The Thanksgiving Post

Lillie decided that we needed a poster on the wall for everyone to write what they are thankful for. She even drew a box for each person: Lillie, Harlan, Sophie, Dad, Mom, Nana and Papa ... We each had our allotted space for thanksgiving. Here are the lists (so far):

Lillie:Sport Dog, tv, school, friends, Mom + Dad (she has started abbreviating), rain + sun, Harlan + Sophie, Nana, Papa, roller skates, Lisa + Mark (her roller skating teachers), art, holidays, everything. (She didn't have room to write it all down, so she just summed it up nicely.)

Harlan: Jesus, Sport Dog, Mom and Dad, Lillie, Sophie, 'myself,' toys, hugging Mommy, kissing Sport Dog, Nana and Papa's visit, dancing, roller blading.

Sophie (really just a list of things she likes ... she doesn't fully grasp the concept of gratitude yet): Dora the Explorer, Sport Dog, dinosaurs, Pinkalicious, Purplicious, Harlan, candy, cupcakes, pink fingernails, soap, dresses, dancing, playing, hearts, school, cochlear implants, swimming, Ella (her best school friend). She also added: "I broke my CI (cochlear implant) and I was sad. But I am happy because my CI is better!"

Wes: My family, Sport Dog, books, school, movies, hockey, bikes, church, my house, scriptures, audiobooks, trees, running, friends, computers, rain, snow, wheelchairs, love, iPhone, engineering, pottery, creativity, failure, problems, tools, mountains, the ocean, ice cream, Trash! (yes, he wrote it capitalized with an exclamation point. He loves to go dumpster diving), Cochlear implants, math, science, music, eyes, ears, ice cream, feet.

Samantha: My awesome family! (and dog), books, trees, kiwis, music, chocolate, Wes's job, toothbrushes, Cochlear implants, pottery, the food pantry, pictures, freedom, flowers, avocadoes, movies, our fun house, sunshine, church, wind, playing in the rain, friends, dancing, jeans, hoodies.

Nana (my mom): family, popcorn, chocolate, good health, golf, blue skies.

Papa (my dad): family, Macavity (his cat ... formerly my cat), golf, health, tennis, reading.

So ... on this most grateful of days, our family offers our collective thank-you ... for everything! :)

PS - I am also thankful for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade!

PPS - AND for Wes having Christmas day OFF!!!! Yay, celebration! :D

Setting goals

Goals (Or maybe just a wish list):

Yoga almost daily (I am afraid of commitment)

Read scriptures daily

Read a book a week

Eat healthier

Stop clutter BEFORE it comes into my house

Finish what I start!

To be continued ...........

One successful day!

Every now and then I have a hugely successful day, a day full of motivation and drive. And usually when I have these days I write about them in my blog. (See, they ARE rare!) So now I will share my today.

Woke up. Showered. Dressed myself and three kiddos. Packed Sophie's lunch. Switched the laundry. Dropped off the girls at school. Took Harlan to gymnastics.

Dropped off Sophie's enrollment forms at the Columbia Public Schools office (so they can pay for her services at Moog). Dropped off Sophie's Medicaid application (a requirement of the Bureau of Special Health Care Needs ... so they can also maybe help pay for her services). Went to the Food Bank to buy t-shirts for our Thursday morning volunteer efforts at the Pantry. Bought groceries at Wal-Mart (no small feat with Harlan in tow!)

Came home. Ate lunch. Switched the laundry. Picked up the girls from school, back home for a much-needed 30-minute rest. Got Lillie dressed in the fancy outfit loaned to us by her wonderful roller skating teacher. Took my friend her 'we work for food' shirt (surprise!), drove all three kiddos to the skating rink for Lillie's special practice in preparation for her talent show (which is Monday).

Returned home. Fed the kiddos pasta and apples for dinner. (Skipped the bath tonight.) Teeth brushed, faces washed, pajamas on, books read, songs sung, Sophie's 'ears' put safely in their special box for the night.

