Buddy’s at camp!

Posted on August 7, 2009 by emandmmom

Buddy has been at camp since Sunday!!  In 12 hours, he will be home sweet home…and probably wishing he was back at camp!  I am hoping he had the week every kid dreams about…the week you see on TV and movies…minus the serial killers and “save the camp” story lines, of course.   As his first camp experience I hope it was all it was cracked up to be…Buddy needed this time on his own.  The time to see what it was like without Mom and Dad.

I am not saying we are bad, but to the 11 year old, it is nice to see what the “real world” is like.  Even if the real world involved a camp counselor named Goose and a screened in cabin for a home.   He still had three hot meals a day, plus snacks…I am sure better than he would have been eating at home.  He still had to keep his area clean…though we heard from another counselor that his counselor isn’t exactly “neat” either.   He was with ALL boys, something he doesn’t get at home with two sisters.

So maybe this week was nothing like the real world at all!  But I do hope he had an AWESOME time and  I can’t wait for 12 hours from now when he can tell me ALL about it!!!

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Nothing is “safe”

Posted on August 7, 2009 by emandmmom

We keep changing the way we do things…just to find out they aren’t any better than what we were doing before.  We trade one evil for another, and it’s just a nasty circle that we are going in.

Here is the latest…you know how we are saving the environment by going with reusable plastic bags?  Well, those very bags could be what are making us all sick!  Here and here  are links  to a study done on how much bacteria and YUCK are on our resuable bags.  Yes, it’s an easy fix…wash the bags.  But how many people are actually doing that and how much water then are they using?

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Missing California

Posted on July 24, 2009 by emandmmom

I am definitely missing something right now…10 years ago I never would have thought it could ever be missed.  It’s one of those things that you don’t miss until you don’t have it.  Whether or not it was taken for granted isn’t the point, you didn’t even know it was missable! (not sure if missable is a word)

In fact, I can’t even type anymore…just gonna daydream about California for awhile.

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The Phone

Posted on July 17, 2009 by emandmmom

The phone seems to be not a very good friend these days.  There was a time in my life, where my phone was my best friend.  Not really, but if you looked at the amount of time I spent with it, you would have thought.  Lately though, I have found a new friend…not sure who it is, but it is not the phone.  The phone is now for my convience, and I like it that way.  It is not for me to depend on, I am let down far too often that way.

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Getting Older

Posted on July 17, 2009 by emandmmom

Bug went to her 3rd year of Girl Scout camp this week.  I have missed her terribly…not being able to talk to her, and hear how she is doing is just killer!  I was very happy to get a letter from her the other day though.  Previous years, she has never mailed anything!  She might have written to me, but she would then hand deliver it.   I can tell she is getting older by her writing.  Not only did she mail me the letter, she wrote a real letter!  It wasn’t just random thoughts from her head.  It was answering some questions she knew I would have, like “how’s the food?”  And also telling me things I hadn’t asked, as in “My couselors name is Ducky!”  I love watching her grow up in these different ways. 

I may not have been with her this week, but I was still able to see how much she has grown up.

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Sweet Blue Car!

Posted on July 17, 2009 by emandmmom

When Bug was 4, she didn’t care about cars, or trucks or motorcycles.  With Squeaky…oh not only does she care, she KNOWS!  We can pass a car driving down the road and she will say “There is Uncle Brian’s Nitro, only that one is red and Uncle Brian’s is blue!” Or, “There is Sarah’s car!”  She can also point out Grandma’s car, my car, Tim’s car, Uncle Mike’s car…and I am sure there are more.  The scary part, she is correct!  (or more scary, we don’t see these cars very often!)

Knowing this, I shouldn’t have been surprised the other day by what I heard come out of Squeaky’s mouth.  We were driving down the road when the most excited little voice came from the backseat. “Look at that SWEET blue car!!!”  Wow, was she excited!  And she was right too…for those who are into cars…it was an old blue Camaro, maybe a Corvette…I honestly don’t know.  But I know it was a “sweet blue car!”

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It never ends

Posted on July 9, 2009 by emandmmom

So, I finished all the laundry except what we were wearing yesterday.  All of it…I did the bedding, the towels, the dog bed…and all the clothes.

Then last night, the kids cleaned their rooms.

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@#^% Chickens

Posted on June 26, 2009 by emandmmom

You know how kids ask for a pet and you say “you have a pet, you have a fish…” And they say “But I want a REAL pet, one I can touch.” Remember that day?  Stick with that thought!  I know I sound awful, but once they get to touch and pet and feed the animal, it is sooo much harder when they die.  (now don’t get me wrong…death is a part of life, and not something to shelter kids from…but let me tell my story) (and I am crying while writing this, so I bear with me)

It was 3 months ago when Bug was told she could order chickens and keep them at a friends house.  A very generous friend, who not only was purchasing the chickens and food, was also going to care for them as she knew Bug couldn’t come over every day!  Bug spent a day researching chickens.  She made a chart with the help of her Aunt Sally, noting all the qualities she wanted her chickens to have.  She looked not only at size and color, but also personality and egg production!   She was allowed to chose 2 chickens, she decided on a Buff Orphinton and a Barred Rock.  Phew!  We thought that part was hard!

