Living & Loving, Autism & Deafness
Our Journey with our loved ones and our lives
JANUARY 2022 – DECEMBER 2022 – THROUGH GOD’S GRACE!
You can click on each picture to see bigger. Captions are on the picture when you mouse over or hold your finger on it…. Still looking for the perfect picture method for this blog but I think I like this best of the last three years…. Click on Read More tag to see the pictures.
Video from a local lightshow off of a local road that we will greatly miss!
CLICK ABOVE TO WATCH!
Ridgewater off Morley by the 84 & 90 intersection. I hope they’ll have it going a few more days if anyone can go see it!!To minimize load time I put all the pictures on a separate page. Please take a look, I wanted to make a snapshot of our whole year! I will put just a few here — then click the “Read More” if it shows up. Blessings!!
A copy from my 07 newsletter…. still very true!
Mary’s Song
Luke 1:46-55
And Mary said:
“My soul glorifies the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
holy is his name.
His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering to be merciful
to Abraham and his descendants forever,
even as he said to our fathers.” (KJV)
VIDEO I put together to “Mary, Did You Know —
Last year’s picture blog — https://www.criscollrj.com/2020-monthly-picture-blog/ 2020 picture blog! (2021 note, I may do this at some point for 21 and more likely for 22. I am vaguely disappointed in ways with both that method and this one used here in 21…. would like to find the PERFECT picture display method…. ha ha.)
A text only version of this newsletter — this one is picture heavy. (WILL BE UNDER CONSTRUCTION, IF NEEDED–let me know)
PRAYERS TO ALL this second very strange year! After God brought us through COVID last December, we are thankful for no lasting problems except some extra fatigue for about 6+ weeks.
So grateful also for our sons’ recovery and my mother’s. Strangely no one else in our families got it! We had two humongous snowstorms in December of 2020 that made life interesting trying to get out of the house for COVID tests and needed grocery pickups. Broke limbs on several of our trees! The snow stayed around until at least February, and as we gained strength we started walking at the parks and seeing the frozen lake.
WINTER 2021,
JANUARY started off the year baking cookies that we gave to family and friends!1-4-21 Roger went back to college, and has several classes finished now towards his Psychology/Human Services Degree from Southern New Hampshire University! Later in January I began substitute teaching again. I also FINALLY got back to some transcription for Free State, and did until April when I once again needed a break due to overscheduling! Looking forward to doing some more this winter to “keep my fingers in the pot.” I also often do some data entry at home, both for courthouses and for a friend’s printing company.
www.facebook.com/285236261589492/posts/4594625367317205/
testing a Facebook post once again! Our Ryan is working to make products for dogs and will be highlighted in this web site this week. He is doing great!
www.facebook.com/1191271319/posts/10226621720347806/
testing this…
Just one of the 2020 pictures. https://www.criscollrj.com/2020-monthly-picture-blog/ Click for our 2020 picture blog!!!
Prayers to you all at the closure of this crazy strange year! Do not believe I’ve sent paper Christmas newsletter since 2014. I did do electronic newsletter in 2019 (published 12-31), and RIGHT after that my criscollrj.com site failed. So whether many of you had an opportunity to read it I’m not sure! I mentioned some dark scary times. Faith in God is so important, and prayer of family and friends is paramount. This post says a lot. Please read if you can. https://www.criscollrj.com/2011/04/11/the-powers-and-exponents-of-faith/, emphasizing Hebrews 11:6 “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” I read through entire blog this year and reviewed it and edited it in preparation of moving back into my soon to be revamped original blog site. I’m glad I wrote so many of these entries years ago – I’d forgotten many of them.
By the time many read this the whole world will know about coronavirus of 2020 and what an odd, terrifying, lifechanger it has been. I won’t describe it, but wanted to share a word I had of encouragement a week or so, while I was helping Roger to shop for Instacart to help people get food delivered to their homes. We have also been working for our sons in their group home, where my hours have gone (for that job) from 11-14 a week to 40-60 a week. Laid off from the school jobs.
I was feeling very panicky one day in the store, as I was watching how people really didn’t seem to be taking the “social distancing” seriously, of staying over 6 feet part. I try and move with the flow, always staying 6 feet away. {I also do with my kids on their walks on the park pathways, which is a more complicated feat!)