Washed dishes, folded laundry (most of it, anyway), took out the trash and recycles, played with the puppy. Located two missing library books and set Sophie's Halloween costume aside for her to take to school tomorrow. Typed a blog entry. Went to bed BEFORE midnight ............ maybe.

And all on a day when I had only 5 hours of sleep the night before (up late folding ... we have lots of clothes, evidently), and a night when Wes is on call!

And so I give some credit to my friend Rosie, whose poster and action-figure, proudly displayed on my red kitchen walls, gives me the inspiration to make it through another day:

A few random things...

1. My new favorite Pandora station is the B-52's station. If you are not familiar with pandora.com, you really should take a look ... no matter what kind of music you like.

2. Today my kiddos had their first tastes of Ramen noodles. I haven't bought Ramen in 8 years or more. I was pleased to read the wrapper and find that Maruchan refuses to compromise flavor for some silly passing fad ... like nutrition. It says, "You may reduce the sodium level by simply using less of the seasoning packet." You want healthy? Use less seasoning. Or eat something else. Nice to know that some things never change.

3. I hate plastic bags, so whenever I go to the store I buy the 99c cloth reusable shopping bags. The problem is that I always forget to take them with me when I go shopping, so now I have an abundance of reusable shopping bags in my closet at home. I've tried keeping them in my car. I still forget them when I walk into the store.

4. Sophie refuses to use the word "ponytail" and prefers to call them "kittytails" instead.

5. I love thunderstorms. I didn't when I was a kid, or even up until just a couple of years ago. But I love to hear the thunder boom and see the wind blow and the rain pound. It is so gratifying to see Mother Nature throw a huge tantrum. I think it's because I often feel like I'd like to throw a big hissy fit but I'm not allowed to ... I'm living vicariously through the weather.

6. The huge fundraiser for Sophie's school, "Name that Tune," is one week from tonight. I need to find a rock-and-roll costume to wear, and I only have a week! Too bad I gave away my black vinyl pants ... but they probably wouldn't fit anymore anyway. :(

7. Harlan's gymnastics place, Tiger Academy of Gymnastics, has a float in the homecoming parade this Saturday. We get to ride on it! (Shh, it's a surprise!)

8. Today Lillie stayed home from school (again) with a weird stomach bug (no fever, no fatigue, no loss of appetite, just a little runny-ness.) Anyway, she decided to 'homeschool' Harlan today. She came up with a schedule and everything: free play time, reading time, snack time, spelling test, science, etc. She even scheduled time to teach him to be nice to the dog. She is such a little teacher! Unfortunately, Harlan does what he wants to do ... not what other people tell him to do. Lillie got frustrated. Now they are just playing in the playroom.

Just felt like sharing. I'm trying to be better at this blogging thing!

PS - I just noticed Lillie did not eat her Ramen. I asked her why and she replied, "It was too salty." Hmph.

Stolen.

I like this blog and I like this post on this blog.

http://blog.cjanerun.com/2009/10/heavy-meal.html

Since you asked ....

Every time anybody asks me about why we switched from public to private, or what we think about Lillie's new school, I yap their ears off forever about how wondrous our experience has been. So now I will blog it instead, and maybe I will get it out of my system. Or just have somewhere to tell them to "read all about it!"

First. Why did we switch??

1. Lillie was attending Mill Creek Elementary, the school that is widely considered to be the best public elementary school in Columbia. Relatively new building, media center, huge playground, the works. She even had to go DOWNSTAIRS to get to her class, which was exciting! However, her teacher had 25+ students and only a couple of years' experience. She seemed like a really nice girl and a good teacher, but when we spoke to her at 'meet the teacher' night, her eyes got huge when she learned that Lillie reads a good 3 years above her grade level.

2. In a class that huge with one teacher, you've got to either need tons of help or act up in order to get attention. Lillie is a smart, well behaved kiddo, so she was blending in with the walls. She was so bored... She can do addition, subtraction and basic multiplication. In her class, they were given a sheet with numbers on it and instructed to draw the correct number of dots for each number. Wouldn't you be bored?!

