Frustrations

Well, I feel I need to warn anyone reading this in advance. I am really tired today and full of frustrations and just need a place to vent. It has been a long couple of days. My little bitty has been sick since late Thursday night and was still sick again through the night last night(or should I say early this morning). Bean has now caught the bug and has been joining her sister in the puke fest for 2 nights now. Lovely. So before I go off to steam clean my carpets again........I had a meeting first thing this morning. I had yet another meeting called by myself trying to protect my son from harassment at school. You see this is very frustrating. My son has a hard time remembering names of kids but can tell you exactly what they were wearing down to the color of their shoelaces. He, being a 7Th grader, has been placed in a class for gym first hour with 8Th grade boys. So, he does not know many names at all only a couple specific kids that do not think of him as some kind of weirdo. So yesterday he called me from school complaining to me he wanted me to come and get him because his tooth hurt. I talked to him on the phone and sensed that he just wanted to come home. He is having a problem with his tooth, the last of his baby teeth that has abscessed. I knew he has been on antibiotic and the tooth had not been bothering him since early last week when I took him to the dentist and he was given medication so I just figured he wanted to come home and play light sabres. He is a star wars junkie. Well I continued to stay home and clean my carpets and uncountable loads of towels from my ever so projectile pukers and when he came home he was in tears.....again. Some kids in this gym class were again picking on him and trying to convince him to punch other kids and telling him he would get suspended and get to stay home with his mommy. Nice. Once child in particular told him he was stupid so Boo told him he was a big dummy( that is a swear word for Boo) and the kids then spit in Boos face. I was so furious. We have dealt with this kind of stuff ALL year and quite frankly I am fed up. I have made countless trips to the school and nothing. They can't do anything with his word against theirs and non of the kids in the group that are doing it will step up and nark on the other so we just keep going round and round and round with them. Everything from trying to throw him in front of a bus to spitting in his face. I know that he is and will be an easy target for mean kids to vent. I try SO hard to give him the tools to protect himself in the situation. I beg and plead with the school to protect him and I get absolutely nowhere. So today, my husband went to work late and made an appearance in the office demanding to see someone that would help us. It was totally unbelievable. She was incredibly nice, brought kids in to question them, showed Boo picts of every child in his class and assured my husband she would most definitely get to the bottom of the issue and he would be safe and not harassed anymore. That kids would be held accountable, and he would be placed in another gym class with kids in his grade. So why did it have to come to this. Why when I go in there do I get blown off. Because I am a woman, because I want to protect him and I am not burly,just some crazy mom they have to deal with on a regular basis. I am not convinced the problem is over because unfortunately i cannot trust the administrators at our school anymore, and when they call me later, my husband will again be at work.
Why can't kids see what they are doing to this poor kid. Why can't they understand that Autism is beyond his control, Why can't they see that we are doing everything in our power to help him heal and if he could be totally better he most certainly would. Why do they not feel any compassion for someone that just wants to be accepted and have friends like any other child. Why would they think it is okay to just spit in someones face and threaten to end their life by throwing them down telling them they will get ran over by a bus and the world would be a better place. I wish for one day they could just be inside his body to see what a struggle it is for him every day. I know there are a lot of really good kids out there. Some that have been taught compassion and understanding. To those parents of them kids, I applaud you. I know there is a smaller number of the mean and demeaning kids than the good ones. I know I cannot put him in a bubble and protect him from every bad comment and threat, but right now my heart would sure be better if I could. We are working so hard to show him how to make friends and be a friend and it is situations like this that push us 10 steps back for every step we gain.
I am sorry for the long post, my heart is really heavy today. Please every morning, tell you children you love them, tell them you can't wait to see them at the end of their day and tell them the importance of being kind to others. A disability can happen to anyone at anytime. You never know when it is your turn or someone in your family you truly care about.
Now, with one eye open, I am back to cleaning my carpets.

Happy Birthday

This post is dedicated to my husband. Today is his birthday and Sunday is our anniversary (and mother's day).

John, wishing you all the best in the next year. Another year of marriage, raising our kids and another year for you to get practiced up because............MY BUCK WAS BIGGER THAN YOURS!! Better luck next year!!!!!!

Thank you for the competition!!I hope that you know how much we appreciate you and your hard work every day to keep our family going. You work so hard to provide us a beautiful home.....and LOOK what we created!!!!!

We LOVE you and here's to countless more years with you........and yes Beuford too, I know...I know package deal.

Could you just explain to him that WE would prefer he slept on the floor??

Happy Birthday to you!!!!!!!

Kids and Critters

We have way too many stray animals around our house....mostly cats. That is where our incredibly selfish kitty mittens came from

my kids relentlessly chased him as a poor scared WILD kitten until they caught him and kept him captive in Sissy's bedroom for who knows how long until we had discovered him living quite comfortably there. Well, my husband is a softy and told the kids they could have him, but no more hiding stray cats in our house. Well now that spring is in full swing around here, all of the stray cats that hang out in our shed, sneak in our garage and consume our dog food and walk all over my car and leave little paw prints in the night, are in mating season and my back yard seems to be the 'special' place.Yesterday, I looked in the back yard and there were 4 cats that didn't belong to us that were just hanging out. Two of them are seen on top of the little hill there ( on my husbands target range) and there is 2 more that ran behind the hill when I tried taking a picture.

