Please follow and support Jimmy Wayne through the last leg of his journey!  He’ll be reaching Phoenix any day now and he’s traveled a VERY long road!  I am still so inspired by his story…not a day goes by that I don’t think of him or his campaign to end teenage homelessness.  I often wonder what more can I do? I will be celebrating with him on Saturday at a free concert he’s giving at Toby Keith’s in Mesa.  If his story inspires you, come on out and show your support!  There are so many ways to help out:

Click here to donate!

Click here to follow him on twitter and leave a few words of encouragement

Click here for his Facebook page.

And finally, click here to read his whole story.  It’s truly amazing.

I think this might be my second charity, after Phoenix Children’s Hospital. Oh, and his music?  Amazing.  The songs are so inspiring, especially knowing that he’s written this music, and knowing about his journey.

We’re on our way to California.  Yes, again.  Why?  Because it’s miserable here and I have precious few days to escape before school starts again.  2 weeks from today, to be exact.  Can you believe it?  This time, it’s just me and the kids.  And it will be more low-key.  I plan on the beach a lot.  Our Uncle will take us pier fishing, too!  I can’t wait for that…Emma is SO excited!  (Note to self: bring extra hand sanitizer and baby wipes)  We will go to the San Diego zoo also.  That’s it for the outings though!

Right now the plan is to come on Friday very early in the morning so we can meet up with Emma’s (old) kindegarten class for a mini-reunion at the movies!  I really want her to see everyone and get “reacquainted” before school starts back up.  She’ll be so excited!

Pelican hanging out on the pier

Any last minute plans before your kids start back to school?

To Oma and Opa’s cabin we go!  We’re headed to Flagstaff for the weekend to get into some cooler weather.  I’m so excited…monsoon season is in FULL swing up there.  That means lazy afternoons playing games and watching movies while the storms take over the city!  I hope to bring back some fun pictures.  Until then, I’ll leave you with some pictures of our time in Big Bear, California.  When I was there, it very much reminded me of Flagstaff.  Except, you know, Flagstaff doesn’t have a giant lake in the middle.  But you get the point, right?

A little info on our trip: we stayed with friends of my mother-in-law.  They have a house right on the lake that you will see.  And they have a boat that we went out on at least once a day.  My kids had never been on a boat.  They’re hooked now! We also took the ski lift to the top of (one of) the mountains.  It was beautiful!

Emma waving in between Mr. Ken and Grandma

The best one we could get!

Pinwheel

View from the top

house on lake

What mountain locale to you and your family like to visit?

I have to express a little frustration, if you will.  I’m a little annoyed at people not returning my phone calls.  How many times should one contact a business for possible… business? An email?  A phone call?  Two phone calls?  I’ve done that.  And still no word.  And this isn’t to see if they have a shirt in my size (or something minute like that).  This is for therapy for my daughter.  Hippo therapy, to be exact.  There aren’t a lot of hippo therapy locations around my part of town.  And I’ve heard good things about them (obviously not about their communication skills).

Or how about my local YMCA who won’t return a phone call?  All I want to do is give you some money so my son can play soccer. Is that too much to ask?

You’d think that in this economy, people would be jumping at any business they could get.  You’d think.  I will be calling the hippo therapy place back.  And perhaps I’ll be a bit more firm in the message that I leave.  As for the soccer guy, I’ll give him another day.

What do you do when people won’t return your calls?

Emma’s school switched to uniforms this year.  They’ve also changed the name to include “Academy”.  They’ve become “A Friend of Core Knowledge“. All changes that I like and that I think will be beneficial in the long run.  Probably the change I’m most excited about is the school uniforms.  When I was teaching, I wished we had uniforms for the students.  I taught middle school back then. So many middle schoolers are into looks, fashion, name brands, material things. Of course it shouldn’t be that way, but it’s the age.  I saw (and heard about) way too much bullying going on and while I did what I could to stop it, you can’t stop it all.  I always thought having uniforms would take some of those issues away.  There wouldn’t be so much pressure for students to have the labels that were “in”.  For that matter, I thought teachers needed uniforms (i.e. scrubs), too.  Seriously.  It’s not always a tidy job!  Anyhoo…back to the point.

