I live in a little logging town in Western Washington. My
husband Jim and I were married in Dec. 1978 and between
us we have 1 son, 4 daughters and now 11 grandchildren!

For many years I worked as a waitress in various resturants.
When Jim and I got married, I quit working and stayed home
to care for my 3 young daughters & Jim's little daughter too.
It was then I started a daycare and did that for about 10 years.

Since 1989, I have worked as a housekeeper, cleaning homes.
I've enjoyed being my own boss & work on my own schedule.
My clients are wonderful people & I like very much what I do.

Jim and I are also busy raising one of our grandchildren.
A 'high functioning' autisic, with ADD, DD and having seizures.
It takes most of our time and energy to take care of this child,
with not much time for ourselves. But Austin needed us and
we could not turn our backs & let foster care be the way to go.
Each day is a challenge in ways of trying to cope, understand
& raise this child. We have learned much about 'special needs'
and will continuously keep learning more as time goes on.

Photo taken November 2003.

UPDATE ~ (Austin is now 12 years old.)
On May 6, 2008 ~ Austin had major brain surgery to remove a small
mass from his right temporal lobe. The monitoring done in March
showed that's where the seizures were coming from. The small mass
was removed & now it's wait & see if the seizures are forever gone!
We pray that it is so!

UPDATE ~ June 2 ~ (Seizures are back.)
After a month of NO seizures; Austin has started to have them
again. When he had the first one this evening; he was crying and said,
"I'm not suppose to have any seizures." For Austin (being Autistic);
to show emotions like this is very rare...he cried and was so upset.
Having seizures again was not expected and we are all discouraged
by what has happened. He had 2 more seizures during the night.
Phone calls will go out to the Drs. today June 3; to his
neurologist and the surgeon.

My thoughts:
Austin has gone thru so much pain and being sick from the surgeries
and medicines given at the time. He has horrible scars on his head now
and to go thru all this without the results we expected; seems at the
moment all for nothing. How much more does he have to go thru?
He wants so much to join in sports at school and to be able to do
things like...spend overnight with friends, etc., all the things that
young kids his age like to do; but he can�t because of the seizures.

UPDATE ~ June 9 ~ First follow-up apt. after surgery.
Austin had apt. today with his neurologist....the Dr. increased the
dosage on two of the three seizure meds that he takes and the
next apt. is in late August. I left the apt. feeling totally unfulfilled
in answers to my questions. I wasn't given any hopes of it becoming
any better. Nothing else is planned for now; the med dosage was
increased to hopefully slow down the seizures that are happening.
(June 2 thru 4 - Austin had 11 seizures. June 8 & 9 -- He had 9.)
Jim and I are so discouraged and upset with the out come of the
surgery just done. We were given such high hopes that this would
stop Austin's seizures and give him a better quality of life;
but for now, it hasn't happened that way.

UPDATE ~ August ~ More increases on his seizure meds.
I worry about this, because of increase in behaviours
with the higher doses. The meds cause mood swings and
aggressive actions. He has shown this at home already.
I now worry about when school starts. What will happen?

UPDATE ~ October 9 ~ After the increase of meds again in July,
Austin has been 'seizure free' since July 21st! The last seizure
was a 'grand maul' lasting for 8+ minutes. We are so thankful
that at this time he hasn't had any more!

UPDATE ~ October 16 ~ With the increase in med dosages and no
seizures at this time; it has caused more problems with behaviours.
Lots of problems now at school and he has being sent home on
several occasions. Lowering the dosages may cause the seizures
to return; and we don't know if it will slow down the behaviours.
One med has been dropped back a bit; and now it's a wait and
see what happens and constant phone calls to his neurologist.

UPDATE ~ October 22 ~ One of Austin's seizure meds has now
been dropped back again; once last week and now this am.
We'll see how the behaviour goes for the next week. I'm holding
my breath that we don't see the seizures return.

UPDATE ~ Nov. 22 ~ No seizures have shown up so far; but the
behaviour at school varies. I have met with the staff on several
occassions to figure out how to get Austin to be better behaved
and 'on task' at school. This is an ongoing job every day; with
various actions he does. We have the same problems at home too.

UPDATE ~ April 2009 ~ I haven't updated here for quite some
time. Austin still hasn't had any seizures since July 2008.
He is still slowly backing off more on the meds; but his
behaviour has increasingly become worse....we don't know how
much longer we can handle this. He has his first phyc apt. soon
and praying that will help him...if not, we'll have no choice
but to have him placed in foster care.

My interests are: cooking, reading, hand stitching,
working on my web site, and have several 'collections'.

I love the 'old' rock and roll music from the 50's~60's.
I got my first computer April 1998 and in the beginning
used it only for chat. After a while I got tired of that and
wanted to see if I could figure out how to build a website.
I saw so many neat ones on the internet & wanted to have
one too! So in August of 1998 ~ 'Lady's Place' was born.
It's gone thru many changes since then. I recently got tired
of the old website and started over with this new one last Jan.!

I'm kept busy corresponding with many internet friends,
family and personal friends. In July 2002, I was invited to
join an internet group called 'The Garden of Friendship'. I
signed up and now help out with several of their committees.
It keeps me busy within the group and also got to 'meet' the
members in the group that way. There's around 300 of us?

I have 'pen pals' I correspond with that I've never met, but
we've been corresponding so long ~ I feel like I know them.

I have several things I collect; mainly porcelain dolls,
also collect cherished teddies, music boxes and baskets.
(Glass or wood.) I have several Longaberger baskets.
They are each quite unique in their style and colors.

I love Thomas Kinkade art and have several of his.

Paula Vaughan is also a favorite painter of mine....
She has all kinds of cross-stitch pattern books out
there to buy. I love to do counted cross stitch & have
quite a few CCS pics hanging on the walls here at home.
Most of them took months & others even years to complete.

Some of my favorite things:

Song: Can't Help Falling in Love--by Elvis
(Jim's and my song)
Animal: Cat
Flower: Pink Roses
Food: Chinese
Color: Blue
Actor: John Travolta

My birthday is May 29th.

Page redone December 22, 2006
Page updated April 22, 2009