Remember When…

My dad has worked for a major oil company most of his life. Today, however he no longer does. He, like so many others in American got layed off from his job! My dad is in his 60’s. He says he will get another job, but in today’s economy, I am just not so sure…..

Today, one of Garrett’s vocabulary words was Economy.

Garrett thought Economy meant that you ran out of money. When I asked him the definition, he made a whistling noise indicating a bomb dropping and then exploding on the ground. 

“How fitting”, I thought….”The economy is definitely dropping like a bomb!”

Our economy is so bad that my 12 yr old thinks the definition of economy is when you have no money!

Garrett is an aspiring drummer. He has been practicing on his XBox Rockband drumset. Oh Yeah…. He practices ALL THE TIME! He is good, without a doubt! And could probably play the real drums quite well. Of course, I would have to buy stock in Advil if that happened!

Today I came across a video of a man who is an awesome drummer and used his talents with what he could find. I imagine that this man could be a very famous, very rich drummer if he was given a chance! I was very impressed!

GroovyGrooves.com - The Grooviest Dancing, Singing, and Musician Videos

Tonight, I let my 12 year old son, Garrett write my blog. He is usually a very deep thinker and a caring individual with a big heart. One day, he is going to do some very amazing things that will change perspectives and make the world a much better place!

He loves to write and sometimes writing can be very therapeutic. It is obvious that tonight was one of those “therapeutic” times….

Here is what Garrett wrote….

My comments in red

This is Garrett. This is what happens to me in my crazy life. You know you can’t trust anyone in the world. A couple of weeks ago I was framed for something I didn’t even do. Someone broke a window at the school and someone put my name on the chalkboard. I thought to myself why would anyone do something like that . People can’t be trusted anymore. I could be in a jail cell right now. I pray every night that I don’t end up on that kind of path. (at least he is showing his upbringing here some… he is praying and he knows he doesn’t want to go down the wrong path)

One time one of my friends went into a slide with a girl that I liked and they kissed even though he knew I liked her. I would of killed him, but I don’t want to fight over some girl that I‘m going to date for not even a long time.

Now there is this one red haired ______ [sorry for my language] (edited by mom, not because it was a cuss word, but it still was not a word I really am comfortable with him using…. lets just say…. there is this boy…) that gets on my nerves more than this one girl that loves me. I’ll tell you about her in a minute. He always wants his way and thinks he is soooo better than me. This kid is lucky that I haven’t killed him yet. I don’t want to fight , but he pushes the limit.

Now to this one girl that I dislike, I cant say hate , more than anything in the world. Now this isn’t nice, but this girl is as big as an elephant. This girl had the biggest crush on me. I hated this girl. (he just said he couldn’t say hate!) She was sico and thank God she moved. My friend said that she doesn’t know what I looked like; she just remembers that she liked me. She begs my friend every day to give her my phone number. But I mean who wouldn’t? (do we hear a little vanity here?) So you know what kind of stuff I go through EVERYDAY of my life. There is really nothing good about it. So just remember, you cant trust anyone….  

(mom disclaimer: please understand that when a 12 yr old boy says he is going to “kill” someone, especially when this person is one of his best friends, he does not mean that literally. He means that they boy is making him mad and he would like to hit him to make him stop the things that make him mad)

Now…. after reading this article that my little boy has wrote, I guess it is time for some mom-son time.  It is so hard becoming a teenager…… 

Do you remember that awkward time? Please share some of your awkward moments when you were trying your best to fit in with the world and all your friends and figure out where your place in life was. I am sure Garrett would appreciate some encouraging words!

I have not written in several days, probably it has been a whole week. I have just been so busy doing so many things that there are times that I feel as though there just are not enough hours in the day to do all that needs to be done. It is 11:30 at night and my fingers are cramping from all of the typing I have done all day. My muscles ache and my eyes are drooping. But, there are so many things to do for so many people that I sometimes just feel as though I can not quit!

Last week, I got a desperate call from a very poor single mom in Jamaica whose 13 year old daughter has Down syndrome and a very severe heart condition. She had surgery on her heart at the age of 2 and has been on medication since then, up until October. 

The mother has no money for medicine and her daughter is slowly dying before her eyes. 

I have searched the internet for help. I have emailed and called so many people and am still waiting on replies!

The mother keeps scraping up change to buy a phone card to call me and see if I know anything new.

I don’t. 

Her daughter’s tongue is turning blue due to the lack of oxygen because there is so much fluid backing up in her heart without this medicine that she needs. 

She told me yesterday that her daughter can no longer walk across the room without bending over to catch her breath. 

My youngest son is the light of my life! He will be 13 in April. The same age of this little girl who needs medicine. Last week, our biggest problem in life was if we would get our Sam Houston clay statue complete in time for his Friday deadline. 

We did.

I don’t have medical insurance, but if my son needs to go to the doctor I take him and I make payments to the doctor until I pay it out. Our biggest worry medically has been his occasional migraine headaches. I give him some Tylenol or Ibuprofen and with a little rest he is fine.

In America, the majority of us do not have to worry if our children will die simply because we can not afford medicine. 

Sure, we all have our own worries, but our children’s tongues are not turning blue needlessly. 

I am worried.

I am worried for this parent. I am worried for this child.  I am worried for my own sanity if this child dies simply because I can’t get the medicine to her!

I am glad that I was born here in America and so were my children. I am glad that I don’t have to worry about them not having the medicine they need. My middle son takes daily medicine for several medical problems. My grandson takes daily medicine for several medical problems, including a severe heart defect. But he gets his medicine and his tongue doesn’t turn blue. 

I am tired.

I need to sleep so I can begin again tomorrow.

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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!