Five summers of babysitting...!

When I was living in Pennsylvania, I would come down to North Carolina every other week during the summers when I was off from teaching, to babysit my niece and nephews.  It was my summer job and I did my tutoring and homebound visit teaching at home during the weeks I wasn't babysitting.  My friends thought I was nuts for driving to and from NC every week but I loved being with my NC fam and getting to know them up close and personal.  It was also supplemental income since I still got paid for my teaching job and other part time jobs in PA.  Those babysitting summers helped me to pay off my Master's degree and my car (RIP Saturn Ion!!).

Now, it's a necessity due to being a "poor college student" again and not having the teacher income I was used to from when I lived in PA.  I still love my niece and nephews to pieces but it is definitely a different set of stressors than when I was traveling back and forth from PA.  There is a sense of urgency in that I have so many other projects/schoolwork/things to do hanging over me when I go off the clock but I hope that the children will some day look back on these summers and smile from the memories we've made.

The first summer it was just Mason Noelle, followed by Clark Brien the next two summers.  Then, during the third summer, thanks to my brother and sister-in-law's extreme and gracious generosity, I moved down here so that was a bit of a transition to say the least.  Last summer saw the addition of Braden Brien and this summer was even more different with a tremendous amount of other responsibilities on my shoulders in addition to caring for my adorable niece and nephews. 

With this week being the final week of babysitting for this summer, since I return to full-time work in (gulp!) 9 days, I need to get our annual summer photo taken before I go off duty on Tuesday night!



Mason and I were excited to joing Alisha for a girls' day of shopping this summer afternoon.  Alisha gave me this photo in a frame as an end of the summer thank you gift.  It is one of my favorite pictures and I can't wait to display the frame again some day when I'm back in my own place. 

Clark, Mason, Alisha, and I had a wonderful time at Olde Salem in Winston-Salem on this day.  I currently display this photo in one of the coolest gifts I've received.  Summer 2009's thank you gift was a beautiful glass vase photo holder that i have light purple orchid flowers and blue and green glass balls in as a backdrop behind this photo.  Old Salem is one of my favorite places here, in NC, and what's even more special is that Alisha gave me a unique handcrafted village of ten of the buildings there that I love displaying in my hutch and will do again when my furniture is out of storage!  This was also taken 6 months before I learned of the opportunity to start working on the doctorate now and not 20 some years from now after I retired from teaching.  Never in a million years, would I have dreamt that the following summer I would be moving down here during my every other week trips!!!!! Amazing how life works.

This photo was taken during my last weekend of babysitting in 2010 just days before starting at UNCG.  We had left mass one Saturday night when I realized that I hadn't taken the annual summer photo yet! 

What a summer this was with having one year of the doc program under my belt, supervising and teaching online student teaching seminars, getting started on portfolio artifacts, and helping with the 3 babies all at the same time...!