The Conley Family: Happy Holidays From The Conleys- 2011

Dear family, friends, in-laws, out – laws, acquaintances, and random folks who stumble across this on our family blog- Happy Holidays!

We hope this missive finds you well and as the financial adviser Dave Ramsey says “better than you deserve” We frequently feel that we are blessed with better than we ‘deserve’.

I think I said in last year’s recount we bought a house basically next door to us for my folks. January brought us much renovation and preparation on the house. The house was a foreclosure prior to us purchasing it, which means it was very bare as far as appliances and such. Curtains had to be made, blinds installed, appliances bought and installed, furniture bought and set up to make it hospitable for my parents. We are keeping the farm, but they didn’t want to bring most of the appliances and furniture, deciding most of it either needed to be replaced or should stay at the farm for use there.

February opened with the ground hog day blizzard with 17 inches of snow falling in one day. We had several days off of school that were spent digging out. Abbi didn’t’ appreciate the giant plies of snow but Caelun found then highly entertaining. February also brought Abbi’s freshman swirl dance with lots of fancy clothes to be procured and a pile of teens at our house doing hair and tying ties. They kicked up their heels and danced the night away. February also brought Abbi taking and passing driver’s training and she has now been logging her hours behind the wheel. Again I know HOW did THAT happen?? She is a very cautious driver and has been honing her skills on the trips back and forth to visit her mom. She has driven me to lots of places in town and she is always attentive and careful.

March brought forensics season. My team brought home trophies from several tournaments in several categories. My dear Caden who I coached for 4 years-gave me practice speech after speech in the category of impromptu– sometimes several speeches in one day all in a grand effort to break to semi final round at state finals. It is exciting to see a student set a goal and then really put forth the effort to get there.

April brought forensics regional s with all 4 of my kids who were competing, qualifying to state. That same week also brought State finals for HOSA for Clint’s students including the new biomedical debate team I helped him to coach. Yes I know – biomedical debate it sounds like a marriage of Clint and my majors – scary (wink). It also brought spring break and Easter where we filled almost 800 eggs for our annual hunt. The weather was beautiful and there were 10 kids hunting. Caelun our ‘little baby’ turned 4 and is reading and counting how did THAT happen?

May opened with state finals for forensics at Oakland University and all that hard work paid off for Caden where he found himself breaking all the way to semi final round . That is such a wonderful feeling to see a student work so hard and achieve a goal. This is why I teach. As I explained to Caden, his hard work and resulting achievement was the best payment as a teacher I could ever receive. Clint completed yet another of his grad classes towards his masters degree getting him down to 2 classes remaining. We planted our garden again a rototiller width wider in our continual process of lawn elimination. I also planted 5 new standard apple trees , 3 pear trees, 3 paw paw trees, and a quince bush all at the farm.

In June Abbi finished her freshman year and turned 15 – yes I know hard to believe. We had a warm weekend with swimming , pizza, and a bonfire in celebration. We enjoyed having a house full of family and friends to celebrate. Later in June we built an ENORMOUS play fort – like you can see it from space play fort -with rock wall and slide. I think the big kid has had as much fun on it as the little kid.

In July we went on vacation. Our Abbi continues to not want to travel so it was just the little person that went with us. We took the ferry across Lake Michigan to Milwaukee where we hit the Milwaukee Botanic Gardens, The Domes Botanic Gardens, and the Discovery Science center. We then moved on to the outskirts of Chicago where we visited Lego Land, and the Chicago Botanic gardens. Where Caelun loved the fish and Clint and I loved the roses.

August rolled in and we worked on more siding on our house as well as repairing wiring and plumbing . This is also when my parents decided to make the full move to the house in Cedar springs so we spent most of the rest of the summer moving them, cleaning out the farm, and continuing to make their ‘new’ house comfortable and habitable. Other than that we spent much time harvesting our garden, swimming in our pool and Clint spent a good deal of the summer writing the new pharmacy program for KCTC. This was unpaid but is something he feels very passionate about . We are excited to see the new program come to life next school year.

