Bullying Is No Laughing Matter

As a parent of a child who is dealing with being bullied perhaps I am just a little to sensitive.  Today while I was waiting for my children in front of their school, several kids came out of school laughing and joking around, they looked like they were having a great time.  Then I heard one of the kids say (while laughing) "I'm being bullied".  This child's friends responded by grabbing this child and laughing, saying that if said child didn't give them their lunch money then they were going to beat said child up.  There were several comments just like this and lots of laughing going on. My heart broke when I saw them playing this way.  

Unfortunately bullying has become a normal sight at schools today. Children who are bullied go through so many things, some even end up taking their own lives. As a result of being bullied I know that my child has developed a sense of loneliness and feeling of just not being good enough, his stress induced tic has come back, and his grades have dropped. These are all things that we as a family have to deal with everyday, which is not an easy task.

I know that the children on the school yard were only trying to have fun, but I just hope that they never have to deal with being bullied for real.  I would encourage every parent to talk with their child about being bullied and what it means.  I would also stress to parents to talk with their children about what to do it they know someone is being bullied.  Bullying can be stopped if the adults and leaders know that it is going on.

Giving Up High Fructose Corn Syrup

Over the summer I read some information about HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) and decided that we should stop eating anything with this product.  That was harder than I thought it was going to be.  I lasted about a month and then stopped reading labels, mostly because I got too busy and didn't feel like I had the time to spend reading labels at the store and I felt like I wasn't getting the support at home with this change.  This past week my husband read the same information that I had and suggested that we should stop eating the products made with HFCS.  Great Idea!  Now that he is on board with this concept we are putting it into full swing.  This is not going to be an easy change for us but it will be a great change.  

The first step for us is to rid our home of the products that are made with HFCS.  I am not going to throw out these products, however we are going to use up the products that we currently have in the house and then replace them with HFCS Free products.  As a part of this challenge I will not be buying anything at the grocery store unless it is fresh produce and dairy products. The idea behind this is to eat everything that is currently in our pantry and freezers.  This is going to be an interesting challenge.  

I plan to take an inventory of what we have in the house that needs to be used up and come up with some menu ideas for these items.  Check back in a couple of days for my inventory and menu ideas.

Heading Back To School

After much consideration I have decided that I should go back to school and get my Early Childhood Education degree (I have only been teaching preschool for four years).  I have not been in school since graduating from Wright State University in 1997, this was going to be a challenge.  I originally wanted to go back and get my Master's degree in Education, however the university I wanted to attend informed me that because my degree is in Social Work and not Education that I would need to go back to get another Bachelor's degree in Education then I could continue on with the Master's program.  It seems that this university does not offer a Master's level degree for first time licensure teacher's.  UGH, I didn't want to quit my job to go back to school full time for the next 6 years!  

I looked at all my options for the career path that I want to take.  It turns out that to eventually become a Director of a Preschool I need to have at least an Associates Degree in Early Childhood Education.  That is only a two year degree and I can complete it on a part-time basis.  So I enrolled at Sinclair Community College and today was my first day back in a classroom as a student since 1997.

In one of my classes the professor had us pair up and learn about another student and then introduce them to the class.  This was a great way to meet another person in the class, especially since we would most likely be in many of the classes together.  As the students are introducing each other one of them comments that her partner graduated from high school in 2008, the other student corrected her saying that she actually graduated in 2003 and she wished she was that young.  Um hello, I must be ancient having graduated from high school in the 90's.  Listening to everyone it was clear that I am the oldest in the class, I have the most kids, I have the oldest kids in the class and I have been married for the longest time without ever being divorced.  I am even older than the Professor.  I hope I can keep up with all these young people.

Holiday Lights

At least once a week we drive through Lincoln Park and every time we comment on how nice the holiday lights are.  Last night I decided that I would take the boys out to see the lights and to walk around and enjoy them.  The boys were so excited to go, they each brought their cameras to take pictures.

