post awards night fun

Justin and I took Lewis out for a special post pre-school awards night dinner at Chick-fil-A, where he was able to eat a whole kids meal (didn't like the lemonade) and then played in the play area before heading home.


Lewis mostly loved the funny mirrors and spinners, but he did agree to go down the slide a couple of times.

We love spending time with our boy!

fountain 2010

We took our first trip over to the fountain at Circus Square a few weeks ago. It took the boys a few minutes to warm up to the idea of being wet. And actually, it was super hot that day, but when we got there the sun was going down and it was rather cool, so they did really well under the circumstances. They are awfully cute in their swim trunks. Though these pictures don't show it, they were both drenched by the time we left. You'll just have to trust me.

Preschool awards night

This one couldn't wait. We went to Lewis' preschool for awards night and graduation this evening. Lewis isn't graduating, but he did receive a participation certificate for attending this year.


Lewis managed to sit well during the ceremony with occasional pointing at Justin and I and some waving or clapping enthusiastically. The funniest part of the evening, by far, was the following performance with his class. They sang a couple of songs with hand movements. At the beginning, Lewis was staring at the lights and not really participating. If you can hang in there until the 1:30 mark, it gets very interesting! He's quite the performer. Anyway, hope it brightens your day!

brown bear, brown bear

Owen's been loving this book lately!

mother's day

Happy Mother's Day, everyone! I always miss my mom on Mother's Day, but feel especially blessed to be a mommy to two cute boys who love each other so much.


Our friend, Mandy shared this video and it absolutely made me laugh and cry, maybe because it is Mother's Day and my child on the spectrum has been so emotional lately. Anyway, this is a conversation between a mom and her son with Asperger's (high functioning autism). We hope that Lewis has this kind of understanding someday, but it gives insight into the way many of these kids feel (and how their parents feel in response) when they become more aware of being different. If you have a few minutes it is worth a watch (listen).

Q&A from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

the garden

It has been nice having my sister, Beth, living in Bowling Green. One of the carrots we dangled before she decided to come was that we could grow a garden when she arrived and live off the land. We don't have much land in downtown Bowling Green, but we managed to get a good 7.5' by 10.5' square carved out to plant stuff in the sunniest corner of our yard. It has been quite therapeutic to plant seeds and watch the sprouts come. It is tiny bits of life that are uniquely hopeful, and surprisingly so. If I'm having a bad day and walk by our planters, I am immediately encouraged if there has been some change. Anyway, here are some photos of the process.Out front we planted some daisies next to our roses that seemed to dead, but are producing new branches.We bought 4 tomato plants at the farmer's market from the nice Amish man with a long beard. He is so kind and always has great tomatoes. We also planted yellow squash, zucchini, green peppers and mixed bell peppers from seeds in these planters.

The spot we picked for the garden. BEFORE:

After a couple of weeks, our squash started to sprout.



We started to shovel the sod off our garden spot. Owen helped. Actually, Beth did almost all of it by herself. She took out some frustration there doing the tough physical labor of shoveling the hard ground. I helped a bit, but would never have finished by myself! Beth was determined, thankfully.


The spot after it the sod was gone.

We rented a tiller and Justin tilled the ground up.

We added fertilizer rich soil and Justin tilled some more.

Priscilla, our good friend, came and helped us plant seeds in the garden. We planted cucumbers, snow peas, pole beans, green onions, pumpkins and Asian cabbage. We have started to see sprouts of the peas and cabbage so far. We have yet to transplant the rest of the the sprouting plants we have been keeping mostly indoors. I'm finding myself to be an overprotective parent, afraid to put them out there in the elements. After the current round of storms have gone through, we will have to transplant them because our squash are running out of room in their little planters, and some are dying.The good news is that after nothing for weeks, our peppers have started to sprout too! Priscilla encouraged us to keep them inside and they needed that warmer environment to sprout. They are doing great now!

Once we have transplanted we will have a little fence out there to keep out rabbits, squirrels and the little Shepherds from tearing up the garden. We are excited and hope to reap a large harvest this summer!

This is our zuchinni, squash and pepper plants....still inside due to the weird weather.

Here's a close up of the pepper sprouts.

We bought a cilantro plant at the Farmer's Market. It is delicious!

We started growing some basil too.

autism awareness

If you come to Spencer's this month, you can see the above sign featuring our drink of the month. It is delightful, I must admit! I love it iced best, but it is good hot too.

On April 2nd, we wore blue for World Autism Awareness Day. Owen was supporting his brother as much as he could! Since we live with Autism every day, it is hard to remember what it was like to NOT be aware of it. But I wanted to dedicate a post to the reality of our lives because it is so hard to reflect on it when there's no time left for reflection.

