American Kids Presents Parent Night Out Halloween Style!

American Kids Sports is hosting a Parent Night Out!

LOCATION: American Kids SW 4401 Ride St. (behind 24hr Fitness on White Ln. & Gosford) PHONE: AKSC SW 833-3986 & AKSC NW 589-2100 E-mail: INFO@AmericanKidsSports.com

WWW.AmericanKidsSports.com

Fri October 31st (Halloween) & Sat November 1st

Time: 6:00-11:00

Price: 1st child $20 - $13 for additional kids

This is a great opportunity for Parents to provide their Children with a Halloween like no other! Parents can go and enjoy a night out without the kids or any worries. American Kids Sports SW is the place for a fun and safe environment this Halloween! Kids will enjoy:

-Costume Contest

-Haunted Maze

-Spooky and Fun Game Booths with Prizes

-Halloween Games

-Halloween Movie & Snacks

Oh, baby! U.S. Navy nurse gives new meaning to multi-tasking

Birthdays are special, and birth days — hospitals, backless gowns, labor pains and hearing that first cry — are special, too, but not just for the parents. Imagine the euphoria of seeing a baby born. Now imagine that feeling times a hundred.

When Teresa Lee McFarland was 34, she and a neighbor decided that they needed a diversion from the monotony of everyday life. Raising kids isn’t easy work, and if you’re raising five young boys, like McFarland, then life can seem downright taxing at times.

Of course, it isn’t unusual for women to seek bonding time away from their children. McFarland is not unique because she acted on a whim and decided to do something for herself. Some women join Bunco or reading groups, some play bridge.

McFarland joined the U.S. Navy.

She became a reservist on weekends — in her spare time between raising five sons as a single parent, driving a school bus and attending college classes to become a nurse.

McFarland, now 49, was born into an Air Force family but said that she and her neighbor joined the Navy because, “Navy boot camp was only two weeks.” The Air Force required six.

With so much going on, it would have been easy for McFarland to fail at something. She didn’t.

“Her name means ‘industrious,’ and it is a perfect fit,” said Staff Sgt. Jesse Tait, McFarland’s son, who is currently serving the U.S. Army in Okinawa, Japan. “Teresa has backpacked in Yosemite, rebuilt engines, poured foundations, framed houses, tarred roofs, soldered plumbing and driven bulldozers and school buses.”

McFarland did something else, too. It took her nine years, but she earned her bachelor’s degree in nursing from Cal State Bakersfield. And she did it mostly from the Kern County mountain community of Frazier Park.

In those earlier years, a typical day for McFarland was to rise early, strap her youngest child in his pajamas to a seat in the school bus and start her route, making her last stop the day care facility. She would then attend classes at College of the Canyons.

After classes, McFarland would go back to work driving the late bus, get home and switch hats from bus driver/student to Mom.

When she was finally able to transfer to CSUB, McFarland moved to the Northwest, to a city she considers her home.

“People in Bakersfield are generous, helpful, friendly and genuine. They are a bit quirky, but that’s one of the reasons I fit in so well!” said McFarland.

She fit in well somewhere else, too: the Navy Reserves.

In July 2005, McFarland had graduated with her degree in nursing and was working as a public health nurse when she received a phone call that would change her life.

“I learned that I had been activated to serve during Operation Enduring Freedom,” she said. Her date to report: Sept. 11, 2006.

McFarland packed all her belongings into storage, put her two llamas up for adoption and moved to San Diego to serve as a Navy reserve nurse for her 16-month deployment.

McFarland, now a lieutenant, was assigned to the Navy Medical Center San Diego (NMCSD) as a labor and delivery nurse.

Moving away from everyone she loved wasn’t easy. Well aware of her fortune to be in a city highly regarded for its tourism, and not in the desert or on a ship, McFarland counted herself lucky.

To battle the inevitable loneliness that accompanies any deployment, she volunteered to work nights, weekends and holidays so that her coworkers could spend time with their families. She ate from a Crock-Pot in a motel room and baked cookies (four at a time) in a toaster oven to share with the security guards on duty.

McFarland also helped deliver a lot of babies.

“One night shift, we delivered 16 babies, and six of those by cesarean section,” she said. Although McFarland wasn’t really counting officially, she had a feeling she was getting close to her 100th birth.

In July 2007, something made her go back and count. McFarland discovered that when she arrived to work on Aug. 1, she would have the opportunity to help deliver her 100th baby.

It was a special day, to be sure. Special for the military parents having the baby — and special for McFarland.

Aug. 1, 2007 would also be her 49th birthday.

In all, McFarland estimates that she delivered nearly 160 babies before returning to Bakersfield in January. When she got home, she discovered that she was a changed person.

“I am amazed by the high caliber of men and women — some of them quite young — that are putting their lives on hold or even on the line to actually do something for a purpose that is far more than just personal,” said McFarland.

The overall sense of patriotism, she said, is what lingers after her 16-month deployment. That, and her faith in America’s youth.

“I feel good that the country is in the capable hands of these young people.”

Although she isn’t the type to take credit, McFarland has served this country as well as the young mothers she currently mentors and the five boys she raised on her own, while she worked and went to college.

Some might even call her a hero, including her son.

“Dreams cannot be realized idly, waiting for the right circumstances or a serendipitous stroke of luck,” wrote Tait, McFarland’s son, in an e-mail. “Faith, loyalty, determination, and perseverance are required to achieve your goals and arrive there happy.

“Throughout my life, I have known only a handful of people that embody this truth. The greatest example is, by far, Teresa Lee McFarland.”

Originally published at http://www.northwestvoice.com/home/ViewPost/54896 on Wednesday, April 9, 2008.

Northwest: Raising Bakersfield

American Kids Presents Parent Night Out Halloween Style!

Oh, baby! U.S. Navy nurse gives new meaning to multi-tasking