Rylan’s Journey Home

Kindergarten is going well for Cameron!  He really does like school, although I notice by the end of a week he’s really wanting a day home.  We have neighbors of ours who have 4 boys who are helping us with Cameron in the mornings.  Their two older boys are babysitting ages, so I pay them $5.00 a morning for when Cameron comes.  They help him with breakfast and basically babysit from 6:20 until the bus comes at 7:35am.  It’s been working great!  Well…. that’s until they couldn’t do it this past Wednesday.  They had orthodontist appts in the morning, so I went into work late and took Cameron to school myself.  Before this he has been complaining about the bus.  One great reason why this arrangement also worked nice was it allowed Cameron to get on the bus later.  Right now if we were to put him on the bus, he’d be the first one on at 6:40am!  The bust gets to school around 8am.  That is 1hr and 20min on a bus.  I’m sorry, but that is way too long.  It’s far to long for any child much less one that gets severe motion sickness and is on 5yrs old.  I’d advocate for the bus route to get changed (which I am sort of doing for some other families near our home), but it really wouldn’t help us any way.  John and I both have to be to Winona early, so we need morning care.  This arrangement we had going with the neighbors solved both problems.  Sort of.
Cameron is still getting ill on the bus.  Friday morning he cried and cried and wouldn’t get out of the car at the neighbors.  He wanted me to take him to school.  I couldn’t be that late for work again, so I had no choice but to drive him to John’s moms house.  She and John’s brother were still milking cows (they’re dairy farmers) and John’s dad is in Canada fishing.  I got Cameron his bowl of cereal and explained the situation.  Thankfully, she understood and said she’d get him to the bus.  At this point I was thinking maybe the newness of the neighbors house wore off.  Maybe he didn’t like that?  I felt bad for dumping the issue in John’s moms lap.  However, when it came time to put him on the bus, he put up a fight again and grandma ended up taking him to school.  It’s only about 10min from our house.  Since then I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out what we’re going to do!
So he likes the neighbors house, he likes school, hates the bus.  That sort of ruins the plan we had.  There is one daycare between our house and school and she is always full.  I’ve tried 3 times!  I thought maybe that would help as she is out on the highway, so no windy, curvy roads like we live on.  There is no before school program like Key Kids offered by us…. which would be the answer to our problem!  So, I’m going to the PTO meeting on Wednesday night to discuss this.  They tried to implement one before and failed.  I would guess there have to be other families like us who need care for their kids either before or after school and can’t find any?  Maybe other families who even take their kids out of the district because of that?
As for our littlest addition, Rylan is going with the flow.  He’s happy as a lark most days to be going to daycare at Mindy’s house.  I find that he’s still very layed back and happy to just be in the mix somewhere!  He will be due for his next round of shots on Oct 1st.  I’m so not looking forward to that!  I have a feeling they may run a blood test too.  Just checking out the basics, but again, not looking forward to it!
We had a picnic last weekend in La Crosse, WI and got to see Sean, Sonja, and Kayla!  It’s always nice to see all the other families, but we sort of horded them to ourselves!  It’s just incredible yet to see them all together, in the USA!
My new blog is nearly setup.  Just a few minor changes yet and I’ll be providing the new address to you.  I’m able to download pictures…. yea!  Until then, enjoy the rest of your weekend!
 

Well, we just got back from our first official family vacation!  We had free airlines tickets to use and a free rental car, so we thought before we lost them we might as well use them.  We cashed in our loose change we’d be saving for the past 2 years and that covered our spending money for eating and activities.  So, just having to pay for the hotel, not a bad deal at all.
Last Wednesday night we stayed over in Minneapolis where we could park the car, and flew out Thursday morning (minus John and that’s a story I’ll save for later).  Anyway, by Thursday evening we were all in Colorado Springs as we had a direct flight there.  The kids were SO good on the plane.  The trip went extremely well and I have to say, I’d do it again!  YES, I’m surprised.  I was a bit worried.  Friday morning we took the Cog Railway to the top of Pike’s Peak.  Then that afternoon we drove thru the Garden of the Gods.  Saturday morning we went on a train trip thru the Royal Gorge Canyon, then that afternoon we went up to the top of the gorge to the Royal Gorge Park and walked the highest suspension bridge in the world (I believe).  We also visited Buckskin Joe’s which is a town made up of authentic western buildings.  The kids got to witness a “real” western shoot out!  Cameron loved that, but Rylan screamed and ran for cover!  Sunday we went to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, which is a zoo on the side of a mountain.  It was fantastic, but HOT!  Oh, and it did snow on us while we were out there.  Weird thing is we were no in the mountains but driving to Cripple Creek!  We had the air conditioning on in the car of all things!
We flew home Monday morning, just in time to get unpacked and get the kids in the bathtub.  That next morning on Tueday I had Cameron’s Kindergarten orientation!  Yesterday (Wed) he had his first day of Kindergarten!  I still can’t believe it!  I took him to school and of course he did fine.  He was all too happy to take off and leave me standing there watching him.  Not a tear from this mom though, if you can believe it.  I wasn’t sure if I was going to shed a tear of sadness or relieve.  I knew he needed to go to school badly as he really does enjoy it and does his best there.  But yet this opens a whole new world that I don’t know if I’M ready for!
I’m still working on starting a new blog, one where I can post pictures with each entry and I can write in easier.  This one seriously is a pain!
Hang in there with me as I hope to have it up and running soon.  It’s hard to find the time lately to work at it.