Welcome to those of you joining me from Disney FAITHful and to those of you
who have just hopped aboard. I am the
4th stop on our Magical Blogorail loop.
Thanks for hopping aboard the inaugural run of the Magical
Blogorail Teal! Perhaps this is your first visit to The Many Adventures of a Disney-Lovin’ Spectrum Mom. If so, please let me introduce myself: I’m
Kathy and I’m a true-blue Walt Disney World Fan! I’m also the mother of two teenagers.
My youngest child is severely developmentally disabled due to his Autism
Spectrum Disorder; thus I am a self-described spectrum mom.
I began blogging in 2009, three years after developing an
addiction to reading and writing trip reports on the trip-planning forums of DisBoards.com.
I enjoyed nothing more than spending an
hour or two curled up with my laptop and a cup of hot tea while poring over a diverse
collection of travelers’ tales. A Disney
trip can supply endless fodder for a good story: the excitement and uncertainty
of travel! The angst of preparing for and battling with the crowds and the
lines inside the parks! The drama of extended family dynamics and the thrill of
those unexpected magical moments! A good trip report can read like a novel -- and
readers said mine always did.
Little did I know that my first report, Adventures in Autism, would grow into a series: An APRIL Adventure in Autism, A HALLOWEEN
Adventure in Autism, etc. Because of
my son, these reports naturally contained many tidbits of information and
advice about special needs touring that I hoped would not only be entertaining,
but helpful for families who were planning to visit The World with a child who
had autism or some similar condition. Nothing was more gratifying than to receive
a message from a reader saying that her family had an amazing Disney trip with
a child on the autism spectrum thanks, in part, to the things she had learned
by reading my reports.
Because of this (and because my friends kept bugging me) I
decided to embark upon an adventure of another sort – the adventure of writing
a book! It’s a rather lofty goal. I’m an
RN by profession and as I’ve said many times, I’m not a professional writer; I
just play one on my blog. In fact, this blog was originally intended as a way
for me to chart my progress while writing about Walt Disney World and Autism. In
recent months I admit that I haven’t made much progress at all! Instead, I find
myself blogging about… well… Walt Disney World and Autism!
Writing is time-consuming and best done when a person has a
reasonable supply of quiet solitude. As a working mother, especially the mother
of a child with special needs, I don’t have very much of that right now. Perhaps it will take years for my book to get written.
In the meantime, I plan on improving my writing by blogging about the things that mean most to me: the
importance of family, an increase in awareness of special needs, and perhaps
most important to all of you, my love of Walt Disney World!
Thank you for joining me today. Your next stop on the Magical Blogorail is Capturing Magical Moments
Here is the map of our Magical Blogorail loop, should you
happen to have to make a stop along the way and want to re-board:
1st Stop ~ The
World of Deej
2nd Stop ~ YourFirstVisit.Net
3rd Stop ~ DisneyFAITHful
Final Stop ~ Capturing Magical Moments
