Celebrating!

After approximately $7000 of clinic fees, 225 hours of sessions, another 450 hours of driving, over 17,000 miles, for the last 3 years......

Nathan attended his LAST speech appointment at the University of Utah last night!!!

He was soooo pleased!  Jubilant!  Excited!  He got a diploma which he is rightfully very proud of!!

We are all thrilled but it hasn't sunk in all the way for me yet.  I keep catching myself planning around this Friday's nonexistent speech appointment.  And I have to say that while the costs have been almost too extreme for our family, the benefits are supreme.  There is no price too great for me as a mother to pay in order to experience:

• Understanding my son--when we started three years ago Nathan was 90% unintelligible.  We could not communicate during the long drives because I could not work to understand him while driving safely.  I could barely communicate with him under perfect conditions!
• Watching him begin to develop true friendships.  Nathan has always been blessed with other little boys who liked to play with him, but he couldn't fully engage because his speech was so poor...now he can really play!
• Our growing faith.  This is priceless.  I have grown because there were so many times I wondered how we could continue and we were always blessed with the means and the time!  More than that, Nathan and I had a few close calls in traffic, weather, etc. when we knew we had been protected.  Several times in the winter, Nathan would be nervous about the road conditions and while I concentrated in the road, he would pray.  And I could understand his prayers!
• This last year and a half I would leave the radio off and Nathan and I would talk.  Or I would listen to him visit with his friend who also started coming to speech.  Beautiful!
• This past year Nathan worked really hard on narratives, being able to communicate a story or event in  an organized way that would make sense to a listener.  This was really challenging. The first time I knew he was really understanding the process and applying the clinic work in his everyday life was when we were on the way home from speech one night and Nathan told his nonmember friend who was going to speech with us all about our church.  He talked for over twenty minutes about our beliefs, his classes, his teachers, our callings, ...     It was like when his tongue finally loosed all he wanted to do was share the gospel!
• Seeing his confidence build and his self-esteem grow!

Congratulations Nathan!  We are so lucky you are in our family and we are proud of you and your hard work!!