this weekend's craziness

oh man oh man.  super busy weekend.  i will tell you all about it starting with friday.

friday morning i had the fourth and final day of my CASA training.  CASA = court appointed special advocate.  so i go to court hearings and advocate for youth who have been abused and neglected and recommend to the judge what i think is in the best interest of the child as far as foster care, adoption, going back to the parents, going to a family member, etc.  it's super intense and the judge takes the CASA's recommendation pretty seriously because they are the only really neutral party compared to the parent's attorney and the social worker.  so since friday was the last day if training, we had to dress all nice and go over to the juvenile court building and get sworn in by the judge.  craziness.  and then sometime in the next week or so I will be assigned a case.  i'm super excited about it, but also a little nervous because it is a lot of work and i have a lot of say in the lives of these children.

alright, then after this all day training, i went straight to work.  had a few minutes to change out of my court attire and into some jeans.  once a month we have the board members come in as our meal team who cooks and serves the food.  and it happened to be their night.  so i had to be on my A game.  things went fairly well. a few things happened and i had to have a few discussions with people about things.  but nothing super crazy.

kk, here's where things start getting nuts.  left there around 9 to go to the airport.  went through security and all that and got on a plane to new york around 11pm.  had a layover in detroit around 6am (4am my time) then back on the plane for an hour.  got in my brother's car around 9am (6am my time after attempting to sleep as much as possible on the plane which, even if you do sleep, is the worst and lightest sleep ever).  we had about an hour to kill before we could go home so we stopped at my aunt and uncle's house.

around 10:30 my sister calls, "she's gone, she's gone" and we race over to my house to start decorating.  streamers and balloons and signs and banners and other random things that all say '50' on them.  around 12 a bunch of people start coming into my house.  most of which i don't know.  but whatever, i just continue decorating.  then i wrapped this huge box in bright pink paper.  12:45ish i hear someone yell "she's here, jill get in the box"  so i get into my spot in the box and wait.  i hear people talking so i know what's going on.  then they all yell SURPRISE when my mom walks in the door.  my mom is surprised, of course, and goes around to say hi to everyone.  then they tell her to open her presents and start with the big pink one.  she tries to shake it to see if there is no bottom and she can just pull it off.  but no, no, that's not how we do things.  too easy.  so she starts ripping and opens the box and there i am.  then, of course, she cries.  she's super happy to see my.  she had been saying for a while, all i want for my birthday is for my 3 kids to be home.  i'm really surprised Nan didn't slip and tell her i was coming.

so we had food and party things and lots of people and cake.  it was a good time.  eventually people started fading out.  around 6ish i picked up denise from the train station and she came to hang out for a few hours.  she was on the train traveling back and forth from jersey longer than she actually got to hang out with me.  she's a good friend :)  we played some rock band with the fam for a while.  i've never played before.  it is craziness.  my brother loves to sing 'american woman' and 'hungry like a wolf'.  well if you can call that singing.  although somehow he always gets 100% on vocals.  then finally around 11 i got to sleep in a bed.

7:30 the next morning my mom wakes me up for the MUD RUN.  a 5 mile run in the mud.  thick thick mud in the woods that cakes onto your legs and feels like your feet are cement blocks.  and then about a half mile from the finish you jump into this pool of freezing mud water and pull yourself out with a rope.  it was disgusting and so incredibly awesome.  i was COVERED in mud.  COVERED.  although we don't really have any pictures of that because the water mostly washes it all off before you get to the finish line where all the cameras are.  but believe me, it was all over everywhere.  my family and my mom's sister's family all did it.  i was super impressed that my mom finished the race and went through every obstacle.  yeah she did come in dead last (480th place), but she finished and had mud all over.

then back home to shower and chill for a minute.  we played some more rock band and just hung out.  we watched Precious before getting to bed.

monday morning up at 6:30 to catch my 9am flight back to seattle.  i stopped to get a few new york bagels before i left town!  slept a little bit on the plane.  went straight from the airport to work.  got some things done and was actually fairly productive there.  then went over to bible study straight from work.  finally left around 10pm.  ran downstairs to say hi to marc for 5 minutes.  then off to bed with NO ALARM to set.  although i only slept until 9:30 this morning.  i'm a little tired, but for the most part i feel ok.

soooo, yeah.  that was my crazy, whirlwind weekend trip to new york for my mom's 50th birthday.  it was worth it to make her happy.  this should conclude the insanity that has been the month of march.  i'm pretty sure april should be fairly normal.  there are definitely things going on, but none of them even as close to as crazy as anything that happened in march.