My Kate! She's becoming her very own Kate. My. I wasn't going to write about MY but maybe I should... I've always been extremely possessive. There is a story about me that my mom would repeat to me fairly often when I was younger. We were visiting a friend of hers. Suzanne was maybe one and I was maybe three? In any case one of the little girls that we were playing with tried to do something to/with Suzanne and I bit her in the face because Suzanne was mine. I'm no longer rabid (jk) but I do still feel very strongly about MY people.
Kate is MINE!! She is my child, my daughter, flesh of my flesh, love of my heart in human form - all my children are this. But she always has been, and always will be her own person - all of the girls are! I know this.
As Kate has been learning about all that's required of her in high school one of the things that she wanted was to earn volunteer hours this summer. Last summer our friends the Tokarevs told us about Marisol's service hour achievements. She earned all 40 hours volunteering at a town run day camp in the summer before grade 9. An idea was born - not so much camp - Kate regularly declares that she hates children, but the idea that she could attain all or some of her community service hours before officially starting high school.
She told me that she wanted to do community service. I asked her where. She didn't know, I didn't know. Then I remembered Marisol, and I reached out to the town of Ajax to see what our options were. I got an email back about a program that was one week of paid leadership training and one week of service. Kate would earn 20 hours after two weeks. I didn't love the idea of paying for service, but was open to it if Kate really wanted to do it, but something held me back from signing her up.
One day during the school year - maybe May? I was sitting at my desk in my classroom on prep and an email came through from the girls school about camps. I usually always look at the school emails, but if it doesn't apply to me or the girls, I just delete. This day I actually downloaded the flyers from the camps in the community because I felt prompted to do so. As I was skimming and scanning them a "volunteers needed" note on one of the flyers popped out at me. It was a French day camp in Pickering. I sent an email and so began a back and forth that led to Kate becoming a volunteer at Xploration Day Camp in Pickering for three weeks.
Not only did she earn 60 hours of community service, she also received first aid training - an extra course offered to staff and volunteers, she received a lovely reference letter from the camp director, and she's made some new friends, and she learned she doesn't hate children! (But they are a lot of work!) I'm so so so proud of Kate. She consistently pushes herself out of her comfort zone and makes her Mama so proud! I'm so proud of MY Kate! Today is her last day of volunteering, tomorrow we pack and then Saturday we're off to Utah... the whirlwind summer continues!
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