Weekend Top Five 10/7/12

So Fall has arrived in Michigan. After going crazy trying to purchase long sleeved shirts for the boys that fit both my standards of appropriate clothing and the boys' standards of "coolness", I was ready as far as children's wardrobe.  What I was not ready for was BEING COLD. Steve was gone for most of the day on Saturday and I broke down and turned on the furnace. We didn't even come close to making it until November before turning it on.

So the weekend was okay. We got out and about a bit but there were some overtones that kind of hung around over our heads for the weekend, as I will share below.

5. Friday Bullying
Noah came in the door Friday saying some pretty unpleasant things about the kindergarten girl that we share carpooling with. The girl has always been mean to him, kicking him, punching him, etc but since she's a "little girl" everyone just kind of laughs it off, which is quite unfair to Noah who has had enough but has had absolutely no recourse whatsoever. So he comes in the door Friday with blood dripping from his eye, The little snot girl came up to him during the walkathon while he was tying his shoes and poked his face, causing a scratch very close to his eye. As usual, he never told anyone in authority and the mom of course did not require an apology. I know Noah has had enough and I don't blame him. So we spent much of the weekend struggling with whether we continue to carpool with this family, given the out of control nature of the children, yet the very much needed savings in gas that the carpooling provides. The older girl in that same family is the one who caused so much pain to Noah and his friends last year so we are just so sick of it all and it would be nice to be separated from them even a little bit.

Meanwhile, while I was dealing with the fallout from this, I get a text message from a mom who has a child in both Noah and Aaron's classes saying she heard that Aaron got hurt again that day. I had not heard anything about it from school OR from Aaron so I kind of  fluffed it off until I started asking Aaron while she continued to shoot texts my way. Apparently the same boy who PUNCHED him in the jaw the second day of school shoved him into a locker after assembly Friday morning. NOW I was livid. This has got to STOP!  I don't know if I am most upset because it happened again or because I had to hear it from a mom's text versus the school. 48 hours later and I am still steaming about both of these situations. The school that I thought would never allow bullying has allowed BOTH of my children to be physically assaulted in the same day. I am still so angry.

4. Aaron's First Party
Aaron got invited to his first school friend birthday party on Saturday. And it was a girl's party as well.  He was so excited and talked about it pretty much non-stop all week. Saturday morning arrived and he kept quite the vocal tabs on the clock all morning until 11 when it was time to go. He had a great time and when I picked him up, he had a pile full of candy (and the psycho behavior that accompanied it) and a smile on his face telling about how much fun it was to dance with everyone in the basement with the lights off. Got to say...not really ready for my 7 year old to be at a boy-girl party in a basement with the lights off. Hmmmm.

3. Single Dates
I am trying to make good on a commitment to having individual time with each of the boys at least once a month. I figured that we would switch off...Daddy/Noah and Mommy/Aaron one month and then switch the following month. It actually worked a little differently since Aaron had a birthday party so I was able to take Noah out for lunch just the two of us for our one-on-one while Steve was at work and then after Steve got home, he took Noah out for a movie just the two of them. Noah was in Heaven with the special time with each of us. Aaron spent most of the afternoon in a pretty unpleasant funk, either because of the down after the party hype or in reaction to the abuse he took at school the day before. We're actually not sure since his nasty mood continued for the remainder of the weekend. All in all though it is clear that these one-on-ones are so important so we need to definitely make an effort to continue them.

2. Church
We had Aaron come to grown up church with us again this week while Noah went to children's church, where he was thrilled to get to run soundboard again. He is so excited about that and has begged to do it every week that no one is scheduled, which has been okay'd by the man training all of the kids. The series we finished today was about "modern families" and each week has started with a slide show of the families of Cornerstone that we all took in photobooths in our lobby at the beginning of September. Our pictures of course were odd, but it was exciting to actually see ours show up on the big screen before church today. Something of a feeling of belonging when you see our family up there,

1. ArtPrize Finale

It was the final day of ArtPrize 2012 and Hubby had not been down to see anything yet so we headed down Sunday afternoon. It was cold and drizzly, but we still walked quite a few miles and covered a good chunk of the venues. There was a two hour line to get into the museum with winning piece but I think we covered all of the other finalists around the city.  There were definitely some amazing pieces of art that we saw and I was glad we got one more trip down to see some of it before it ended.

The Week Ahead
Not sure about this week. I have some decisions to make regarding how my kids are being treated at school and how we are going to handle them. There were a few other little things at school that came up Friday that we may need to tweak this week as well so I guess we'll just see what happens. Last week on my two days off I took care of a million things out of the house that needed taking care of so this week's two days off will be more internal, hoping to get my house in order. We're kind of getting Christmas Fever around here after turning on the furnace so I am getting itchy for Black Friday ads to come out and to start figuring out the holidays ahead. I know it's the beginning of October but that's just the way we are:) I need the cheer that the season brings.




Have a good week.