Remember When…

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My son Arron called me tonight with some horrible news! A friend of their’s had a toddler who was sick and so they gave him some motrin for whatever it was that was ailing him. I don’t know how long it took, but the little boy got sicker and they took him to the emergency room.

Tonight their little boy died! The hospital said that the cause was the mix of the drink Tang and the Motrin. Together, they caused a fatal combination and killed him.

I know this sounds far fetched and I know eventually it will wind up on Snopes probably. But this isn’t a scam. This was my son’s friend’s child. 

We don’t really understand it, but the hospital was sure that this is what caused his death. 

It wasn’t that Tang and Motrin were bad. It was the combination of the two together.

Please let everyone know about this! I am sure eventually the companies will have to come out and say something about it, but we all know how long that can take!

Garrett’s Sam Houston project is due on Friday. We began it last week and I posted pictures of our beginnings here.

We have been so busy doing so much that we just hadn’t got around to working on the statue. So, today we just didn’t have a choice but to really get working on it, since it is due Friday!

So, tonight we worked to get his head on. Then while I worked on his nose, Garrett worked on the hair. After attaching his nose I tried cutting out eye holes, but I kept hitting his nose and messing it up! 

Garrett pointed out that his once-perfect-nose, was now crooked.

I told him that no one has a perfectly straight nose anyway and I am sure that Sam Houston had his rough times where he bumped his nose. So… as far as we know, the statue’s nose could be “perfect” for what Sam Houston’s nose really looked like!

Garrett didnt’ buy that…. 

I worked harder to get it straight.

Then, in order to make the hair, I suggested that Garrett take the knife and cut squiggles through it to make it look like hair. 

Unfortunately, he cut straight through the clay to make long thin lines. I encouraged him to try again-this time without cutting all the way through.

He managed it and did a good job.

So, we attached all the hair around the sides and I told him all he had to do was the top. 

He asked me if I was sure Sam Houston wasn’t bald on top?

We had a picture from online that we were using as a guide, but my lap top kept going into energy save since I didn’t have it plugged in and with my hands covered with clay it was too hard to keep turning it on. So, I assured him that it was ok to add hair on the top.

After that, we decided to stop and we would finish it up tomorrow. After we cleaned up I looked at the picture of Sam and realized that he was bald and had much more prominent sideburns! 

So, tomorrow we will have to remove his top hair and we have more details to add. But this is where we are at now!

Tonight Garrett had an awards banquet at school. He had competed in a UIL competition. I really don’t even know what UIL stands for, but basically what it is is children compete in various academic areas with other schools and if you do the best, you win 1st, 2nd, 3rd and so on for places.

Garrett was an alternate in Inpromptu Speaking. This is basically debating with himself. Which he does quite fine at while arguing with himself during video games or looking in the mirror and getting caught up in his own world.

Because he was an alternate, he didn’t have a chance to really compete and receive a place. But he did speak at the competition and he was part of the team and faithfully attended every practice.

So tonight we attended the banquet and the awards ceremony. If anything, I didn’t have to cook supper tonight and we were treated to a great dinner of chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, green beans and peach cobbler. All the mom’s and most of the dads were there with their children. Because my husband is currently in Connecticut, he couldn’t attend, but Tim and I were there with bells on.

As we were sitting at our table waiting to eat, one of Garrett’s friends walked in and joined us. I asked him where his parents were and he hung his head and said they dropped him off! Then, he looked around at the other kids and noticed how they were all dressed up for the event and then observed his worn out black T-shirt and dirty blue jeans and asked, “Am I the only one that isn’t dressed up?” I assured him that others didn’t dress up, however that wasn’t really the truth. 

I was angry, although I didn’t let it show. This event was a major milestone in these children’s lives. This child was there without his parents and he won 2nd place in his event! 

As we made our way to the line to get our food, he asked me if he could call me mom. I hugged him and told him that he could. 

When he made his way to the stage to receive his award, Garrett leaned over and whispered to me that we needed to yell extra loud for his friend to make him feel good. So we did.

We had a good time. The boys and I sat on the front row seat of the packed auditorium and the boys made quiet comments to the students as they passed on the stage to receive their award.

If the students were walking too slow, Garrett would whisper “Walk faster”

The principal who was handing out the awards snickered at the remark.

If the students were walking too fast, Garrett or his friend would say, “Slow down!”

The principal looked at them and chuckled.

