So, we have just had our final ARD meeting...if you don't know what that is, it is a meeting to decide services for the next year...Admission, Review, and Dismissal. This is our final meeting before she "ages out" of services from the public school system. We have just entered the era of adult services. It went well, and I think that she will keep her job at Subway. It is scary for me, because I think that we have just become more responsible for her well-being than ever. You expect that your children will grow and leave the nest. The only problem is that some children are never ready to leave the nest. I don't want for my child to become a ward of the state. I want for her to be as responsible as she can...isn't that what every parent wants for a child?

So, now we have to make plans for her life when she leaves school. We have our last ARD meeting on Tuesday, and we embark on a new era in her life. I want for her to be able to keep working at Subway...they have been so good to her. I just have to figure out how to make it work. I need to find a way to have her cared for during the day when she is not at work. I still do not feel comfortable having her at home alone. She is fine under normal daily circumstances, but she is not at all prepared for any kind of emergency. I'm not sure she would know what to do in an emergency, such as a fire or a break-in. I think that she would panic, but I don't know that she would have the mind-set to call 911 or to get out of the house if it was burning. I know at the very least that she is not able to lock the door on her way out. I have tried to train her to do this, but she has not been successful with it. She is able to unlock and come into the house and lock the door behind her. I am comfortable with this scenario as long as she doesn't have to spend too much time at home alone. The only thing that I know she does when she is home alone is that she eats nonstop. She makes herself a sandwich and continues on from there eating whatever she can find to munch on. I don't mind her having snacks, but I don't want her eating everything in sight, either.

So, Chase's teacher at her high school had her best interests at heart. I am forever grateful for her contribution that she made in the development of Chase. She made sure that Chase went into a "post-graduate" program that would foster independence.

Chase entered this program and she got a job at Subway. These people welcomed her and fostered her in a way that no other could. I am forever grateful to these people for this. They welcomed her in and trained her and offered her a way to make some money, while at the same time taught her that she needed to work to earn a buck. This is not something that I could have taught her. Chase has learned the value of money, when money made no sense to her (and still really doesn't). She just knows that she likes money (like we all do), and she likes to have something to spend. This is a lesson that all parents want to teach their children, and Chase was taught this in a way that we were not able to do. It is a great program, and I am grateful that the school system taught her this. It is now my duty to keep this up and to make her know the value of the mighty buck.

So, we made it past this episode. We were more motivated to make sure that Chase was going to be in a safe place. We knew that there were other students in her class who would be threats to her, and we had to protect her from them.

She moved on to Lee High School the next year, and we avoided the dreaded two years at the freshman school. We loved (and still do) the teacher at Lee. She always had the best interests of the kids at heart. I so much respect and revere the job that she does. She has students to deal with and she has to deal with disabilities that she should not have to deal with. She deals with students, gets them into jobs, and she deals with students who should not be in her classroom. She should not have to deal with kids who have no business being in her classroom. It is a situation that she should not have to deal with. I don't know the solution, but the students who can not have any chance of being productive citizens should not be in her classroom. There should be some sort of support for her, and she should be trying to produce productive citizens in her classroom. She has the chance to get these students to be productive, and we should be giving her as much support as we possibly can. She has gotten Chase to graduation, and we should support her as much as we can.

After the brush with danger that Chase and her friend encountered, we thought that the school personnel would be on their toes when it came to safety. We were sadly mistaken. Chase and the same friend would face something just as sinister as before. They were in a homemaking class as an "out class" with some of the other students in their class. The homemaking teacher left Chase and her friend with a boy in the classroom without adequate supervision, without any supervision at all. The boy proceeded to expose himself to them and suggest to them how they could "help" him out, if you get my drift. Chase's friend knew this was wrong and got the teacher from whatever rock she was hiding under. We got a call that sounded like a plea for us not to sue, which immediately scared the pants off of us, no pun intended. We met with the principal and teachers the next day, and let me tell you, they had one angry papa bear on their hands. My knight in shining armor was ready for battle, and he was going to make sure that everyone in that room knew that he would slay anyone who put his princess in danger again. We didn't sue, though the thought of revenge was an attractive one. We chose to use this episode to move her on to the high school the next year. We would not stand for her to be in the freshman school for another year (and we dreaded the thought that her sister would soon enter the same campus).

Choir was a major equalizing factor for Chase in middle school. It was the only class that Chase was allowed to join as a peer, and it introduced her to the "regular" population and gave her a place to belong. The other choir members proved to be accepting and encouraging. They treated Chase with respect and kindness. Any one of the choir members who sang in proximity to Chase knew that she couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, but they encouraged and accepted her as one of the choir. The director was wonderful in taking her in as a member of the choir...he didn't seem concerned in the least that she might sing out of tune or out of place. He was a major godsend in Chase's life in middle school. Chase still encounters fellow choir members in the community, and she is always greeted with kindness and acceptance. What a wonderful thing choir was for Chase while she was in middle school and beyond.

