Last Slice of 2023

Last day of Slice of Life. It has been fun reading all the different slices and finding out about new people and the people I work with and just don’t have the time to talk to like I would like. It is crazy how our lives get so busy we can’t hear about the fun things or not so fun things people are doing. This was my second year trying this challenge and my favorite part is getting to read about what other people are up to and thinking about. I wasn’t sure I would be able to get this done this year, but I did and I am glad. My new house has clean air ducts, a new furnace and the floors are looking great. We also were able to pack a ton of things and my husband is not so stressed even with working 10 hour days at work and then working on the new house after that. He finally sees an end to the madness and the ability to take a weekend off in the future to smoke something in his smoker and sit out on the patio and watch it smoke with “nothing” else that needs to be done.  After all these months, I’ll give him that day!!

My Dad

My dad is an amazing person. He grew up spending a lot of time with my great grandparents who I never met. His parents were married, but my mom told me once that he was just more like his grandparents. My dad is the oldest of four. He has a younger brother who is close in age and then they had a sister who died as a baby. Then there is my aunt who was born while my dad was in high school. They have always lived pretty far away from us so we never did a ton with his family. We did visit my grandparents every other year in Florida and they would come visit us in the other years. 

My dad was first a history teacher, councilor, vice principal, principal and then superintendent. He says his greatest accomplishment was building a huge high school. The funny thing is we moved shortly after it was built so he was only the principal at that school for a few years. I think another big accomplishment of his is that he got the school he was superintendent at financially stable and didn’t punish any of the students while doing it. This is probably why once he retired other schools hired him to help them. 

As a dad he always wanted to be at all our events. He was always willing to listen and he loved when I crawled up on his lap while he was sitting in his lazy boy. I also remember sitting there and playing the drums. On his belly that I thought was perfect for drums. He doesn’t go by his first name, he uses his middle. His first is Herbie and while growing up Burger King had their commercials with Herb. This made my mom and I and all my friends start lovingly calling him Herbie. Which he laughed at.

My dad is now 86 and able to do everything he would like to do. I know that if my mom was still around things would be different and he would be at every one of my kids’ events even if we live 3 hours away. However, I would like that to be the case though at least he is happy and healthy and enjoying life without my mom better than anyone ever thought he would.  I am glad he is still able to do things and I love him dearly.

Waiting Tick Tock

Reading another post another day that Melanie wrote made me think about why I hate to wait and always love to be on time. That would be because that is how I was raised as well. 

Growing up we were never late to anything and somehow my parents were always ready to leave at the same time.  Even when my mom was recovering from breast cancer and going through radiation and chemo we were always on time. This makes me wonder, why am I always driving fast to make sure my kids get places on time? Worse yet, why are we always late or driving fast as a family to get to places?

Growing up my dad was a stickler on time. I am not sure how he got that way but it worked well for his job as a superintendent. His teachers knew also that when it was stated that a program, teacher’s institute, meeting whatever was going to start at a certain time it would.  There was no waiting for it was start and then usually he would get people out early because no time was wasted at the beginning. 

He taught my sister and I this idea as well. I vividly remember when my sister got married her husband’s family seemed to be late to things. He looked at the groom’s mom, who decided a few minutes before Dana was to walk down the aisle that she needed to go to the bathroom and said Dana will be walking in at 2:00.  He meant it. Everyone in our small town knew our wedding would start exactly on time, even if the bride wasn’t ready most likely! Our church had no air conditioning and we both got married in the summer. Both days were very hot and the church was packed. No way was my dad making people wait.

I tried to teach my kids this same idea, but we usually end up waiting in the van for their dad to do one last thing. This one last thing takes several minutes so my kids’ way of coping has been to realize we will leave 10-15 minutes later than stated. That then however only delays us more because Brian’s one last thing can only be done after everyone is out of the house. Nope it doesn’t matter if I already tried to do what I think that one last thing will be.  Yes though our wedding did start on time because it would have happened even without the groom!

Spring Break?

Spring Break?

For those of you who have read my blogs and were thinking I would get a break this week to relax here is how it started.

