Moonrise Retreat - Day Four (Enchanted Rock)

This day was one I've been waiting for for a long time.  ENCHANTED ROCK DAY!!!  I think my dad carried me up to the top of this big ole granite hill before I could even walk up it myself.  I remember climbing to the top many times in my youth.   Since we had kids I've thought about climbing it with them.  And today was the day.

There it is!  

When we pulled in to pay our State Park Fee (we really need one of those yearly passes!), there was a group of college kids paying their fees too.  Jav got back to the car and said we might want to avoid that group at all costs.  So we hung around the restrooms, watching as they cranked up some rap and started up the hill.   Jav knew my face said, OH GOOD GOD.  I know I was young once but those memories are quickly fading.  We waited about 5 minutes but then saw they'd stopped at an observatory station.  We saw our chance and took off at a pretty brisk pace.

I bet there is a pic of me and my brother doing this very thing.  I need to  do some hunting.

It took me a good 5 minutes to get my breath back once we finished the steepest part of our hike.  It was then I realized I had not climbed up this big ole rock for 28 YEARS!!!  My poor ole body has shifted significantly since then because of these two fellas.  But it was worth every gasp and heart-pounding step once we got to the top.  The weather was nothing short of phenomenal.  It was cloudy the whole time we climbed, and when we got to the top it actually rained on us.  Not what we were expecting in Texas, in June, around 11 am in the morning.  It was almost chilly!  

It's hard to do a selfie and show the spectacular view.

There were still flowers everywhere, which also surprised us.  Lots of puddles too.  

I love all the pics from this adventure, but this one above is my favorite.  The boys with their arms around each other between us, Joel gazing at his big brother as is his habit.  They loved the big ole rock just as much as I did.  Which made my heart sing with happiness.  

Texas really is a beautiful place, and even the presence of the college kids at the top, sitting and enjoying some snacks with their music still going couldn't ruin my good mood.  We had such good luck on the trip with weather and happily realizing our boys are up for pretty much any adventure.  I really want to explore the State Parks within 1-2 hours driving distance so we can do some day hikes.

One of the coolest things that happened on the way down was that we had a rare spotting of this - the painted bunting!  He was doing some type of mating ritual, hopping all around here and there.  He wasn't even paying attention to us and let me get really close for a pic.  Hopefully he impressed his lady friend and they lived happily ever after.

One of the boys' favorite things about this trip:  the fact that we had stairs to go up and down.  Kids are funny.

After our great hike and lunch, the boys trounced around the farm then we all got cleaned up because we were to going to a big family dinner.  They had been upstairs making lots of noise, and all of a sudden I realized they were too quiet.  I crept upstairs and found them sound asleep!  It was 5pm.  Guess that big ole rock tired them out a little.

When I found out my cousin Peggy and her husband Rob were visiting Fredericksburg at the same time we were, I asked if everyone could get together for a family dinner.  They decided to have it at my Uncle Robert and Aunt Lou's house, which made me even happier.  This is the house we spent all of our summer trips in.  It seems a little empty without Uncle Robert and his 6'5 frame and gentle German accent.  He passed away a year and a half ago.  But Aunt Lou, who just turned 91, is doing well and still able to live on her own with some help for now.

We had pizza, salad and wine...and lots of talking, reminiscing and laughter.  Laurie, who owns the farm and B&B, is the middle child of Robert and Lou, Ross is the oldest and Peggy the youngest.  How fun to spend the evening with all three, their spouses and Aunt Lou.  The boys now have a tiny taste of the fun we used all have on our vacations.  The smell of venison and brisket being smoked in Uncle Robert's smokehouse; all the kids playing in the backyard while the grownups drank beer and told stories on the back porch.  Such happy, happy memories.  We didn't start taking pics until after Ross and wife Karen had gone home (shoot).

I love this picture of them all laughing!  The boys both (lightly and accidentally) stepped on Aunt Lou's feet!  

All the handsome men.

Love this one even though I have my eyes closed.

And so ended another really fun, but LONG day.  

