So Sore!

I am so flipping sore it's not even funny.  Part of which is due to not being allowed to take any meds for the entire week before surgery, the other part is me doing way more than I probably should with a torn muscle in my shoulder. 

So I owe you more recap on yesterday's events.  I left you after telling about the adventures with Alex.  

So after an incredibly exhausting day with the children tubing, Mia and I had plans to extend our Girl's Night from Friday.  So we headed up to our favorite nail salon to be pampered, Antonio decided he wanted to tag along.  And then one of the greatest moments of my life happened, Antonio, one of the manliest teens I've met, was talked into getting a pedicure.  It was truly classic, I really wish he wouldn't have taken our phones first so we could have gotten a picture. 

After the nail salon we headed to dinner at Chili's...yes again.  But Mia and I had to take him when we discovered he has made it 19 years without ever having Chili's...I don't understand this. 

So it was definitely a great ending to a long, stressful day. 

Now I've decided to enjoy the Super Bowl from the comfort of my own couch.  Which is hard to believe since the Diaz family invited me over to a Carne Asada...my absolute favorite thing ever, especially when Isabella is making it. 

Well now I am off to make some sausage rotel and a turkey sandwich before kick-off.  Enjoy the big game!!

What a Day!!!

Today was quite the day.  It started at 6:00 am and I am just getting settled in at home.

So Mia stayed the night, and she is by far one of the most ornery girls.  While I was taking a shower this morning and she was "sleeping" downstairs, she busted into my room and yelled at me.  I'm pretty sure I have never been more rattled.  I'm also pretty sure I see more of myself in her every day I am with her.

So we headed up to the office pretty early, with the plans of meeting a few of the moms to make burritos for the children to eat after we got to the mountain.  When we got there, their were already a handful of families waiting at the door.  What I thought was a perfectly organized and stream-lined process, was not.  But I've learned to live with, such is life when working with children.

We ended up taking 23 children, 1 middle school student, and 11 adults up into the mountains.  This is the most we have ever taken up on one day, and thankfully today is over.

We hit tons of traffic, had three students get very car sick through the whole ride up, had to push our reservation back two hours, and had some discipline issues with two girls.  This all however was completely eclipsed for me by my "adrenaline filled mom moment".

We tube for an hour and it was an absolute blast.  About 30 minutes in, one of our newer little boys, Alex asked if I would go down with him.  I of course obliged and we had a blast on two runs.  As we stood on the "magic carpet" that takes us to the top we decided we wanted to get everyone to go together for the last run.  So we rallied as many of our group as we could find and started to group together, their were 26 of us piled together to go down the run with a jump in it.  We put all of the adults by the smallest children, Alex, who is six and tiny was near me, but I was hooked in with a few of the girls who were a little smaller than him. Right as we started down, I noticed the children next to Alex had let him go and he was by himself, so I let go of one of the girls and grabbed his tube.  Right as I grabbed the tube, he went up on the edge of the run and his tube started to flip over.  Before I could react, Alex was completely out of his tube and was about to get ran over by the 20+ people behind us.  I grabbed his arm and threw him on top of me as we raced down to the bottom.  Once we got to the bottom of the hill Alex fell on top of me and started crying, from then on he was attached to my hip.

I still haven't fully processed everything that happened, so look for the rest of the day's recap tomorrow.

Girl's Night

Today was near perfect!

I spent a lot of today doing last minute prep work to hopefully stream line a lot of the little things that hold us up on tubing days.  I love working out new ways to organize things and make them run more effectively.

Adrian came up today after school and helped me do a lot of the grunt work.  I'm not going to lie, it's kind of convenient for me having the extra help right now as I can't do a lot of lifting.  It's amazing how much you can use something without realizing it, until you can no longer use it. 

After finishing up at the office, I ran over to the Diaz house and picked up Mia for a long overdue girls night!  We ran to Chili's and got some Chicken Enchilada soup (one of our personal faves) and a Chicken Quesadilla to share to go.  Then we headed back to my house and curled up with a good chick flick, Confessions of a Shopaholic.

Now it's off to bed.  Mia is staying the night and we are heading out for tubing first thing in the morning...yay for not getting any sleep!

Prep Day

Today was a prep day.  I worked from home for the majority of today and then decided to head into the office around 3:00.

I spent a lot of my time prepping everything for this Saturday's tubing trip and trying to clean out mine and Lindsey's office.  Mia helped me to call all of the parents so they would bring their children's permission slips up to the building.

One of my middle school students, Adrian, came by with his mom and proceeded to tell me about his two recent court dates for tickets he had.  He was able to work out community service and will now be putting in 27 hours with us.

