October meeting for ECI-Ortonville

This past week has been so busy it was a bit of a blur. For the beginning I helped comfort a parishioner who was dying and her family. Then, on Thursday, her funeral. On Wednesday, I was up early to travel to the hospital by 8a.m., an hour and a half drive away. Also, on Thursday, I had another family to visit and a night meeting. As well as other responsibilities and enjoyments. So, it has been a bit of a blur.

Nonetheless, on Thursday, I was able to attend part of the Early Childhood Initiative's (ECI) planning meeting for our area. This is something I am interested in, as it is important to stress reading and nutrition and other things for the 0-5 age group. This is the ages of our boys, and for all children, this is the foundation upon which they will build the rest of their education on.

So, what I was involved with was mainly to decide if we wanted to continue past the grant money that the initiative had begun with or not. We chose to continue. So, we have a lot of work ahead of us. We need to begin fundraising so that we are ready when the money given for this work runs out.

That was the main important accomplishment for this meeting. We also needed to decide if we want to give the newborns of our area a readers bag or a onesie or both. The onesie was to have printed on it, "Read, Eat, Sleep, Repeat". It was a cute idea, and to the point. By the time we covered that, I needed to take off. As I said above, I had other work related things that needed my attention.

As much as I enjoy the work of this committee, I will have to continue to be aware of focusing on work first then this. It is something that I have been successful at so far, but it is something that will require me to be continually aware.