The grant is finished

There are several reasons I have finally decided to start my blog. First, my twin sister Gail has been bugging me to do it for a while now. Second, I didn't want to be the last of the seven siblings to create one. Tom and John, thanks for dragging your feet. Third, I really do want to stay in touch with my family and this seems like a great way to do it. I am not very good at telephoning, duh. I found out after our parents death that I was the only one of the seven that didn't call them every week to check in. And as my siblings can attest they almost never get a phone call from me. I have lots of excuses: way too busy at work... well I guess that is my only excuse but I just don't like to talk on the phone. My husband Randy doesn't like to talk on the phone either so that works well for us. I don't bug him with a phone call while he is working and he doesn't bug me while I am working unless one or both of us is hungry and want some company for lunch or dinner and then we have a ten second conversation. "Are you hungry? Where do you want to eat? Ok, meet you there." Perfect. I think the reason I don't like to talk on the phone is because in highschool my boyfriend would call every night and then have nothing to say. I tried to keep up the conversation but there would be long silences where we just sat on the phone and listened to each other breath. yuk! Actually, now that I think about it, it is not that I don't like talking on the phone, I just have a hard time initialing the call. When my family calls me, I love it. Gail decided recently that she would call me on a regular basis even if I didn't ever call her. I love hearing from her. I don't know why I have problems initialing the call. Might take years of therapy to figure that one out. Anyway, initialing phone calls isn't my thing and initialing e-mails doesn't seem to work either and I am sure not going to send a letter so perhaps this will work. A one way conversation. Perfect! I love reading my siblings blogs. I love finding out about what they are doing. I feel really close to them as I am reading. So I hope I can connect back with mine. Finally, (the reasons I am starting a blog) I am pretty obsessed with my job which happens to be working with children who have a parent in prison. I have all of these books on children and best practices and how to make a difference in their lives but I don't get them read because I have so much other stuff to do like raise money so we can conduct our programs and pay my few employees. Oh yeah, that is another reason I am starting my blog. I told myself that as soon as I got this grant finished that I have been working on, I'd start. I put it in the mail today. Anyway I have decided that I would read a book each week and then I would blog about it. I love reading books on how best to work with children and I love buying books even more (I'll put my books up against Jane's Christmas decorations anytime), so when I finish reading the books on my shelf, I can start buying books again.
A word on the title of my blog, "Just because they are children." A couple of years ago my son John was creating a video for New Hope (that's the name of my non-profit) and he was interviewing some of the counselors and asking them why they volunteered a week of their lives to be at camp. One of them said, "I come to camp to be with the kids. They deserve a chance to come to camp just because they are children." A lot of the kids I work with don't get to be children. They have to grow up way too fast, taking care of younger siblings, sometimes taking care of mom or dad who are addicts. They live in unsafe neighborhoods and don't get to roam the woods like I did growing up. Sometimes their childhoods are stolen from them through abuse. Some of them never learned how to play. Anyway, I am really reading and blogging for them, just because they are children.
I am half-way through my first book. Hopefully I'll finish it tomorrow and give you the high points.