Junior Internship...nothing like last minute!

The Junior class at Emerson Waldorf School have to do one week of an internship every year. Last year Alex did his week internship with an art therapy school learning about art therapy. It has helped bolster his desire to seriously continue on that career path and is now looking into colleges that would help support him.

Jared mentioned last year that he was interested in becoming a police officer and wondered whether they took on interns. At the time I advised him that we would check into it but that he should consider a second option just in case that was not possible. Well, time got away and before we knew it school started up this year.

We eventually got in contact with the Hillsborough Police Department - and though they did do internships in the administrative side, they did not do internships with the actual police. And, because of some event that was happening in October the particular week Jared needed was not possible. They did have a program called The Explorer Post which was a year commitment for two Saturday's a month learning about becoming a police officer. We had nixed the idea in the beginning because it did not fit the criteria the school wanted.

So, we moved on to the Chapel Hill Police - who had an internship but it was for 17 and 18 year olds and it was a year commitment - not old enough. So back to the drawing board.

We attempted to contact his back-up choice of Architect but we were having no luck on any local places being available that week either.

So we asked to see if the Explorer Post would work in lieu of the one week - as I felt a whole year had to be much more worthy and education than just a week. At first we were advised yes, then we were advised no, that he still needed something for the week of internships. And now it's the Thursday before the internship is supposed to start!

Luckily for me I happened to complain to just the right parent at our school about the whole thing and she said, "How about the sheriff's office? I happen to know the sheriff and his daughter. Let me check on that!" And off she went.

Well, it was incredibly last minute, Sunday as a matter of fact but she called back and said that Jared was all set to start on Monday at the Orange County Sheriff's Office in downtown Hillsborough.... Yipee!!!!

Jared had an awesome week and really seemed to enjoy himself! He went out a couple of times cruising a rougher neighborhood with some of the inspectors, learned about finger prints and how to lift them off objects with different devices, he saw an interview, went to the court, went to the jail, and also saw many old weapons from old cases that had not yet been destroyed. He also did a lot of filing for them and got to see lots of graphic photos of some of the cases the different inspectors had worked on over the years. All-in-all I think he had a great experience and that this has strengthened his desire to become a law enforcement agent of some kind.

He is still going to start the Explorer Post as well and see how where that takes him over the next year. I can't wait! I'm very happy to see him so happy, engaged and interested in something so noble!

Heartbreak and Heartache...

There's always something new to experience as a parent but, even though I knew this might happen eventually, I was saddened that it happened so soon. This is one of those things that you cannot truly fix and make better as a parent - you have to watch your son or daughter from the sidelines, giving love when you can, but really, just watching them work through it (hopefully) and eventually moving on.

Jared's girlfriend Ashley broke up with him after about 6 months of dating. Her reasons were not truly understood and a bit confusing which only hurts more. I think it would be better to say the hard things then to say "I need space. I think we've grown as much as we can. I still want to be your friend." sigh.

But at 16 it's hard to truly say what it was about the other person you didn't like anymore - or maybe never liked - so they try to break up "nicely" and try not to hurt the other's feelings. I get that, but it's hard to grasp from the other side.

It breaks my heart to know that Jared had opened up so much from meeting Ashley - playing games that he would normally not have played, read books he would have NEVER read, seen movies he would have never seen, for his girlfriend because it made her happy and he cared enough for her to want to make her happy. To see him hold her hand and make her laugh; to see him go to the hospital, if only for an hour or two to keep her company and make her feel loved and cared for to be told the above. They had never even fought, not once in the 6 months they were together. She seemed to constantly want to get together with him and then not want to leave when it was time to go home. So this is a difficult switch - as if someone just turned her off - and it's hurting my son.

There's nothing I can do but offer my love and listen if he wants to talk - there's no words of wisdom to impart on this one as I don't understand why Ashley did it. If she had said "You are to pushy about wanting to have sex." or "We never do what I want but only what you want." I can give him words of wisdom of how to grow and change. But to say, "Maybe you cared too much for her?" just doesn't seem right. So it's, "You didn't do anything wrong. There's something wrong with her." Which doesn't make it any better or any easier.

This one's tough for me because I've always loved my role of "fix it and make it better" with boo-boo's and the such. But, this is one boo-boo that I can't truly fix... and it breaks my heart.

Welcome to senior year in a waldorf school!

So the year has started off with a bang! Alex's class went to Maine for a zoology block trip to a place called Hermit Island! It sounded like it was a blast and I think Alex really enjoyed himself and learned a lot. The best part about this trip is that they spent it with 7 other waldorf high schools and about 100 senior waldorf students. So they know they aren't the only "weird waldorf" students out there! Alex made friends with a few students from the Toronto Waldorf School and had them on his facebook shortly after he got back, as well as the Atlanta Waldorf School. I'll post a link to the photos later.

