School Board meeting

Well, I am sure you are all anxious in finding out how our presentation to the School board went the other night :)! We were originally given 5 minutes to do our presentation, but they decided right there before we went up that they would give us 10 minutes and in the end we had 30 minutes. They kept asking questions, commending us one by one, shaking their head at the state of how things are, we kept answering questions and asking questions ourselves. Then they asked if we had something else to add, I told them I did and here is what I said:

" I would like to challenge the board to go out into the schools, to go out into the communities to talk to the families at all the schools in HRM and the staff at the schools. Making sure the staff know that they will not be reprimanded for telling the School board how things are! You really have to LISTEN, you will hear some pretty heart wrenching stories but these are the stories you need to hear. They will tell you if you ask, but go out and get to know these people...you will have your eyes opened."

To that they told me it is impossible to get out to all the schools in a short time, but that I was right in that they HAVE to get out into the community and talk with the families/Staff or how will they know what is going on. They told us we have to take this to the government next, so the next morning I wrote all the MLA's in our Province and they are one by one writing me back telling me they support us :)!

Check out our FB page called "Choice Words", would love if you could be part of it too :)!

Inky Hugs,

Catherine

bad blogger again here

I know I am such a bad blogger lately, but here is my reason for the past week and this week as well...I am getting ready to do one of the BIGGEST things I have ever done in my life. Not only am I a full time stay at home mom of 3 beautiful children, but now am working on a side project that involves being an advocate for all Special Needs children or children with Learning disabilities in HRM. Yep, I know a big job and yes I am crazy :p! Not to worry I am not taking this task on by myself, I have a friend named Laura Campbell who is a parent of a Autistic girl who is in grade 4 at my son's school.

Tonight we are going to our school board to do a presentation with regards to the lack of:

~Support Services

~Speech Therapy

~Occupational therapy

~Learning Center service

~Resources

we aren't pointing fingers and we aren't looking for who's at fault. We just would like someone to stand up and say okay how are we going to fix this or start to fix this?? As I said before this is for all children in our city :)! We have been printed up in the newspaper, and are getting a lot of feed back...yes even the people who should really keep their mouths shut are coming out of the wood works to give their thoughts. Will let you know how it goes tomorrow morning...this is going to be an interesting night! We have also started a Facebook page called Choice Words, and not too worry once this presentation is done we aren't done we are moving on to the lovely politicians :D!

On another note I will be having something crafty to post tomorrow for you :)!

Inky Hugs,

Catherine

new playground in our area

The other day I had to goto the Post office, it is about 20 minutes away from our house...on the way home something caught my eye. So I looked and I saw a HUGE new playground behind a community center just up the street from our post office, well I was excited to see this here because if you want to goto a good playground you have to drive into the city. There are several play structures there for different ages, and there are also swing sets there too for older kids and little ones :).

Yesterday, we decided we'd stay home and rest...since we are still exhausted from the flu we all had over the past 3-4 weeks. I decided the kids needed to get out of the house mid morning,

and took them to this new playground to check it out :)!

Check out this castle, it was pretty neat and the best part is that it is for 5 year olds to 12 year olds (not too sure if it is something a 12 year old should be on). My kids had fun climbing, sliding, spinning things, climbing through tunnels etc. :)!

Here is my dd all bundled up on this cold Sunday morning, getting ready to go play on one of these several play structures :)!

Here is E* up onthe neat climbing structure, he loved this and spent a good 1/2 hour on this one.

Here is I* up on the same climbing structure as E* was, but Isaac went to the top of it :)!

Here is Isaac in another one of the climbing structures, wanting to just take a break from running.

This is my dd mashing her face against some plexi glass at the plaground...just as I took it I told her to get her face away from that as we don't know who else had done that. Lol!

The kids came down all at once in a row, and I was there at the right moment to get them coming down the slide :).

This is the last picture of my dd coming through one of the small tunnels that they had there...it is actually a lions head that she is climbing into.

Inky Hugs,

Catherine

kitchen pile up and my Sensory Sensitive child

Lol, this was too cute... myself and my dh were making French toast and eggs for brekkie on Saturday morning it is kind of a every Saturday morning thing but sometimes we switch the French toast for Pancakes. Anyways, my oldest came in to the kitchen and lay down in the middle of the kitchen on a blanket...next thing we knew the other two came in and laid down on top of him. We called it the Kitchen pile up or the E* sandwich, believe me it didn't last long at all!!

(Warning put down your drinks and swallow before proceeding)

Later on this same day, I made some yummy chicken rice soup with veggies for lunch. While I was making this soup, my son E* hurt his finger and got a cut on it. So he got a band-aide by himself, put the band-aide on himself and left the wrapper on the table. It finally was lunch time, when E* decided that he didn't like the smell of the soup I made ( yet he has had this soup 100's of times before and wasn't bothered by it).

He just couldn't handle sitting there smelling the soup, so he left the table for a few minutes and came back looking like this. He thought outside the box, and developed this nose plug himself and then was able to eat his soup. He literally scotch taped this band-aide wrapper onto his face and it worked enough for him, and then he had no troubles eating his lunch. He did the same thing yesterday for something he didn't like the smell of, but this time instead of using the wrapper of the band-aide he used the actual band-aide.

Inky Hugs,

Catherine

a foggy sunrise

One day near the end of last week, here is the second most amazing looking sunrise that I have ever seen. Yes, I said sunrise...yes I was up, as my oldest son gets on the bus at 7 a.m.!

Anyways, check out this gorgeous foggy sunrise...

Inky Hugs,

Catherine

Christmas card

I had to make 2 cards for this months CCE card exchange, and here is one of the cards I came up with :)! I used the "Worship the Lord" stamp set by Our Daily Bread Designs, I actually won this stamp set last year on someone's blog candy and I must say that I really like this set. I have checked out the different cards on Splitcoaststampers site, which helped me with creating this card.

Some of you were wondering if my coasters would be good for placing a spoon on, and I would have to say it would be good for that sort of thing. The stamped images don't smudge or run, because I spray each of them with Make it Last Clear Acrylic sealer. I use Archival jet black ink to stamp my image on the tile, and I picked up the coasters at my local Home Depot or Kent store in my area. I also should mention, that for the backs of my coasters I use cork board that comes in a roll from Michael's Craft store and I cut the cork to the size I need. I usually cover the whole back of each coaster, not put squares on each of the corners :)! Hope this helps...

Inky Hugs,

Catherine

bad bad blogger I am

I am such a bad blogger lately, I think it has a lot to do with just all the illness then my knee surgery and then the complication to the surgery plus allergic reaction to meds for the said complication. Anyways, I promise I will have cards up on here for you to enjoy soon! In the meantime, a friend of mine who owns her own little gift shop in my area is having a Christmas sale at her store and has asked me to make some of my coasters to sell. Here are two of the coasters I have made so far. I think I will do at least 15 sets of coasters for her to sell :)!

Please keep Julie and her family in your thoughts and prayers this week, her mother in law isn't well and they have gone up to spend as much time with her as they can before she passes. HUGS to you and your family Julie and Jim!

Inky Hugs,

Catherine