Favorite Photo Friday

Yes, this will be 2 weeks in a row folks. Amazing, I know!!!!

My challenge was trying to decide what photo to post. Obviously, since we're still waiting on pink I should probably post a photo of Lili wearing something pink, but I decided instead to give everyone a little information on our oldest son, Ryan, and post one of my favorite pictures of him.

For those who do not already know this, Ryan has autism. He functions lower on the spectrum and also has a seizure disorder, which is not that uncommon in individuals with autism. Our goal for Ryan was to do everything we could that would allow him the opportunity to live a normal life. Part of living a normal life is moving away from home so about 3 years ago Ryan moved about 20 miles from us to a residential facility with 4 room mates. These 5 men have 24 hour staff to assist them with cooking, cleaning, hygiene care, shopping, medications, etc. Ryan has made some new friends and is living his life independently of mom and dad now, so he is living "his" normal life.

Unfortunately, Ryan's seizure disorder does create problems from time to time and this is one of those times. He got the flu and being sick will cause him to have break through seizures. During a seizure he aspirated vomit and was taken to the emergency room yesterday. A chest x-ray and blood work verified this and he was diagnosed with pneumonia in his left lung. After some heavy duty antibiotics were administered, they allowed him to go home for the night. Today he went back to the hospital for more blood work and another chest x-ray and then off to see his doctor for the results. The antibiotics seemed to work!!!!!!!!!! The x-ray showed significant improvement and his blood count was almost totally back to normal. He will stay on antibiotics for a little while, but he should recover nicely.

Since my big guy has had a rough go of it this week, I decided it was his turn to make the blog post.

Ryan chillin on the sofa.