Summer Break

I am so thankful for the school year to be over. I feel like I have a burden lifted off my shoulders – for a few months anyway. Hopefully next year goes better for Dakota. On the last day, the kids got to find out who their teachers are for next year and find out who will be in their class. Mikayla has Dakota's 1^st grade teacher. She was nice so that's good. She won't have any of her friends in her class though, so she is disappointed about that. Her “boyfriend” Logan isn't going to be in her class either, so apparently she decided that he shouldn't be her boyfriend anymore. I'm sure he'll be happy about that. Around Valentine's Day she tried telling him that he was her boyfriend and that didn't go over too well. She didn't give up though.

Dakota doesn't have any friends anyway, so it didn't really matter too much who was going to be in his class. The good news is that the two mean boys will not be in his class next year. He will still be at recess with them though, and that's when most of the stuff happened. He did tell me about a girl that will be in his class, and he said that she was really pretty. Kids are so cute. His teacher is going to be a man, so I'm curious how that will go. Dakota has always seemed more comfortable with women and has never had a guy teacher (except the gym teacher). He didn't get the teacher that he was wanting.

Pet update: Not long after the praying mantis fiasco, my mom found a huge ugly moth on the tree at their house. She called and told me about it so, being the wonderful mom I am, I took Dakota over there. They were able to catch it and we brought the creepy thing home. At first, Dakota decided to keep it in his bedroom. That first night, a few minutes after we turned out the lights in the bedroom, John and I heard this really weird noise. John went to check it out and it was this moth flapping it's huge demon wings. It was loud. And creepy. So I told John to put it on the back deck. Well, this week during one of the many thunderstorms we had – we forgot about the moth being outside and the rain went into the air holes that were poked at the top of the lid. A lot of rain got inside and it drowned. Oops. Dakota has been going outside every day since, looking for a new pet bug. He caught some flies but you know how long they live. He tried really hard to catch what he said was a wolf spider. I'm so glad that didn't happen. He just doesn't seem too excited about the fish anymore. I think it's because he can't hold it. Today, he told us that he wants a lizard. I'm to the point that I'm seriously considering it. I asked if he would stop trying to catch bugs to keep as pets and he said yes. Then I read that you have to feed the lizards live insects. Ugh... What do you do, order live crickets online and have the fedex guy deliver them to your door???

A couple of days ago, Dakota told me that he had a couple of new friends that were girls. I was excited and thought that maybe he actually made friends at the end of the school year that he forgot to tell me about. He said, “One's name is Widow and the other is White Tail”. I'm like, huh??? Apparently, his “friends” are a black widow spider and a white tail spider. My son has resorted to imaginary spiders as friends. Sooo... this momma got a brilliant idea. I'm in this group on facebook that's for Autism in this area. I asked if there were going to be any events for the kids this summer, or if anyone had a child that would like to get together and play with Dakota. I just hate to see him keep to himself all the time and not have anyone to play with. I got a response from another mom, who has a son the same age as Dakota. He's not as verbal as Dakota – all kids with autism are different. But we are going to give it a shot. When you put two autistic kids together, you don't know if they will interact at all.

Speaking of Facebook... Mom...Dad... You two are the last people on the planet not on Facebook. Seriously, all of your sibling have one. Hint, hint. I mean, imagine all the pictures of your grandkids you could see that Kayla, Jami, and I post. And there are things that I post on there that happen that are short stories and not really “blogworthy”. Is the guilt trip working yet? I'll keep trying. Oh, and mom.. there are these swap and shops that you can join that are kind of like online garage sales! Heck, there's even a group where people post their garage sales that they are having that aren't always advertised in the paper. Oh, and dad... well, I guess there is probably something manly and boring that might catch your interest. You can follow sports pages or something. You can advertise your business. You can find the friends you went to high school with 80 years ago...

And now on to our current bad luck, because you know we always have to have some. On Memorial Day, we went to put flowers at graves. There's quite a few out-of-town ones that we have to go to. While we were on the highway, we got a flat tire. John drove over a large rock or a piece of cement and put a big unfixable gash in the tire. Our jack wouldn't work for John. I don't know the specifics, I don't know anything about changing a tire. After 30 or 40 minutes of trying, John finally called his dad to see if he would bring us his jack. We really hate asking people to go out of their way for us. A half hour later or so, John's dad showed up. John got the lug nuts off but the tire refused to come off. Around this time, we also discovered that our battery was dead and neither of us had any jumper cables. I had been listening to music while John was working on the tire, and wasn't thinking about that not being good to do for too long when the car is off. Oops. John's dad had to leave and get jumper cables and some other tools to pry the tire off. I was remembering a time, a long time ago, when John and I got a flat and had a donut tire. We had to drive super slow on the highway back home, and people were getting mad and honking at us. Possibly flipping us off. This was before the highway between Maryville and St. Joe was 4 lanes and there weren't many places for people to pass. So anyway, after that horrific memory, I told Dakota to ask John if we had a donut or regular tire to put on. He looked and came back and said, “I looked, and I'm pretty sure that's not a donut”. Ha ha... My son probably thought his mom was crazy. I sometimes forget how literally Dakota takes things. Meanwhile, Mikayla was getting upset because she had to pee and wouldn't do it on the side of the road. After awhile of crying, she finally agreed to let me help her take her pants off and stand beside the car. I told her to kind of squat and pee and she freaked out and I had to put her pants back on her. A little while later, she started crying again and decided to try again. As soon as I took her pants off she freaked out again and we put her pants back on. It was a blast. Actually, I think Dakota had fun. He just happened to have some of his bug containers with us so he was in the ditch looking for bugs the whole time. I freaked out when I saw that he was poking a stick into a snake hole though. But anyway, we finally got back on the road after sitting there for 2 hours. And Dakota brought a dozen bugs home. All of which have escaped or died (luckily the ones that escaped were on the back porch).

Even though the spare tire that John put on appears to have a lot of tread, we were told that we would probably need a new one put on because it's probably as old as our explorer is. We haven't actually had it checked at the tire place yet but I would feel more comfortable knowing that we had a new, sturdy tire. Having a cousin die in a car accident because of a tire blowing out makes you a little more paranoid about these things. Hopefully we can afford to get a new one soon. Oh, and to make matters even better, the explorer wouldn't start yesterday morning. John ended up walking to work and being late. On John's lunch break, my parents were able to pick John up from work and brought him home to get the battery and go have it tested. It was bad, so John had to buy a new one which was a hundred and thirty-something plus tax. There are so many things that we are trying to save up for, but every time we get a little bit of money, something happens. We're trying to save up for a deposit because we are wanting to move somewhere that has 3 bedrooms. We're trying to save up for my doctors appointment in Columbia that doesn't file insurance and I'm told will cost hundreds of dollars for all the testing they will do. We're trying to save up for a small family vacation. I know we can't spend a week anywhere, but we were hoping to at least take a day or 2 and take the kids to the zoo or Worlds of Fun. We just need to get away for a little while and relax. We were hoping to buy the kids pool passes for the first time this summer, but they are $80 a piece. Probably wouldn't have been able to afford that anyway. Oh well. My rant is over. I saw a quote somewhere yesterday that said “Without darkness, you would never see the stars”. I'll just keep reminding myself of that.