June 8th, after waiting two months, her chickens arrived.  We drove her over to meet “Penny” and “Charlotte” and when we got there we were thrilled to see they had given her two Barred Rock (after only ordering 1) so we also got to meet “Lucky.”  Lucky seemed to not be as developed as the other chicks, but seemed to be getting along.  Bug was over for a few hours, playing not only with her chicks, but ALL 21 of them!

The next morning, Tim got a heartbreaking email from our friend.  The night before 9 of the chicks had drowned!  Which included all three of Bugs chicks!  Friend immediately placed another order to replace the chicks that drowned, they would be in June 22.  Bug did ok with it, she was very disappointed, she had waited a long time for her chicks, but she was mainly sad that an animal had died.  (or in this case 9)

June 22 arrives.  Bug gets driven over to meet the chickens.  The surving chickens from the first batch have grown quite a bit.  Not so cute anymore, but getting along well.  Bug has three new chicks.  We now meet Midnight, Twilight and Honeysuckle.  She spent the entire next day with her friend and the chicks.  As the friend also has new chicks, they play with chickens all day.

The next day around dinner Tim got a phone call.  Midnight was found in the water dish under all the other chickens, she was still alive, but soaking wet and not doing too well.  We drove Bug over, she dried the chick, she sang to the chick, she fed the chick water from a medicine dropper…she would cheep a bit and flap it’s wing every now and then, but it couldn’t walk.

We were getting ready to leave their house around 11pm that night, when the mom suggested Bug just sleep over…she knew the chick wouldn’t make it through the night.  So the girls slept on the kitchen floor with the chicken.  Bug woke up in the middle of night and it had died…then, the next morning it started all over again.  Twilight was knocked into the water and soaking wet…and after a few hour she died too.  Now I know you are going “get rid of the water!!!”  That is just it, they are using a 2in diameter saucer with barely any water, and they aren’t leaving the chicks alone  with it…they just get trampled and stuck.  So now both her Barred Rock chicks died yesterday.  When I went to pick her up, she totally broke down.    I wish I had been there with her when it happened, but I wasn’t.  She had her friend with her who hugged her and was doing everything possible to help her feel better.  It’s just so much harder as they get older.  Her fish died all the time and she was sad, but not heart broken.  She never held it, or fed it from her hand, or had it pecking at the mole in her finger.    She had never seen something living one moment and dead beside her the next.  I know, all life lessons and experiences she would have someday…but why today…or even tomorrow.  Why not when she is MUCH older?

So that is why I say $#%^  (dang) chickens, and stick to having just fish for pets.

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Sportsmanship: Part 2

Posted on June 26, 2009 by emandmmom

If you read Part 1 of this you can probably guess I am less than thrilled with some of Buddy’s soccer teammates. 

This team consists of 5th and 6th graders, so you have “first year players” and you have “second year players.”  In most cases, your 2nd years will be “better” than your 1st years.  The 1st years have to start out somewhere.  They have to learn just as the 2nd year players learned the year before.  However, somewhere in the transition to “2nd year player” some players seem to forget what it was like as a “1st year player.”

When Buddy started soccer this year, he was excited.  He wanted to play goalie, and he wanted to badly enough that he used his own money to buy goalie gloves.   So earlier this week when he wouldn’t even bring his gloves to practice it set off some alarms in my mommy brain.   After doing some investigations, both questioning him and asking the adults in his school that we have close contact with, we discovered he was told by some 2nd year players that he sucks at goalie.  (Can you hear his heart breaking?  Can you hear mine??)  To use my sister-in-laws words…”HOW DARE YOU?!”  How dare you tell someone who is trying, learning, doing their best, and doing it as well as some of your friends, that they suck?  What happened to being a team?  Why are they not trying to bring him up?  Fill him in on what he did wrong, sure, we can all use improvement.  But don’t totally shut the kid down. 

It wasn’t just Buddy that they were bringing down either.  It was a handful of the 1st year players.  Though the whole team has now been talked to, and to my knowledge things are no longer being said to the first year players, Buddy still will not play goalie.  

And the game he played…wow it was a doosey. Within the 1st 30 seconds of the game the other team injured our goalie.  Buddy was the ONLY player then willing to even get in the net that night!  Yes, we lost, but now that we have played that team a 2nd time, we lost again…and this time we lost by even more!  I know great news for Buddy, not for team though.  My point, though we lost the game he played, he was brave enough to get in the net when there was NO other players that would do it!   And yes, we lost, but the 2nd time we played them we lost too.

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Larry, Larry, Larry!

Posted on June 26, 2009 by emandmmom


Our school is full of traditions.  Some traditions I would like to mix up a bit…like the songs the students sing on the last day of school.  Pretty sure they sing the same songs every year.  The very last song is new…and possibly the kindergartens song, but the rest are the same.

Traditions that I wouldn’t change.  At the end of each school year, the 4th graders put together a time capsule.  During the end of the year ceremony you will hear “Larry, Larry, Larry, Larry!” chanted by all the the students as Larry goes up into the rafter of the gym and attaches the Time Capsule to the ceiling.  There it will sit until those 4th graders enter 12th grade.  Then sometime during the 12 grade year, the contents will be revealed to the students who are still in our district.

Students with Perfect Attendance receive a certificate and a 2 Liter bottle of pop at the ceremony.  I know Bug was sooooooooooooo excited to get the pop.  This was her first year to get it, I think it made her year.  It’s an interesting incentive and one that came to be before HFCS was all over the media!  But, it is their tradition, and even though it isn’t the principal’s favorite, they keep on doing it.

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