When one boy refused to smile while walking across the stage, Garrett whispered “Smile! Your getting an award!” 

The principal had to turn around so the audience could not see him bursting into laughter!

We did have a great night and we laughed a lot. We had fun! And so did Garrett’s friend. But I can’t help but to be angry about his parents not showing up. 

The banquet was free. They were not working, they were at home. No one else was sick in the house. They managed to bring him to the school, but couldn’t manage to stay and be there for them! If I had not been there, this little boy would have sat alone! 

Parents need to pay attention to their children! They grow up fast and before you know it, they are out of the house and on their own. If you don’t pay attention to them now….. They wont pay attention to you later!

A couple of months ago I finally made the plunge and switched from Internet explorer to Firefox. It seemed to a miracle in the internet world. It moved faster-much faster than IE and I was still able to add my beloved website buttons that allowed me to click an icon for my favorite websites.

I have been quite happy with it and have even referred all my friends and family to use it! 

However, within this past week, I have found that my internet is running slower and slower. I spend the most of my waking hours on the internet, so every second counts for me! I don’t want to way half a minute just for my blog to come up so I can write. I don’t have time to wait long seconds to go from one email to the next. (I read and respond to around 100 emails a day!) 

So, I started looking for a solution to my problem. I typed in my search engine “Firefox Running Slow” and I got hundreds of sites with hundreds of solutions! Apparently this is a big problem. After a while of running firefox it slows down to a crawl.

I tried one of the solutions, which involved saving my bookmarks and then changing my profile. It still seems to be running kind of slow, but maybe not as much. We will see….

On top of it all, my enter button on my keyboard is tired. It no longer wants to “enter” it is tired of working and honestly, I don’t blame it for going on strike! However, I have a major awareness event to plan and an international conference! Hitting Enter is a big deal when you are typing! I have promised my enter button a little reprive if it will just hold out a little longer! 

Unfortunately, my “enter” button is a little more stubborn than that and it is hard to convince it to continue its job!

Today Garrett and I had one of those heart to heart talks that all parents really don’t want to have, but as a parent it is something that needs to be talked about.

Garrett is having trouble with peer pressure and one of his friends convinced him to go through a previously broken window of the old school building to go into one of the rooms. Garrett didn’t want to go into the room and tried to convince the others to not do it, but they called him “Chicken” and he went in. Later, apparently someone else went into the room and wrote all the children’s names on the chalk board. Because the names were written, the children were called to talk with the principal. The principal believed the children when they told him that they did go into the room, but the window had been broken out before they went in. And, the names were written incorrectly on the chalkboard, so obviously they were not the ones who wrote the names.

Garrett and I discussed how things could have gone differently and how much trouble he could have been in if they had been caught in the building. We also discussed what he could do in the future to not give into peer pressure. I tried several scenarios, but any solutions I had were shot down with, “that wont work”.

So, I began looking for books that may help us and I found some that I think I may purchase. I added them here.

If anyone has any suggestions (other than ‘just say no’) I would love to hear about them! This is a big problem for all pre-teens and teenagers and I know that as a child I gave into peer pressure all the time! This was before “just say no” and before parents really talked with their kids about these things. I feel as though I didn’t do so great with my older kids in this area and I want more than anything to protect Garrett from peer pressure as much as possible.

So, what do you do for your kids to help them with peer pressure?

Garrett has his friend Justin spending the night. Justin is like my other kid, not that I needed another one. But there it is!

This is basically what they do… Garrett on his cell phone and Justin on his laptop. 

Every now and then they wrestle and break a bone or two, but basically this is them.

Justin is trying to figure out his iTunes on his computer and I offered to help but he told me that I was too old and that there was no way that I would know how to do it! 

hmmmm…… 

I explained that I do Garrett’s all the time, but he didn’t think I could help him. It is funny that they think there is an age requirement to understand things like that. 

Garrett keeps texting with his friends as he walks back and forth waiting for me to help them on the computer and now they want me to figure out how to video them. 

The dog is barking, the kids are yelling and the phone keeps ringing…..

Typical Friday night for the Colvin’s!

If you like free samples, one site I go to often is Walmart to get free samples. I have been getting a lot lately, especially hair products and stuff like that. They have different samples each week. You can click here for their site.This week their special is Crest Whitestrips. I love these things!