I think we ate ice cream and looked at stars, but it's all a big blur now.

Moonrise Retreat, Day Three

Good morning!

How about a walk?  The wildflowers were EVERYWHERE still, which really surprised me.

The road goes on forever and the party never ends!

My handsome chaperones for our walk.

What a beautiful spread.  The sky was like a changing painting the entire time we were there.  My cousin has a bunch of hens, 5 sheep, 3 horses, 3 cats and a dog, little Gracie who is obsessed with chasing the tennis ball.  They were heading to Lake LBJ at Marble Falls on Thursday and asked if the boys would like to do some farm chores for them while they were gone.  Boy howdy would they!  Here's my notes I took as we followed her around.  We realized on this trip that we'd love to have a farm.  We just wouldn't be able to deal with the animals when they got sick and had to be put down- Jav and I are both wimps about that.  But it was fun to pretend for a few days that it was our farm and we were tending to our animals.

The Blues Brothers ride again, lattes in hand. Proving you can take the boys out of the city but you can't take the city out of the boys!

We spent all afternoon and then some in town.  The weather was warm and humid but not steaming hot, so we were lucky.  It was quite pleasant to roam around under the awnings.

Admiral Nimitz with either his father or grandfather, we can't remember!

We went back for the final part of the Nimitz museum, to the old family hotel.  Then we walked around town.  We found the coolest store called the Fun Shop that I thought was new.  Nope, been open a long time and it's so tiny we never noticed it before!  It has halloween masks, magician supplies, and lots of rude humor t-shirts and coffee mugs.  The boys LOVED it.  The shopkeeper did several magic tricks for them and they were mesmerized.  We bought a new piggy bank for Joel in the shape of a El Did de los Muertos skull, and Gabriel picked out 5 foam rubber balls and a book about sleight of hand tricks with them.

The reason it's always been fun to shop in Fredericksburg is you can walk up and down Main Street with a beer or some wine.  The vineyards have taken over the outskirts of Fredericksburg and there are tasting rooms and flights of this or that everywhere you turn.  We walked to the t-shirt shop (you'll see why in a future post), then made our way down to the far end of Main Street so we could eat dinner at our favorite restaurant, The Altdorf.  It was closed for renovations!!!  GRRRRRRRRR!!!!!
The boys were super tired by then, and a family argument ensued about where we would eat.  We ended up at a new burger place, sitting outside right by the pedestrians walking everywhere.  They had Build Your Own Burgers.  I got a grass-fed beef burger with caramelized onions and goat cheese on a sourdough bun.  OMG it was good.  I think we all earned the extra fat after walking 15000 steps that day/evening.

My cousin was so sweet to take the boys on a short horse ride around the driveway on Beau, retired race horse.  He is beautiful and moves with such grace.  What a treat!

And after that taxing event, they needed a good soak in the hot tub while enjoying another beautiful Texas sunset...

and we had the bonus of a sweet cat bath!  I very much miss Dottie.  We finished the evening with another balcony visit armed with our ice cream and ready to star gaze.  

Moonrise Retreat Day Two - Fishing

My cousin Laurie and her husband Daniel are two of my favorite people.  I have such happy memories of vacations to visit them just after they were married, with a new home built out in the country.  My brother and I romped around their land, rode their old horse Stonewall, stood statue still on the back porch so hummingbirds would feed right next to our heads, and climbed big piles of dirt and almost got bitten by a scorpion (actually just my brother did that one). They still own the land, and they offered to take the boys fishing on Monday night in their pond there.  I asked if they would mind if the boys rode with them in Daniel's giant Dooley pickup truck, because Joel had never ridden in a truck before.  It turned out great, because they got to know the boys.  And the boys LOVED Daniel.  He asked if they wanted to help him search for the cows so he could feed them and keep them away from the pond where we'd be fishing. I'd say those are two pretty happy faces in the pic above!

While the boys searched for the cows, Laurie checked on the goats, some of which had had babies recently.  Her faithful donkey, Jack, is seen up front and center.  

