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A continuation of my original blog, "Surviving Motherhood". |
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Welcome to my world of middle school, high school, and motherhood. The life of a mom is never easy, especially as children grow, and especially when you have a special needs child. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| Today was the last Brownie meeting of the year. We had a party to end all parties, and ALL of my girls were there. I let them choose their journal each, and a colored pen, and then I had them write their names in each journal. I then wrote my own little personal note to them in their journal, and gave it back to them. I told them they could write whatever they wanted in them, or draw, or do whatever they felt like doing. They were pretty stoked about that. I'm so pleased that they liked their gift! It's not easy to shop for 7 and 8 year old girls, they're all into different things, and they're all different people, so to get everyone the same type of gift and have it a success, that made my day. The girls were so excited to get me to write a note in their journal. It was my pleasure, they're very special girls. I'm thrilled with how this year turned out. It was way better than I expected. We did a lot of activities, and had a lot of fun. Even the work for it was enjoyable, and the girls really got into it. We earned so many patches this year...so many things. And though some of the girls were unable to make it, those that did enjoyed it immensely. I really hope to repeat this year's success next year. I don't want to fail these girls. I got so many compliments from the parents. They told me I was a fantastic Girl Scout leader, and they were thrilled their daughter was in my troop. I also got confirmation from the girl I thought wasn't coming back that she is coming back, and her mom will pay for early birding this week or next. I'm so happy and excited to have all 10 of my girls back. That means the world to me. We all started this journey together, I'm so glad we get to keep going. I love each and every one of those girls. My parents spoiled me and got me not one, but THREE Thirty-One items, and a box of chocolates. I definitely feel spoiled! Hopefully I can get my one picture mom to put the pictures up on the website so I can make a photo book with them. I'd love to have my first Brownie year in a book! I couldn't be happier with the decision to take on being the Brownie troop leader. I couldn't be more grateful for all the girls and parents I have. This really is one of the best things I've done with my life. Journey said she's thrilled that I'm her troop leader. As long as she's happy with it, I'm happy with it. What a great year! |
| Nine more days of school. Ryan has a field trip to the swimming pool on the 6th, and then after that it's pretty much the end of school. Journey has a class party on the 10th, and then the 12th is Ryan's promotion. Journey will be an usher at the promotion, as all younger siblings are ushers for the promotion. I'll be dressing Journey nice for the promotion as well, but I'm going to have to talk her out of her heels that day, as they said they'll be moving up and down, and I don't want her to trip. I'm hoping to get seats inside the gym so I can be sure to take pictures. I'm going to stand outside the doors for 20 minutes to see if I can't get seats in the way back at least. It would totally suck to have to be stuck in the cafeteria watching on screen, and not even be able to take pictures. I don't like that. We'll see what we can do that day. Journey's last meeting for Girl Scouts is on the 4th, and we're throwing a little celebration. My 2nd adult mom was the one that put all this together, and I can't be more thankful to her that she spearheaded this. I've been busy with end of year things, so I don't think I would've had time to put this together. We're also having a pool party for the girls on the 7th at my 2nd adult mom's house. I'm so grateful that she's allowing us to do this. I have some awesome parents, like her. Some parents just don't give a shit, but she does, and I'm thankful for her. I wish I could've done more than just a t-shirt for her. I wish I could've gotten her something bigger and better, but sadly that was the best I could do with the financial circumstances. I hope it's thank you enough to her. I want her to feel appreciated. I'm getting the girls a journal each and letting them pick out a colored pen to keep, and each of them is going to write their name in the front page of the journal for them to remember this year by. I don't think one of my girls is going to show up to either celebration (she's the one that's not coming back next year), so I'll just have to give her gifts to one of my other girls that sees her. Since I'm giving the gifts at the end of year meeting, I'll just give it to one of the girls that's in her class to give to her. That way for sure she'll be able to get it. Sad that it's going the way of her not participating anymore even though she's still part of the group. I guess her mom sees no point in her going to the meetings if she's not coming back, I don't know. She could've earned another badge if she was there last week, but she wasn't, so she missed out again. I feel bad when my girls miss out on things, but there's nothing you can do about it, you know? Oh well. Speaking of journals, I've decided that's what we're going to do as a family this summer. The kids and I are going to journal all summer long. I figure I'm already journaling, and they could use it to help practice their penmanship, keep up with spelling, punctuation and grammar, and it'll either help them get in touch with themselves, or give them a place to record their memories, or both. I highly recommend journaling. Of course, this recommendation comes while I'm blogging, HA! We're mostly staying home this summer (I've talked Don into letting us have the car every Friday, so we can go get gas and groceries and go to the library), no occupational therapy appointments of speech therapy, no Girl Scout camp, no camps period, just staying home almost every day. I'm trying to think of things we can do that will keep them off the Wii, the DSes and the tablet all day. They could spend HOURS on those things, and I don't want them to lose what they've learned from this last year just because they're playing Angry Birds all day (or watching endless episodes of Dr. Who). So far, all I've thought of is two hour reading time, and one hour journaling time. I wish I had our desktop computer working, I would get them on Moodle and Fast Math for the summer. Sadly, our desktop crashed...yet AGAIN, for the 6th time in 3 years. What a piece of crap. Nothing we can do about it right now though, so it's just the laptop here. I can allow them to go on the laptop to do those things, but it's kinda hard to navigate with the mousepad and missing keys on the keyboard (I'm getting around that right now by plugging the USB keyboard into my laptop and using it instead), so I dunno. Journey's being interesting lately...and I don't know why. She won't tell us, but something has changed her, and I don't know what it is. Firstly, she refuses to go back to gymnastics, which I find odd, because she LOVES gymnastics. She used to cry every time we couldn't afford to put her in a session, and now she refuses to do it at all. We can afford to put her in the last session, but she doesn't want it. I don't know if some girl made fun of her in the last class she was in, or if something happened that a coach said, or what, but she won't go now. She won't tell me why she doesn't want to go, she just says "I don't know", which we ALL know, is not an answer. She changes it to "I don't feel like it", and leaves it at that. I wish she'd tell me what changed her mind, I'd like to help her. She's the same way with bedtime now. She sobs when it's time to put her to bed, she insists she's not tired, and that she's going to stay up all night. She told me yesterday that she never sleeps...I almost fell for it, until Don piped up with "Journey, we have to wake you up every morning. You have to fall asleep at some point." Good point Dad. So I told her "What do you mean? Do you stay up late?" and she says "Sometimes...sometimes I have a hard time going to sleep" so we started discussing melatonin. For some reason, she just does not want to go to sleep, and I don't know why. She told us she has bad dreams all the time. I know that's not true, because she tells me about the dreams she has every morning when she wakes up, and they sound like good dreams to me. So I pointed that out to her, and she retracted and said "sometimes" she has bad dreams, to which we told her that everyone has bad dreams sometimes. She was insistent that she didn't want to go to bed though. She fights us almost every night. However, when it comes to waking up in the morning, she's really pleasant about it, and on the weekends, she sleeps in till like 11:30 am. I don't know what her deal is. At least she was honest and up front with me about why she didn't want to go to Girl Scout camp this year. I wish I knew why she didn't want to do the rest. So that's what's up lately. Hopefully we'll get seats in the gym and I'll be able to share pictures of Ryan's promotion ceremony. We're going to celebrate his promotion not that night, but the next night, as we don't have any money to celebrate on the 12th, but we get paid the 13th, so we can go out to dinner and get him a watch then. I'm so proud of him. |
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