Then we have the college visits starting up in which Alex is now looking at Guilford (Greensboro, NC) and possibly Brevard (Asheville, NC - Kim, the mountains, where we were when I was in white water rafting hell!). So we shall see how the year progresses. For now it's starting to work on scholarships - which will be a learning curve for all of us. Jared doesn't know how lucky he is that we'll be skilled for next year! HA!

We are still only a one car family so the guys have not had their practice to finish up their licensing sadly. I keep hoping it will be soon to get a 2nd used vehicle...sigh. So it's lots of driving them around for their dates and outings.

I stepped up to be the class parent for 12th grade - for those of you who know Waldorf you know that's a big job... and even bigger for 12th grade as we still have their end of year trip we need to earn money for and their graduation... wheee. So, fundraising here we come!

Jared will be starting up his internship next month for his Junior year. At this point he is still interested in being a police officer so he need to contact them this week to see if that's possible. If it is not then he next choice is Architect - don't see the correlation but at least he has a second option and either of them sound interesting to me! I think he would be great at both but we'll see what comes of it all!

Alex has his senior project as well - which is a big deal at our school. They use most of the year working on it and then in the spring they will have a presentation night to talk about their project to the community (parents, other students, etc). His project is creating a Graphic Novel - from the story creation, art work, lettering and inking - truly a huge project! He is hoping that it is worthy enough for publishing at the end. And he has found a alum parent who used to do that for a living as his mentor and we are very excited about it! It fits Alex perfectly! He was so excited about it that he started this summer with working out his idea and starting on the story line - so he's off to a great start!

I completely skipped over summer but I will get back to it at a later post and talk about my great week vacation at the beach with my sister - but for now I wanted to get all of that out there before time slipped by and we were on to the next thing in life!

Kelley

Money Anyone??

So after reading the sob story below does anyone have about $4,000 they would like to donate to the Wiley Clan??

Vehicle Headaches....

I think everyone knows that we bought a brand new car on new years eve day. And when doing so we let our poor 4runner, as he was aptly named "Beast" have a nice respite - waiting to save up enough money to take him in for some highly needed work - and for us to be a 2 car family again.

Well, we did that over our spring break - giving Toyota our truck and telling them we were not in a hurry. They found that it really needed a tune-up and that it definitely needed the O2 sensors replaced (which we were already aware of). But, Beast dumbfounded the service people -after they took care of all those things it was still not running right and it took them about 3 more days to figure it out.

The sad news is we had to pay $500 for the above items to find out that one of the cylinders is bad and though the Beast is running, roughly, that eventually he will die and that it is not worth fixing it or replacing the engine. So, today we went and picked up the dear Beast and left our new Corolla there for it's 5000 mile check up and its gas pedal recall - drove home and waited for them to call us back to go back and get our car.

Beast was running rough but seemed to be just fine and got us home - and 3 hours later got us back to the Toyota dealership for us to get our car back. But it was almost out of gas so Shannon dropped me off to get the car and he took Beast away to gas up and meet me at home.

I got back home - pulled out the vacuum cleaner and was cleaning the inside of the car - making her all shiny clean for my hubby when he got home - but, alas, he never came home. He called from a payphone from the gas station stating that after gassing up the Beast it would not start again. After trying to jump it with the help of a kind citizen, it still wouldn't start. It seems that the fuel pump fuse had shorted or exploded. So I drove back past the Toyota dealership, which was now closed, and hung out with the truck while Shannon went to see if he could buy a new fuse from an Auto Zone or wherever. Sadly, the truck is old enough they don't carry the proper fuses but Shannon bought one that might work.... it didn't.

Another $80 later we have had the Beast towed home - with no hope in sight for us ever using it again. Now all we can hope is that someone will want to buy it off us and come tow it away for parts...

Goodbye Beast...

Hello one car family... AGAIN! Maybe some day we'll have two vehicles working at the same time!

First snow of the winter

Believe it or not we actually had our first snow of the winter, and before Christmas! I was totally shocked that it happened, but there you have it. And there's no such thing as global warming...riiiiight!

I think we only have a couple of photos and I haven't d/l'd them yet off the camera so I'll share those later. But what I wanted to share is how much fun it was to watch our teenage sons, 15 & 17, along with their good friend Sasha who is either 16 or 17 go romping out to PLAY in the snow. They were having snowball fights, rolling around and tackling each other in the snow and then running through the neighborhood chasing each other and yelling and throwing snow balls at the street light.

Shannon and I were out in the hot tub hearing them in the distance and they were the only sound in the neighborhood oddly enough. Otherwise it was that peacefulness that seems to occur when it snows. No animals making any noise or moving around, and it was the kind of snow that just was coming straight down in big fluffy flakes, with no wind. It was quite peaceful and beautiful! Thank you mother nature!

I Can't Decide...

...whether to write by person or by time line...and I never know who may still be looking at this since it's been forever since I last posted - but I'm feeling the need to write again so here goes...by time line...

