Camp Kiesel

I'm not gonna lie. I have not being excited about Darren starting scouts. Not at all. The scout program is great, don't get me wrong, but for Darren it means A LOT of "stretching". Everything that Darren dislikes or is afraid of they do in scouts. For some kids these activities come easy and natural, not for Darren, but are hoping it will be able to find something he likes to do. He will work mainly on those social skills that are so difficult for him and hopefully he'll learn new things in the process.

Flipping through the cub scout handbook made me cringe and shake my head. We really don't have a ton of expectations but at least we want him to try it and be positive about it. Their motto is "Do your best" and that's a very important idea we would like Darren to learn and apply in his life and I'll be the happiest person on earth if that's the only thing he gets out of this. For us tough, the most important thing is that he experiments and tries new things and feels proud of himself when he's done.

I do get anxious about other kids picking on Darren because of his lack of skills on some things but  we hope he also learns that, in the words of Temple Grandin, he's different but not less.

So anyway, Darren's first activity was their day camp at Camp Kiesel and I gotta say Darren was all excited about it even though he had no clue what to expect. Daniel took the day off and went along. They met early in the morning around 7am and came back home around 1 or 2 pm. That's a L-O-N-G morning for a kid who loves to be indoors playing video games or on the computer.

They had a lot of fun activities planned for the kids like a nature walk, archery, boating, BB guns, leather crafts and an obstacle course. Overall and considering the situation Darren did great and much better than we thought. He was fine letting other kids ride in the car with him and Daniel, absolutely loved archery and the rope bridge. Towards the end he was tired and had a hard time with the bb guns (let's say he won't trying those any time soon) and even though he likes boating he did not appreciate getting splashed by other kids haha.

His den is taking the rest of Summer off (and I'm very happy about that :P) They will resume activities on September. There was only a pack meeting a couple of weeks ago and involved swimming and hot dogs. Needless to say Darren loved it! (and this time he didn't mind kids splashing and throwing balls in the water!!)

Baptism

Finally!!! After a long wait June 2 came and Darren was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You can go here to see the invitation I made about a month ago. Since I think this might be the only time I go through this I wanted to make sure we had a good, memorable experience. We started preparing Darren more seriously about a month ago and we included more baptism related stuff to our  family activities (like family home evening, etc). He was very excited and we were hoping we could jump over some "asperger- related hurldes" and make this a wonderful day for him.

Carmen, Daniel and Darren

My mom came to visit as well as Nedra and Dave. We had close friends join us on that day and it was just a wonderful bonding experience for us as a family.

Darren and my mom Carmen 

Darren with Nedra and Dave

Left-right: Dave, Ryan, Daniel, Max, David and Darren (front)

The week prior to his baptism, we encouraged Darren to pray every morning to receive a testimony of baptism and I think he did, he was happy, cheerful and very willing to make right choices, we tried to do a "baptism countdown" and have a little activity every day for 8 days prior to June 2... we started off pretty good but then it got hard as our routines got changed when our families arrived. Oh well, we had good intentions. I found the countdown at sugardoodle.com by Melanie Day and this is what we did:

Day One
A new birth: We told the story about the conversion of Alma the younger in the Book of Mormon.

Day Two
Have you prayed?: We talked about receiving a testimony of his decision to be baptized and we suggested he prayed every morning. We made "prayer pretzels" with Rhodes rolls that looked just like this ones from rhodesbread.com (of course I forgot to take a picture).

Day Three
You're on the right track!: We talked about road signs and how they help us when we go out on the road and we made the analogy to the "road signs" Heavenly Father has provided to guide us through our journey in life like the Holy Ghost, scriptures, parents, prophets, prayer, teachers.

Day Four
Squeaky clean: We changed it from the original one and instead of making cupcakes we had Darren wash his hands very well and then I squirted chocolate syrup on them and explained him how even when we make mistakes we can always repent and be clean again by washing the "chocolate spots" of our hands using "repentance soap"...he loved this but before he could wash them again he licked all the chocolate of his hands! Oh well, I think we made the point.

Day Five
Take upon us his name:
Daniel and Darren talked about our individual names and how we belong to the same family through our last name. He also talked about taking the name of Jesus upon ourselves and acting the way he would.