3. On the fourth day of school (the FOURTH day!) she asked, "Do I HAVE to go there again? Do I EVER get a day OFF??" She hated it.

4. The girls in her class were a bit clique-ish ... their parents know each other so they just play with each other. Lillie felt out of place, socially awkward, and generally not accepted. The school was huge, the class was huge, Lillie was shuffled around and lost in the crowd and miserable.

5. Every day when I picked her up, I would ask how her day went. And every day she grumbled. She would say things like, "Well, I had lunch ..." OR, "Um ... we had recess ..." OR something like, "So-and-so said she would meet me by the swings at recess but she never came, and when I went to play with her, she ran away from me." (That really happened, by the way.) She was never excited to tell me anything. And no matter how much I asked, she didn't want to tell me the things she had done in class. She just said, "We didn't do anything in class."

So, Wes was working for the months of July and August in the Ellis-Fischel Cancer Hospital, and on his last day there (8/31), he was telling one of the nurses about Lillie and our school woes. She said that he should call her sister, who is the principal of the lower grades at Columbia Independent School, and get Lillie an interview. We took a tour of this school a few months ago and were supremely impressed with what we observed, but it was WAY out of our price range. However, this nice lady told Wes that if we just called and said we knew her, that her sister could get us a good deal on the tuition. So I did. That day.

Lillie had her interview there on Thursday, 9/3. She and I had a tour (they moved into a new building since my last tour!), and we were both blown away by the separate science room, Spanish room, art room, etc, etc... While I spoke with Mrs. Savage (the sister of the nurse), Lillie had her interview with Mrs. Nowlin, one of the two first-grade teachers. She asked Lillie questions about what she is interested in, and she had Lillie read her a few books to get a good idea of her reading abilities. She brought Lillie into the office and stated that she thought Lillie would be a great fit at the school.

Lillie said: "I want to come back tomorrow!"

And so it was done. She got an awesome scholarship so we pay less than half of the cost of tuition. She came for her trial day on 9/4, and she started school officially on the day after labor day, 9/8. She has not stepped foot in Mill Creek since.

How do I know I did the right thing?

1. Because that Tuesday, when I went to pick up Lillie's things at Mill Creek, I got her Friday folder from the previous week with her weekly progress report. The teacher had written: "Lack of focus - not able to repeat directions." She was BORED. And the teacher wasn't doing anything interesting or challenging for her, so she was tuning her out. And school wasn't interesting. And this was only the beginning.

2. Because Mrs. Nowlin gives her the freedom to work through her workbooks at her own pace and introduces new, harder ones when Lillie is ready for them. And she knows each student's abilities and encourages them to push themselves to the next challenge. The second day of school was 'curriculum night,' when the parents went and learned from the teachers what the kids will be doing this year. That night, I went in to her classroom and found that Lillie had already -- on day two -- completed 19 full pages in her workbook. Mrs. Nowlin saw me looking at the book, and she said, "I know this is way too easy for Lillie, but I started all of the kids at this level, and I'm not going to make her complete this whole book ... once she gets in the habit of doing her pages, I'm going to give her the next level up."

3. Because she has Spanish twice a week with a teacher who is a native Spanish-speaker. And art twice a week with a woman with an art degree. And science twice a week with a man who has a background in science, in a room full of different animals and insects and spiders in tanks for her to observe. Because she can now tell me Spanish words for feelings (sentimientos!) as well as the Spanish words for the different parts of a butterfly. And she can tell me the different kinds of legs the insects in our backyard have ('true' legs bend, and 'bristle' legs do not. I didn't even know that).

4. Because she was elected by her classmates to represent them on the student council ... after only attending the school for one week. This school has already done wonders for her confidence. She approaches the teachers and the principal to ask questions and make suggestions, she asks friends to play with her, she speaks up so people can hear her ... we have had trouble with all of these things in the past. But she knows now that her opinion matters and that adults want to hear what she has to say, and they care if she has a question. Today she even signed up for the school talent show!!

