life lessons...

time has flown and it’s been forever since i posted anything.

i went on a relaxing and fun scrapbook retreat the 2nd weekend of october. connected with some amazing women, ate lots of yummy food and almost got some digital scrapbook pages done.

it was perfect for me because just prior,in less than a week, 2 people i knew were killed in separate car accidents, both involving drunk drivers. the 1st was a sweet boy i met at starbucks a few years ago. KC was a passenger in a car driven by a man who was drunk. he chose to get in the car and paid with his life. it made me really have some frank discussions with the girls about never getting in a car with someone under the influence of drugs or alcohol. i also made sure they knew that no matter what the situation was i would always pick them up, no questions asked.

the 2nd person was an 18 year old girl who jason & i have known since she was about 2. bawny was jason’s friend chris’ cousin. she was in a car with her boyfriend driving down the freeway when a woman who was drunk AND driving the wrong way on the same freeway crashed head first into their truck. she killed bawny instantly and seriously injured bawny’s boyfriend. this accident was much harder for me to deal with since there was just no clear way it could have been avoided. how do you protect your children from other people’s bad choices? i took it as a reminder to enjoy, appreciate and be thankful for my family.

last thursday i received a call from kial's school because she was in the vice principals office. kial threw a girls phone in the garbage during soccer practice. long story short this girl has been bullying and harassing kial since last year. a friend of kial's saw this girls phone on the ground, handed it to kial and kial threw it in the trash; figuring she could pay her back a little bit for all the hurt. the phone was supposedly broken. kial was suspended from school for 3 days, suspended from the soccer team for 15 days and told she would have to replace the phone.

jason and i went to the school and had a meeting with the principal on monday. we were not contesting kial having consequences for her poor choice, but we felt like she was given too harsh of a punishment. we got kial's suspension from the team changed to 7 days, got the wording on her referral changed from theft to possession of stolen property and got the principal to agree that we needed to see the phone and a copy of her phone usage before we would replace the phone. (the reason we are contesting the phone damage is because of rumors at the school that the girls found the phone by calling it and that she used it after she found it.) we left the meeting feeling better than when we got there. we were reassured that kial was still considered a good kid and that her poor choice didn't change the way her teachers thought of her.

it was a hard and painful lesson for kial. she was humiliated and upset by the bad choice she made. the hardest part for her was worrying about us being disappointed, even though we completely understood why she did it. it's such a hard thing to see your child hurt.

kial will now be going straight to the principal if anything happens between her and this girl, no matter how small or trivial it seems. this has also helped some of kial's friends start to deal with their issues with this girl. the fact that kial's friends and their mothers have all rallied around kial really helped keep her spirits up. i seriously doubt we will ever be called to the principals office again. i think once was enough for all of us.

ps..it's been over a week and the girls mother still has not produced the phone or the usage information.