Trip to Madison and... Boy Scouts (gulp)

Well, I'm having to post "old" pictures again-- this time because our camera is not working. It failed on our recent trip to Madison, when I wanted to take pictures of our visit with Don and Hope. Great timing, huh?



It was nice to finally meet Stephen and get to hold him for awhile. What a sweetheart! He was very open to be held by all of us "strangers", and hardly cried. He's an armful! His size and full head of hair make him seem older than he is at first, but he's still just a little guy and needs his head supported and is kind of curled up and snuggly, like a newborn.

Hope very graciously delivered the maternity and baby clothes I'd given her back to me, all the way from Arkansas. Of course, at the time I gave them to her I never expected to need them back. But it was fun rummaging through the box and recognizing items-- especially some of Emma's little dresses and bonnets. She enjoyed seeing them, too. She immediately claimed a couple of baby blankets she "remembered" (even though I've already allowed her to keep three other baby blankets she remains attached to).

We had an excellent meal at Morels Friday night, and a lot of fun having cocktails with Bob, John, Jim, Laurie, Mom and Dad as we waited for Don, Hope, Kenny, Beth, and Stephen to arrive. (My cocktail was seven-up, of course). The food was great and we were spoiled with our own little banquet room, so the kids could run around and wrestle with each other and their uncles.

We had adjoining rooms with Don and Hope, so the kids had a passageway to play between our two rooms. The motel pool was unusual in that it was open all night long, so we let the kids swim until about 11 at night. The pool water was VERY cold, but the hot tub was pleasant.

The next morning we had continental breakfast at the motel, packed up, and congregated at Laurie and Mark's house in Middleton. We had coffee and donuts, and the kids had fun tagging after their Uncle Mark while he harvested a giant edible mushroom from a tree stump in their back yard. It filled a grocery bag when he was done, and weighed approximately 10 pounds. He figured it was equivalent to at least $100 worth of mushroom. I forget the exact name of it, but it had the word "hen". Mark sauteed some in a pan and let us sample it, and it looked a lot like chicken. Very mild and interesting taste.

Well, I better make this brief. I have to get ready for our Girl Scout meeting tonight. Let's hope it goes better than last night's Boy Scout meeting. That was a fiasco. It was the first time this year that I led a meeting all by myself, and without their old leader, Bob, there, things broke down into chaos pretty fast. Apparently I'm not loud and intimidating enough. We have 10 boys, but almost half of them are "special needs"-- 2 unmedicated ADDs, one autistic boy, and one boy who's kind of immature for his age and real wild. I was not prepared for the way the ADD kids got up and walked / played around the room. The situation was further exacerbated by the presence of two parents who sat through the meeting but mostly just stared on in horror rather than helping me in any way. Also Emma and another sibling were there, so it was a full house.

Things were bad: bad enough that after 45 minutes I had to ask another parent to take over so I could leave the room and weep a little. It sounds ridiculous, but I was just not prepared for how naughty other people's kids can be! I'm so used to Mikey and Emma, and things that work with them simply don't work with these high needs kids.

But I'm not giving up and am determined that next time will be different. I've lined up another parent (male) to be present during the meetings and help me maintain order. Also, I'm going to request that the three boys who behaved worst have a parent accompany them and sit by them during the next two meetings, at least until we get some sort of routine established. Third, I'm establishing a discipline policy where each boy gets two warnings, and if they misbehave after that I'm calling their parents to pick them up early. It simply isn't fair to the other half of the boys, who are listening and trying to cooperate and deserve to get something educational out of the meeting.

I don't know HOW teachers do it! I have so much admiration for that profession. And these are third graders... I recall how much worse junior high age kids were.