An Adventure Shared

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to the beginning of a great adventure.......no that's not true this adventure began in September when Mrs. Proll invited me into her Grade 5 room to share the art of Scrapbooking and Journaling with her students.  Somewhere along the line "her students" became  MY KIDS.  Each of these kids are so special to me right from the quiet shy person who never spoke about their feelings who hugged me on my last day and whispered I love you Dawn........To my warm loving kids that raced to hug me and share their latest accomplishment or trouble.  These are MY Kids, and MY new friend Mrs. Proll and we had a wonderful year of adventures and fun.  We learned about scrapbooking - we learned that there are never any mistakes......there were creative alterations and making it your own.   We learned how to take photos and to watch for Blue Speedo's thank you Allison Orthner  for letting me steal your term.

Probably the biggest lesson that I wanted to teach the kids was about paying things forward. I am so incredibly proud to tell you that these kids got it and it a HUGE way. There were plenty of events during the year when we shared our lunch parties with another class or gave another class some of our cupcakes. We made cards of thanks for the school to use, We made Christmas cards for every single student and staff person in the school....that took us 5 weeks but they totally rocked it out.  Throughout the year My Kids slipped me notes of  love and thanks into my purse, hand or even pocket........those were huge and made my heart swell with pride to know that they understood you did't have to spend money to pay it forward you just used what you had.

Towards the end of the May we had a difficult conversation with the kids as I explained that I had cancer and would not be able to finish out the year as I had hoped.  There were some tears, there were lots of questions and the biggest of these was "Are you gonna die?"  I am pleased to say that I am no where near being ready to die. We told the kids I had to get more sick in order to get better. Through out the remaining few weeks of my visits the kids came to me on their own time asked more questios, offered to do things to help, and they gave me hugs and told me of the prays that they were offering for me.  I am so blessed to have this amazing group of 30 kids......wait you say there are only 20 in the photo......well your right the school had to do some re-organiztion mid year and 10 of my kids ended up in a different class., but they are just as big a part of my heart as they were before.

I want to tell you about each of my kids.....but today I am going to start with one very special  young lady.......her name is Kale (photo by KMP photography).  I could spend all day on telling you about her but on my last day with the class she gave me a very, very special gift.  She gave me her very own Beanie Baby Cow that was one of her very special possessions. When I went to give it back to her....she told me that I had given her a journal to put her thoughts and feelings into, and she wanted me to have her cow to give me courage on my trip to Chicago. What an amazing gift......not the cute cuddly cow but that she understood the concept of doing what you can for someone else with what you have - paying it forward. Thank you Kale.

So I have been thinking about how I could share my journey to recovery with the kids. I want them to know the world is not always fun and games but that bad things happening does not mean your world comes to an end.  So Kale's Cow is coming with me on my journey!.......starting tomorrow Kale's Cow is going to travel with me and I am going to share the next couple of weeks with them. So every few days I will post what Kale's Cow has been doing with me.....

I am so excited to share Canadian geography, US geography and life experiences with them.

Now, I have been wanting to share with the kids the photos that they took with my DSLR (a treat that was earned on the last day) so for those of you from other parts of my life your welcome to continue viewing but truthfully these are for the kids by the kids .......and these photos tell you more about the kids than I ever could.