Today I have been busy. Well, I guess I am always busy, but today we had a little extra stuff to do. Every 6 weeks Garrett has a History project that he has to do for his final semester grade. The teacher is great and she always comes up with interesting things for the kids to do for their semester project. She gives them three choices and each pertain to what ever they have been learning for the 6 weeks.

Garrett, however, always has to be “creative” and come up with his own ideas. I think if she had never told the kids that they could come up with their own ideas he never would have, but since he knows this, he always asks to do something different. Which is fine, because this does stimulate his mind and gets him even more involved in his work.

So, this semester he had 3 options. The first option was to make a PowerPoint presentation.  He didn’t want to do that because last semester this is what he asked to do instead of her other options. Choice 2 was to act out a skit with friends, but we both agreed that that wouldn’t work because it is always hard to get the friends to practice. And, the third choice was to write an essay. He loves to write, but not when it is called an “essay” because that sounds like too much work when you are 12.

So, he asked if he could make a statue of Sam Houston. In Texas, Sam Houston is big for history and also big on the side of the road!

This Sam Houston is in Huntsville, Texas and is 67 feet tall!

So… I was thinking I needed a lot of clay! Because we live in a very rural area, just running out to Walmart is never an option. It is an hour drive one way to Walmart, so anytime we do that it turns into a day trip and we get all our shopping done. Finally, over this past weekend I made it to Walmart and bought the clay.

We finally started the project tonight. We decided that instead of making all of Sam Houston (I only have 3 tubs of clay) we would make a bust. This way, we wouldn’t have to worry about him toppling over during his transport down the bumpy, dug-up, dirt road on the way to school. (that is a whole other story! I will try to take pictures of that crazy road tomorrow!)

So, we began….

First he made the base that the bust would fit on.

Then, we had to decide how to make the chest and shoulders. The clay was pretty hard so I showed Garrett how to squeeze it and make it soft.

He made 2 balls and put them on the base and said, “There! I’m Finished!”

So much for enthusiasm!

I convinced him that he needed to try a little harder and finally we got the clay to shape into something that resembles a chest. Then I helped Garrett carve the lines to resemble the lapels of the jacket. As we were carving, he said, “I am so lucky to have a mom who helps me with my projects”

I told him I was so lucky to have a great son that I could help with his projects. He is such a sweet boy!

Before we knew it, it was already 9:00! He said he was tired and I looked at the clock and couldn’t believe how the time flew by! So, we will have to continue working on good ole Sam over the weekend. It is due next Friday.

Here is what we have so far…..

It’s not much and I am sure it is not going to look anything like Sam Houston, but all that matters really is that we are having fun, spending some extra time together and learning about Sam Houston!

After Garrett got to bed, Tim was finally able to show me all the stuff he set up on his new computer. He had been waiting patiently for hours for me to see all that he had done. He found some pretty cool add-on’s from Firefox and some of them I will definitely have to have him set up on my computer for me!

He got something that allows him to highlight any word and search it in various ways through the web and also translate it in many languages.

Then he installed a program that allows him to type in any word he wants and he can find almost every picture on the web that is tagged to that word! I really liked this because it gave him the option to set up a photo gallery in all kinds of ways.

After I watched him I talked with Arron on the phone. He is a Critter Catcher. His job is to go out to homes and businesses and trap critters (possum, raccoon, squirrel, and skunks mainly)  and then he releases them by the pond where they will be much happier and wont bother the people. Today, he had a very interesting call. Somehow a bank had a bunch of squirrels inside it! They were running all around the top ledges of the building close to the ceiling and having a good ole time being the banker squirrels. ( I could make a bank joke or a bail out joke…. but I just wont! ) So, he is supposed to trap the squirrels but first he is supposed to find out how they got in. The bank is made out of that marble-stone stuff. He looked all over inside and out and on top and bottom and couldn’t find how they got in. Then, a lady at the bank told him that she wished he wouldn’t get rid of them. She liked them there and she fed them! So, we will have to wait and see if he ever traps them. I know that I wouldn’t want to go to this bank!

Today was a rather uneventful day in our household. I got Tim’s computer up and running on internet yesterday, so I haven’t seen him since then! My mom and dad bought Tim a Dell computer for Christmas and he was so excited he was beside himself!

When he was opening the package he didn’t have any idea what to expect.

 Then, after getting the wrapping off, he was speechless!

Then, absolutely overwhelmed with joy!