Every child in our new city would face the ninth grade at a separate campus. Ninth grade was segregated from the rest of the educational system for some reason that I have yet to figure out. There are two campuses, one for each high school, and the ninth-graders attend them according to the high school into which they ultimately feed. This would prove to be a real challenge for Chase, and we would once again find ourselves trying to navigate the public school system in such a way as we were not inclined to do. We found out that the system wanted for all of the children in special education to spend two years in the freshman schools. Unfortunately, the freshman schools would prove to be inferior to all of the other schools in the district. Chase's school was in a part of town that was not safe, and it was located very far from our home. The many times that I had to go to the school took a very long time to get there. Our school system has chosen to bus the students in ninth grade to this campus, and there is no telling how much cash it has cost the taxpayers to bus all of these kids all the way across town. That is a whole different story, and I won't get into it now.

The point is that the freshman school is in a bad part of town, and we, as parents, expected that our children would be supervised closely and protected from any dangers in the area. That did not happen, however, and one afternoon, we eluded a danger that would scare us for the rest of Chase's time there (not to mention Chase's little sister, who would soon be attending the same freshman school). Chase's teacher did not properly supervise the students in her care, and one afternoon Chase and her friend were waiting for the bus without any supervision. They were both trusting and innocent, and they would soon face other students who would take advantage of them. A student approached Chase's friend, tell her that he had something to show her, and he would give her a necklace if she would come across the street to see a pretty necklace that he had to show her. Chase's friend followed him across the street to see what he had, and he intended to assault her and to do other things that we didn't have to find out about, thank God. Luckily, there was a parent waiting for another student to come out of the school who witnessed this whole interchange and saw it as abnormal. She followed Chase's friend across the street and intercepted an exchange that could have ended in a sexual assault or worse. Chase's friend only wanted to get a necklace out of it, and she completely trusted this student who lured her away from the school and across the street to an abandoned building. I am so thankful that she had someone looking out for her and that person stood in the gap between goodness and something awful.

This would not be the only horrible thing that would happen while Chase was at the freshman school. School supervision would once again come into play, and we would have the opportunity to interact with the administration of the school once again, even though it would not be pleasant.

So, things went well our first few years in the new city with Chase. All of the educational objectives that we thought were important for her were taken seriously. We were met with cooperation and respect, something we had never gotten before, so it was like a bright ray of sunshine. We had no idea that we could be treated in such a respectful way, and it was so nice. We felt like we had entered the dawn after being in the dark for such a long time.

Elementary school was great for Chase in the new city. We were given everything we asked for, and it was great to have the feeling that we and the school were "on the same side" for the first time ever. We felt like it was a united effort instead of a war for the first time since we had entered the public school system with Chase when she was three years old.

Middle school would prove to give us some challenges. Middle school is always difficult for any student...who would want to be thirteen again? Kids can be very cruel, and it is hard to fit in even under the best circumstances. It is an awkward age for anyone, trying to grow up, and the "kids" always seem to be competing for the "top-dog" position in every situation. My hat is off to anyone who feels "called" to teach these alien beings (thanks, Kim), because they seem to be the most vile beings on the planet (in my opinion). They can be mean, and their aim seems to be to promote themselves and demote others at all cost. This would become evident to us in our first few years there with both of our older daughters. Fortunately, for Chase, this would not be evident to her. She was oblivious to it at most times, but our her big sister would suffer from this, and it would make life difficult for her in many ways.

Our first challenge with Chase occurred when she was in middle school. We got a call from the principal that there had been a problem in a P.E. class. Apparently, the kids were getting dressed out of their P.E. uniforms into their school clothes, and Chase was not able to keep up with them. We thought that there was an assistant that was to be there to make sure that she was getting things done as she should, but we were apparently mistaken. The other students got dressed and were ready to get to their next classes, and Chase was left behind. She panicked and thought that she was being left behind, so she left the dressing room having only gotten her shirt on. She had no pants on yet. She walked across the entire campus in her shirt, socks, and tennis shoes. She had no pants on. Along the way, she encountered jeers, laughter, and whistles. She had no idea of how to deal with this, and she was horrified. She arrived at her destination, her classroom, and her teacher had to take her back to the gym to retrieve her pants. I finally got the call after all of this had happened, and I was horrified, to say the least.

My first response was to call her dad and let him know about what had happened. As a dad, he immediately wanted to call someone on it and let them know that he felt that his daughter had been violated. By the time he got home from work, the teacher had called to let us know what had happened. We really flew into a rage at that point and wanted to hurt someone. About that time, Chase arrived home on the bus. She was crying, saying that all of the kids had laughed at her. To a parent, having your child laughed at is so much worse than having your child beaten to a pulp at school. The emotional trauma lasts so much longer than a physical trauma, and it hurts your heart to have your child cry in your arms over being laughed at. I can think back at the time when I was in junior high school...laughter was the ultimate humiliation for me, and I think of Chase. She doesn't understand any of the normal social crap that kids have to deal with...she only knows that they were laughing at her and that it hurt her feelings. How does a parent try to explain that to a kid, much less a kid that only sees good in others? She had no idea of how to get angry about it, she did not understand that kids do this to make themselves look better to others, and she could not transfer any of it to the kids that did it. She only knew that it hurt her feelings, that it made her cry. Try comforting a child like this when there is no way to comfort her. It will hurt you to your bones, to your very being, and it will enrage you in a way that you had no idea was possible. You will feel an anger and rage that will probably scare you. It will make you understand the guy on the highway who shoots a fellow driver who has cut him off from an exit. You will wish for a firearm and want to search for the culprit.

