Personal SMASH Pages and a Diagnosis

Heads up, this will be a bit more of an emotional post, but I will try not to ramble too much, heehee! What you see before you are the first pages of my red SMASH book. I got this one for free, and there's an interesting story behind it. For almost a year now, I've been attending a support group for parents of children with severe behavioural difficulties, and it's been really great. I've reached the point where I'm comfortable sharing my everyday frustrations, and it's been wonderful to learn from others' experiences and just to know that I'm not alone - the other parents' stories are sometimes so similar to mine, it's almost freaky! Anyway, after I'd been working on my orange SMASH for a while, I brought it to show to the group. The facilitator was so blown away that when she traveled to Williams Lake, she went in to Creative Accents and cleaned them out of SMASH books and gave each of us one! Isn't that just FABULOUS?! So I feel I've done my part in spreading the word about SMASH - let the therapy begin!

My first page, above, tells the story of my cupcake fiasco. (Read that post here.) I printed the photos on the left from the internet, representing the most beautiful and professional cupcakes I could find, and made the cupcake on the right from a CTMH stamp, representing how mine looked (although this is rather generous, mine looked a whole lot worse). Oh, and I also glued some MME scraps around the edges to make a border - I really like this added touch, I'll probably be using scraps like this in the future!The next spread talks about who I am. On the left, I did another scrap border and some masking with ink and a crown screen from Tattered Angels. I go through my feelings about the whole cupcake thing and why I would feel so bad about something so silly. It was quite therapeutic and made me feel better about myself. For the right side, I was stuck. I say in the journaling how when I saw this page, the only thing that came to mind was the I. Am. Canadian. commercial. (For those foreigners reading this post, Molson Canadian is a beer that has built its brand around Canadian patriotism, such that it is.) So I asked my four best friends, via Facebook, to describe me in three words. The words in multi-coloured alphas are words they chose, and I love it! They make me sound like a wonderful person - what a boost to the ol' self esteem!
On this page, I didn't want to cover up the "A" or the bird, so I journaled around the bird and used the "A" as a prompt. At the bottom of the spread there is a horoscope I clipped out of the paper a month ago, and I go into how I used to feel like I should be a Sagitarius rather than a Capricorn - maybe I'm growing into my Capricorni-ness! One day, I was inspired by this pin to journal my "currents". I just jotted them down in a note pad, and I was planning to copy them onto a nicer journaling card, but it was quicker to tear the page out and smash it in with smash tape. I added some stickers from Making Memories to dress it up a bit, too.

And then there's this page, probably my favorite one so far. I just gathered some photos from the internet and printed them off to show what I was into in February of 2012. It's funny how things have already changed in a month! I'm no longer drinking beer or double doubles, and I'm finished with the Tudors and the book I was reading, but everything else is still the same. I used a whole lot of stickers from my stash to make these four pages, so I'm going to enter over at Scrapbooker's Anonymous for their sticker challenge.

Now for the second part of my post - are ya still with me? We took Nolan to Williams Lake yesterday for his big assessment and found out that yes, he does have Asperger's Disorder. It was what Jason and I were expecting, but the news threw Nolan for a loop. He was feeling terrible last night, very sad. He sees it as a disease, and proof that he's not normal. All I could do was tell him that he's my same Nolan and I love him no matter what. I tried to explain that we put him through this process in order to understand him better and help him, but he just wants to be "normal". The other part of his diagnosis, which Jason and I were pretty excited about and which Nolan could care less, is that he has "superior cognitive functioning." He tested in the 99th percentile for verbal reasoning (still not sure what it really means, but sounds impressive)! Now here's the kicker - he told us after the tests that he was trying his hardest not to be diagnosed with Asperger's, so he used all the most technical terms and biggest words he could!!! Like they showed him a picture of an umbrella and asked, "What's this?" He said, "A mechanical device used to deviate atmospheric water," or something like that. I may have changed the wording a bit, but I had a heck of a time keeping a straight face during that one! Poor kid, his plan backfired! Anyway, I'm sure it will all be for the best once we wrap our heads around the whole thing. Thanks to everyone for your support!