Playground @ MindSay 
park
Hello, world! I can't talk to much right now, because I'm supposed to be babysitting, but I thought I'd write a quick entry. 
Right now I've got to go outside and watch Thomas in the sandbox. I'm taking him to the park later. Expect an entry later!
Attorney: Playground case should be dropped
Two young girls are accused of brutally attacking a classmate in Pa.
ERIE, Pa. - Two young girls accused of brutally attacking another girl on a playground are too emotionally immature to understand the criminal charges against them and the charges should be dismissed, their attorneys said.
The girls, ages 10 and 11, face aggravated assault and other charges for the attack on another 10-year-old girl at an elementary school playground the evening of April 3. The girls are accused of stomping on the victim and breaking her hip, police said.
Erie County Public Defender Tony Logue says he will ask a Juvenile Court judge to dismiss criminal charges against the 10-year-old girl.
"How can my attorney effectively communicate with his clients given the client's chronological age versus emotional age?" Logue said.
Attorney Bruce Sandmeyer said he has similar concerns for his client, the 11-year-old, and expects to file a similar motion in the coming days.
"My client is just 11 years old and just an elementary school student," Sandmeyer said.
The lawyers said the case should be treated as a dependency case, not a delinquency case. In legal terms, a judge who rules a child is dependent can place the child under the supervision of the Erie County Office of Children and Youth.
A delinquency case, which is what the girls currently face, is the juvenile court equivalent of a criminal case. If the girls are found delinquent, the equivalent of a guilty verdict, they could be confined in a juvenile detention facility or otherwise be under the supervision of the court until they turn 21.
Ian Murray, another lawyer for the 10-year-old girl, said she and her family feel deep remorse for the attack. "This is tragic for everyone, especially the victim," Murray said.
Family members of the 11-year-old suspect say she is an "A" and "B" student who has never been in trouble before.
The injured girl said the other girls pulled her off the monkey bars and attacked after she told the girls to stop splashing water on her 8-year-old sister in the school playground. Police said the victim was repeatedly stomped on the head and legs.
The victim remains hospitalized and is expected to undergo at least one week of rehabilitation at a hospital. She has three pins in her hip to keep the bones in place and may eventually need a hip replacement, her mother said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24052416/
As a mother of a 9 year old girl. I HOLLAR! BULLSHIT! I don't care what state, I don't care if the girls are purple or mauve colored skinned, I don't care if the girls are Pagan, Christian, Muslim, Buddist, or what have you............they KNEW what they were doing! I don't care if they were "good girls" and got straight A's or if they were "bad girls" and got straight F's. They KNEW what they were doing. So they don't understand the court system and all the big words. Got news for folks, unless your in a profession of the justice system, NOBODY knows the court system and the big words because it is all sooooooooooo complicated.
Their parents get lawyers for them, the lawyers and the parents EXPLAIN things to them in words they can understand! They need to be held accountable NOW or they are going to continue this behavor of snapping for stupid shit!
I didn't read the whole story to my kids, but I think it is awfully interesting that I explained the jist of the story to my 9 year old daughter and 8 year old son. I asked them what would happen to them if they were stupid enough to do something like this. If my 9 and 8 year old can look at me in a shocked manner and go:
"We would go to jail for hurting another kid that badly. And if we didn't go to jail we would be someplace for just kids in jail, having to correct our naughty behavor."
I also asked them if anything else would happen to them besides going into jail. And this is what they said.
"Well, since we aren't old enough to pay for everything like lawyers, our parents would probably get told to pay for our laywers and pay for the other kid's operation if she had one. And their parents might have to pay the other girl's family some money to say sorry."
So notice they don't completely understand the process of the court system, but they do understand a good portion of it. And before anyone says I told them, WRONG! I cleared some things up after they proved that they could understand the situation and that is it. Make those lil girls accountable NOW for their behavor.
Here are the first few shots I am willing to share from our camping trip. There won't be many of me because my husband doens't know how to take pictures!:D
Pictures 1 and 2 are self explanatory. Pictures of our tents. We had what we call a snow bird's camp site because they were packed this weekend. Meaning the site was near the park ranger's building and close to the entrance/exit of the campground.
Picture 3 is of the play ground in our campground.
Picture 4 is of the Cottonwoods that make up the campground. The name of the camp ground is Cottonwood:D Actually these are a group of middle cottonwoods. If you walked from the northern part of the campground to the southern part you go right through them and see a view of Lake Yankton which Cottonwood camp ground sits next too.
Picture 5 is just one picture of the bank of Lake Yankton near our campground. This is also where I took the kids to fish. I HATE lake fishing unless I am in a boat but I sucked it up and took them in the mornings and in the afternoons.