We made it through that debacle, and by this time we were ready to move on to a new school system. Chase's dad took a new job in a city two hours to the west, and we were on the move again. We purchased another "fixer-upper" and were ready to start anew again. Chase's sister chose to stay to finish her senior year, and it was a difficult and heartrending decision for us to let her do it. In the end, we arranged for her to live with her Sunday School teacher for the year. She had made it through her middle school years well, even though it was a challenge, and we wanted for her to finish her high school years with the peers with whom she had built relationships and the adults with whom she had learned to trust. We would have to deal with the distance between us, but we would be as supportive as possible. Her grandparents would be there for her, which was a comfort to us, and we would try to move on in the new city with her sisters.

We were pleasantly surprised with the new city. We met with school officials about Chase, and we were assured that they had Chase's best interests at heart, and we actually believed it. She started out in a middle school, and we chose to put her back a grade from where she had been previously. We felt that she had been treading water in the last school, just coasting, and we wanted to get her into a position where we thought she should be.

Chase met new teachers and new friends. She was readily accepted into the choir program, which surprised and thrilled us. You see, Chase can't carry a tune in a bucket, but she has a passion for singing. Even if she doesn't know the words to a song (which is most of the time), she will sing along with unbridled enthusiasm. She loves music and anything to do with it. It is such a joy to listen to her sing...it brings joy to even the hardest heart, because she gives it all she has.

We were so pleased with the acceptance with which she was greeted. The director was not worried about Chase disrupting a performance, and we knew that this was a possibility. She sang so enthusiastically, but it wasn't always on the same lines or pitch as the others. She was never singled out as missing a line, a pitch, or a note. This makes me eternally grateful to her choir teacher. He was never worried that Chase would make the choir look bad...he continued to put her on the stage at performances. It is so great to see a child performing, but it is such a complete joy to see a child with a disability, who may not know all of the words or all of the music, enjoy performing with the rest of the choir. This gave Chase such a sense of belonging, and it is probably one of the most important things in which she was involved. These are the kids who showed us the beautiful acceptance that was possible. They gave Chase the acceptance that she had craved, even though she didn't have a clue that this was what she wanted.

I can't tell you what a joy it was to run into a student from Chase's school and have that student stop to talk to Chase, to give her a hug, and to make her feel like "one of the crowd."

Belonging is such a fundamental need to humans, but it is not usually something that we think of. It's one thing for adults (like me and her dad) to feel welcome and accepted, but it is completley another prospect for a student to accept, respect and embrace someone when that person is coming in from a foreign place (even though it may be only hours away). The physical distance is never as significant as the intellectual and emotional distance. A person may choose to live in a location of his choice, but on arrival, this person may find the locale to have less to contribute to his life than his previous address. We didn't find it too difficult when we made the move to the new city, but we also knew that belonging would be a major endeavor for us.

We said our goodbyes, and we were on to bigger and better things, or so we thought. Looking back, we headed into the lions' den, and we didn't know it. There would be good things and bad things about this move, and we would discover them soon enough.

We got to our new home, and I set out to get the family in order. The first order of business was to get us moved in. We managed that okay, after I got over my flu. We got the kids registered in school, and all seemed to be going well. Our oldest daughter was in the second half of the fifth grade, a difficult time to move, but she seemed to adjust well. We wouldn't know until much later that it was a really difficult time for her, and it would continue to be difficult until we left. We had moved her from a secure situation into a competitive situation for which she was not prepared to enter. We will forever regret putting her into a situation that made her feel inferior. The people around her, especially at church (imagine that), would put her self-confidence to a test. We put her into a social situation with people who were so self-absorbed and so arrogant, and we will regret that forever. I hate that she had to be around the so-called "upper class" who made it their mission to make her feel like she was inferior. She was never inferior; in fact, she was superior to them. She managed to rise above these snooty girls, and she made something of herself. I hate that she had to go through the hate that she had to endure. I can't stand that she had to withstand ridicule and belittling. I am so proud of her and the accomplishments that she has made. She is a productive citizen, and we are so proud of her. I just can't stand that her self-esteem was damaged by these girls (in our church, no less), but she has gotten past it, and she is a bigger person for it.

Moving with Chase was a good move. We knew the teacher she would have (we bought our house to have her in this school), and we were excited at the new possibilities that we would face. We would soon make life-long friends with the teacher as well as the speech pathologist who would serve her for the next several years. These women would help to renew our hope and our confidence in the system that would serve Chase. We settled in and spent the next several years reveling in the comfort of being in a situation in which we did not feel threatened.