One of the first things that I noticed was that they had Christmas music playing.  We never noticed that touch because the windows on the car are always up.  Watching my boys run around to look at the lights and taking pictures was such a wonderful sight.  MJ said that it was one of the best nights he has had and AD agreed with him.  I think I might have gotten my Christmas miracle, the boys getting along and agreeing with each other.

Here are some of the pictures that we took last night.  If you get the chance, I would recommend spending some time walking around and see the lights.

Elf On The Shelf

Ahh, the Elf On The Shelf!  Was this invented by someone who didn't have children and had lots of time on their hands?  We have been lucky to avoid taking part in this holiday tradition.  That is until this year!

Several of AD's friends have the "Elf", one day after returning home from a friends house AD asked me why Santa hadn't sent our elf to us.  Not knowing how to respond I said that maybe Santa really needed our elf to help out at the North Pole.  I was very hopeful that this would be a great explanation and he would forget about the elf.  No such luck, the next morning AD again mentioned the elf and still didn't  understand why we didn't have an elf to report back to Santa.  So, like any good mother I told my child I would email Santa and ask him why we didn't have an elf.  You would have thought that AD had won the lottery with how excited he got about this.

Now I had a very busy day planned and didn't plan to be at home until the boys got out of school.  There was no time in my day for an elf visit, but an "elf visit we had.  When I picked the boys up from school I made sure that everything I had picked up and done was evident in my van so it would look like I hadn't been home all day.  We even had one more errand to run before going home after school.  I told AD that I had emailed Santa, but I hadn't heard back from him yet.  When we finally got home and walked into the house all I could hear was AD yelling "Our elf is here".  I told AD that Santa must have gotten my email and sent our elf right away.  The elf even came with his own book, which we had to read right away.  

Now every night I have to remember to move the elf to a new location or do it first thing in the morning before the boys wake up.  Well this morning, I was informed that our elf didn't move last night.  UGH!!!! To say the least I had a very sad child.  I finally told him that perhaps our elf didn't want to report to Santa because they hadn't been on the best behavior yesterday.  He told me that today would be a better day so the elf can report to Santa tonight.  Whew, I hope the elf remembers to move tonight.

Here is a picture of the elf in the same location as yesterday. He is sitting on the hat rack with my husbands cowboy hat.

Summer Happenings

I started this entry back in June and just realized that I never published it.

I totally suck at writing my blog, how hard can it be to write what I am thinking.  There have been so many things that I wanted to write about, but I have talked myself out of them.  Why, I have no idea why.  Now summer vacation is here and the boys are home from school for the next three months.  I should have lots to write about, at least I think so.

Here is what's happening this summer for us.  Last week I spent 5 days chaperoning my sons Cub Scout Pack at their local day camp.  These were fun days but very long (about eight hours each day).  Each day the boys did something new and exciting.  The favorite part of the week were the days they got to shoot BB Guns, Sling Shots, and Bow and Arrows.  Every morning when the boys would arrive they would ask if we were shooting something.  I am glad that our pack had these last on the schedule each day so the boys had something to look forward to.

This week my oldest MJ is away at Boy Scout Camp.  We dropped him off on Sunday morning and left him and three other boys setting up their tent and cots for the week.  I hope that they all survive the week in one tent.  I know that MJ was looking forward to camp this year.  He will be working on Rifle Shooting, Fishing, and Canoeing.  Lets hope that he stays safe and dry.

While MJ is off having great fun with the Boy Scouts, AD and I started off the week by going to a FREE movie at the local movie theater.  Apparently Rave Cinemas does free movies for  nine weeks during the summer.  Each week there is a different movie, we plan to keep doing this each week.  AD is also participating in a Wrestling Camp this week in the evenings.  He has been having so much fun learning new moves and meeting other wrestlers.

The rest of the summer should be low key with a couple of fun weeks planned.  There will be lots of swimming at the pool and the local "Beach" at a state park. 