Picture 6 is the kids playing one evening with a group of other kids camping that weekend.
Picture 7 and 8 are pictures of Lake Yankton from the south and north. This was about 7:30 in the morning.
Picture 9 was of our morning coffee done brewing. If you look closely you can see the steam indicating it was done.
Picture 10 is another picture of Lake Yankton that leads to the southern point.
We went by bike though we couldve walked.
Everyone had alot of fun. They asked if we could do it again soon but its been raining.
One last picture:
Dudley hanging out on my table by the computer. He was keeping me company and looking oh-so-sexay.
We're in the same play together. I'm always a little startled whenever I pass by a mirror, because, normally, I never wear eyeliner, and I don't really wear cover-up, either. So, I'm confronted by great-hair, perfect-skin, dark-eyed Amanda, and my mind immediately decides that my evil twin has crossed dimensions into this reality. Especially since my normal casual half-smile looks so much like, "Haha. I'm baaack." Or something equally devious and proud of itself.
I have new reason to love this park. Normally, I'm over by the waterfall. I love the waterfall, playing in it, splashing, watching, singing inside the sound it creates, listening to it. But the waterfall's also got a fair amount of emotional significance for me. And it's just not the kind of thing I share with more casual friends.
Said friend will be called Max. Max's senior year has been pretty much crap. He came out early in the year to his parents, had some issues with it at school. Note: It was not widely announced at school, we go to a small-town school. Anyway, he had some kind of anger and aggression outbreaks that resulted somehow in him talking with the new school counselor. I haven't worked with this woman at all - I graduated the year before him. But, somewhere in their discussions, he let her know that he was gay. Sometime later, he figured out that talking with her just wasn't helping him at all, so he stopped going to see her. She wanted to keep talking with him about this, and tried getting him sent to her office a few times. Then she tried meeting him and asking him to come to her office. Then came the fateful day when she just tried talking to him where he was, which happened to be in the library. Now, it's not that she directly broke confidentiality and told someone else. It's that she talked about it at a volume that anyone else in the library could have picked up on.
In case you missed this, announcing that you're gay, to a small town school in the Midwest, takes about as much nerve as announcing in complete sobriety to six rugby teams in the same bar that they're all pansies and only in the sport for the after-practice showers (concept: Brunswick). And Max is, for the most part, a very shy introvert.
I was not pleased to hear this. If you had two people in the library who heard that, it'd be all over the school by the end of the day. With the fourteen or so that were most likely there, it wouldn't take 'til the end of the lunch hour. I sincerely wanted to hear that she'd been fired, but Max's approach is fairly non-confrontational. He changed schools and finished out his senior year, still amid a fair amount of crap.
As far as I can see, it changes nothing about our relationship. Max and I never were dating, and most likely never were going to date. We're still going to chase each other around backstage with a water spray-bottle, make the same dumb jokes, I'll be teasing him nonstop and he'll just give up and start poking me when he runs out of words. I think we were first drawn to each other just because we needed each other. Just someone to laugh with who's not going to judge you over anything.
Admittedly, I do give him grief about the guy he likes. But that's because of the guy's age, not his gender. And that look he gets on his face. I LOVE getting that look on his face!
Anyway, we went to the park to hang out after it became clear that conversation at the restaurant wasn't working out so well. Max says I'm more comfortable with him being gay than HE is. Our conversation for the night was actually mostly about marriage - some stuff about the Catholic church, some stuff about dating.
Of course, we were at the playground. Which I'd never been on. So, right in the middle of some serious topic, I'd suddenly, "What? It spins?! This is awesome!!" Because I'm talking with him perfectly seriously, but I'm also checking out all this cool stuff and squealing over some parts of it. Joe couldn't stand it when I did that - Max just takes it and waits the half-breath it takes for me to get back to what I was saying.
"They have a TIRE swing?!?! Oh! Oh! I'm going to make myself sick!!!" Which I did. Not like actually barfy-sick, but still feeling very internally uncomfortable. I haven't done that in years. It felt so great. I think that was when we were debating, "Do you think God made you gay for a reason?" Totally serious, thinking about his responses, and being completely open about what I thought, but spinning and spinning faster than fast can be until the night and the lights blurred and my mind couldn't interpret sight anymore.
We're growing up. We're still doing the kid stuff. Maybe it'll always be this way. Maybe for just one night, we needed it to be this way. I really don't know. I just know it was a good night.
Catholicism, rural vs. urban. "Uh huh. No, that would actually make sense. Hey, come jump on this with me! So, what do you think about...."
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