Emma’s school is making uniforms mandatory.  Older kids aren’t happy.  Younger kids probably couldn’t care less.  I’m wondering if I get to spruce up her shoe wardrobe now.  The uniforms aren’t bad, really.  They’re polo shirts in red, navy, or white, that the kids will wear with khaki bottoms.  I think the shirts will have to be tucked in as a rule (belt shopping, anyone?). The shirts have a patch with the school name and (new) logo.   Although the patches aren’t true patches.  They’re similar to a poor quality fake velour.  The texture that gives me the heebie jeebies.  I’ll get over it.

I mean, it could be worse.

What’s your opinion on school uniforms?

Okay, I know this is a common issue with parents…they have a hard time getting their kids to sleep!  And many parents have a hard time getting their kids to sleep even in their own house!  I can’t imagine what those parents do when they’re on vacation.  Fortunately for me and Brett, our kids are WONDERFUL sleepers.  I don’t know how it happened.  I honestly don’t!  We didn’t co-sleep when the kids were infants.  We always knew that just wouldn’t be us.  I’m an extremely light sleeper and I knew I’d never sleep well knowing my baby was right next to me. I was always paranoid I’d roll over on him or her.

When we’re at home, we have our routine, as most households do, where we potty, wash hands, brush teeth, brush Emma’s hair, and story time.  Story time is in Emma’s bed because she’s got a double.  Then Mason goes into his room and it’s lights out for both!  Well, almost lights out.  We have a dimmer on their fan light so we leave it on the dimmest setting so they can read if they want to.  Within 5 minutes they’re usually both out.  Seriously.  And on vacation it’s the same thing.  Seriously.  How did I get so lucky?  Trust me, I know it’s not the norm!  Even on vacation when they’re not in their own beds, they still have no problem.  In San Diego, they both slept on inflatable mattresses without any issues.  Of course I would wake up in the middle of the night because I was worried they’d slide off or something.

Emma sleeps like me.  A little lighter and a little earlier.  And that goes for night time and morning.  She’ll go to bed earlier but she’ll wake up earlier, too.  We’ve tried too many things to change that.  It’s just who she is!  Mason, on the other hand, sleeps like my husband.  Heavy and LONG!  He can stay up later, but he’ll also wake up around 10:00 if we give him the chance.  Yes, he is 4 years old!  So crazy to me!  Oh, and Mason, much like Brett, and sleep in many places, as witnessed below.

How do your kids sleep?

one-oh-nine = HOT!

This was the temperature when the kids and I went out looking for Jimmy Wayne.  And he is walking in this heat.  All day long.

I challenge anyone reading this to send him a tweet and show him some support.  I’ll take it one step further and anyone in Arizona (Phoenix Metropolitan) to go and meet up with him.  Give him some bottled water.  Bring him some lunch.  WALK with him a bit.  Attend the Celebration Concert on July 31st that is FREE!! You can also walk with him the last 2 miles to reach Home Base Youth Services Let him know that the blogging community supports his quest…and Arizona supports him as well.  Leave me a comment and let me know how you supported him!

Latest tweet from Jimmy:

“The people I have met on this journey have given me a home; not a place or shelter necessarily, but where peace dwells inside of me. ~JW”

So yesterday I decided to pack up the kids, the stroller, a cooler with fresh fruit, water bottles, and sunscreen.  I made up my mind that we would find Jimmy Wayne!  I DM’ed (Direct Messaged) him on Twitter.  To find out where he was.  He was on the 87…the road that goes to Payson.  I asked him if he’d like a Sub sandwich and he replied with:

“Yes!! And Mt Dew ..”