5. Because when I pick her up from school, she is excited to tell me about her day! All about new things she learned, funny things her friends said, and fun things coming up.

Basically, I am thrilled about this change for Lillie. She is excited and she is thriving!

Moving nightmare

Wednesday, April 1 was our official "MOVING DAY." Lesson to all of you: never plan a big event, such as a move, on April Fool's Day. Not a great idea. We were definitely the victims of some ridiculous cosmic april fool's gag ... read on ...

Our trouble actually started a little bit last Friday, when Wes was loading up our (first) Penske to make the trip with all the stuff. He was moving a metal filing cabinet and almost sliced off the tip of his pinky on a jagged part. I never knew so much blood could come out of a pinky finger. Wes went into shock. He was feeling ill, curled up in the bathroom in the fetal position. He really did turn green. It was bad. I called our friend Spencer, who is an ER resident who happened to be off work at the time (thank goodness!) and he came over, numbed Wes's finger and stitched it up. Three stitches in the pinky. Poor guy. Anyway, after the stitches, that trip went okay.

On Wednesday (Moving day ... April Fool's!) we started packing up early in the morning, hoping to get on the road in the early afternoon. We got on the road a lot later than expected, of course, like always. Wes had the remaining junk from our house loaded up on his truck and on a trailer that he bought on craigslist for $300 (Dixieland Special ... GRRR...) We pulled out of the driveway around 7:00 pm; Wes had to run to the church to do one quick thing; we picked up dinner in the Chick-fil-A drive thru, and we were fed and on the road around 9. Smooth going at first: Wes, Lillie and Harlan were in his truck, pulling the crappy trailer, and Sophie and I were in the car, which was also packed full of stuff (bedding and such), following behind.

The next sign of trouble came around 10:15, when I watched in horror as one of the junky old tires on the junky old trailer blew apart and shredded to junky bits in front of me. Luckily, we had borrowed CB radios from our friends (same guy who stitched up Wes ... they are great!) and I started screaming into the radio for Wes to pull over. We also felt very lucky that the blowout didn't cause the trailer to swerve more than it did, which would have caused the crappy trailer ... and the truck ... to flip over.

Wes pulled over and told me not to worry, that the tires were the same size as the ones on his truck, and he would have it changed in a jiffy. He was actually surprisingly cheerful. But after an hour, he had the spare off his truck, but the wheel on the crappy trailer was rusted on and he couldn't get it off. He had to find his hammer in our Clampett-style mound of junk on the back of the trailer and use it to pry the wheel off. Then he realized that his spare wouldn't fit; the holes were in the wrong places. I emptied the back of my car so he could get to my spare, hoping it would work. It would not. We called AAA, which would only tow us (not possible) or change our tire for us, had we had one. At that point it was after midnight. Something had to be done. Wes's mom booked us a Penske for the next morning so we could just do the 'safer' thing and leave Wes's truck in Jackson (to pick up at graduation time) and put only a few things on the crappy trailer to pull behind the Penske. I voted to dump the crappy trailer, but Wes wouldn't do it. We took enough stuff out of the car so that Lillie and Harlan could get in there with me, and we piled said stuff on the side of Hwy. 55 next to the truck, with a tarp over it. Wes spent the night in his truck near mile 173 on I-55, and the kiddos and I drove the 72 miles back to our empty house to sleep on the floor. The kiddos and I got home at 2:30 am.

I woke up at 6:30 Thursday and called our friends Jason and Christy, who were nice enough to alter their plans (and Spencer and Sonia were nice enough to also alter Spencer's birthday plans) to make it possible for Jason to help us out. He went all over the place searching for a new rim for this crappy old trailer that I just wanted to ditch anyway, but Wes wouldn't agree. Finally, Wes remembered that the guy he got the crappy trailer from had an extra wheel, which he gave us for free. While Jason had been running all over Jackson, MS and calling every dump and salvage yard looking for a wheel (yes it was that old and crappy), my best friend's husband Tim was helping me get our remaining junk together at the house. Around 11, we went to pick up the Penske, and Tim drove it back to our house. There was no way I was getting behind the wheel of that thing. (Phobia of big trucks, you know.)

