Thursday, July 23, 2009

Mama Mia

I maneuvered through a year of empty nesting and came out the other end with a lot of used Kleenex, but still in one piece. It's been great to have the little chick-a-dee home for the summer, but the past two days we've been in overload. Shana's participating in her third week of her Leadership Workshop and with this bunch of kids, you never know what you're going to wake up to. Sometimes it's just Shana rolling in around 10pm or even 2am or sometimes I stumble out in the morning to three, four or more bundles of teenagers all over the house. These guys work so hard during the day, working with younger kids on some pretty significant issues - peer pressure, drug abuse, parental and boy-girl relationship issues, etc. They work late after the participants go home on skits and lessons and processing their workshop "families" to determine how they can help them get through some of their problems. Then they crash. Anywhere. And I love it. I love waking up to a houseful of kids. I love feeding them. I love forcing them to drink water since they probably go all day without touching any of it. I love watching Shawn take the coffee orders and fire up his machine for the second round of the day. And these kids are so polite. It's all "yum, this is great" "you're the best, Mrs. Sullivan!" "Thanks so much, Mrs. Sullivan." ( I'm pretty sure they know I don't create a spread like that every day, but I may have forgotten to mention it). Plus, Shana always seems so happy, she likes having the Kool-Aid house. This morning I jumped on her for a little morning hug and one of the girls said that Shana's the best snuggler in the world - that they snuggle all the time. I got in one last squeeze and said, "Yeah, I taught her everything she knows."

1 comment: