spring without mud?


My sweet Daniel Josiah...