I need to go back to Thursday night when I did my normal running kids around and getting dinner for everyone. About 9:00 my son calls from his robotics club and has cut his finger bad enough that he is driving to the emergency room. I then call my daughter’s dance company ask them to have her get her stuff ready so that I can pick her up a half hour early. Drop her off at home and race to the emergency room to meet my 18 year old. We wait over almost 3 hours for him to finally get the seven stitches he needed on his left hand index finger. By the time everything was said and done we got home around 1:00 am.  Of course, on Friday, I had to teach my class all day.

The weekend we did sleep in some, but we really needed to get things done at both houses so we were cleaning and packing as much as possible. Yesterday was the first real day of Spring Break because only Brian and my niece had  work. I however needed to meet the ductwork cleaners and the flooring guys at the new house after dropping my niece off at work by 7:30.  I then ran to the knee doctor because, WHY would the spot they took fluid off of heal 100% correctly. I couldn’t take more school off for this stupid knee. Then my daughter had an appointment that I needed to get her by 12:30.

My most exciting part of the day was at 2:30 when I was finally able to speak with a lawyer to help my niece get Social security that she should have had since birth. I need help doing this because it isn’t easy. My parents set up a college fund for all the grandkids which became hers when she turned 21. To get S.S. you can’t have more than 2,000 to your name and her having a job that doesn’t pay enough to live on could be a problem. All these rules seem crazy to me and cost a lot to get solved in all honesty. It needs to be done though because I can’t make this responsibility land on my kids some day and she needs help to live on her own and her money won’t last long at over 4,000 a month. 

After the lawyer it was back to packing and getting everything ready to move. Basically, it was another mentally and physically draining day, but one I needed to get done while there is no school.

What to do with so many books?

What to do with so many books?

My mom and I have collected children’s books for years and years. We loved going to the Illinois Reading Council Convention, meeting authors and having them autograph the books. We also always wanted to have several books to go along with whatever we were teaching. That led to an overwhelming amount of books. With both my mom and I teaching we ended up with a 18 gallon rubbermaid crate or two for each Holiday and theme we taught. We also of course had several different authors we had collections of and Caldecott and Newberry award winners. 

Add this to the fact that we had several books growing up that my mom kept and then when she became a Grandma she had to buy books for her grandkids on things they would be interested in and of course there were new books that made sounds, of had something fun to draw a kid in. 

This has led to an overwhelming amount of books. My parents house had an entire wall with built-in bookshelves that were full. Another wall full of 6 bookshelves full of books and if that wasn’t enough a good size bookshelf in the bathroom downstairs above the toilet with old basal readers.  That bathroom had a total teacher/Dick and Jane theme. I haven’t even mentioned all the books I have already brought to my classroom and are still in my basement. 

Besides not having space for all these books I had the challenge of my own kids also had several connections they had formed with books at Grandma’s. (Exactly what she had wanted, but now a problem) We ended up bringing more than we should have home. We did however give three car loads of books to my old elementary school that they passed out to the students. I hope over break to go through several I have at my house and donate some of them to kids. Wow, it was fun to collect and has totally helped several kids find a love of reading, but it’s getting too hard to store and I just don’t have the space my parents had. I do hope I can find a good home for several of them. I also need to figure out what to do with all those antique basals.

Dustin High Dive??

I drove by a pool today that we had gotten a free pass for when Dustin was maybe 4 and Chloe was 2. It was a really nice day and we were all there as a family. I was mostly hanging out with Chloe in the baby pool area. Brian was hanging out with Dustin. We had been there for a pretty long time when Brian came over and asked me if Dustin had come over by me. Somehow he had lost sight of him. I am sure at the time I was ready to kill him. How could you take your eye off him at a pool after all that was why 2 adults were here with 2 kids. Next thing I knew Brian said there he is. Dustin had climbed up the high dive ladder. He had been going off the low dive all day and swimming to the side. Now our baby was clear up on the high dive with a line behind him. I tried to tell him to just walk back towards the ladder. Instead he looked over the edge of the front of the diving board, looked back at the kids waiting in line, shrugged his shoulders JUMPED. He did the worst belly flop and everyone watched in amazement that he had done it. He swam to the edge and I hugged him. He seemed unphased. He did not want to do it again that day however! That has always been how Dustin is. He kind of looks at the situation and then figures out how to solve it. No second guessing. I laugh about that day now, but I will never forget how scared I was. I am also glad that he is usually pretty smart at figuring out solutions before he jumps in now.