It was a beautiful night.  We didn't realize Daniel and the boys gave up trying to find the cows and started fishing.  We missed Joel catch his first fish EVER!  While the boys fished Laurie and I sipped wine out of paper cups and caught up with each others' lives.  At one point Laurie said that we had a visitor.  I turned around and saw an armadillo about 2 feet away from me!  It shyly ( or slyly!) ran off as soon as I spotted it.  The boys ran out of bait and gave up; no one caught anything except Joel's first fish that they threw back, some weeds off the bottom, and sometimes each others' lines.  But they still had a blast, and I'm grateful to Laurie and Daniel for taking time out to spend with us and get to know the boys.  

Sunset on the way back home

Tired boys

Moonrise Retreat, Day Two

Waking up in the Texas Hill Country is always a good thing.  Waking up with the view we had was miraculous.  The sheep were already baa-ing in the pasture right outside the back door, and the sweet outdoor kitty Dottie was curled up in one of the patio chairs just waiting for someone to come out with a cup of coffee and snuggle with her.  The sun was rising just over the horizon.  I feel those hills running through my blood and it's like coming home when I am there.

Our plan for Monday was to visit the National Museum of the Pacific War.  Admiral Chester Nimitz, who headed up the entire Pacific conflict after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, is from Fredericksburg.  I had always wanted to visit the old museum located in his parents' hotel on Main Street, which is still there but scaled down.  The tickets now get you into three places:  A big, new state of the art museum where the entire history leading up to the conflict is told and all the major battle strategies are outlined, the old hotel with its history of Nimitz's family and the hotel, and another facility that houses a restored PT boat, a torpedo bombing airplane and a beach bunker where battle reenactments are done several times throughout the year.  There is SO much to see that your tickets are good for three days, so you can leave and come back at your leisure.

We spent two hours at the big museum and were only a little over halfway through!  It was fascinating to Jav and I.  We never realized how far back the US/Japan conflict went.  We never realized the enormity of what happened at Pearl Harbor.  We never heard the strategy Nimitz used for all of the different battles.  The boys didn't really get into the details, but they liked the videos that were shown in each new phase of the war.  Even for thinking adults, there's only so much your brain can take at one time.  So we decided to walk to Main Street and have lunch, then go back to finish up.

We ate lunch at Wheeler's, where we had the nicest server that the boys loved right away.  I normally get a Reuben sandwich there, but decided to try beans and cornbread.  Perfect!  We promised to take the boys to Dooley's, the five and dime that's been there since before I was born, and let them pick out one thing to buy.  They have a new store a few doors down from Dooley's with the same kind of merchandise, it has an old feel with hardwood floors, but it's nicer and a little more expensive.  More like a dime and quarter store.  But it isn't the same.  I hope to high heaven they don't end up putting Dooley's out of business!

I love Dooley's.  I just like walking around and taking in the smell of those old hardwood floors.  Everywhere you look there is color and it makes me feel like a kid again.  My grandmother, mom and I used to go to Mott's Five and Dime quite a bit and the smell and look is exactly the same at Dooley's.  Joel picked out marbles and Gabriel got a fidget spinner (sigh, he had left his at home), and we got t-shirts for Cade and Macy.

After Dooley's we headed back to the Museum to take a look at the restored bomber and PT boat.  The videos were so interesting, especially the one with actual footage about life on an aircraft carrier.  I really feel the boys understood a little more about war, the sacrifices made by servicemen and women, how hard and scary to be away from home and facing unknown situations constantly.

We were pretty wiped out when we got back "home".  We ate a quiet dinner, watched a little Rangers and returned to our balcony to eat ice cream and look at the stars.  We also learned something interesting about tin roofs:  When a branch scrapes against them in a good Hill Country wind it's impossible to sleep!  We switched the A/C to Fan setting and that seemed to help.

Vacation 2017! Moonrise Retreat, Day One

Since I am turning 50 in August, Jav wanted me to decided where we were going to vacation this summer.  I picked a vacation in Fredericksburg.  Every time we have visited here, we have spent time with family and not really been tourists.  Except for the pre-Christmas trip we took with my brother's family 4 years ago, when we went into town to see the giant Christmas tree in the square.