Many of you are aware that we have a busy schedule. Lewis has tons of appointments every week. He attends school from 8-11 a.m. Monday through Thursday. He has 1-3 other therapy appointments/interventions every day after school. Because our focus is a home therapy program (ABA) much of my time is spent preparing for his therapy. I gather materials for Lewis to label or sort, making many of these resources myself or finding them online. I keep up with a data notebook, time sheets for our therapists (so they can get paid through a waiver program) and otherwise research methods to make Lewis' life better.

On rare occasions, I attend support group meetings with other moms/parents of children with ASD or other disabilities. It is amazing to me that we don't sit there sobbing or even whining. These women who deal with this baffling disorder hit it hard and give it their all and still can laugh and help someone else by sharing something that worked for them.

But I have to be honest and say that my heart still breaks when we are around "typical" kids Lewis' age and we see what they are doing, and especially their level of understanding and social awareness. That is emerging as Lewis' major deficit: he is unaware of others, their feelings, their existence sometimes and must be coached to have a 'conversation.' School is a nice break for me and is good for Lewis in many ways, but it is basically a black hole in that we have no idea what happens there from day to day because Lewis can't answer questions about past events.

His strengths are definitely memory and music. He can plunk out any song at will on the piano. He memorizes videos, books, songs and re-lives these kinds of things over and over. He is definitely brilliant. We just have to keep chipping away at his brain to figure out what all is going on in there.

All of this to say.......my main comfort is in knowing that Autism is not eternal. It will burn and fade when Christ returns and Lewis (and countless others) will not be plagued with it any longer. It (like all disease) is a result of the fall, of sin, and while I can't understand why God picked us to go through this, we trust there is a purpose in it. My confession is that most days I worry constantly and feel like I'm fighting against the world for my child. It so often feels like no one gets it and I am all alone. But deep down I know that is not the case. We have so much to be grateful for in the support we have for Lewis. It is not perfect, and every positive has its dark side (and vice versa). There is a lot of work, and many days I long to wake up and do something for ME. To just have a day off. I have forgotten what that's like!

This is not meant to be a woe-is-me post! It is meant to be an honest post.......and unfortunately most days when I see people I am so happy to just be talking to someone about something else that it is easy to say things are okay when there is a much longer answer to how we are really doing. So there it is......autism is not easy! We take great joy in the progress. And there has been tons of progress. There is just constant uncovering of more of the puzzle each day and it can be exhausting. We love Lewis! He is worth it. Hopefully one day he'll be able to help us figure all of it out.

what we've been up to

Life is always crazy around the Shepherd household. It has been nice and warm so we have spent a lot of time outside. Owen is becoming quite a little boy and running around. He loves to "walk" and look for letters all over town.



Lewis has been perfecting his tricycle riding. He is doing great! He can even turn around 180 degrees if he wants. Sometimes Owen has to give him a push if he slows down and isn't keeping up. He has had one accident where he scraped his elbow, but he mostly laughed about it. He really loves his tricycle!

Owen, on the other hand, has gotten into "sand." We have some moonsand that the kids got for Christmas. It's an amusement park. They have both loved playing with it now that they can make a mess outside. It is a mess, but on the back porch it is a blast for them. He likes running it through his fingers saying "sand" over and over.

Both boys have loved having their Aunt Beth around. She spends a lot of time with Lewis every week, but Owen also loves it whenever he sees her. His new favorite activity is having her draw things on our Magnadoodle and then saying what it is. Here is one of the first times they did this. You can tell how excited he is.



Poor Beth basically got herself into it, but Owen pushes her all over the house and drags the magnadoodle to her to get her to play this game. We are happy they have a fun activity to do together!

Easter Sunday

This year we spent Easter in Louisville with my side of the family. My step-sister, Leah and her husband, Mike and their kids (Will, 10, and Mallory, 6) joined us too. The kids had quite the little Easter egg hunt in the yard. Owen is very much into colors right now, so he had a blast yelling out the colors as he found the eggs. He found a lot of them!


Aunt Beth helped Lewis spot the eggs. One funny thing was that some of the "eggs" were actually shaped like animals and Lewis did not want those! He only wanted to collect actual eggs.

Aunt Ellen had to go get some extra baskets to hold all those eggs!


After the egg hunt, the guys played ball and Owen had a blast watching and throwing the football around. Uncle Mike seemed to enjoy it too.

easter eve

We headed to Nashville for Easter Eve with Justin's family. While Owen napped, Lewis got to help dye Easter eggs for the first time. He seemed like he really liked it! Aunt Monica lead our endeavors. The eggs turned out really nice!


Lewis really liked dipping the wire egg holder into all the cups.


Olivia designed a couple of cool ones.



It was a nice, relaxing time with our cousins, aunts, grandparents and the boys loved seeing everyone!