Week Ten

I live on an Indian Reservation, my husband is full Penobscot Indian and my children are half Penobscot and half of their blood line from be is mixed with French, Irish, and English. I work at the school on the reservation and love were I live and work. The children in our school are for the most part not full-blooded Native Americans but we have seemed to forget about part of their culture. We want our children to be brought up with knowing all of their cultures and being proud of each of them. This has become very hard when they spend their day in a school that is so focused on just Native American culture and history. While having our children taught their Native American culture so strongly is great they are not taught the history of the rest of the world along with it. We have Native Studies that mostly teaches the culture and only that. The Social Studies books are out dated by 15 years and for the most part not used. Most classrooms use the newspaper in its place. This is great children are aware of the world they live in today, but are missing all that led up to it. Our students spend nine years from Early Childhood to eighth in a school of about 110 students and then after eighth grade they are sent off to a high school that they have been only partly prepared for. They enter high school with a limited knowledge of others history but with a strong knowledge of their own. We expect to our children to succeed but do not give them all the tools they will need.

week nine

I think your right John. Hows this?

Driving for hours in a cramped car; teenagers fighting; baby crying; changing radio stations; crazy drivers; excited to see family; dreading seeing family; listening to achievements; remembering lost ones; meeting new family; staying clear of crazy aunt; being hugged and kissed; smiling until your face hurts; marriages; divorces; food; laughter.

week nine not week eight agian

April 22, is week nine not eight

Theme Eight

Going to the annually family reunion is different every year. Driving for hours in a cramped car; teenagers fighting; baby crying; changing radio stations; crazy drivers; excited to see family; dreading seeing family; listening to achievements; remembering lost ones; meeting new family; staying clear of crazy aunt; being hugged and kissed; smiling until your face hurts; marriages; divorces; food; laughter; deciding this is great lets do it next year.

Theme Eight

I have often thought that maybe our lives are mapped out for us in a tentative way from the minute we are born and what we do with that map is left up to us. When opportunities are given to us we can either take them or pass them by. What professions we go into, who we marry, how many children we have are all choices that can change the direction of our lives. This is what I believe may have happened when my husband and I decided to have children. Our first attempt at having a child was marked by lost and years of seeing doctors. With the news of our first child we were so excited to welcome into our home was lost when I was only three months pregnant. Having people tell us that this might have been for the best because sometimes it is Gods way of knowing when a child may suffer more then if their live were taken before they were done developing. This was no help to either of us because it would not have mattered what issues the baby may have had because he or she would have been ours and we would have done everything possible for the child. Again this may have been something that was in our journey that we could not have changed no matter how hard we would have liked to. Soon our sadness was replaced by joy and a little fear when I become pregnant with our son. We worried and read all the books and followed them like a religion and our son was born in November of 92. Even with our happiness over having a son we still wondered what our first pregnancy would have given us. As time passed and our daughter was born two years later we thought about our first child but with raising two active children the times became less and less. We were always thinking that three children would be great but as the years passed and we were not given the gift of another child we fell into our lives of being a family of four.

This changed quickly in 2006 when a co-worker brought her grandson into work and I held him. While she was at a point in her life when she should have been enjoying her grandchildren and still having the time to enjoy being free to travel and have her interest she was contacted by Human Services that her grandson would be taken at birth from her daughter and placed in foster care if she was unable to take him and doing the only thing she could she brought the baby home. That first day while holding him I felt the same way as when I held my own children for the first time. I had accepted that we were only going to have two children but found myself offering to help his grandmother with his care. This was the beginning of getting to know my third child. During those months Ashton came to stay with us often and soon he was with us more then his grandmother. In December we were asked by human services if we would like to be Ashton’s foster parents we said yes very quickly and with in days he was ours. As he became more and more a part of our lives I know that if we were to loose him that it would be like loosing one of our birth children. Months passed and during one of our home visits the social worker asked if we would like to adopt Ash. In less then one second we both said yes. This process was long and at times a pain in the ass but we kept looking ahead to when he would be our son legally even though he already was in our hearts. December 5, 2007 our wait was over and going in front of a judge we finally had been given our third child. Sometimes it’s funny how our life changes.

Week Seven Theme

Some people just need to be busy to have a full live and that it how it is with my friend at work. She is a wonderful person that would do almost anything for anyone but when she is in a bad mood then we steer clear of her. She has had so many interests over the years that we can’t keep track of what she is doing at any given time. She started seven years ago with being consumed with loosing weight. She joined Curves and that lasted about a month then came her membership to the YMCA where all she talked about was swimming and weight training. Before long the exercising was out and the South Beach Diet had taken over. She tried pushing the book on anyone that came near her and that was fine but she would get up set when no one would join her in the latest thing. We started out as a group moving from one thing to another with her but soon grew tired of her changing interest so often that we just gave up. After the weight loose era she moved on to being a Creative Memories sales person. Of course we all booked parties and bought everything we needed to start our memory keeping. She was always showing us what was new and telling us how much money see spent on her last order. Most times it was more then she made that week. After the memories were all cut and stuck in many photo albums she started working two jobs and being grumpy the day after working late. She came in with all these great stories of her other job and the products that were available at a discount to her. The second job lasted the longest of her interest just over one and a half years. While still working at her second job she began having an interest in photography. She took a class and that was all we heard about for about 15 weeks. Then she started bringing in her pictures that she would have blown up and framed. Some of us bought a picture but they still kept coming. The pictures soon gave way to cards she would make and she was always having a container of them out and trying to push them under our noses. She would get upset when fewer and fewer people would show an interest in them. She is a very passionate person in anything she does but along with that passion comes pushiness. It’s hard to tell what her next interest will be but we all hope it is something that doesn’t involve us buying something.