Yum!!

These all came off of the vine this morning. They are sweet and juicy and plentiful!

Dirty Baseboards

I have said in the past that you can tell how things are going in my house by looking at the baseboards in my kitchen. If the baseboards are sparkling clean, then that means someone has been making bad choices and earning extra chores like washing walls, cabinets, door jabs and baseboards.

I guess I can say that I am the proud owner of dirty baseboards.

Things have been pretty good over here. Our schedule is chocked full of appointments this week, but it seems to be a fairly calm week so far. Tomorrow the kids have to work at the local food bank which they enjoy immensely!

We have 6 weeks before we leave for vacation!!! Hope to get very far ahead so that we don't have to take school with us.

Virtual Refridgerator

Confession: I am a collector and I love the art and work that my kids complete at school, daycare, children's church, etc. This presents a fridge and wall space problem. So I started taking pictures of the kid's art and filing and posting some here. We review the original and say how beautiful it is and then we toss most of it. I still keep some very precious ones, but this system has saved space.

This week in Bible class, Kindergarten made these things:

A dove and booklet about John.

I searched long and hard for a Bible curriculum for kindergarten that would fit our needs and I finally found a great workbook called Bible Stories from A to Z. I like that I can make up to 5 lessons per week if needed (even though we rarely school 5 whole days per week). Here are 2 examples of the pages:

It was kinda funny because I was going to just use some tissue paper to tear into pieces and glue onto the dove, but in looking for my tissue paper found some really old art feathers that were left over from my student teaching days in 1986. They were still soft and in really good shape.

We had a week that was very interrupted, but still productive. Next week we have so many appointments that they barely fit on my dollar store dry erase board. LOL!

Pancake breakfast tomorrow!

Have a great weekend

Kind Enough to Stop By...

But over an hour late to pick her up!!!

The bus driver did not show up until 9 am this morning after telling us to be ready by 8 am. After about 30 minutes I called the bus garage who radioed the driver who said she would be here in a couple of minutes....

25 minutes later after standing in the driveway watching school buses speeding by, she showed up very apologetic and frazzled. By then, school had started and my kid was going to be late. We followed the bus to school where the driver had to sit for another 10 minutes waiting for someone to take the kids from her bus into school. We went ahead and took our kid in to see the class and meet the teacher. She was everything we had been told!

Hopefully tomorrow the bus will be more on time.

Not Even 1 Hour?

For the past 20+ years, my mom given my brother and I the Labor Day tradition of making a pallet on the living room floor to watch the Telethon. It was always a contest to see who could stay up the latest. In the morning, we would then drive to the local fire station to make a donation in the "boot".



I have offered this to my kids, but they are just such creatures of routine that they can not stand the thought of sleeping in the house without going to their beds. I mean I had popcorn and snacks and they asked to go to bed after about 1 hour! James did try to hang in a little longer, but he only lasted another 15 minutes or so. Wimps! LOL!

More At Ease

I have a 6 year old foster child that is to be enrolled in a special ed kindergarten program for this year by her last year's preschool teacher. Now back in the day when I worked outside of the home (in a land far far away) I had worked as a therapist with a few families that had children enrolled in this particular school. It was not a pleasant experience. In fact, I remember saying at 1 point that I would not even enroll my dog at that school.

So today I talked to the social worker that has been working with my kid in some capacity over the last 3 years while she was with her birth family and she gave very glowing reviews on the teacher of this special program. She described the teachers style and reports that she has been teaching this class for over 10 years. This class operates semi-independent of the rest of the school, but does some activities with the regular kindergarten classes. Finally, she reports that the principle of many many years has retired and there is a new guy in the office. He does not believe in sending problem kids home as an automatic and encourages teachers to deal with behaviors in the classroom. BONUS!!!! I am feeling more at ease about sending her.

The social worker contacted the transportation department and within 3 hours, the bus driver came came to our home to introduce herself and to let me know an approximate pick-up time. Good.

The Princess speaks...