Read more about the article Emmett’s Martial Arts Tournament Results (Tons of Pictures AND Video)
Emmett John / Gallery / Martial Arts Promotion / My thoughts / YouTube Video

Emmett’s Martial Arts Tournament Results (Tons of Pictures AND Video)

It's been a long day, but I've finally recovered enough to write this post. I'm going to keep this brief and let the pictures/videos do the talking. ☺ Emmett had his martial arts tournament on Saturday morning and it was a pretty awesome experience. I had originally thought this was going to be something that wouldn't have any actual competition but I was wrong. There was no sparring or contact anything, but they did compete. Everything they did was scored by the judges and the highest score won. He competed in the Empty Hand Kata and the Weapon Kata. I'm super excited and incredibly proud to share that Emmett took first place in both competitions. He had the highest scores of anyone who competed today and there were a ton…

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April 22, 2018
Read more about the article I’m really pushing myself today
Emmett John / Martial Arts Promotion / My thoughts

I’m really pushing myself today

We leave for Emmett's martial arts thing in about an hour. I'm absolutely not feeling well and I just want to go back to bed. Obviously, that's not an option. I'm going to have to really push myself this morning. I know how important this is to Emmett and I will not be the reason he doesn't make it there. My hope is, after I get moving around a bit, I'll begin to feel better. I'm so excited for Emmett and I want today to be all about him.

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April 21, 2018
Read more about the article Helping my kids deal with loss
Autism Parenting Insight / Family Pets / Maggie / My thoughts

Helping my kids deal with loss

It's been one week since Maggie passed away and we wanted to try to keep the kids distracted today. Kids with Autism are especially prone to struggling with loss and tend to benefit a great deal from distraction. Trying to process already confusing emotions is difficult and at least my kids tend to perseberate. It's been a rough seven days for most of us and it somehow seemed fitting to spend the one week anniversary of her death, outside enjoying the sun. She loved being outside and basking in the sun. Lizze and I took the boys to the park and let them explore this afternoon. Click the image below to open the gallery. [foogallery id="79085"] The boys had a great time. We all had a great time actually. Everyone…

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April 20, 2018
Read more about the article I have an exciting announcement
Emmett John / My thoughts

I have an exciting announcement

So this is pretty exciting. Emmett will be in a martial arts tournament tomorrow morning up in Akron. Every year at the end of the school year, the school invites the kids to participate in a martial arts tournament. In previous years, the tournament was held in Columbus, Ohio and that was a bit too far away for our guys. This year it's in Akron and only about a thirty minute drive. Emmett was all over this when it was announced but Elliott wants nothing to do with it and that's totally okay. Over the past few weeks, Emmett's been working very hard to prepare for this event, including practicing with weapons. He's really excited about that part because he gets to demonstrate how they are used. ☺ Martial Arts…

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April 20, 2018
Read more about the article The boys don’t have school today but I’ll be there anyway
My thoughts

The boys don’t have school today but I’ll be there anyway

There's no school in the morning. Some nonsense about end of the grading period or something. Lol Anyway, while the boys won't have school, I'm supposed to meet with the principal about the raffle to raise money for an end of the school year surprise for the kids. They've worked so hard this year and they deserve anything we can pull off. I've been collecting items for the raffle from some very generous companies and I have big box full stuff to help raise money. There are times where this platform I've been blessed to have can be very frustrating. There are other times however, when I'm able to leverage my platform to do some pretty awesome things for deserving people. I'm so grateful to all the companies that are…

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April 19, 2018
Read more about the article It’s funny how things work out
Family Pets / Maggie / My thoughts / Ruby

It’s funny how things work out

Tomorrow marks one week since Maggie passed away. I'm not sure if the significance of the day will strike the kids or not but I'm certainly not going to raise their attention to it. We've been preparing for awhile now that Maggie wouldn't be around forever but we had no idea how soon she would be taken. When I stumbled across Ruby a few months ago, I had no idea how important that moment would be. We would have survived Maggie's passing and eventually moved on, because that's the way life is. I will say that having Ruby a part of our lives has made the adjustment a little easier, especially for the boys. She may only be the size of my shoe but she packs a whole lot of…

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April 19, 2018
Read more about the article If I had known 6 years ago
My thoughts

If I had known 6 years ago

I've not been feeling well today and I'm getting really tired of it. Everyday it's wash, rinse and repeat. If I had known six years ago that Paxil would be so devastating to come off of, I would have never gone on it.

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April 19, 2018
Read more about the article Why my day was so stressful
My thoughts

Why my day was so stressful

It's been a stressful day for about a million reasons. About half of those reasons were Autism related and the rest were the result of a few other things. I'm still not feeling a hundred percent but I'm probably upwards of sixty or seventy percent lately and that's progress. I'm really grateful for that. We're also coming up on the one week anniversary of Maggie's passing and that's still a pretty fresh wound. It was a rough day. Everything was going okay until the mail came. Inside was a letter stating that we had lost our insurance coverage. More specifically, Lizze and I had lost our insurance coverage. The boys were not impacted and that was blessing. We're on Buckeye insurance, which is a managed care provider for Medicaid in…

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April 19, 2018