After briefly recovering, he thanked my mom…

Then jumped up and hugged her with all his might!

Unfortunately, the joy was short lived because we could not get him online! Since the day after Christmas we have been trying to get him online. I called the folks in India THREE TIMES! I kept telling them that the computer was defective and they kept taking it as a personal insult to themselves and their family. Finally I got through to one of the folks in India and convinced them that there was indeed a problem! They directed me to the right people and I got part of the problem fixed with just a click of a button. However, I still couldn’t get the computer up online wirelessly because I had to uninstall and reinstall the wireless card and last week I was sick with the flu and just really didn’t feel like doing that! So… finally, Tim is online and all is well with the universe! 

If you ever have to call Dell, just don’t….. It isn’t really worth the headache!

Yesterday, I was unable to write because of a horrible migraine that is actually still lingering, but I am trying to deny that it is there. So, I wanted to post today because yesterday was a very exciting day for us!

My eldest son, Arron married the love of his life a year ago on February 29th. He has 3 sons from a previous marriage, Arron, Aidan and Spot (Spot’s real name is Anthony, but we have never called him that) Arron’s beautiful wife, Amber has a wonderful little boy, Garrett who will be 3 in just a few weeks. He has called Arron “Daddy” since he could talk and yesterday, they made this title official!

Arron adopted Garrett and throughout the ordeal Garrett sat on the judge’s lap coloring not only the paper she gave him to occupy him, but also all of her court documents. When the ceremony was complete, she asked Garrett if he wanted to say anything and Garrett, who has a bit of a speech delay and doesn’t talk an awful lot anyway, said that yes, he wanted to say something.

She gave him the microphone and he leaned forward and said,

“I love you Daddy!”

I get tears just writing that! So, as of yesterday, it was official! I have 4 of the most beautiful Grandsons in the world!

Garrett

Arron, Aidan, Spot and Garrett

Arron jr, Aidan, Arron sr, Garrett

Arron and Amber

A few weeks back it was late at night and I was just laying down to go to sleep when Tim came in my room to talk. We don’t do this often, but I cherish the moments when it does happen. He layed down next to me and we talked about life. We talked about everything and we talk talked about nothing and then, we talked about life.

Tim has mosaic Down syndrome and Asperger syndrome. The mosaic Down syndrome causes him to be short in stature and he has some difficulty processing information if too much is given to him at one time. I have learned to improvise and I give him one thing at a time. It isn’t a huge deal, in fact it really is nothing at all for us. It is the Asperger syndrome that I wish he didn’t have. This is a form of Autism and he has great difficulty socializing. And, to make matters worse, he knows that he has this difficulty, but he doesn’t know how to fix it.

I am an expert in mosaic Down syndrome. But as for Asperger syndrome…. I don’t have a clue!

So, during our talk he brought up a girl in our church and how he would like to get to know her better. We discussed ways to do that and last week, he had a long talk with her after church. We are new to this church, so we don’t know the family very well at all. I knew she had some special needs, just by listening to her talk, but didn’t really know what they were. When we left church last Sunday, Tim happily told me that they wanted to read his poems and that he was bringing them next week.

This week, we had a lunch after church and he was able to sit and talk with her more. I watched out of the corner of my eye from another table and she read his poems and commented on how well they were written. Then most of the church were hovering over them eager to read the poems too. The girl’s mom looked over at me and told me that her daughter had Asperger syndrome. I felt the connection and was happy about it! I told her Tim had Asperger syndrome too. 

Finally, everyone figured out that they really needed time alone, so they all left them to the table themselves. They continued to talk and Garrett leaned over the table to me and whispered, “Mom, Tim likes that girl” 

“Yes” I whispered back “He has told me” 

“Mom” Garrett said, “That girl has stars in her eyes the way Laura does when she looks at me!”

(Laura is a girl that absolutely loves Garrett, unfortunately for her, the feeling is not mutual, but he is kind to her because he doesn’t want to hurt her feelings)

I smiled and asked him did he actually see the stars?

He said yes that he did see the stars!

I told him that the girl had Asperger syndrome. He said, “That’s Wonderful! They are perfect for each other because then they can understand each other! They will have babies together!”

I laughed and asked him to please not begin to plan babies, they were just beginning to talk!

I am so happy for Tim. I do hope that he and the girl find friendship and if love is to happen, what a wonderful story for him and her to tell their children, how they met in church and read poems together!