He decided to start tonight, so I had him walk his mom and little sister home and come back.  I fully expected to have to hold his hand through every task and start to teach him a decent work ethic (this is unfortunately the norm for most of our students).  Instead, Adrian finished every task in record time, he went above and beyond making sure things got done well.

During his time working with me, we talked about school, friends, life choices.  It was so awesome to see the genuine desire in his eyes to change and start making smarter life decisions.  I'm excited to see where his time doing hours will take us.

And then the day ended perfectly, a trip to B-Dubs with my little brother, Antonio.  I love, love my time with him!  Especially when it is time spent talking over wings and fries. 

Shopping, shopping, shopping!

The vast difference between my Tuesday and Wednesday night children, is incredible.  Last night was absolutely crazy and then tonight was so mellow it's not even funny.

It was so good to see the children too!  I have missed them so much, it's not even funny.  We unfortunately didn't have all of our youth tonight, I'm thinking because we have had to cancel so many nights in a row.

So before the night started, I got to spend the rest of my day shopping with Lindsey.  Shopping days are some of my favorite days.  I've decided if I ever work in a different field, I need to be in the personal shopping industry.  I absolutely love to shop and it is so much more fun when it's not your money that your spending.  I also like looking for a bargain, which is key when you are trying to be a good steward of the money a donor has given you.

So today, we went bargain/clearance shopping for gloves, hats, and snow pants/jackets for this weekend.  We also had to get supplies and food for the next month or so while I have to take off work to recover for surgery (more on that later). 

All in all, today was a successful response to yesterday and was exactly what I needed.

Yay Kids!!!

I finally got to see my Tuesday night children!!!  And I've also decided that there is a full moon somewhere.

They were absolutely insane tonight!!  We had 25 kids and 4 adults...this is not a good ratio for my kids, but we made it work.

We spent the night playing games, catching up, painting rocks (the rocks are their place holders for seats at dinner), taking pictures, and talking about when I'm gone next month.  I'm excited to see where this crazy group of kids can go.  They have so much energy, are absolutely hilarious, their imaginations are insanely huge, and they have some of the most genuine and interesting questions I have ever heard come out of a child's mouth.

Speaking of energy, I don't have any, so this girl is headed to bed.  The children were so insanely crazy, I'm pretty sure they sucked all of the energy out of me.

Sudden Snow

Today was my pre-op appointment.  The nurse went over all the things I needed to know for next week.  I'm so thankful Elizabeth went with me.  I'm not nervous for the surgery, but yet I'm kind of nervous for the surgery.  I know, I make tons of sense.

Elizabeth and I enjoyed a lot of great conversations today.  A year ago I would have laughed if you would have told me how close we are now.  I'd be lost without her.

After pre-op and lunch we headed into the office, where we discovered a surprise.  100 cases of Capri-Sun pouches were waiting for us, our food bank acquired them for 0.25 a case, such a steal!!  And it came just in time, we were definitely running low and by low I mean we used our last case last week.

After we loaded the last case on the shelf, Lindsey and I headed back towards our office for a meeting.  And that's when we discovered it, snow.  Snow coming down like crazy.  Hours before we had 50 degree weather and now it was snowing, which was not good news for me, I was rocking flip flops.

We decided it wasn't bad enough to cancel and powered through, something I started to regret as we were driving to pick-up the middle school students.  The visibility was awful and snow just kept piling up on the van, but I'm glad Lindsey helped me power through.

Tonight we enjoyed polish pool, pizza rolls, chicken nuggets, and an amazing discussion.  Antonio came to visit and help volunteer for the night, which just added to our discussion time.  Tonight we brainstormed ideas of how we could serve in the community and also raise funds for our programs.  Antonio helped to provoke the youth into thinking about the Children's Hospital and we quickly filled up a full page just with ideas of what we could do there.

It was such a blessing talking to the students about how they could help others.  I'll give you a glimpse into a few of their ideas:
- Decorate Children's Hospital for the holidays.
- Help build a house for a family. 
- Do a blanket and sock drive for the homeless.
- Help serve a meal at a homeless shelter. 
- Spend time with the elderly at a nursing home.              

I love my students!!

Not to mention, as we ended the night everyone pitched in to do the chores, even the students who were exempt based on their performance last week.  Seriously, they are amazing.  I mean how many 11-13 year olds do you know that willingly sweep, mop, clean a kitchen, and wipe down walls.

After we closed up the building for the night, I proceeded to drive home in the snow.  And for once, I wasn't completely annoyed.  It was so beautiful, hanging on the trees, covering the yards, but completely off of the streets.  Everything was so undisturbed, it was truly beautiful.  Hopefully I still feel this way tomorrow.