The sadder goodbye would be the one we would have to say to my parents. They had become really a second set of parents to my girls. I am so very thankful that my girls had the time that they had with my parents. We could never have known that our time with them would come to an end in such a short period of time. We thought that even though we were going to make a geographical move, they would be there for us for a long time to come...how wrong we were in that assumption.

We finally moved to Abilene in January. Rob had worked his butt off getting our house ready for the family to move in. We bought a real "fixer-upper," and he really fixed it up. He did such a great job of getting it ready for us while we were trying to wind up our time at home. I don't think that I have really thanked him for that. I know that he was starting a new job, but he also set up our housekeeping in his very limited spare time, and I don't know if he knows how much we appreciated it.

When we finally got ready to move, I happened to come down with some kind of virus. We managed to get the U-Haul loaded and to get everything to Abilene, but I was so sick that I just wanted to expire when we got there. I just wanted to die. I don't remember how we did it, but we managed to move in. The house was ready, and we were ready for a new start.

Okay, so we would have to endure this for a little while longer. We could handle it, and our daughter wouldn't have to be in the classroom of the superintendent's wife. We could do this, and we could monitor it.

It was fine. We were biding our time. We knew that we would be leaving as soon as we could. We took our time as my husband lined up his new job. As far as I was concerned, he could not do it fast enough. He did get the new job lined up, and we bought a new house in the new place. It needed lots of work, but he was willing to do the work while we finished up business in the "bad" place. We were finally ready to move after the new year, and, let me tell you, we were ready. I was so sad to leave the two friends that I had made that had been there for me, but I was ready to move on.

I had a very sad goodbye with my friends, and I cried lots of tears, but the excitement of moving on was so invigorating. It was a new beginning, and we were so excited to find out what was going to happen next. As it turned out, it would be a new beginning after all.

We registered the kids in school, knowing that we were "the enemy," and we would watch and monitor what they were going through.

I had resigned my position as a teacher in a district completely disconnected with the district we had been dealing with, fully expecting that we would be moving on by the fall and that we would not have to deal with these people again. Thankfully, we would be leaving the first grade and moving on to the second grade with Chase. You see, Chase was placed in the classroom of the wife of the superintendent of schools the year before, and any other placement would be an upgrade.

You see, this placement placed us in a place where we would be constantly looking for the enemy. We had gone into enemy territory. What we didn't know was that this teacher was completely unbalanced. Even though her husband was the superintendent of the system, she was soaring through an unbalanced place that no one else could see. (I would later find out that she was found crouching in the corner of her classroom, when she was in charge of a classroom of first-graders...she was rocking back and forth in the corner of her room...she was never called on it, because her husband was the superintendent of schools, something you can obviously get away with when your husband is a member of the hierarchy of the school system. I certainly hope that this woman is no longer a part of any public school system.) We tried to get through this year, and I think that we did an okay job of it. After all, we emerged with our daughter, and she seemed to have survived it okay.

We had been through so much that year. We tried to get the school system to give Chase the services she deserved, and we were met with the school system's might at every step. They had no desire to meet with us and to help with any kind of therapies or help with our child's disabilities. We had been through numerous and numerous hours of meetings with school officials before this time, with the superintendent at the "helm," and we felt that we could endure anything that the school system could throw at us at this point.

We had seen this school system face meetings with the people who came to help us with our struggles with the school system. We had not enough resources at this time to hire private resources to help us with our struggles, so we were fortunate to come into contact with a group of people who had made it their mission to help people who come into contact with school systems who make it difficult to get their children into regular education situations. They were remarkable. We had an educational specialist who was wonderful and would talk with us whenever we had the need; we had another educational specialist who had physical disabilities that would come into play later; we had a lawyer who was blind and made one of our ARD meetings so priceless that we have never been able to tell him how much we appreciate it.

Our 24-hour meeting was such a laborious endeavor for us. Even though we were both educators, we didn't have any idea of how to deal with this bureaucracy. We felt so inadequate, but we had the support from our group that we had enlisted. They were wonderful. We didn't ever have to pay anything for their services (they were a non-profit group, and they were sent from God, as far as we were concerned), and we got to witness the other people in the room make fools of themselves (which was absolutely priceless, when we needed every little bit of entertainment that we could get). You see, our lawyer (who was blind), was able to name everyone in the room (which was about 20 people) after one introduction, and our supporter (who was physically disabled, and he knew that the school system had not made the mandatory changes to the physical campus), and he put the whole school system in its place when he pointed out the indiscretions in the system, and about the physical outlay of the system that had not been corrected and clearly violated the policy that had been passed by the government. You see, he could not pick up his feet high enough to get to our meeting without the help of his friend (our blind lawyer) to get him over the curbs.

We weren't pleased to be continuing our experience in this school system, but we knew that our daughter wouldn't be placed in the classroom of any relative of anyone related to the hierarchy of the system we had been dealing with for such a long time.

Okay, enough of these memories for now...it is so hard to revisit hard times.

