Meet My Family

Raising six kids hasn’t always been easy for us.  Understand that it’s a blended his-mine-and-ours family, and it becomes more of a challenge.  Change up the mix to two with special needs and four with typical needs, and the challenge gets even tougher. 

In this first post, I’d like to introduce you to my family. 

Wayne is my husband and the delight of my heart.  We’ve been married since 1997.  He works as an IT specialist for a non-profit agency that provides Head Start and Early Head Start services to children in our community.  Wayne is also a distance cyclist and bike commutes 35 miles a day several days a week.  He plans to transition to providing direct care to people with autism and their families, including ABA advice down the road.

I am Jyl.  I’m an at-home mom and deal with some health challenges of my own, including fibromyalgia.  I enjoy reading, jigsaw puzzles, quilting, and embroidery, and have finished the first draft of my first novel, Untrue.  I also like finding healthy, plant-based recipes for Wayne and me to play with on the weekends.

Michael is our oldest child.  He currently teaches English as a second language overseas.  He has taught in Taiwan, Morocco, Turkey, Russia, China, Vietnam, and Indonesia.  He’s very interested in US politics and sports, especially US pro basketball and world wide soccer.

Alyssa is next.  The mother of two beautiful little boys (I admit I’m biased about my grandkids!), she works as a coder for a software development firm.  Alyssa grew up on fairy tales and still believes in the wee folk.

Michelle is a teacher in a developmental early childhood education setting.  Her area of expertise is children with autism.  She plans to start art school in the fall of 2016.  Her style is fantasy, very whimsical.  She’s also fascinated by Nicola Tesla, Albert Einstein, and their cohorts, so we can only guess at the directions her art will go.

Andrew, our older son with special needs, lives in a group home about a 20 minute drive from our home.  He works as a landscaper on a team through his day treatment program.  Andrew has cognitive impairment (they used to call it mild mental retardation), serious mental health issues, and a form of colitis.  He loves Star Wars and cowboys and spies, and taking things apart to try to “fix” them. 

Ryan, our younger son with special needs, attends a pre-vocational program at his day treatment program.  Ryan has moderately severe autism, cognitive impairment, and serious mental health issues.  He loves vintage cartoons and computer games like Mario.  He lives with us, as does . . .

Reeve, our youngest.  A junior in high school, he plays trombone in every school band and ensemble he can audition or volunteer his way into.  Music is a huge part of his life, and he plans to make it his career in some fashion.  He currently works at our local grocery store as a courtesy clerk.

Our lives are shared and enriched by Snowball the lab-mix dog and Amber the dusty tortoiseshell cat.  We’ve had pets throughout our marriage.  I can’t imagine life without their presence.

In a nutshell, that’s who we are as a family.  Stick around and get to know us, and let us get to know you.  This kind of life is a journey, and it would be great to have more friends along for the trip!