So my kids being my kids decided to try and lure the cats to them so they can 'make friends'

In the photo above is Bean hiding behind a cardboard box. In front of the box was a bowl of food and water. Unfortunately for her, she did not catch herself a kitty but it sure kept her busy for quite some time.I took these from the bedroom window in our house as to not disturb the catch in progress. No animals were harmed in the making of this story, and thankfully we do not have any more cats yet!

Growing Up

My little bitty is the baby of our family. Her little blue eyes and sweet little voice pretty much gets her what ever she wants. With 2 older sisters and 2 older brothers it is a pretty good thing for her. They are always there for her every little wish and want. I guess I still look at her as the baby too, which is hard when you realize that she is growing up way too fast. She is closing in quickly on being a big six year old.

She was so excited to FINALLY lose her first tooth. She knows that losing the first tooth now puts her in the big kid club! It is so hard to believe that she is old enough to lose her first tooth. She immediately had to call her big sister who was not home at the time to share the exciting news and declare her big kid status.

Last night was a music program for the Sissy and Bean. It was the annual school program and this one was themed around saving the earth and was called Easy Being Green. It was so much fun to watch them stand up and proudly sing their song(sissy my 5Th Grader) and Bean laugh and giggle because everyone was watching her(she is a first grader). I could not get a real good picture. They looked horrible, flash on they were too dark and flash off they were too bright and fuzzy. I need to learn more about the camera I guess. But regardless, It was absolutely a pleasure to be there. They are definitely growing up so fast. This is Sissy's last month of school before Middle school...WOW! Now I feel old! I look at the baby pictures on the wall and just wonder how it went so fast. No Destini, I do not want another one!!! Actually at the program last night there was a woman with a real young baby who pretty much screamed for the whole program. I felt so sorry for her, She wanted to watch her daughter's program but her little one was just not cooperating and I just sighed a big sigh of relief, I am so done with that. I am sad my babies are not babies anymore, But I sure don't want to go back there either. I love being able to take the kids places and do the big kid things with them. I am so proud of the kids they have turned out to be and just sometimes wish I could freeze time for a while.

Spring has sprung!!

I absolutely LOVE this time of year.

For the first time I finally have spring flowers that came up, No dogs tearing them up, no ground moles munching them, no kids riding bikes through them!! YEAH!!

It has been perfect weather to take your dogs for a walk...or let your puppy do it for you...

Who's idea was it to keep the dirty white dog anyway? Must have been the kids.....
As you can see Brutus likes to play outside too!I guess I should have kept the black puppy!

My favorites.....

Here are some of my favorite things, things that I love.

I love blue, it is my favorite color

Even American dolls need their hair done!

I love fishing.. That is always something we can do as a family...

One of my very most favorite things in life is music, it soothes me and keeps me sane,With out my radio cranked and singing, my house would never be cleaned!

I love, really love, sleeping babies

Although, Ellie is not real impressed, she does not know where to sleep!


I love Darth Vader....our version.....


I also love clean babies....They are so sweet and smell good!
okay well she is still my baby!And...probably my most favorite is a big strapping manly man that is so sweet he can take time out to play a little Disney princes dress up with his princess
I love to laugh... and laugh with my kids!
I love sunsets.....
Last but not least....I love smiles that light up my world.


Show me your"This is what I love posts!!"

Kids, Kids,Kids

Well,

We survived another week of spring break. The kids were home all of last week and returned to their classrooms yesterday. Unfortunately the weather was not as we had hoped. And today is going to be a beautiful day....go figure.

We did have an opportunity to make it to the movies once and the park

It was really nice to not have to get the kids up in the morning to catch the bus and not have to do homework every night!

Boo was working on a project for school. He had to do a report on a famous artist. It was supposed to be his work with me just helping him to read to him and help him to understand the directions. The artist he was given was Amadeo Modigliano. There was a series of questions that he had to answer on his report, and one was to give his personal feelings on the artwork. His answer was "My personal feelings about is art are that I like the colors but definitely not his art." " I would have liked his art more if he would draw deer or monster trucks" Can't wait to see what his grade is on that one! I try really hard not to correct his answers because it is so fun anymore just seeing his own answers and I hope that the teachers will appreciate them as he didn't participate in class previously. It won't be long and we will be back on Summer vacation and we can really work on his reading.And maybe work on artist appreciation!!

We still have our white puppy! We have named him Brutus. He is such a sweet little guy with a serious chewing problem. He also keeps us very busy. I just don't understand why no body took him....tee hee! I sure tried real hard to find him a great home, okay so I didn't put ALL my effort into it, but I was going to....for a short minute!