Holidays, changes and time off!

Tomorrow we will celebrate the holiday season at our annual Christmas party and are so excited to see everyone attending! We filled EVERY SPOT! Wowza! It's going to be awesome. After tomorrow Utah Easy to Love will be taking the remainder of December off to spend time with our families through the Holidays. We will make an effort to answer pressing questions or concerns, but may be slow in our response.
A recap of the year...

Our art program with UMOCA was amazing! We will be meeting with Jared and their educational director to work out a schedule for 2015! Stay tuned.

We had an AMAZING turn out for our special needs Easter Scavenger hunt, and even better feedback. We cannot wait to do this again for our awesome families!

Super fun giveaways on Facebook... more to come in 2015

E2L held our 3rd Annual parent retreat in Kaysville, this will continue being an annual event but we will be making changes to the format. It will be better than ever!

We held our biggest fundraiser to date! Our first annual charity glow ball golf tournament at Swan Lakes golf course was a HUGE success!

Had a fun day indoor rock climbing with SPLORE (stay tuned for another round!)

Held an awesome clothing drive for families raising children with special needs, everyone was so awesome in helping us spread the word and get donations together. We were able to help a lot of families get ready for the winter season! Big thanks to KONA karate for their sponsorship and help pulling this together.

We lost one and gained one. Co-Founder and President Jennifer Levy moved to California the beginning of December. She will continue on the board and be involved from a far - but we will miss her. We also added Angela to the board as well as the position of volunteer coordinator/ community liaison, she has been an amazing addition to the group and has stepped up and in to her role with Utah Easy to Love - gun blazing!

Angela put together Easy to Love's first Sub 4 Santa program this holiday season. We were able to help two families and are finishing up this week! We are so grateful to those who have pitched in for these families and cannot wait to make this a yearly program.

So there you have it! It's been a busy and awesome year and 2015 is going to be even better. Watch for additional board members, a new website, awesome groups and activities and more!!

We hope you all have a warm and happy holiday season.

Love,
Lindsay Bartholomew
Jennifer Levy
Chrissy Young
Angela Mitchell

Utah Easy to Love Upcoming Events

Utah Easy to Love has a full and fun rest of the year! 2013 has been flying by and we are so thrilled with how things are going! We have our first family event under out belt, a parent retreat, our first ever workshop & a huge fundraiser. On top of that, we were also able to set up free special needs film screenings with The Utah Film Center! There is more to come and we wanted to share!

October topic is focusing on the effects on siblings and families. Raising a child with special needs is tough and exhausting. It also can take a toll on everyone involved. We will be talking about this stress, have helpful handouts and information and most importantly the support of others who understand. Also that month is a FREE family event at Kangaroo Zoo! We are so excited to be able to offer a fun night out at no cost to you. There are limited spaces, so please RSVP as soon as you can.

October 9th - Salt Lake City
7:00PM
October 16th - Davis County
7:15PM
**If you need to use child care, please reserve your spot. Limited spaces avaialbel. $5/child.

October 19th - Free special needs film screening
Shriners Hospital
11:00am

October 23rd - Family Event
Kangaroo Zoo
6-8PM
**PLEASE RSVP ASAP

November will be focusing on the upcoming holiday season! Always stressful and over stimulating. We will have ideas and support to make the best of it!

November 13th - Salt Lake City
7:00PM

November 16th - Free special needs friendly film screening
Shriners Hospital
11:00am

November 20th - Davis County
7:15PM

In December, we will be holding our 2nd annual 'Special Needs Favorite Things' Holiday Party. Last year was an amazing success and we are thrilled to be able to host another! Watch our facebook and blog for additional details!

It is crazy that there is a little over 3 months until 2014! We have so much planned for the rest of the year and some seriously AMAZING things planned for next!

Christmas Social Story

The Holidays are a struggle for Miss Emma... she has struggled with all the chaos and change since her first Christmas.

The decorations, smells, outings, family gatherings leading up to Christmas are very overwhelming and have often led to melt downs. The week of Christmas is insanity and there is not really a way to get out of a lot of it. The 23rd is always her Christmas with her dad (we separated before her first Christmas) & a big change this year is that she will be doing an overnight 23-24th, 24th is the family Christmas dinner and all the Santa shenanigans, Christmas day is a whirl wind and then the 26th is her birthday. It's A TON packed into days. We are changing things this year to accommodate Emma and her struggles. Less 'get togethers' and group things etc.

Last year when I felt she had gotten to an age she could understand more, we started talking things through to prepare her for certain events. It did seem to help some of the anxiety.

I decided to take the Christmas a little further and create a social story. After pricing them (OUCH!) I decided to do my own and tailor it to our families traditions. It worked really well... it did not take away all of her anxiety but she was at least prepared for what was to come.

These pictures are from last years... I have tweaked a few things for this year, but it is still similar.

**I picked a few of the pages to give a general idea**

Lindsay

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays Everyone!! We are really looking forward to our holiday socials coming up! It is a casual open house type event. Come visit and snack with parents who "get it"!
We will work on keeping the blog posted with new information and posts as much as possible. As I am sure all of you know this is an INSANE time of year, so bear with us through December!

Watch for a post this week, I am posting our Christmas Social story that worked really well last year!!

December 7th - Davis County
7-9pm
Davis Behavioral Health
934 S. Main St. Layton

December 14th - Salt Lake
7-9pm
The Sharing Place
1695 E. 3300 S. Salt Lake

Remember to 'Like' us on Facebook and Sign up for our Newsletter on the top right hand of the blog! The first newsletter will go out the first week of January!

Lindsay