Waco Moms Blog Continues to Grow | Brooke Malthesen

Hi Waco mamas. I am Brooke Malthesen. I am so excited to be a part of this team of Moms.  I think it is so important for moms to have a place to grow and talk about everything from the funny things to the hard stuff.  A place where women empower each other and learn.  This journey we are on with our kiddos is not for the faint of heart and we need each other.

I live in the McGregor area with my husband, two kids, two fish and a rescue dog. My husband Nolan and I have been married 13 years. We met and fell in love in college at Kansas State University. He headed to medical school while I finished my bachelors in public relations and advertising. We dated long distance for 3 years before we got married in 2005. Nolan is an orthopedic surgeon in Waco so his job keeps him very busy. Although we are both originally from Kansas, we consider ourselves Texans. We moved to Texas during our first year of marriage and haven’t turned back. We love the lack of snow and ice in Texas. We have a 7 year old son, Cole, and a 5 year old daughter, Ellie, who keep me running here and there. Cole is your typical first born. The light of our lives, strong-willed and independent and loves everything sports. He will be in second grade this year in Midway. Ellie constantly keeps me on my toes, full of energy and fearless. Ellie has Autism but doesn’t let that hold her back from anything. She’s the life of the party and she never complains about the endless therapy we do weekly.

Pre-kiddos I lived in several large cities in Texas while my husband finished his medical training. After he finished we were two kids in and looking for a smaller, more of family-friendly, faith-based community for him to practice. Before coming to visit Waco, all I had seen was the few miles from 35 on Valley Mills Dr. to the old Floyd Casey Football Stadium. It didn’t give me the warm and fuzzies. It was not an accurate picture of what Waco was all about, that’s for sure. But, he got the job, I put a smile on my face, trusted God and we moved to Waco. Once again the Lord knew just what we needed. We are now proud Wacoans and love living here for the past 5 years.

When I am not busy shuttling kids, I also enjoy reading, crafting and traveling. I love to play golf as well, but at this stage in my life I unfortunately don’t have to time to spend on the course. I enjoy being outside playing sports with the kids, swimming or riding bikes.

Throughout past two years we have been on a journey with our daughter Ellie. We have struggled to get her evaluated, diagnosed, into the right school and started on the best therapies. Going through this was extremely isolating and scary. Because of this I have met and befriended some of the strongest women who fight and advocate every single day for their special kiddos. Because of this a couple friends and came up with an idea of a community to support moms of kids with behavior issues and special needs. We started with 4 moms and in less than a year it has grown to over 450 members. We live-stream our monthly meetings on Facebook and try to provide resources to these families and place to be understood. We just transferred over to a new Facebook page called “Mothering Outside The Lines- a behavioral support group” and are quickly working to get it up and running. Throughout the journey with Ellie, I felt the Lord telling me that I needed to share our story. Not because we are experts at navigating this life, but mostly because our lives are not picture perfect. There are things that go along with having an Autistic child that are just plain messy. The days are long but so rewarding. It was through this I decided to write about our family’s journey.

I started a blog called Oursensorystory.com. Although I hadn’t seriously written since college, I found myself loving it. It is a way for me to raise awareness and also provided a therapeutic outlet for me I didn’t know I needed. It seemed only natural that I would want to write for this amazing community of moms on Waco Moms Blog. I hope to be able to add insight and raise awareness about the special needs community within Waco.