I was also worried about my daughter working in crowds. So while we were shopping this one day last week, and I was feeling very anxious, worried over my husband and I in the store and worried over our loved ones, and a kind of voice/feeling came in my hand and said
What would JESUS do.
Take care of the needy. Supply their needs. Help the ones who need it.
That was amazing, and then a few minutes later Roger’s customer wrote and thanked us and said we were doing the work of God. Nooo but that was so sweet! I got all teary eyed at the grocery store.
There are so many people all over doing so many things, whether out on the front lines, or at home. Thank you all!
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Incidentally, this is a duplicate blog. I am cleaning up these pages to repost a clean copy sometime soon into my main blog. Meanwhile, these posts will show up now and then.
My last Christmas newsletter I typed in January/February of 2017, and finally posted on February 4, 2017, not knowing it would be the last Christmas newsletter I’ll do for 3 years. I have missed it and hope that I can begin sharing them again every year. Things were rather dark and scary for a while, with a lot of issues, and we just held on for the ride, trying to just trust in the Lord and in each other.
And it’s hurricane winds.
But hoping it will all end up good. Some of the prayer requests lately were about this as we didn’t know where it was all going! Being in the dark, or going around a curve not knowing where you are going, is so scary. But it seems God is working things out!
After 6 years at his waiver house Chris is moving to a new house! This was years in the making and finally happened suddenly when we heard of an availability too good to pass up. (Everything had been too expensive!!) We needed to cut his rent in half and have just about done so. It is a cute place and I hope he adjusts well. Prayers appreciated! He also should be able to eventually have a roommate. We never successfully were able to get one where he was because the rent was just too high. “But the legend of the rent, was way past due.” Or about to be. (School of rock reference, haha)
Chris is doing very well right now, as he was when he moved 6 years ago, so hopefully with all our support and love and good staff he will do very well. He is still thriving at the workshop he started in September of 17.
On top of this change (4 days earlier!!) Ryan is moving to a new school. This came as a shock but is all part of planning for his transition years to vocational. This will have more music and art opportunities for Ryan as well. They even brought a guitar to class for him to play. They had an opening and thought it was a good time to transition since Ryan will be 17 soon. They have opportunities to work on job skills even making some money ahead of his post-high school years. We weren’t expecting to do this so soon but felt the opportunity was great for him. So he had orientation today and will be starting Thursday.
Please pray for him in this transition as well, and that our move for Chris is smooth as there is SO much to do and so much furniture and items to juggle! May our boys be blessed in this new season….
And in the middle of that our daughter’s store closed and she got transferred to a new one. THIS just happened a week ago. We are praying for her as well, so far it is going fine.
After working with Chris every weekend for SIX YEARS I did not proceed to get a position with his new provider in this house. it will be very strange but Roger and I are missing each other over the weekend, and this way we can all visit Chris together without me being gone 48 hours a weekend. As soon as we adjust to Chris’s move and Ryan’s new school I’m going to be on the hunt for a new job in my educational bachelor’s degree field. Not a regular teacher, as I don’t yet have license, but I have seen a lot of cool opportunities on the job boards!! I also signed up for a few freelance jobs that look good that also use the bachelor’s degree — one for tutoring and one as a web reviewer of some sort. I haven’t started either one, plan to look at that in November as well as start doing more data entry with roger.
As always, busy busy! God’s blessings and happy autumn!
Around October of 2009 I was still planning to go and get my AAERT certificate for transcription, and start my own transcription company. There was a time around then that I found out with all the years I’d already been transcribing, that I probably wouldn’t have much of a pay raise by making this change. I was also already happy with the transcription company I was working for, and I didn’t really want to change. Additionally, we were concerned with Chris’s placement then, and had a dream of eventually owning a group home and having it be for our boys eventually plus other clients.
This led to my signing up at community college to work my way back up to getting into a speech pathology program. I started in January of 2010 and by Fall of 2011 was at Kent State starting the pre-speech pathology program. Then this happened: https://criscollrj.com/2011/09/09/minor-changes-or-major-changes/