So on the way to my house, through no fault of his own, Tim accidentally swiped some woman's car. I have no nice words for this woman. She informed Tim that she had just bought the car for $1100, then proceeded to demand $1500 to fix it. (Not the smartest woman.) He offered to buy it from her for $1100, and she refused. Then, although she was driving with a suspended license, she decided to call the cops. And, lucky me, since I rented it, it goes on my insurance. AAARRRGHHH!! (Side note: the cop didn't even run the woman's suspended license. So she just left with no problems.)  (I actually feel worse for Tim than for myself ... he felt awful about it.)

So, here's the scenario: We are sitting in my driveway, Jason and two missionaries from our church in the Penske, the kiddos and me in the car. We are loaded up and ready to go. There's a storm coming our way in less than an hour with predicted tornado watch and golf ball-sized hail. Wes is sitting on the side of I-55 with some of our stuff piled up on the grass next to his truck. Then it starts raining huge drops. I have to go save Wes! And we CAN'T LEAVE until the cop finishes his report!

We finally got to leave, and we drove to Wes. He had been sitting on the side of the highway for 15 hours by then. We loaded the junk from the truck (and most of the junk from the trailer) into the Penske, hitched the trailer to the Penske, said goodbye to Jason and the missionaries, and were on our way around 2 or so. We were exhausted, though, and falling asleep. Not safe. We decided to stop at our friends' house in Oxford (Sherry and Les Driggers), where we were sure they would let us take a nap and help with the kiddos. We walked in the door, and the kiddos immediately ran upstairs to play, and I immediately crashed on their couch. Wes went to buy another tire for the crappy trailer so we could hopefully avoid another blowout. (These tires were $100 each, by the way.) The Driggers convinced us during dinner that we should stay the night and sleep in their RV. It was my first night in a bed in more than a week. Very nice. We woke up at 4:30, and after Sherry stuffed us all full of toaster strudel and packed a huge bag of snacks for us, we hit the road. It was about 6. Friday, day three. We had two new tires (and a spare from Les) and we were good-to-go ... we thought ...

A little while after getting out of Oxford, the trailer started bouncing. It was small at first, and we figured Wes was just going too fast. He kept slowing down, and it kept bouncing. Then a trucker got on our CB and advised us to slow down more because the trailer was bouncing all over the place. By then we were going 45 MPH. Wes pulled off at the first exit ramp (Coldwater, MS), got out of the truck, and looked at the trailer. And I saw a look of disbelief come over his face. Why, you ask?? Because the trailer tongue had broken a little bit with each bounce, until it was hanging on by a thread. Literally. On one side it was only connected by about an inch of metal. On the other, maybe 4 inches. I estimate that after 5 more minutes of bouncing (or less), it would have come completely off the truck and smashed the kiddos and me ... and whoever else happened to be driving by ... into a tangled mess of metal. I am serious. THE CRAPPY TRAILER ALMOST KILLED ME.

We were only 175 miles out of Jackson at this point ... a day and a half after we first tried to leave. And it was all because of the crappy trailer. Sherry and Les came to our rescue, yet again, and helped Wes move everything from the trailer into the Penske. That was when Wes conceded to dump the crappy trailer. His mom found the number of a local salvage yard for us, and Wes talked to a guy there who said we could leave it in a nearby parking lot (since we couldn't take it very far without risking injury) and he would pick it up. Wes and Les took the tires off (thanks for the two $100 tires we can't use, we'll take them) and we left it there.

After the crappy trailer was history, it was blue skies and smooth driving. We arrived in Columbia at 7 pm on Friday, a full 48 hours after we had originally anticipated. For pictures of the crappy trailer, etc ... visit here:

 http://picasaweb.google.com/playwithdirt/MovingDaySWithTheRayburns#