September sent us back to school amid much disruption in the education system from lack of funding at the state level. We continue to try to do more with less and we do our best to have it not impact kids but we are at a place where that isn’t always possible. I have to say it seems we as a culture value education the least I have seen in my life time. That being said debate continues on at my school. I thought forensics was going away but my principal figured out a way to make it fly so forensics continues. I will note that while law makers seem to value education very little the students seem to value it more. I think I may have the most eager to learn over all group of students I have ever had. There seems to be a prevailing view that getting an education and in the case of the area I teach, communication, is critical to being successful in the ‘real world’. While I have always held this view the students have sometimes needed convincing. My dad a 40 year teaching veteran told me from the beginning of my career in education that teaching is one quarter salesmanship. That doesn’t seem to be the case this year and eager learners are exciting for a teacher. Ever the optimists I hope that as these kids move into positions of leadership they can change our societies' over all lack of value for education. Here is hoping. Clint is in the final stages of launching and marketing the pharmacy tech. program for next year at KCTC, he is currently teaching Med Lab, and taking the next to last class for his masters degree in vocational education. September also meant Caelun got to start pre-school. We got a diagnosis of Autistic Spectrum for Caelun, the very low end but enough to qualify him for Early Childhood Special Education for preschool in the mornings 4 days a week through the Cedar Springs Public Schools. Through this program he gets the much needed speech and language therapy and the PT /OT we were feeling he was needing. In addition we enrolled him in a private pre-school, called Wee Folk, in the afternoons and for a full day on Fridays when he doesn’t go to Cedar Trails. We are thrilled with both programs and he LOVES going to school. In the morning when we wait for the bus he jumps up and down and shouts when it comes. It is like Disney Land every single day. While he has some speech delay and struggles with some fine motor skills such as eating and potty training he continues to be a rock star in the reading and math areas. His teachers both say he is reading somewhere in the 2^nd grade level and is starting addition and subtraction. He continues to be an exceedingly happy and affectionate kid who finds joy in almost every moment of every day and as a parent what more can you ask for? Abbi is working hard at a new venture, the school newspaper titled The Approach. All summer we thought this program was going away due to budget cuts and the need for a minimum class size but they pulled together 30 kids- bless the teacher /advisor doing the newspaper at Cedar Springs, and the newspaper is a go. She has put in countless hours editing and learning lay out. I think this is really a niche of hers and we are excited to see her excelling. We are also very proud of her for earning academic honors awarded from last year and she continues to excel l academically this year.

The first of October was Red Flannel Day, our town festival. The weather was terrible the week leading up to it but was beautiful on the festival. Caelun was very distraught to find out that having just completed his first full week at both schools that there would be no school on Sat. His response, “OH NO!!” I explained that there would be a big parade and a carnival. He somewhat dejectedly agreed that that would be ‘okay- sigh’ Luckily Grandpa Bob has been taking him on tractor rides in his trailer behind his new John Deer Lawn mower all over town every Sat or we might have revolt on our hands unless we could generate a town festival every weekend. Fall also brought the onset of the debate season. The topic this year is space exploration and in spite of debate programs being cut everywhere I for some reason have one of the largest groups of new serious debaters I have ever had. We are having a wonderful season learning the basics of argumentation, research, and case construction. They are enthusiastic and hard working which again is exciting for a teacher and a coach. We had the first of what we hope is an annual tradition of a Halloween party at the farm the weekend before Halloween. We carved pumpkins, went on a hay ride around the trails and had a bon fire. We had 7 kids and numerous adults. This also gave all the kids an additional opportunity to wear their costumes. Caelun was a monkey- I know that seems appropriate. Halloween meant not 1 but 2 Halloween parties for Caelun between his 2 schools. The evening weather was clear and beautiful. Abbi used her creative abilities to turn herself and several of her friends into zombies and the monkey was very excited to take his plastic pumpkin and trek from neighbor to neighbor showing off, which was actually more fun than the candy. Both of the kids were exhausted at the end of the night.

November brought the Grand Rapids Metro Debate league where my novices placed 7^th. I was pleased with the entire team being all new kids. November all so brought Thanksgiving and it was nice to have the short trek to next door to have Thanksgiving with my folks. We have so much to be thankful for I can’t even begin to list it all. I do have to take a moment here and brag about my fabulous husband and his research skills. The 2^ndweek of Sept. I got a sinus infection. I know – 4 sinus surgeries and that shouldn’t be happening but it did. 9 weeks, 3 late generation heavy hitting antibiotics, 6 weeks of steroids, and 2 weeks of gentamicin irrigation later I still had it and was going downhill. I had a CT scan and the ENT didn’t have any solutions for us. Clint started researching. He said to me “If I can cure you will you love me forever?” my response was “ I will love you forever no matter what” he said “yes but I would like forever to last a bit longer than it looks like right now.” The answer he found… baby shampoo. I couldn’t make this up. The Mid West Sinus Institute and the Mayo Clinic have done studies. I will attach links at the end of this letter for folks looking for more information on it. The issue is a bio-film in the mucus coats the bacteria and keeps the antibiotics from working. The baby shampoo breaks up the bio-film and lets the antibiotic work while also actually washing away much of the bacteria. It is a 1% solution of baby shampoo in saline 2.5 cc of baby shampoo to 8 oz. of saline) used as a nasal irrigation. Within 48 hours of starting this treatment my voice came back and the infection started to recede- and yes I plan to hold good to my promise of loving Clint forever (wink).

December is here and I am 80% better. We are discussing one more round of systemic antibiotics but I am functioning quite well. Clint just got an e-mail response telling him he aced his final in his grad class, and tomorrow is the last day of school for all 4 of us before winter break. May all of you find joy and true love this holiday season and all the year through – magic cures of baby shampoo or by other means.