UPDATE: This summer that boys and I ended up doing a "Jar Of Fun".  I read about this in a magazine, and it was a lot of fun to put together and use.  I got a plastic jar and used stickers to put the words "Jar Of Fun" on it and then let the boys put stickers on the jar.  I then had the boys tell me some things that they wanted to do over the summer.  We typed all their ideas in to the computer and then printed and cut them out.  Each morning the boys got to take turns pulling a piece of paper out of the jar.  Whatever that paper had on it was what we were going to do that day.  The boys had so much fun taking turns and seeing what we were going to be doing that day.  There were never any complaints about what we had planned.  It made for a very relaxing summer.

Jar Of Fun

This year for summer vacation we decided to take a long weekend trip instead of a big week long vacation.  This year we went to Bloomington, Indiana and camped at a "Jellystone" campground.  Both MJ and AD were so excited to be staying there.  On the way down to Jellystone we stopped in Indianapolis and visited the Indiana State Museum (we used our Boonshoft Museum membership and got in for free).  We had fun looking at all the interesting exhibits.  On our way home we went to the Wonderlab,The musuem of Science, Health and Technology (again thanks to our Boonshoft Membership).  This was a fun museum with lots of hands on science experiments for the boys to do. 

Home Sweet Home

Boo Boo and the boys

Yogi and the boys

Summer came to a close for us with AD's very first trip to King's Island.

 I would say that we had a wonderful summer and are sad to see it come to a close.  Both MJ and AD have asked if we can continue to use the "Jar Of Fun" during all of their breaks from school. 

A Family Fun Day!

We have had such busy schedules that we haven't spent much time together this summer as a family.  While looking over the family calendar one day I noticed that we had a couple of days where there were no activities planned or scheduled for anybody.  I decided that on those days we would do something fun to spend some quality time together.

On a Friday evening before the boys went to bed I told my family that on Saturday we were going to get up and pack lunches and head to Chillicothe, Ohio to go to the Hopewell Culture, National Historic Park.  The park isn't that big and the museum was small, but the best part had to be taking the hiking trail.  Each of the boys was able to check out an explorer backpack.  These backpacks had all kinds of guides in them and binoculors, even a notebook and colored pencils so they could draw things they saw on the hike.  The boys had so much fun using the binoculors to look for the birds we could hear in the trees.

After we were done exploring we decided to do some geocaching, but that didn't happen.  Instead we went to Hocking Hills to do some hiking.  I had never been there before and was in for a real treat.  There are six main hiking areas at Hocking Hills.  We went to three of them.  First we went to Rock House.  Rock house is believed to have been a hideout for horse thieves and bandits in the 1800's.  I do not like heights at all, imagine my surprise and anxiety when I discovered that in order to get into the cave I was going to need to climb 53 steep steps on the side of a cliff.  The best part of climbing up to the cave were the hugs and high fives from my kids, who told me that they were proud of me for putting aside my fear.  While in the cave a little boy shouted, "This is awesome".  I couldn't agree more, the cave was incredible!

After we left Rock House we headed to Conkle's Hollow.  This too was breath taking.  With the drought we have had the waterfalls were dry.  Before we headed out on the trail we had to decide which path to take.  Should we take the lower path or the one that warns you to have continuos control of children and that those afraid of heights should avoid the Gorge Rim Trail.  Yep, the lower trail was for us.  It was a lot of fun to see the boys having so much fun climbing and playing where the waterfalls should have been.

Once we were done at Conkle's Hollow we headed over to Old Man's Cave.  Once again the sceanery was breath taking.  We started our journey at the Upper Falls and the Devil's Bath Tub.  Then we continued down the trail to Old Man's Cave.  As we exited the cave our youngest, AD, asked how much farther to the cave.  We explained that we had just come out of it.  His response was "Oh, I didn't think that was a cave, but I guess it was".

On the way home we stopped off at Sumburger in Chillicothe, Ohio.  This was an interesting resturant.  To place your order you pickup the phone in your booth and tell them what you want.  When it is ready they bring it to you.  Everytime you need anything you pick up the phone and let the staff know what you need.

I had a wonderful day with the family!  I am looking forward to our next family fun day, which is a surprise for the boys.  Be on the look out for that adventure story.