So school kicked off at the end of August and went right into cross country for Jared and Alex. It has been a lot of fun attending the meets and cheering them on and watching them both improve incredibly over the last 2 months. I think doing the individual competitions has been more exciting for them than the team ones, since our team is very small. But considering that this is the first official year for having a varsity high school cross country team 6 young men is not so bad of a start. Jared has really pushed himself and even impressed his coach. Last week when it was cold and started raining on them while practicing - the coach told the students they could turn around and head back to the school if it was too cold or continue on and finish the full run (which I think may have been a 5 mile run). And just when the coach thought Jared was going to turn around at the crosswalk and head back he pushed on and completed the full run! Jared came into my office soaked to the bone and shivering - the poor guy, but he did great! They have one last meet tomorrow that is an individual run as well - should be fun!

We then had our first week vacation in October in which the 5 of us went to Kill Devil Hills, NC. It was an amazing week full of beauty and relaxation with a little tourism and fun thrown in. For those who are not familiar with this area it is right on the coast, the Outer Banks, which is a long strip of sand that we humans have been crazy enough to build homes, businesses, condo's and hotels along. The condo's we stayed in were facing the Atlantic ocean and so the view was incredible every day. We swam in the ocean almost every day except for 1 day in the middle of the week because it was very cold and the ocean was pretty turbulent, and then the last day we did not swim either. Kill Devil Hills is also the location where the Wright Brother's took their first flight - so we went to the monument and got to see a replica of that first plane along with a couple of buildings - one they lived in and one the worked on the plane in. Then there was the hang gliding - which I think the video's can kind of speak for themselves. I'll post them on here later. It was a wonderful time and we hope we can go back again next year!

We had to leave our vacation a day early as the boys had their PSATs that Saturday and then Jared had to get packed up for this 10th grade curriculum week long trip. While Alex was finalizing his internship with the Art Therapy Institute.

So here I'm going to go into a proud momma moment with Alex. Out of all the students in his class he was the only one who completely cold called for his internship. The other students either did their internships with current or alumni parents or they interned at a place of business that their parents have friends or contacts in. So to me that first step was HUGE as some grown-ups cannot even do that - and he did it on his own. We googled Art Therapy and found the Art Therapy Institute in Durham and he grabbed the phone, called the number and left a detailed message. When he didn't hear back the next day he did it again and left his email that time, and sure enough he received an email and everything went forward from there. The other great thing is that instead of just a week internship, which is what our school requires, he is going to intern for the whole school year. He was originally supposed to work with some refugees children from Burma but because he would have had to leave class one day week that didn't quite work out - but he will be doing one-on-one work with a young girl named McKayla who has some issues (not sure what yet) but would benefit from art therapy. Alex will be starting the week after this one - as soon as his TB tests come back and we get a background check done - then he's all set! I'm very proud of him!

Alex also had his 17th birthday during that intern week - and though it was low-key I think he's enjoying his new birthday present (no, not a car) but a mini-laptop. It's pretty sweet!

Jared came back from a week of hanging out with his classmates and friends having learned about textiles. I think he was happy to be home and sleeping in his bed once again. :)

The boys also hosted a Halloween party at our house on Halloween. I think it was a success. We had 20 teenagers at our house from 6 until midnight and then the girls had to go home. We ended up with a total of 8 guys staying the night and boy, they were up late, until about 4am I think! There was loud music (boy those Bose speakers can really play loudly), lots of pizza and junk food and the hot tub - all was good!

We've received their interim grades so far this year and they are both doing awesome! Mostly A's with a couple of B's - so all-in-all they are doing great! Jared is in the midst of learning his lines for the 10th grade play, "You Can't Take It With You" and Alex is reading and discussing Parsival. And starting next week we move right into basketball season... yippee! It was so much fun last year that I cannot wait for this year. We have been allowed back on the league so there are many more games than last year and these games will be real ones - go Fighting Gnomes!!

So, as you can see, every day we are home very late, and now that we have fallen back in time it's pitch black by the time we get home. It's homework (prepping for Shannon), dinner, hot tub, and then one of our many netflix tv show addictions before going to bed to start all over again.

Shannon is doing well in his class - he just accepted a new student - Michelle Nelson. So he is at 24 students for this year. It sounds like there may be one more coming for a visit after our holiday break, but they won't be joining until 4th grade. He is knee deep in farming and dirt with his class - which is all fun!

I'm constantly kept busy in the office at school - besides my normal daily work stuff we are in the middle of an audit and trying to become accredited so I have taken on many other tasks that would not normally be mine to help things flow smoothly and get completed. I have given myself the nickname "Xena"! :) And just around the corner is re-enrollment - so it's never ending! I can honestly say that I am never bored at work - ever!

The guys are still practicing driving with their permits - but I don't think they are driving enough. We need to step that up some and Shannon and I need to become lazy and say we "just can't drive" and see how that goes?? I still think a defensive driving course would be the best thing for both of them so I need to take the time to research that and find out how much it will cost us...ugh!

I think that's all the news for now. I'm sure I missed some things along the way - but at least this is something.

Happy Martinmas everyone!