Day Six:
Bear each other's burdens:
We didn't get to this one but we were supposed to have 3 backpacks filled with books and help each other carry the "burden" so that not only one of us had to carry the entire weight. I also gave him during the baptism a teddy bear that he named "Covenant Bear" to help him remember the promises he has made to: 1. Bear the name of Jesus Christ, 2. Bear each other's burdens, 3. Bear testimony of the gospel.

Day Seven:
Baptism by immersion: We kind of did this one before the countdown started by taking Darren to the swimming pool and practicing going under the water. We talked about the word immersion means and why we have to be submerged in the water when we are baptized.

Day Eight:
Baptism Book: We were supposed to have Darren record his feelings about his baptism and we are currently working on this since he was gifted a few journals and a cute memory book that Nedra bought for him.

I also made Darren a special towel that hopefully he'll keep forever.

I found this cute quote and I decided to include them as favors using fun size Kit Kats.

I had Harmon's made some white cupcakes and I made the toppers with the number 8 on them and
used these new baptism cupcake liners  that I found at Desert Book.

Nedra and my mom helped me put together fruit skewers (which the kids loved!) and some mini sandwiches. Nedra made her special shrimp dip too.

I guess the most important thing was that Darren made a choice to be baptized, Daniel is a worthy priesthood holder who is able to perform this ordinance and confirm him a member of the church. I was able to enjoy that warm feeling and feel the love of my family and friends. I'm proud of Darren and I love him and Daniel so much :)

 

It's great to be 8!!

Well, it's almost here!! Next month  Darren will be baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We're all super excited especially Darren. I honestly can't believe he's almost 8 years old :) As we prepare for this big day, we have focused our Family Home Evenings on the topic of Baptism and we have had some fun activities to go along with it. Last week we made a list of all the things we needed to do before the big day and yesterday we got Darren all dressed up and took some pictures for his invitations. I'm definitely not a photographer and the pictures truly show my lack of skill BUT I gotta say that Darren's "cuteness" makes up for it.

Baptism Invitation

For some reason I can't upload the rest of the photos here...so here's the link to youtube

IT'S GREAT TO BE 8!!

General Conference

Last week we enjoyed watching General Conference together. I gotta admit it's always a challenge finding ways for Darren to sit by us and try to listen to what the speakers are talking about. This time we talked to him about King Benjamin and how he addressed his people and built a tower so that everyone could see him. All the people gathered in tents with their families as they heard King Benjamin's counsel. We attempted to turn our family room into a tent, we weren't very successful, but Darren liked it and that's all that mattered to us. We know he's still young, but at least we're making an effort and we hope that Darren will come to enjoy General Conference as much as we do.
Here's some ideas I found around to help him. I don't remember all the websites I went to and I don't claim credit for any of the work sheets, some of them I printed and some of them I changed a bit to fit Darren's needs and likes. Coloring is something he doesn't find interesting so we always relay on math papers to kill some time. He's also not a big candy eater so we reward him with a few candy, coins and "coupons" that I come up with and these ones are his FAVORITES! (like skip jobs on Saturday, skip grocery shopping trip, earn 10 minutes extra before bedtime, etc).

Here's our attempt to building a tent, note that we're not campers AT ALL, bahaha.

Darren working on his General Conference packet.

(Hey! there's a giraffe back there!)

 Prizes (candy, coins, coupons) he earns when he listens to key words like: prayer, scriptures, Jesus Christ, Temple, etc.

 Some of the work sheets I found (If you made any of these, thank you!)

Darren placing each general authority on their seat as they spoke during each session.

Darren got to eat an M&M every time he spotted a general authority.

Darren working on a puzzle of the Salt Lake Temple...At this point we were almost out of stuff to do! (wherever Darren is, there will also be a giraffe haha)

 My boys working on the puzzle.

 Puzzle is finished!

Beautiful Salt Lake Temple.

 Darren coloring the ties of the First Presidency.

More work sheets.

 Daniel before General Conference.

Daniel 20 minutes into General Conference :)
Never listen to GC while lying down...duh!