Sub sandwich -check!  Mountain Dew -check! Chips -check!

Okay, call me crazy for doing this.  Actually I was questioning myself the whole way out there (it was a long little car ride…over an hour!).  Would Brett be mad I was trying to find a Country artist who was walking across country?  Would I even find Jimmy? Was I actually going to walk with him?  Here’s the thing.  My afternoon was free.  Clearly I’ve been touched by his story and his campaign to change something that needs improvement.  I mean, I wrote about him yesterday.  We had nothing going on yesterday afternoon…my car had just been serviced so I knew it would be fine.  And I had a full tank of gas.  Why not?  Why not help someone out when it touches your heart.  Stories like this make me want to be a better person.  Stories like this make me want to try harder to get Emma’s Story out.  So that’s my reason and I’m stickin’ to it!

Back to the story.  Jimmy’s nephew calls me and says they’re about 20 miles from the casino on 87.  Okay.  I know where that is!  The problem that I see is that the highway separates with little mountains and hills in between the two directions.  So I’m booking it out there, keeping my eyes peeled for a guy in a red shirt.  Not that I had to look hard.  It was 109 degrees outside.  I’d be floored if anyone else was walking this stretch.  I ended up going about 30 miles from the casino, just to be safe.  I turned around right after a little town called Sunflower.  This is the sign you see when you come upon Sunflower.  No joke.  (click on the picture if you can’t read it!) Uh, you can’t miss this town!

So I turned around and headed back.  About 10-12 miles going west I spotted a car on the side of the road and TWO people wearing red shirts!  BINGO!  I couldn’t pull over fast enough into their pullout area.  So I stopped ahead precariously in between two metal guides.  I don’t know what they’re called…two metal poles sticking up off the ground.  Probably to keep people like me from pulling over on that part of the shoulder.  Genious. Not only do I pull over there.  I then drive in reverse on the shoulder (past these metal guides) for a few hundred yards.  After the fender bender I had last week (long silly story), I was definitely questioning this decision!  I got to their pullout spot, parked and turned the car off.  Jimmy was actually doing a phone interview with someone.  So I set up our little picnic and pulled out all the goods.  Then realized this stuff would get hot fast and put all the goods back in the cooler until he was done.  Except the Mountain Dew.  He wanted that!

What a sweet guy Jimmy is.  We just chatted away about the places he had visited.  He asked about Monsoon storms.  I asked if walking in the ice storms were worse than walking in this heat (the heat is worse, he said). He asked about Brett and what he did.  Asked if I was coming to the Celebration Concert next week.  It was easy conversation with a new friend.  I was so happy to be able to do this for him and help support him on a leg of his journey that’s definitely not easy.  Just standing in the heat was rough.  I can’t imagine walking in this heat.  And 87 isn’t an easy highway either.  It’s twisty and turny and narrow.  Very scary.  I told him I wouldn’t be able to walk with him today, unfortunately.  How would I get back to my car?  And I couldn’t walk on this stretch with a stroller and two kids to boot.  Perhaps I’ll be able to meet up again with him in the valley somewhere.  Perhaps somewhere with sidewalks!

I got this sweet tweet after I left:

@jessicacrozier Thanx for coming out & bringing food! Awesome folks in this world!

Jimmy (if you read this), the pleasure was all mine.  Maybe I’ll meet up with you again next week and can actually walk a bit!  Expect a DM from me…perhaps Tuesday!

Anyway, here’s the moral of the story.  If something inspires you, then do it!  Help out in some way!  I’m so happy I was able to take a few hours out of my day to put a smile on his face and let him know that he’s supported!  Please take a minute to learn more about his story here.  You won’t be sorry…and you will be inspired.

Here’s a quote that is on my Jumping Waves Facebook Page right now:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, It is the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead

Picnic in the car!

Best of luck, Jimmy…and I hope our paths cross again!  God bless you and keep you safe!