It's So Hard to Say Goodbye...

As I said before, Thursday was the final day for our regular after-school program and the last day for several youth programs staff. We ended two weeks early. Here are some pictures of me and my kids on the last day. The party and talent show went really well. Things ran pretty smoothly, by our standards at least. It was the best talent show we had this year (our third one). For the final act, the staff peformed a dance to a Jackson 5 song, complete with some 70's costumes. We made it up and rehearsed it earlier that day. The kids seemed to enjoy it. I made a video of our farewell party. It turned out well - I got some great footage of the kids. Speaking of videos, I also finished my video for Extreme Home Makeover last week and I am going to mail it in with the application tomorrow. I got some really good footage with that too. How can ABC pass up my cute kids?? Anyways, I really enjoyed our last day and tried not to think about how sad it was until it was over. Afterwards I went out with several of my coworkers and then it started to sink in. We really had a great after-school staff and we worked well together. And the coordinator did an amazing job. It will be hard without them. We had a great year and I am sad that it is over. But those of us who remain are going to do all that we can. Tomorrow starts the first day of our "new" after-school schedule. For the next three weeks we will be open three days a week for two hours, for homework help only. Most of our volunteers are going to keep coming which is great. And the kids can still come to eat at Kids Cafe. But that's it. I have a feeling this is going to be hard to enforce, but we'll see how it goes. A lot of the kids won't understand why we can't just have the normal program. I'm going to be asked over and over why I can't open the gym or the computer lab and I will keep having to tell them no. I am not looking forward to that. I had a super long meeting on Friday about our possiblities for the summer and also about keeping the community garden going. So don't worry, I will have plenty to do. And I will still get to see the kids. But this transition time is going to be rough. And whatever happens in the summer, it won't be the same without all the staff that were laid off.

And this weekend sucked. My last entry on Thursday night says I had a horrible headache and basically it never went away. I'm not sure what is wrong, but I have felt awful the past few days. Talk about bad timing. First off it is no fun being sick on the weekend when I would much rather be out doing things. And it gave me lot of time to sit around and dwell on what has happened this past week, which is not good either. I didn't make it out much - only for church tdoay. And I have slept A LOT. I have enjoyed having time to read for pleasure this year, but I couldn't even do that this weekend! I could only make it through two pages of my book with this headache. Staring at my computer isn't helping either. Hopefully I feel better soon. It is important that I am at work this week, and Derby is next weekend! I need to get rested up for that. Ok I can't take this headache anymore, goodnight.