Days like today

Days like today I miss my mom. She would have been here helping us get the old house all packed up and everything organized into the new house. Actually, she would have been here any day before letting people in and out of our new house to work and watching to see if they were cleaning up after themselves. I love knowing that my mom was around when all my kids were born and they were all held by her and knew how loving she was. I wish however that my kids would have been able to experience so many more things with my mom. She loved holidays and I try, but they are just not the same without her. She also would have not missed very many of my kids’ activities. She might have lived 3 hours away but she would have been here to see every soccer game, volleyball, badminton, choir, band, dance, track meet, graduations and prom that she possibly could. She loved her family with all her heart and once she became a Grandma she always had so much love for them and pride in anything they did. I hate that Haley was only 3 when my mom died. Haley seems to really have my mom’s personality. She has several good friends and they all are not in the same “click”. Several people think she is their bestie. She is usually very happy and loves to be on the go. My mom would laugh when she was babysitting that once I went to work and the older two got on the bus, Haley would look at her and say “GO”!  Haley loves dressing up and my mom loved shopping for clothes for her kids so they would love hanging out still today and Haley would still be saying to her let’s go Grandma and off they would go.  

Finally Friday

FInally the Friday before Spring Break!  I have been waiting for today forever it seems like. Ever since we bought our travel trailer we have gone someplace for Spring Break. I am going to miss heading out for warmer weather, but hopefully this coming week we get a ton done at the new house. I have the flooring guy coming at 8:00 on Monday and the air duct cleaning company between 8 and 9. Then the next day our furnace and air conditioner will be put in. While they are all working on the house the kids and I are going to be packing up the old house. Then after they leave for the day we can start taking all the boxes to the new house. Since the basement is done, it can get packed up. We really need to get our old house on the market and move into the new one!!  I hope my week will be as productive as I am hoping.

Braces

I had to have braces and now all my kids have had to have braces. I was super simple as far as I remember. I remember I did only have mine on for about 8 months. All my friends got them on before me and I got mine off before them. They were so mad. My sister also had braces and since she was my older sister I learned from her mistakes. She would never wear her stuff and one time her and her friend decided they wanted to wear their rubber bands the same way so they did. This moved her teeth in the wrong direction.  I grew up in a small town and we were family friends with my dentist/orthodontist.  I had gone swimming  at his house. Cheered for his older kids when they played against our school.  After he retired my aunt, uncle and dad have gone to visit and celebrate new years with him. I wish my kids could have gone to him actually.

Anyway I thought about writing this because my youngest daughter just got her bottom braces yesterday. She had not noticed that one of her top brackets was missing. They replaced it. Well guess what today we are back at the ortho getting that same bracket put right back on. Both my daughters have small teeth I guess and those silly brackets just don’t stay on. So here we are quickly before dance getting that silly thing put back on. 

Today I….

I am borrowing this idea from another slicer. If it was you thank you because I can’t remember who did it. They did “Today I….” I am going to do some today and some yesterday.

Today I made sure my husband got up for work, then woke up all my kids.

Today I quickly put dinner in the slow cooker so it would be ready for everyone tonight. 

Today I quickly posted my story because tonight is going to be crazy busy. 

Today I gave all my kids a hug and kiss goodbye and told them to have a great day. 

Today I drove my niece to work by 7:30.

Today I got to work and fixed my schedule on my board which I had forgotten to do yesterday before I left school.

Today I will teach  my class to the best of my ability.

Today I will hurry home and go to pick up my youngest from soccer.

Today I will then rush my youngest to dance.

Today I will go pick up my niece from work.

Today I will hopefully make it to my older daughter’s badminton game so I can support her after all the other pickups and drop offs.

Today I will go home and eat dinner then clean up everything.

Today I will see if there is anything I can do at my new house.

Today I am going to look forward to Spring Break even more because all my days seem to be so busy that I am constantly exhausted.