I contacted my cousin who owns several bed and breakfasts in the area.  One of them is located on their farm, right next to the farmhouse.  I had visited them last year and fell in love with the land, the view and the B&B.  Our chosen dates were open and she gave us a great deal for the week.  It seemed our plans were falling into place.

We had some things in mind before we came:  Hike to the top of  Enchanted Rock, visit the National Museum of the Pacific War, another possible hike in a nearby State Park, dinner at our favorite restaurant The Altdorf, maybe visit the Old Tunnel where the bats come out to feast every night.  But Jav and I also wanted to relax, drink some good German beer and enjoy the view.

We left Fort Worth on Sunday morning, me with yet another stressful couple of weeks beforehand due to the health of my oldest cat.  Bones had lost weight recently, and the vet found him to have the beginnings of kidney problems.  He turned 19 this month.  Leaving him for a week was very hard for me.  But I knew he would get great care at the vet's office and tried to not worry about it.

Our Spelling Bee

We drove the back way to Austin, and visited the Bob Bullock State Texas Museum.  Jav had a fun time strolling down memory lane seeing the UT campus across the street from the museum.  They had a special exhibit on Stevie Ray Vaughn, Texas music legend.  His brother Jimmy Vaughn had donated tons of memorabilia for it.  There was a constant loop of his Austin City Limits performances playing on a big screen.  There was a guitar you could play while pressing various foot pedals to change the sound.  There was a drum kit on which you could learn a drum solo from his drummer.  It was very moving for all of us music nerds.  We ate a late lunch at Taco Cabana and the boys got a big kick out of watching the birds jockeying for position and scraps around our table outside.

We headed on to Fredericksburg in the late afternoon.  Google Maps is such a necessity in my life and didn't let us down trying to find the farm.  Even though my cousin and her husband were out visiting some family they left it open for us.  You can still do that in most parts of Fredericksburg! We explored our new home from top to bottom (the boys were SO excited it had two stories).  I didn't realize there was a full kitchen, so I made a grocery list and we went to stock up for breakfasts and lunches for the week.

My cousin returned and showed us around the farm.  They have 14 egg-laying hens, two horses named Jet and Beau (Beau is a retired race horse), a miniature horse named Moonshine, 5 sheep, 3 cats (sisters Goldie and Amber and Bed and Breakfast cat Dottie) and 1 dog, Gracie.  The farm sits atop a hill and has beautiful views all around of the hill country.  Everywhere you look are wildflowers, hummingbirds, hawks and other birds.  There are lots of places to sit on the back porch, and outside stairs leading to a 2nd story porch.  There's a hot tub and a fire pit for colder nights.  In other words, it's perfect.  After watching the fireflies in the twilight we settled in for dinner and later ate our ice cream upstairs to look at the stars.  We don't see stars like that in town, there are too many lights.

I told the boys about visiting my cousin and her husband's first house they had built in the country.  I was probably about 11 or 12.  They had just fogged the house for bugs and there were dead crickets and other bugs I had never seen before (they were mostly katydids) laying everywhere.  Then the nighttime calls of the katydids started, and I was full-on terrified to go to sleep.  I just knew they would all come attack me in the middle of the night and eat me!  So when Joel started saying he was scared from the darkness and all the bug noises and wanted to go back in, I could totally relate.   We are, at the end of day, total city people!

End of day one we were tired and happily went to bed, realizing that it didn't matter if we had plans or not.  It would be a great week just hanging around the farm.

Boys and other random things: Jan through March 2017

As we were looking back over my posts from when the boys were babies, we realized how much we have forgotten about it all.  It makes me sad to realize we forget anything.  But it also makes me want to find some time to just hit on some things we might forget.  My accounting brain decided to try quarterly reports.  Hah.

Joel:

He gave up racing his Hot Wheels Nascar cars for Lent.  The afternoon of Ash Wednesday we found him lining up little bouncy rubber balls on his race track to race them instead.  Yesterday he thought of coins, and borrowed all the change from his dad's nightstand.  He now has his own Fantasy Nascar team where he picks five drivers each weekend, and he studies for this more than anything he does for school.

He just came and asked one of his typical, out-of-the-blue DEEP questions:  "Mommy, how does God hear everyone when they are praying?  EVERYONE?  How can he do that?"  I answered carefully, because trying to explain the concept of omniscience is tough with a 7-year-old.  I asked if he hears Father Eric during each Mass say, "The mystery of Faith".  He did.
Me:  "Do you know what mystery means?"
"No."
"It means something that can't be explained, or looked up in a book.  So God being everywhere and being able to hear everything is something we can't explain.  It's sort of like He is the greatest super hero EVER and has some amazing powers."  I am not sure that was a satisfactory answer.  But he walked away.

Joel has found a good friend, Thomas, who is very much like him, loves baseball and video games.  The only difference is Thomas is waaaaayyy into super heroes and J not so much.  But they've been to each others houses for sleepovers and things went pretty well.  I really like his parents, Ana and Pete.  They are older parents like us and seem very level-headed, willing to help at the school, but they're also fun.  We spent New Year's Eve at their house and had a good time.  Definitely a couple we would like to hang out with more - if only we can find time.


Huge news for this boy is his grades.  This quarter is the first quarter ever that he is eligible for Honor Roll, and he made A-B honor roll!   I'm so proud of him.  I can be a little Tiger-mommish when it comes to grades.  Jav is always on me to lighten up and realize if they are trying hard it doesn't matter what grade they get.  But I know how smart they both are so this is difficult for me.  But Joel has a very tough teacher this year and I wasn't expecting much, but he has surprised me with these grades.  He still will say out-of-the-blue, "I don't think I want to go to high school or college.  It's going to be really hard by then".  We remind him that each year you have to learn more and work a little harder, and if you do the next grade won't be that bad.  He grumbles and moves on.   On the other hand we have Gabriel who is already thinking seriously about where he wants to go to college.  He can't wait.  Man are they different.


Gabriel:
Gabriel and I went to see School of Rock at Theatre Arlington.  It was a total youth cast, even the parts of adults.  It was fantastic!   I think Gabriel has the theater bug BAD but unfortunately the camps for that type of thing are really expensive.  ($300+ as opposed to $150-175 we pay for others.)   He already decided to attend Rock Camp at his music school again this summer so he's got to make those tough choices next year.

Gabriel has given up games on the Ipad for Lent.  He wasn't quite ready to give up all video games yet.  I wish he had given up arguing.  Sheesh.

He has grown at least 2 inches since Christmas and his school pants are all of a sudden too short.  We're going to get one new pair for Friday Mass, and the rest of the time he will just have to flood away.  Just when we thought Joel might catch him, he shot up.  But now Joel is following suit and seems determined to pass him.  They will both be taller than Jav's mom any day.

And in the WOW department, Gabriel's good friend Charlotte asked him to go with she and her family on a crazy two-night road trip to Carlsbad Caverns!  They have four kids ranging from Charlotte (4th grade), Emily (7th), Katherine (Senior in HS) and Michael (Junior at University of Dallas).  They each brought someone, so 10 people in 2 vehicles with 2 hotel rooms.  G stayed in his sleeping bag on the floor with Charlotte, her mom, dad and Michael.  All the other girls were in the other room.  They drove out Tuesday morning, stopped for sand dune sledding at Monahans Sandhill State Park, and arrived at Carlsbad at 9 that night.  They spent all day at the Caverns and had a picnic lunch down there.  They were originally supposed to go home through Roswell and see the infamous Hangar 18, but the family voted to head toward the Guadalupe Mountains Nat'l Park to hike and rock-hop.  They didn't head back home until 1:30pm and arrived back at 1 in the morning Friday!   G was a tired boy for the rest of Spring Break, but very happy he got to go.  Pics to come, hopefully.

