I am entering day 4 of my 7 day shift this week and it has had many ups and some downs. I came on duty and Wednesday marked the first day of SAP (Summer Activities Program) which basically means someone comes in and plans out activities for our entire summer. :) It makes schedules a little bit easy because we don't have to plan an entire summer for the kids but get to partake in the activities with them...along with of course taking care of the kids, paperwork and taking kids to appointments. Although there is all of that it brings some fun as well to mix. Thursday brought to be an interesting day. It started out wonderful with our girls. We went to SAP and played games with the other cottages one game which included 9 Lives...which for those of you who don't know what that is...it is basically dodge-ball to the extreme where instead of getting hit once and you are out, you can instead get hit 9 times before you are out. It was intense, by the end of the game I was the last girl standing against two boys and then I got out...needless to say after many hits, run ins with other players I was pretty sore! It was super fun though. After SAP we returned to the cottage for hangout time and that is when it all came exploding. One of our girls had a rough visit that past weekend where she broke rules, etc and we explained to her that because of her actions she lost her visit for the next weekend. Well she didn't take it well and she ended up walking back from the office to the cottage and started packing her things stating she was leaving and she was ready to go. Then she ended up playing basketball to let her anger out, throwing things and threatening the program manager and my fellow staff while I was downstairs with the other residents. In the end the Sheriff had to come out and she ended up having to leave Grace. It was sad though because we know she could have done so well here and she had already made some major progress while she was with us. It is harder when they leave unsuccessfully and you know they could achieve great things but they choose instead to be stupid with their choices. I do hope the best for her though, even if it means she has to hit bottom before she can pick herself up and make good choices.

So after that night it was pretty rough and Becca and I were exhausted. Then when all you want to do is sleep it doesn't happen. One of our other girls was returning from visiting her family in Kentucky and her time had changed so instead of her returning at 1am she returned at 5:15am! So I set my alarm for 4:20am to be up when she was supposed to get home at 4:30 but fell asleep and she walked in 5:15am. That was indeed a very long first night on duty. I passed out for another hour before I had to get up for the day Thursday.

Thursday was a great day! We spent the morning mowing which went fine and then we took our girls out camping at our boss's house since he has a lot of land! We packed up for a night all the tents, sleeping bags, food, etc and left at 5:30pm. We set up camp, cooked hot dogs, banana boats and these tasty things called Dough boys over the fire! It was so much fun to get out into the nature and spend some time outside with the girls. We must have worn them out because they all were in bed in their tents by 9:30pm! So it gave us as staff the opportunity to just hangout together by the fire and talk. It was great being able to get to know one another more and just hangout and have fun. Especially because Becca, Hannah and I never are off duty together so to hangout together and have fun when we don't have to worry about the kids that much was great! I love camping too and so to be able to share this experience with the girls was awesome! We told them that if they cooperated together we would get them McDonald's breakfast the next morning for doing so well. So we took them to McDonald's for breakfast before we went back to the cottage to shower and get ready for SAP.

Friday comes and we went out for breakfast after packing up camp, returned to the cottage and showered, then went to SAP. Friday we played volleyball and soccer and man was that intense. I never realized how competitive I was in sports until I came here to work. I do just love being outside and being active. We had a great day of sports then had a relaxing evening for pizza and a movie like we do every Friday night.

Today is Saturday which marks day 4 of 7 for me. It is pretty low key which is nice. We have spent the day deep cleaning, playing board games and right now we are making Bagels. It is quickly becoming more and more like home to me here and I love every minute of it, even if it is challenging. I look forward to sharing more summer fun memories with you all! I am sure there will be more to come by the end of this shift!

Love,
Ashley

Bader Staff Summer 2013

Becca, Hannah Annie (Our Summer Intern) and Myself