Voluntering and Wildlife Safari

I am a Family Support Worker for a non-profit.  It's a wonderful and rewarding job.  But...
Since I work for non-profit, I am required to volunteer four hours every year.  I typically volunteer many more hours then four though.  I don't mind volunteering, because serving my community is a personal value.  I believe you should give back to your community.  I want my children to also serve the community.  So, I volunteered today to work the CAAP's Celebrate Children Event at the Wildlife Safari.  I have volunteered for the past five years and this was personally my favorite year. I saw many graduates from the Healthy Start Program and many current families. 
There was one great big scary thing that happened today.  There were thousands of people at the event.  Noah brought the kids at 1:30 when I was finished.  Henry takes off at the dead run and the next thing we know he is gone.  We frantically search for him. I go all over the park twice and finally search the cafe.  I should have looked there first, because that is where he was the whole time. He ran straight for the cafe.  It was a horrible 15 minutes.

Kindergarten Readiness

Tonight we went to the parent/teacher dinner that Desmond's preschool has once a month.  The topic for the evening was kindergarten readiness.  In Oregon Kindergarten is five days a week for two 1/2 hours with 20-24 kids in the class.  When I was in Kindergarten there was half the children and it was twice as long.  I worry about were Desmond will go to school.  We live in the school district that more of the wealthier families live. I worry that Desmond's problem with transitions will be hard for him.  I don't worry that he is intellectually behind, because we have worked since birth to give him a healthy start.  I know he will have an advantage in this area.  He also has the advantage of a loving family.  Desmond will succeed and I will have a few more gray hairs.  Over the next couple of weeks we will be working on preparing Desmond for Kindergarten and I will post some of my activities here.

Layaway and Fabulous Birthday Presents

Henry's 7th birthday is next month. I wanted to get him something fabulous.  I know that Henry really likes to jump.  The problem is he has already worn out a bed from jumping.  (not really but close)  What better gift to give him but a trampoline.  The problem is they are expensive.  My husband, Noah, and I went to Kmart and found the perfect trampoline on sale.  (fist pumping the air)  In just 4 easy payments, my son will have the perfect gift.  I am already thinking about two more layaway projects.  Oh, no this may be trouble.  lol 

Next Month I will post pictures of Henry on this bad boy.

Clean Mud and Fingernails

 Desmond doesn't like to cut his nails and they can get really gross.  It's a fight to convince him to clean under his nails.  I don't want him to go to school with grubby nails and I don't want to fight with him to clean his nails either.  So, today I made clean mud.  He had to cut his nails and wash under them in order to play with the mud.  Then we had an hour long activity creating and cleaning the mud.  He thought it would be great fun to put red paint in the mixture, needless to say a bath ended the activity.  It was a win/win day for me.