People who know how control-freaky I can be about my kids were amazed that we let G go on this trip.  It was not easy for me.  But we have gotten to know Charlotte's parents and family pretty well the last couple of years and we both think they are the best parents, very devout and responsible.  The kids are all honor roll students; the younger girls are altar servers and the two older ones are lectors and Eucharistic Ministers at Mass, Charlotte's dad and brother are both Eagle Scouts.  I don't think I would have let him go with anyone else, and I didn't really worry that much about him.  But I sure was happy to hug him at 1 in the morning when he got back!!!

I'm proud of G for finding a good group of friends this year.  A mixture of boys and girls (but mostly girls), they all care about grades and being well-behaved at school, as opposed to the super competitive sports boys he was trying to be friends with before.  He has never seemed happier.



Family/Random:

My dad had surgery for kidney stones and other male issues I won't go into.  He did fine, is still recovering but almost back to normal.

My mom took me to see the FW Symphony play selections from Rogers and Hammerstein movie musicals while the movies played on a huge screen above them!   It was so great.  The music is very moving anyway, with the visual factor added in I welled up quite a few times.

We have been having a blast watching Master Chef Junior.  The boys love all the kids, and I think it will inspire G to help me in the kitchen more.  But J....he is so funny.  He says, "wow that looks really good" about something they're making.  Jav and I then hopefully ask if he would eat it and he always says, "Oh no way."  Shaking my frustrated head.  

The other show they loved was "A Series of Unfortunate Events" on Netflix, based on the Lemony Snicket books that no one in this family had ever read before the show.  Gabriel has almost read all of them now (they had them at the school library), and I'm interested in them too.

We made a huge decision in our TV-watching world.  A few years ago we were told that satellite wasn't an option for us any longer unless we put the dish on the FRONT of our house.  Not on the roof, sticking out from the front porch.  No.  So we went Uverse, but kept having problems with the signal popping in and out, and the cost significantly rising each year.  The signal problem turned out to be squirrels chewing on the line.  My brother had recently rid himself of all satellite/cable for TV, and has the Amazon Firestick with apps on 4 tvs now.  We decided to do the same thing.  We have Netflix and Amazon Prime, Playstation Vue for local TV and sports and our favorite cable channels, and we are thinking of adding Hulu.  We LOVE it!  We also had to add more bandwidth and stronger signal, so we switched to Charter for internet only.  Our bill has dropped over $100 a month!  The only complaint I have is that we still don't have PBS, but Playstation Vue people swear it will be available soon.


And at school/church, Gabriel trained to become an altar server in the Fall and is serving pretty regularly on Saturday nights now.  It's good and bad, we needed to attend more regularly, but sometimes we have family get togethers that we have to do on Saturday nights and if he's scheduled you have to find someone to swap nights with (kind of a pain).  But we are very proud of him for wanting to do it and have fully established ourselves as 5 pm Saturday Mass regulars.

During Catholic schools week in January, the school has students participating in all the weekend Masses.  Our boys had a Mass where G did 1st reading and Prayers of the Faithful, and J did the greeting and 2nd reading.  I was a nervous wreck ( more for Joel because he had some challenging words for a 1st grader), but they both did beautifully.  I would never, ever have been able to get up in front of a sanctuary full of people to do what they do.  The first grade class was scheduled to lead some important Masses this year.  The first was when Bishop Olsen officiated and spent all day at the school.  And the second was for Accreditation Week, when the team to evaluate our school visited the entire week.

Let the girls play too

My boys are very into Nascar racing, and they know every driver and their number/sponsors by heart.  They have their favorites, but Danica Patrick is not one of them.  In fact, they sort of consider her a joke.  She has never won a big race, she seems to never finish in the top ten.  But she is the person I root for in every race, and I hope to change their opinion of her.  Although I do have to admit there are differences in males and females that might predispose either sex to do better in certain sports, there are always exceptions to that rule.