Okay, so I left you with us in a pop-up camper and through traveling. Now, don't get me wrong...our camper was nice. We had indoor plumbing, complete with a shower, plenty of room for all of us to sleep (even when we had our niece), a refrigerator/freezer, a nice heater, a great air conditioner (which was nice in the 100+ degrees that summer in Utah), a place to cook, and room to put everything that wasn't in storage. We even had a TV with a VCR (this was pre-DVD). We had a nice set-up for the traveling summer...we were ill-prepared to spend the fall and upcoming winter in the Texas Panhandle. We had been through a Halloween in six inches of snow, and we knew how cold it could get and how quickly it could get that way. My mom used to call it a "Blue Norther," and it could turn you "blue" in a hurry. We did have a great heater, but we had a tent on either end of this camper. I didn't think that the heater could keep up with temperatures dipping below freezing and staying there.

We also had the problem that all of our things were in storage...this was supposed to be a short-term arrangement. All of our winter clothes, coats, hats, boots, just about anything we would need for the slightest change of season were in boxes, and the boxes were stacked twelve feet high in the storage unit. Planning ahead was going to be a major problem.

The most pressing emotional moment would come with the beginning of the school year. We had planned on seeing the town in our rear-view mirror in August, and that didn't happen. We would have to deal with the school system for at least a few more months, and that was not an attractive prospect. We had been through the loop with these small-town, closed-minded people as long as we cared to. We felt defeated. We had been through the legal system, and we didn't feel like anything else that we did would make a difference. We had been able to obtain some excellent support through a non-profit advocacy group, and my parents had been our lifeline through the whole ordeal. Their support was unwavering, and I will forever be grateful to them for that. They loved us and our children through that time, and my children have wonderful memories of their grandparents (they have both since passed away). As painful and difficult as those times were for us, I feel like God put us there, knowing that the experience would enrich our lives (isn't that strange?) and to enrich the lives of our children, who would not feel the strain of the experience too much.

Our oldest daughter does remember some about the experience, though the things that she remembers are the social workers trying to talk her into saying something guilt-inducing about her parents or her grandparents. I remember them taking her aside without our knowledge and interrogating her. I believe now that adults can coerce children into saying something if their efforts are intense enough and last for a long enough period of time. I have seen that process, and it is one of my great regrets in life that my daughter had to go through it. I know that there are children out there who need help, and I would be the first one to protect a child. I saw children when I was teaching, and I made reports more than once. I, however, never made a fraudulent report with a spirit of malice, and for that, I am proud. I always had the best interests of the children at heart. I hate that my oldest daughter had to go through that process, to hear suggestions about which she had no clue, and the years, really, that we spent trying to heal the things that she endured during that time. I think, in a way, that her life was "colored" by that experience. It certainly soured us as parents, and it made all of our dealings with public school officials suspect from that point forward. We always went into ARD meetings after that with a certain sense of suspicion and certainly with an attitude of reservation.

It has been a stressful thing for fifteen years now, and we are about to come to the end of our relationship with the public school system. That is jumping way forward in the story, and we will get there eventually.

So, when I left you, we were ready to leave my hometown. It was an exciting time for us. We were so excited that we sold our house at the drop of a hat. We had a friend come to our door and say that he heard that we were interested in selling our house. We told him that we were, and told him a price off the top of our head that we thought was high. He said that our price was fine with him, and when would we be able to move out of our house? We weren't really prepared to sell, but we told him a time, and we had to get ready to move. We started to get things together and to prepare to move, even though we didn't know what we were going to do when we vacated our home. We proceeded to buy a pop-up trailer, and we moved out of our home. It was one of the things that we have done that made no sense, but we were excited to move on. After all that we had been through, it was an incredibly liberating thing that we could do to say that we were in control of our lives and that we could do something to make sure that our family could have fun and not be affected by the school system that had abused us for such a long time. We were going to get away from the stress that we had endured for so long, and we were going to move on to a dream that we had no idea that we had had for so long.

We moved out of our home, and we put the majority or our belongings into storage. We thought that we would be moving on in a few months, and we prepared to have things in storage for three or four months, tops. Unfortunately, our things would be in storage until January. We proceeded to travel for the summer. We took on a passenger, our niece, who would travel with us for the summer. We now had not three girls, but four, who would be our family for the summer.

It was one of the best summers of our lives. We traveled throughout Colorado and Utah, and we saw the most beautiful national parks that we had ever seen. We started out in the parks of Utah, and we realized that the Mormans were wise when they chose Utah as their "mother-land." As far as we can see, the national parks in Utah are the most beautiful in the country. If you want to see the handiwork of God, go to Zion National Park. The sheer cliffs are stunning. We had to drive through a high mountain, and the road was forged through the mountain. We zigzagged through the mountain, and we got to see views at every u-turn. There were little windows at every turn, and the views were spectacular at every turn. I don't know how we made it through the switchbacks with our mini-van pulling a pop-up camper, but we did. Zion was waiting for us, beckoning us to join in and have a special pleasure in the waters that were flowing from the mountains and the springs. Seeing all of this beauty, we were ready to camp. We set up camp and proceeded to go to the river to play in the water. The girls had such a good time playing in the water. Water, you see, is a rare and precious commodity in Texas. Water is such a fun thing to ponder when living in such an arid area, something that we long for, and when we find it, we go hog-wild in our efforts to play in it. So, we found a great swimming "hole," and the girls were thrilled to go in to play. They splashed and swam around, and they even found a waterfall to stand under. It was such a wonderful and unexpected pleasure, and the girls had such a good time splashing around and splashing each other.

