Faith's Mom's Blog

It is the last day of school for kids here in Bismarck but all of the excitement for summer is being drowned out by flooding from the Missouri River. Residents of Bismarck/Mandan have been fighting hard all week to keep the waters at bay.  Today, the Bismarck mayor called for even more volunteers because over two million sandbags are still needed. While it looks grim for some, they continue to hold out hope. man-made dikes are becoming a common site in Bismarck-Mandan Yesterday, the public was told of a plan to help save most of south Bismarck and others who live near the river from severe flooding. There are many residents though who live outside of their proposed plan. Some of them have already gotten water in their homes, others are packing up and leaving while others continue to sandbag. This weekend it is supposed to rain and on Monday, the Army Core of Engineers will be releasing more water from Garrison Dam. It's hard to know what will happen after...

Earlier this week, Faith, along with the rest of the first graders at Centennial, went on a field trip for what is normally called "Summer Fun and Safety Day" but to me and probably many others it was a "Not So Summery Crazy Day."  The whole event was supposed to take place outdoors at Sertoma Park, where the students could visit about 25 different booths and learn about having fun while staying safe. Due to the rainy weather, however, all of the kids (about 1,500 first and third graders from different schools), teachers, chaperons, booths, games, prizes, informational handouts and even a live DJ all got crammed into one church building -with mostly everything in their gymnasium.  It was a little crazy, especially since I was trying to be super safe and maneuver Faith's wheelchair through the crowd without running over any feet. Thank goodness Faith's afternoon aide was there to help! Though a little crazy, there were still some good moments - like me ge...

Finally last week, Faith got her hair cut! Her thick hair was getting too long and unmanageable, so I had Julie cut it pretty short - perfect timing for the warmer summer months. It is really cute, and she has gotten lots of compliments. We are also finally looking at purchasing an accessible van. Our disability case manager e-mailed us some specs of a van that is here in Bismarck. On Sunday we went to look at it and we think it would work well for us.  The van does have some door issues, but we think we'll be able to work around them. It also has an in-floor ramp that can come out and go back in either automatically or manually. We rolled Faith into the van, and she was pretty excited about it! Yesterday Faith had her class field trip to the zoo. Even though it rained for about 20 minutes, we still had lots of fun. Thankfully, the weather was good for the most part. Since I drove Faith out there, we were able to stay a little longer while her classmates headed ...

Last Wednesday I had my yearly doctor exam and when she said I should get my tetanus shot updated, I didn't think twice about it. The nurse said my arm would be sore for a couple of days, gave me a handout and stuck the needle in my arm.  The next day my arm was sore and although I found it a little harder to pick up and carry Faith, I was glad the pain wasn't going to last long. Boy was I wrong! But not only was my arm sore, my whole body was. I felt achy and extremely tired. According to a medical site on the Internet, these were mild side effects of the Tetanus shot. If these were only mild side effects, I would really hate to have them at a moderate or severe level. My arm is still red and sore on day 2 after my tetanus shot. On Friday, two days after getting the shot I felt so tired that I took a four-hour nap after getting Faith off to school. Then on Saturday I took a three-hour nap up until 7 o'clock, but still felt tired and was able to go back to sleep around 10. ...

In school, the students are learning about three important R words - Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. But not only did the first graders at Centennial Elementary learn about these words, they put them to action. All three first grade classrooms were asked to take empty cartons, cans, containers and other materials; save them and remake them into something else. This afternoon they were able to share their recycled projects. I must say, some of them got quite creative! The parents were able to go around their child's classroom and look at the projects one by one. When someone came up to their table, the student said their name, described their project and then asked if there were any questions. The kids seemed to have a good time telling their audience about their reused and recycled products. There were trains made from pop bottles and empty soup cans, robots made from several different boxes, plant containers made out of egg cartons, a few birdhouses, and even a black un...

All day yesterday, my friend Sandy (fellow Christian concert junkie) and I kept anxiously looking out the window hoping the weather was going to cooperate for us to get to our concert. I was on KFYR's website all day keeping tabs on the weather and really couldn't believe some of the photos I was seeing. Western North Dakota was getting hit with a major blizzard - some parts of the state had 12 inches of snow with 60 mph winds. Trees were uprooted falling on vehicles and houses, cattle were lost out in the pastures, power was out, and even the Bakken Oilfield was shut down due to power outages. Blizzard hits Watford City, downs trees on April 30, 2011. Photo by Cindy Kummer Wollan The concert started at 7:30 p.m. and at around 2:00 p.m. things did not look so good. The rain had turned to snow which was really coming down and the wind was blowing hard. Many roads, including the Interstate were closed. Sandy and I held out hope that things would clear up. And they did! ...