Friday, April 22, 2011

Improvements

I am making lists now of all the changes we would like to see on the new house IF we get it. It is looking promising. The bank is assessing our offer. We may hear by Monday. First week of May is closing date, unless we have to extend it.


The boys would stay in school until the end of the year at this point. I am having our favorite moving company come bid us the move. The only bad move I ever had was when we didn't use these guys. We had to use a company his job wanted us to use. It was a nightmare. The original owner of this company is an old family friend. His company has moved our family from grandparents to children just out of college multiple times. I am going to see how much they charge now for packing and moving. Tom doesn't do the heavy things anymore, and gets mad if he sees the boys and me trying to do it.


Tom has his list of things he would like to see happen in the new house. I need him to put them down on paper so we can prioritize. It can't all be done in the first year. But knowing us, we'll try.


Tom has been board this week. He said he was looking forward to getting back to work. He starts next week. I told him if we lived in Longview he probably wouldn't have been board, he would have been at the club. He said I was probably right.


I think he will love this project though. Starting in from the ground up, and being commutable from home, its just what he likes to do. He is excited.


Even the boys are excited about the move. Trevor can't wait to see his old friends. Riley just seems to like the concept of a change. He is doing so well in school, he wants to see what the new high school can do for him. I am hopeful Riley will remember old friends.


I did have a talk with the boys about the prevalence of drugs. This area we are moving to has a very high incidence of drug use. From their school classes, they knew more about drugs than I did. It kind of made me uncomfortable, how much knowledge they had. The different ways you could ingest cocaine and the street costs.


What they both agreed on was that once hooked you are addicted for life and all your extra money goes away. Now that is something they understood no money, and addiction (their Dad's very expensive and stinky tobacco habit). I can hope that they stay strong against temptation when it is offered.


We also talked about the new pill parties. Kids stealing prescriptions and tossing them in a mixing bowl taking what ever, having no idea what, and ending up dead later from time released drugs. Riley commented that they had better not take his or they could die. Its true he is on some pretty hefty drugs at the moment, Auto immune suppressants that could trigger who knows what in another person. I plan on having these conversations again and again. Trevor told me two boys were expelled from school, eighth graders just recently. They were caught doing drugs in the bathroom. Without this little pep talk about drugs, Trevor would not have shared his news with me. These conversations are even more important than I realized.


The district is considering combining the two middle schools back into one to save money. One thing I liked about the middle school now was the intimacy. The teachers could catch the culprits. There was control in the chaos. They may be able to pull off combining the schools with keeping sixth grade in elementary one more year, so the numbers of middle school students stay reasonable. It would just be seventh and eighth graders. I wonder how they would divide up the wings. I liked the dedicated grade level wings. It felt like an intimate school within a school.


Moving to Washington, I am hopeful that the education is still exceptional. I know that their budget crisis is not nearly as severe as Oregon's. I know they are not contemplating closing schools, or cutting major programs. They still have orchestra and band in Washington.


One thing that Trevor mentioned along with the drug discussion is that I am considered one of the strictest moms according to Trevor. I smile with pride. One thing I can say about my own very strict mom, to her credit, in the end all her children graduated from College and turned out to be contributing members of society. Personally, I feel like I am a push over when it comes to my boys wanting to do something they and I think is fun. It is all perspective.
If Trevor would only hand in his homework, he would find out what a push over I can be.


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