We had our dachshunds with us, and when we set up camp, we had to tether them to keep them from wandering. We didn't realize that being in Utah would cause us to have a reason to defend our faith, but defend it we did. It was immediately assumed that we were LDS, because we had four children (all girls) traveling with us. Yes, we did have lots of kids with us, but we were not LDS. When the other folks in the campgrounds found this out, we were immediately left alone, and we had plenty of privacy...as much privacy as you can have when you have four girls under the age of eight!! We found this scenario to be true at every campground where we camped. It really was kind of nice, because we had the chance to have quality time with all of the girls, without fear of being interrupted by others who were camping. My niece got homesick about halfway through the trip, and we had to make special efforts to make her feel more at home, but the trip was a great success, all in all. We saw most of the national parks in Utah, and it is such a beautiful state. The Mormans sure knew what they were doing when they claimed the territory that would become Utah. It is the most diverse and the most beautiful state in our nation. If you have not been to Utah to see its parks, run, don't walk, to see the beauty. It makes it abundantly clear that God did have a plan, and he made some beautiful sights for us to see.

We traveled through Utah, went into Colorado, and traveled through New Mexico before we returned our niece to her family in Texas.

We had no idea that we would not be moving in August, but we didn't move until January. This left us with quite a dilemna. We had all of our belongings in storage, we had no house to live in, our kids needed to start a new school year, and our plans were in limbo! We had no idea what we were supposed to do when the fall arrived and the start of the school year arrived. We decided to roll with the punches and wait to see what happened with Dad's job in the fall. We had no idea that we would be "living" in the pop-up camper for an extended period of time, and it would be VERY cold before we were finished with this living arrangement.

A funny aside that I remember about our time in my hometown...

The girls stayed with Mary Beth when their dad and I were teaching.

One day Mary Beth was trying to get all of "her" kids to put their shoes on to get ready to go to pick up the after-school kids. She looked at Callie and told her that her shoes were on the wrong feet. Callie pondered this and finally said to Mary Beth, "No, these are my feet." Her shoes weren't on the wrong feet...they were on her feet where they belonged!!

This was one of my dad's favorite stories. He told it to anyone who would listen. He got such a kick out of his grandkids and loved them all so much.

I left you with us about to move away from my small hometown, but there are so many other things to say about our time spent in my hometown.

My parents, Chase's grandparents, still lived in the house I was raised in, and my husband and I bought a house three blocks from them. We had so many hopes that this would be the place where we would raise our daughters. We had no idea that the small town would have so many prejudices against differences. Looking back on my childhood, it was a town that frowned on differences, and any differences, whether they had to do with race, class, or anything that was different than the "normal," were singled out and frowned upon. I did not know that, because my parents didn't raise me that way. We were taught that all of us were the same, and we were taught that differences were good, that variety was the spice of life. We were taught that colors were something you found in a box of crayons, not differences in skin color. We were taught to respect everyone, no matter what the color of skin was, the primary language spoken, nor the ability of learning. Everyone deserved respect. I thank God that this is the way I was raised. My parents were well ahead of the majority of parents in my small hometown.

So, as we embarked on our journey of parenthood and our second daughter's disability, we assumed that everyone would accept her for her possibilities and not her limitations. We were sadly mistaken. It seemed that her special needs, as limited as they were, were such a challenge to the school system that they could not fathom that she would be an asset to the system and the children in that system. We felt that in dealing with her disabilities, the other students would learn compassion and acceptance, that they would learn as much from her as she would learn from them. That, unfortunately, was not the case. The school system saw her as someone who would bring them down (particularly since we wanted her to be integrated into the regular population). We could not see a problem with her being in a regular kindergarten class, especially since she had all of the prerequisites...colors, numbers, shapes, body parts, ABC's, etc. We soon learned that her differences would set her apart and be used to set her apart from the so-called "regular" kids. All we wanted was for her to have a chance to be integrated and to learn in that setting with the "regular" kids. That desire started a firestorm of disagreements that would continue until we finally gave up and moved away to a new school system which would work with us, listen to us, and make mistakes of their own.

We are so thankful, however, for the time that we had in my hometown. My children (we added a third daughter while we were there) were given an opportunity to have a great relationship with my parents. We had no idea that my dad would be diagnosed with cancer months after our move and pass away a year after our departure. My mom would be diagnosed with cancer five years later and pass away in 2001. My children had an opportunity to be so close with my parents, and I would not trade that time for anything. All of the pain that we endured through the school system was worth it, because my children had the close relationship with their grandparents that they will cherish forever. I will be grateful for that time until the day I die.

Chase went to therapy in Amarillo, speech, occupational, physical, for the years that we lived there. As my husband and I both taught school in Amarillo, my parents brought Chase to her therapy twice a week. They got to spend time with the girls on these trips, and my girls still have fond memories of these trips.

Chase did hippotherapy (therapy on a horse), and she still loves horses. This therapy did wonders for Chase. She could talk better, better use of words, better pronunciations, better communication on the back of a horse. I don't know that anyone could explain why it happened, but it was nothing short of miraculous to us. This is the single therapy that did her the most good of any of the therapies we have ever done with her. If you have a chance to volunteer, to observe, or to take your child to hippotherapy, run, don't walk. You will see advances that will astound you.

So, my parent's time with Chase (and with our other girls) was well spent, and they built memories that are priceless. The things that Chase remembers (not to mention the memories that the other girls have) are priceless. Our girls remember their grandparents fondly, and the struggles that we had to endure were well worth it for them to have these memories. I wouldn't change a thing.

The trouble all started when she was ready to enter kindergarten. She knew all of her numbers, colors, shapes, and body parts. She was ready to go to kindergarten. The problem was that we were in a very small school district (the one I had grown up in and gone from first grade--no kindergarten when I started--through twelfth grade). The school district suddenly wanted to put Chase into a self-contained special education classroom, one which contained only one other student who was thirteen years old, was a boy, who had no verbal skills and was known to have violent outbursts. Of course, we were diabolically opposed to this...why would we want to put our five-year-old daughter into a classroom with a young man who was violent? Thus began our legal battle with the school district.

We hired an attorney (he was blind) and an educational specialist (he had significant physical disabilities). We planned for the ARD meeting to come. (ARD stands for Admission, Review, and Dismissal in Texas, which is the meeting that is supposed to be an annual event for parents and teachers to meet to discuss and decide on educational goals yearly). We were familiar with this process, as we were both teachers in the Texas public school system. We had no idea how familiar we would become with this process in the next few years. We met for an extended period of time (approximately 12 hours). Chase was placed in kindergarten for the year. We kept a journal that we passed between teacher and parent for the year, and we knew that getting her into first grade would be a struggle. We knew that the kindergarten teacher was trying to document her way into keeping Chase out of first grade.

The nightmare began when we had a knock at the door from a social worker telling us that there had been a report of abuse with Chase. You see, Chase was not potty-trained, and the school thought that we were abusing her. We made it through that incident with the social worker reporting that the reports were unfounded, and we thought that we were through with that. We continued through that year, trying to communicate with Chase's teacher, but it was clear that we could not talk with her and that she had motives (given to her from the principal) to move in the direction of the self-contained classroom spoken of previously). We continued to try to communicate, but our efforts were met with anger and malice. We were the enemy, even though we were just trying to get the best education possible for our daughter.

We again faced long ARD meetings that spring, and Chase was placed into the classroom of the superintendent's wife for the next year, with less time spent in the regular classroom and more time spent in special education. We tried to continue communication through written means, and it became clear to us that we were in danger of being accused of abuse. Again, we were reported for child abuse through Child Protective Services, this time accusing my dad of sexual abuse. Chase was still not potty-trained, and the report said that it was my dad's fault. Believe me, my dad tried to legally call them to the carpet, but getting that done is very difficult. A judge has to open the report, and that just is not done in a small town.

One good thing that did come of it is that they sent us to a urologist to see why Chase was not potty-trained at the age of seven. He told us that the test commonly teaches children what it feels like to need to use the restroom. It was a traumatic event for Chase...they hooked electrodes all over her genitals before filling her bladder with water via a catheter...but it did exactly what the doctor said it would do. She was potty-trained!! The school called a couple of weeks later to ask when we were going to file our insurance for the procedure, and I told them that we wouldn't be filing our insurance for the procedure. They asked for it, and the bill was on them!! They had to pay thousands of dollars to potty-train Chase...a little bit of sweet revenge. My dad got a big kick out of that.

By the time that we left my hometown, Chase was in a self-contained special education classroom with students that did not speak. Her teacher was great, but she was in an environment which pushed her backwards. It was a good thing for us to move her to a new school system where she could thrive at last.

I have a need tonight to talk about my pregnancy and the birth of Chase. She was the result of the easiest of my pregnancies. Our older daughter was born when I was twenty-three (barely). My pregnancy with her was difficult in that I had headaches (later diagnosed as migraines). I suffered through them and delivered her by c-section when I was a week late. She was breech, and the doctor advised that it would be best. She developed normally and was a normal toddler when Chase was born.