Race car driving at the professional level is an intense and totally adrenaline-filled exercise.  As Jeff Gordon stated after trying to fill in for Dale Earnhardt, Jr. last week after retiring at the end of last year, it is physically challenging, and even more mentally hard than he remembered.  He was visibly shaken after doing his first test drive, having jumped in cold turkey from his cushy announcing job.  Just the fact that a female can race at that level, week after week, and stay competitive blows me away.  In a race about a month ago I saw her crash into the wall so hard I wondered if she would get out of the car.  She did, and walked over the the other drivers who crashed to see if they were ok before stumbling over to the ambulance.  But there she was the next week, ready to go again.

Who would have thought that the sport made fun of all these years as being "red-neck" would be so forward-thinking as to allow a female to race with the boys?  I heard a grown man at my work this week state that one of the drivers must've known he was in trouble because he was "in the back with Danica".  I don't get it.  He has a 20-something-year-old daughter.  If we have daughters, nieces or granddaughters and we want them to know that they can do or be anything their hearts desire, shouldn't we all be rooting for her?

It will happen, but not how you think!

It's been a long time, blog land.  I want so badly to have more time to post, so I've asked the boys to figure out how to expand the length of one day to 30 hours.  We'll see how that goes.

I had trouble deciding what I wanted to do with myself after high school.  When I started I had planned to get a business degree because it seemed the sensible thing to do.  I switched at one point to History, and considered English literature and even Music at various times.  In other words, I was just drifting.  And since I was drifting it was hard to stay committed.  My grades were pretty good the first two years.  But my junior year I started missing days here and there, for no particular reason other than I couldn't find a parking place, or it was raining.  Then I just quit going.  Somehow I managed to only flunk one class, only because of the professor's attendance policy.

My parents were really upset, since they had been footing the bill for school.  They made me find a job.  I had worked part-time during my freshman and sophomore years, but had been laid off during the summer.  I got a full time job as a receptionist/accounts receivable clerk.  Then I moved up to be a cost accountant.  I had heard horror stories during those college years about accounting and how difficult it was, but in the workplace it came easily to me.  When I decided to go back and finish my degree I picked Art History for half a semester.  Then I realized I would never ever ever ever ever ever find a useful job with that degree, so I switched to accounting.  I enjoyed it, made excellent grades and was even able to bring my dismal grade point average up.  I graduated and have been working in the accounting field ever since.

Around 4 years ago I realized I had a new dream job.  I wanted to teach middle school science.  Science had always been a so-so subject for me.  Girls were not supposed to be good at or interested in science back then.  So since I was a rule-follewer, I really didn't like science much.  Until I took Geology when I went back to college and LOVED it.  I couldn't get enough.  All of that stuff I dreaded hearing about each day in Earth Science (7th grade) came flooding back, but in a new and exciting way.   How could I have not found it interesting back then?!?!?!?!?

When I investigated what it would take for me to become a middle school science teacher, my heart fell.  I would have had to take many science hours to make up for my poor science showing in college, along with getting my Teaching Certificate.  I looked into those fast track "Get Your Teaching Certification quick" businesses, but soon found out the market around here was flooded with people like me, mostly folks who had been laid off, hadn't found anything else for a good while, and felt teaching might be a viable option to start bringing some income in.  So I gave up on the dream and resigned myself to part-time accounting work.  It has worked out.  I recently was trained to do weekly Payroll and got a nice raise.

The crazy thing that's happened is that I'm beginning to live out my dream anyway - through cub scouts.  When I volunteered to help I had no idea I would instantly be a Den Mother, and this year have by default become the 2nd in command when the Scoutmaster can't make it.  At first it was difficult for me to get in front of the boys and hold their attention for an entire hour (how sad).  But now I really get into planning a whole month's adventures, and all of our Den (the Bears - 3rd grade) are coming week after week.  Maybe they are getting something out of it!  The last adventure was on Nature/Food Chain/Conservation, all subjects near and dear to my heart.  And guess what - it's SCIENCE!!!  Kind of a mixture of Physics, Biology and Geology.  MY DREAM COME TRUE!!

Wait patiently, pray a lot, and watch what happens.