Living with Autism

I don't know if I have made this clear, but I travel a lot. In the last 20 months I have been to:

Abu Dhabi, UAE
Melbourne, Bendigo, and Ballarat (via Singapore) Australia (twice each)
Orlando, Florida
San Diego, California
Valencia, Spain

London, Oxford, Birmingham, Belfast and Manchester, United Kingdom.

Letterkenny, Cork, Galway and Louisberg, Ireland.

I travel to give keynote presentations or deliver Grace App and "Autism 101" workshops and since the end of 2010 I stopped bringing my Macbook.
It was one less thing to get out of my bag and have x-rayed when going through airport security, and there were often compatibility issues with the projection equipment in venues where I present.
Since I started presenting exclusively from the iPad2,  I have never once had a problem plugging in to the available connector using my adaptor.

I still get asked to use the PC but I just say "This is a presentation about iPads, I am using my iPad to present it" while smiling…

What do Snumpreneurs do in the Summer Holidays?

Like superman in reverse, we take off our all in one leotards and put on a summer frock and flip-flops.  And we keep busy!
The kid's special school is no longer offering a 4 week summer program in July - it's because the staff get July off as paid annual leave and any overtime earned by doing an extra month with 23 autistic kids is taxed to bejayzuzz and not paid until NOVEMBER!!!

 So we have 45 days extra days at home to fill.
One of our annual day-filling routines is a special needs swim camp offered by Newpark School in  Blackrock. One to one ratio of teacher to pupil and 5 days in a row to learn and remember what they learned the day before. We love it.






Bringing 2 kids swimming on my own might seem difficult; and as it is a special needs swim camp we can't expect to get into the disabled change room as it is always in use.

So I have to bring both my very post-puberty teenagers into the ladies' changing rooms. It's…

My Gramps passed away today. He was 92 and had a long hard fight but died peacefully with my Granma, my dear Uncle Danny and my cousin Kel at his side.

I got to say Goodbye in person just over ten days ago when we stopped by the nursing home to introduce him to great grandchild number 12 and number 13, Matilda and Emily pictured above. The room was full of cousins, grandchildren, great grandchildren, sons and daughters-in-law and Gramps was over-joyed to see everyone. I went from there to the airport to fly back to Ireland.

He had a long battle. As you may have read I rushed over to Australia just over 6 weeks ago to say goodbye but he rallied that time, and I was glad. This time when the end came he was calm and as prepared as a 92 year old body that fought in Tobruk and New Guinea in the Second World War could be.

He was also a lifelong Carlton Football Club supporter and appears on their website here after they signed a card for his 90th Birthday. I printed off a screenshot of tha…