I have been neglecting this blog because I have a different one that I do just for me and my little family.  It is our journal.  But enough of you have been helping Brooke and hoping for the best for her so I thought I would copy what I wrote on my journal blog and share it with you.  Thank you for all of your concerns and more important, your prayers for our family.  This has been a long time coming and I think even you will be surprised as to what we found out!  On a side note, Amy, you can see when we last had our pictures taken.  We would love to get them redone sometime soon!  We would like to have some current ones of Jayden especially for his baptism in March.  Is there a time during Landon's weekend where we could get some taken?

WOW!! What an amazing day I had yesterday! I woke up and got the kids all ready for school and sent them on their way! I had only been home for a couple minutes when I got a call from Sandy Kunkel over at the school telling me that there was a lady coming up from Vernal to test Brooke and see if she couldn't help her. Brooke has been really struggling with her school work. I have shed so many tears these past couple of months because I have know that there was a problem but not knowing how to help her. So many prayers I have uttered asking that help would be given to Brooke and that she would start to do better. Well, those prayers were answered yesterday! Vernie Heanie is the lady's name and she works with kids and finding out what color they need. That sounds strange doesn't it!? I was a little worried when she started to tell me that by laying a colored overlay over her pages that she reads it will make a big difference. I wanted to laugh because of how rediculous it sounded, but I held back because laughing at someone is not nice!! I just sat back and let her take me on the amazing ride.

I pulled Brooke from class and we sat at the little tables in the Library and let Vernie do her magic! It was really simple, Vernie wanted to make Brooke's eyes tired, since the problem usually presents itself the more tired she is! So she had some papers with a Jackolantern and a Penguin made out of all "X's" and other symbols. The belly of the penguin was all white and the eyes, nose and mouth of the jackolantern white. Brooke was asked to look at the jackolantern and was asked several questions about what was happening as she looked at the white parts. She said that the black was "Jiggling" and that the white part was really bright! WHAT? Have you ever heard of that? Normal images moving back and forth when all she was doing was looking. Well, hold onto your socks because then Vernie asked Brooke to look at the white of the penguin and was asked all the same questions. I expected her answer to be the same since I couldn't tell the difference between the two images except of course the image itself. But she blew me out of the water!! While looking at the penguin she told us that the paper kept turning red and blue. As I sat there listening to her describe what was happening to her when she tried to read I had to hold back my tears because the last thing she needed was to see me crying AGAIN for her. But it was hard. Think about how much you read every day! Everything is reading or looking and keep in mind that Brooke wasn't READING anything she was just looking at a white paper with black marks on it. Vernie then gave Brooke a piece of paper that had Dutch words on it. She didn't want Brooke to focus on the words but to just let her eyes spot which color was better. She then took one colored overlay and put it on the paper. She removed that one and put a different color on, asking Brooke which color looked better. She continued to do that until she had gone through all of her colors. Then she put one color on half of the page and a different color on the other side asking Brooke which one was better. Again she did that several times. THEN she put two colors, that according to Brooke had been the best ones, on top of each other on this page. Brooke sat back and exclaimed that they were no longer moving. This was a page of words that you would read in ANYTHING! This wasn't a picture made out of white paper and symbols. As her Mom it hurt me to know that she had been living with this for probably forever and Vernie said that that is the reason she hadn't said anything was wrong. She didn't know any different! So NOW she has a couple of the sheets to keep at school for her books there and I was sent home with some to keep her at the house. When her siblings saw what she had they HAD to know what they were and what she was doing with them. I smiled to myself as I heard her tell them that they helped her read just like them! AMAZING!! I sat back and just thought about how blessed I am to live here in Dutch John. I wonder if she would have been given the glasses that she DOES need (she has a stigmatism and is near sighted just like her Mom) and then then her other problems would have been looked at as just her not trying. That is what I was told at the last Parent Teacher Conference. "She is very bright, she just isn't trying hard enough!" "Maybe if she stays after school we can scare her into doing better!" Those are not things you want to hear about your child but we did try having her stay after school. And it did scare her to think that her Mom was going to be mad! Now wait, that isn't fair and I have no idea why she would think that because I thought I had been doing a good job at hiding my fears and not telling her how she was doing at school. The only thing I can think of is someone at school told her that Mom was going to be mad!

In the next couple weeks there is going to be different lady who will come up and work with Brooke AND the teachers. She will see what kind of help Brooke needs to get herself to where she should be and will TRAIN the teachers on how to help her! Two weeks ago when we met with the Opthmologist/O.T, I felt like my options were NONE and that Brooke was going to have to just deal with her grades! AND NOW! The whole world seems to be opened for Brooke and that makes my heart SOAR! I have had some amazing moments with my kids but THIS is one of the top!!