The boys spent some time visiting their mom and grandparents today. While they were gone, I had intended to do nothing but work on the house. Unfortunately, my sleep has been so disrupted lately, I opted to take a nap instead. When I got up, I decided to hit the park and get some walking in. I popped in my Galaxy Buds and began listening to A Warning: by Anonymous and was able to get about 3.5 miles in before heading home to eat and get some house work done. I felt so good being able to walk again. It helps me to deal with my stress and get centered enough to carry on with the day, without losing my mind completely. The kids were home a little before 6pm…

I wanted to talk about some of my New Years Resolutions. Gone are the days where I would set these unattainable goals and then beat myself up when I inevitably failed. Instead, I want to focus on a few things that are important and will have a positive impact on our lives. My main goal for 2020 is to improve my selfcare. Since I became a single Dad again, all my time and energy has gone into the kids. This has significantly impacted my focus on selfcare and I'm paying the price for it. As part of this, I'm going to put significantly more effort into the following: I'm going to walk at least 3 miles after taking the kids to school. I want to walk at least 5 days…

When I look back on 2019, there's a great deal of pain and loss. Some of this loss was sort of expected, like the deaths of my grandparents. Some of this loss was completely unexpected, like my wife leaving again. Whether expected or not, these losses have made their mark on our lives. I have been struggling with these losses myself, I can't imagine what my kids are experiencing. The last few months have been particularly challenging as the kids and I are trying to adapt to the major changes in our lives. I'm adapting to being a single parent, raising my kids on my own and my kids are adapting to living in a single parent home. Trying to grieve without burdening my kids is not easy. Trying to…

I couldn't fall asleep until 5 AM last night. My brain was not able to shutoff. I've got so much to look forward to but so much to worry about as well. Last night, I happened to be hyper focused on this trip to Florida. The trip is going to be expensive but it's absolutely worth it. The kids desperately need to get away from all the shit in our lives right now. This will really be sort of a working vacation and will open up future opportunities. It's an amazing opportunity to be able to experience the lengths that DoubleTree has gone to, in order to be an Autism friendly, inclusive environment. I just heard back from Give Kids The World and have locked in our volunteer day. That…

I feel pretty good about today. We had some surprises but we handled them in stride. Everything that needed to be done was done. Gavin he got his blood work done and we all got our flushots. The flushots were sorta impromptu but it worked out. We were supposed to get them a couple of weeks ago but we all got sick. You can't get a vaccine when you're sick and so it was cancled. I called to reschedule this afternoon and learned that they were booked until the end of January. We were offered a different location where we could just walk in and get it taken care of. It was all the way on the other side of town but this is important and I wanted to get…

One of the things I wanted to do for the kids this Christmas was something that would help them both gain some additional independence and learn some responsibility at the same time. After careful thought, I arrived at getting each of the kids their own credit card. Actually, it's a debit card and it gives the ability to save their money online and use the debit card to spend it when desired. It's way better than having them carry cash around and I maintain parental controls over the accounts. This is done through a company called GreenLight. They work like regular debit cards but I can control things like what stores they can be used at, how much they can spend etc. They are even taught to give to charity…

We have a full week to recover from Christmas before the boys will be returning to school for the last half of the school year. They will be visiting their mom on Wednesday for a little while and Emmett is going to be having a friend come over to hang out. I'm actually really excited that Emmet is having a friend come over. I know that seems pretty mundane but for an Autism family, it's pretty freaking awesome. Assuming it goes well, I'd to make this a regular thing. As for the rest of the week, I don't really have any plans. I think we're going to stop by my parents house for a bit on New Years Eve and hang out. That's sort of a tradition. It's pretty low-key…

We had a great time visiting family and friends last night. The kids did great and were quite social. I decided to surprise them with a late night movie after our family gathering. We went and saw the new Star Wars movie at 10PM, making it an exceptionally late night. Elliott was the only one who really didn't want to go and pushed to leave after the movie started. That said, he quickly got into it and became glued to the screen for the duration. Emmett, the one who pushed to go in the first place, passed out about 30 minutes in. He woke himself up after his brief nap and enjoyed the rest of the movie. At this point, Elliott was not happy that we were there. Look at…