Chase's womb-warming was more difficult than her sister's. I again had the headaches and had my first MRI to make sure that there was nothing wrong neurologically. It was clear, so I was given the green light to deliver Chase by c-section (she was also breech). I developed a hernia during her pregnancy, so I saw a surgeon before her delivery. It was planned that I would have the c-section and the hernia repair at the same time so that they could work through the same incision at the time of delivery. Problems arose when I went into labor the Saturday before I was to deliver on Monday. I checked into the hospital on Saturday evening, and the obstetrician tried to stop my labor with medication. The meds didn't work, and my labor continued. The meds, however, did make me very groggy and sleepy. I don't remember a lot of what happened that night. Finally, at about 1:00AM, the obstetrician decided that the delivery couldn't wait, and he had to call out his partner, the surgeon, and the pediatrician to do the surgery. Chase was born at 1:15AM. All I remember is that the doctor had to slap her around to stimulate her, and it took her a long time to breathe. I have no idea how long it took to get her to breathe, but it seemed like forever. She did finally cry, and she went home with me three days after her birth.

We went to a scheduled appointment with the pediatrician at two weeks, and I told him that she wasn't making eye contact. I did have an older child, and she was different. She was feeding fine, and she was growing, but she wasn't making the eye contact that her sister had made at that age. The doctor poo-pooed me and told me that I was being a nervous mom. He told me to relax and enjoy her. I did that, but I voiced my concerns at every appointment after that, only to be told that I was being a nervous mom. Who was I to question that.?..I didn't have a medical degree, and I wanted to believe that there was nothing wrong. We continued with this doctor until we made a move to Amarillo for my husband's job.

We got in to see a new pediatrician in Amarillo, and I, once again, voiced my concerns about Chase's development. As we voiced these concerns, we got the same advice that we had gotten before. We were being nervous parents, and we needed to relax and enjoy our daughter. More time passed, and I asked the doctor for testing when she turned two. She had sat up at 12 months and had started walking with assistance at 18 months. I finally had to write a letter to the pediatrician when she was two and still not walking, asking for her to be tested. The doctor wrote back in a very nasty letter that we needed to find another doctor. This ended our relationship with pediatricians forever. We have had family physicians ever since.

The family physician that we found ordered the tests that we requested. It was inconclusive that she might be having petit mal seizures, and we put her on anti-seizure medication for a year. She didn't have any genetic abnormalities, no hearing deficits, and there was no visible brain damage on the MRI. Basically, there is nothing that we can blame her deficits on. There is no diagnosis. She had EEG's a year later, and there was nothing that showed up. She probably never had seizures. We were left with no diagnosis, no reason that she was delayed.

We entered the public school system when she was about 2 1/2. She received home visits from a therapist, and we took her to physical, speech, and occupational therapy twice a week. We loved the therapists, and she made much progress during this time. She entered school when she was three, and we were satisfied with the help that she was receiving. She continued with this, and when she was five, we were ready to put her into kindergarten. This started a horrible experience dealing with the public school system in a small West Texas town.

So, we made it through the holidays. Chase cleaned up on her "Wizard of Oz" items. She got numerous things, from a Glenda that glows 24/7 (thanks Teresa!) to a nice Tinman ornament (thanks Cousin Lauren!). The holidays have always, always meant so much to Chase. She embraced Santa Claus from an early age, although it was at a distance, and she loves Christmas more than any other. Santa was great from a distance, because the very sight of someone dressed as someone else has always terrified her. From Chuckee Cheese to Santa to Mickey Mouse, she has been terrified about who might be behind the costume, but she has also been excited about the possibilities of the characters. She believes that Dorothy went through the storm and that Santa is capable of delivering the presents, and the possibilities that she believes in are the things that keeps the magic alive in our family. It is so much fun to buy for her and to anticipate her reactions to the gifts that she will receive. It makes the season magical. It makes us all believe in the miracle of Christmas.

Now, we embark on a New Year. Chase is going to become an adult, as far as the school system is concerned, and we have to figure out how to navigate through this uncharted territory. It is an uncharted territory that we have to navigate for her, and it is a responsibility that is unprecedented for us. How do you decide your child's path? Parents aren't supposed to have to decide this for their children. Parents are supposed to raise up their children to choose the path that they choose. How are parents supposed to choose that path for them? It is a question that parents of children with disabilities have to ponder. I don't want to choose her path. It has been thrust upon me to choose her path for her. What an awesome responsibility! I don't want for her sisters to be burdened with her path. I want to be able to make her independent of her sisters. How do I do that? Who do I choose to take responsibility for her when her dad and I are gone? Right now, it is her Uncle Andrew and Aunt Laurie. It had been on my side of the family until my mom's death. Then I was able to see that they wouldn't have her best interests at heart, and I would rather her be with family that will love her until the end.

It is a curious thing wondering who will care for your children when you die. You tend to think of people to care for your minor children. It is easy to think of that. That is a finite thing. You die, and someone else will be responsible for your children for maybe ten years. It is a very different thing to think of someone making decisions for your child who will never really grow up. It is a lifetime responsibility. You don't want to pick someone who will put your child into state care. You want someone who will think about what's best for your child, someone who will think about what will make your child happy, someone who will love your child the way you would have loved her.

There are so many questions when you find yourself a parent of a child with a disability. You find that parenthood extends through your whole life, and raising your child to be a productive citizen is only the beginning. Your responsibilities extend far beyond that. Your responsibilities extend to the end of your own life. You have to stare into the face of your own mortality and decide what will be best for your child in the future. It is an awesome responsibility.