Hello everyone!! It is sunny this morning and I am so here for it! It has been a very gray week here in Michigan so this is Mother Nature’s little Valentine’s Day gift! And Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

We don’t really do anything to celebrate here. I am a person who loves little celebrations so much so it is really funny to me that I skip this one for the most part. I do love to decorate for it though, with heart buntings all over my house that will stay up for months because they feel so happy. But we don’t often do anything. This year though I asked Wyatt who he might want to give a Valentine’s gift to, and he told me the library workers. So today we will be delivering cookies to the library staff. I thought this was so sweet, that he thought about the library workers. He also has valentines to pass out to his fellow scouts next week as well. (and he will call his grandmas tonight too, lol)

This week was a bit of a crazy week around here. Billy has had a cold so he is not at 100% Billy, and on top of that, I had three days of Leadership Advocacy training. They were thankfully on Zoom, but they were for three and half hours straight in the morning so we did need some childcare! Thank goodness for grandparents! However, our house was all in a kerfuffle, just all off of our routine.

The training though was an amazing experience and I am so thankful that I took it. I learned so much from it, the trainers, and the rest of the attendees. It was a small group, so we got to know each other a bit more than we would have in a larger group setting, which was nice. I feel like it was challenging in some ways, and I feel that I really grew from it as well.

Our first day was to discuss our why – why did we want to take this training, why did we want to be parent voices and parent advocates? We all had our own “why”s- obviously mine is Wyatt, but there were many other reasons in the group, including a woman who wanted to advocate for homeschool families, to change the image so we don’t look so fringe to the rest of society, and that our children aren’t judged for being homeschooled. I hope she succeeds! We do need people to speak out and change that perception! We also had to share our collages (which I think I shared here already?) about our families and give a two minute introduction to ourselves and our family. I was super nervous about doing this, but I did it you guys! I made it through!

On the second day, we did more of introspective kind of thing – what are our skills, what are our strengths, what do we need to improve sort of things. We had to do a few exercises and activities that really did change some of my thinking, and we also took a personal communication style inventory survey, where we learned what our communication style is. I came back with a tie between two (because of course, that often happens with me) – driver and amiable. Drivers are very decisive, independent, sort of intense, efficient, and people of action. I also got amiable, which is also a group that initiates, but is casual, relaxed, and inclusive. It was an interesting exercise!

Our last day was all about conflict, and how to deal with it, which I found very informative and useful. It also talked about leadership in general, and how boards and committees work. Overall, I found this workshop to be very useful and I learned a lot. When we “graduated” at the end, they had made each of us a little graphic with the leadership qualities that the others felt we displayed. I thought this was so nice. We all like to hear nice things about ourselves! It’s also been so long since I personally did anything like this, so it was fun to do a little learning and be a student again!

However, we didn’t get any school done this week – and I barely got any personal reading done. That is ok though, we had a different kind of week and that is ok. And on top of it Billy was not able to help out as much as he normally would, so our house is, to put it mildly, a disaster. Tomorrow will be spent getting this place back into order, then Sunday Wyatt has his first bowling league.. match? Game? What do you say for this? I signed him up for an accessible league and he is very excited about it. His team name is the Thunder Turkeys, which cracks me up. I can’t wait to see my little turkey out there bowling!

Yesterday I was still in work mode, so I took care of some things I had been putting off, like calling about appointments, that sort of thing. I sent in Wyatt’s scholarship application for Eric “RicStar” Winter Music Camp! We can’t wait to go again and I also had a scheduled phone call about my mom and signing her up for Medicaid. That went really well as she was approved, and it is honestly such a relief now that we know she is taken care of. Just a few more steps! I also read about fifty billion books with Wyatt, which was a nice return to normal.

Oh! That just made me remember I was going to do book reviews today, not this post! Lol. Oh well. Book reviews tomorrow!

And now a few photos from the reel!

And that is it from around here this morning! Happy Valentine’s Day everyone, and whatever you do today, try to do something that makes you smile!