The Big "E"

 

This is my first photo that I've entered at I heart faces.

This past weekend, my daughter and I spent some time decorating a big "E" that we've had for ages.  She picked out a handful of scrapbooking paper that she felt best described her current interest--music, soccer, rocks, water, chocolate chip cookies, etc.  While watching a Harry Potter movie together, we tore, glued and pasted for the rest of the evening.  When the theme was paper, I figured I better hurry up and take a picture of our project.

She's pretty pleased with how her big "E" turned out.  At least that's one craft project off the to-do list!

What Holiday?

This morning, at 6:30 a.m., I sat down and had a nice little breakfast with my son before we headed off to work and school. John, who has crowned himself  the "Hot-breakfast Dad,"  had made a healthy bowl of oatmeal for each of us.

From the kitchen he asked our son, "Guess what holiday we're celebrating today?"

"The sinking of the Titanic?" replied the eighth-grader.

"Close," said the Hot-breakfast Dad. 

"It's your mom's birthday."

Nice. Real nice.

I just love my family.

The Library Roll

In Fredericksburg, there's this little community library.  It is operated completely by volunteers and funded by donations.  I just love the thought that a group of people so valued the idea of a library in their community that they really did what it takes to make something like that happen. 

Six years ago, they started a bicycle ride called the "Library Roll" in order to raise funds to help operate the library.  When John saw the flier for this ride, he immediately said that he'd like to do this.  We enjoy supporting something like this and we've always enjoyed bicycling, so it seemed like a great thing to do as a family.

When we checked in for the ride today, we were reminded by the volunteer that we've participated in nearly every ride for the past six years.  I had almost forgotten that we started doing this ride when I was pulling the little girl in a trailer behind my bike.  Wow, time flies.

The ride is completely on the Holmes County trail.  It's a really nice, paved path that's well kept and travels through some really pretty Holmes county areas.  Being Holmes County, you not only share the path with other cyclist and walkers and runners, but you also share the path with Amish buggies.

Instead of alerting each other to "walker ahead" or "bike behind", the call was actually "poop ahead". 

Yeah, the kids got a really big kick out of that one. 

The shortest distance is 18 miles, with a nice little snack stop at the 9 mile point.  They serve homemade cookies, fruit and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches made on homemade bread.  Just the right thing to re-fuel and re-motivate the kids for the 9 mile trek back to the start. 

It's kind of funny, but the conversation during these rides almost always involves books.  What the kids are reading, what have been their favorites and what ones are on the "I really need that book" list.  They usually find themselves trying to recite a favorite Shel Silverstein poem (because so many of those are fun and easy to remember) or Dad's favorite Robert Frost poem (because Dad bribed them with a dollar a few years ago if they would memorize it).  Pretty appropriate for a library ride.

At the end of the ride, there's always fry pies and a new t-shirt to add to the collection.

Oh, and a few sore bums, but also a lot of pride for riding!

3,000 Bouncy Balls

It's not too hard to talk our kids into a trip to the library.  In fact, they get pretty excited about it.  Yes, a trip to the library is sometimes the highlight of their week.  Last night, we offered them a trip to the Medina library, but failed to mention that the purpose of the trip was to watch 3,000 bouncy balls being dropped inside the library from the third floor.

They actually were pretty upset because the library part was closed and they were unable to check out books.

Angry looks and all, is what we received at first.

Fortunately, watching 3,000 bouncy balls hit the ceramic tile kinda made up for that.

Oh, and the pizza afterwards helped too.

Thanks Medina Library!

A few extra acorns?

A few weeks ago we lost a large limb from our old oak tree.  The limb was overloaded with acorns and simply could not bear the weight of those acorns any longer. 

The Dad that lives at this house started thinking about what could be done with all of those acorns.  I'm not quite sure how he came to pull together a couple of bike tubes that had blow outs earlier this year (or why in the world he still had them hanging around), some bungee cords and some leftover duct tape from this project. But, put them together he did.  In the end, the kids ended up with a pretty cool acorn launcher.

Just another way to reuse, re-purpose and recycle, I guess. 

Back to School

It's hard to believe that I now have a fifth-grader and an eight-grader. The years sure do fly by way too quickly. The school year, so far, is off to a good start. One of the fifth-grader's teacher is having a "silly band" year.

"B"ring materials to class
"A"ttend school regularly
"N"otice the details
"D"o the right thing

The kids can earn a silly band for turning in homework timely each week and the teacher gives them out as incentives or rewards for other various things during the week. What a fun and creative way to use a current "trend" to encourage and reward kids!

The eight grader is loving his classes as well, especially science. His teacher used a bunson burner to create a "geyser" this week--any time you do something like that you're gonna get a 13-year-old boys attention!

Of course, we had to take the annual first day of school pictures. I always make the kids hold up the number of fingers to represent what grade they are going in to. They're probably gonna hate me for this someday. 

Once they were home from school, we  celebrated with a special back to school treat.  A great start to what I'm sure will be a great school year.

4-H Project Time

It's almost Medina County Fair time and this week is project judging for the two 4-Hers that live at our house.  Although it seems that we're always down to the wire when it comes time to wrap up those projects, I'm really glad that the kids are involved in 4-H. 

Growing up a "city girl", as my husband calls it, I had never really been to the fair. Well, at least I don't really remember attending the fair as a kid.  All I really knew about the fair I probably learned from "Charlotte's Web".

I still remember when we had our first little garden at our first little house and John decided to enter one of his green tomatoes into the fair. 

"Um, okay.  But, why?"  I thought.

So, he entered his tomato and won his first blue ribbon. 

"Um, okay.  Congratulations there, honey.  Nice tomato."

I really didn't get this whole fair thing.

Now, my kids are involved in 4-H.  Being involved in 4-H has kind of changed the whole fair experience for both me and the kids.  It's made the focus more on the projects and the animals and not so much the rides and the food.  Yes, they'll still get their bucket of greasy fries and cotton candy, but we'll spend most of our time seeing what types of projects were done by all 4-Hers,  checking out how their friends did and finding out if our kids or their dad won any ribbons. 

As we were wrapping up those projects this past weekend, I could see the pride in their faces and excitement about how they might do at judging.  We've been encouraging and reminding both of the kids to be ready to really tell the judges what they've learned. 

"I remember last year, I talked and talked to my judge, said the 10-year old.  My throat was sore for three days afterwards because I talked so much." 

Hmmm, I think we've would've remembered if she had talked that much.  But, sometimes you just don't argue with a ten-year old girl. 

Make that most of the time.

Although both of the kids have had numerous opportunities to speak in front of people, at both church and at school, project judging gives them a sense of nervousness and excitement.  On our way to judging, the ten-year old asked me about a knot in her stomach.  "Mom, is that what being nervous feels like?  Is it okay to be nervous?"  Both good questions.

The kids have now finished their judging.  They did really well, both receiving "A" marks and blue ribbons for the judging portion.  They came away from the experience excited and pleased with themselves for what they had done.  Now, we just have to wait until fair to see how they placed.

Dad isn't planning on entering any green tomatoes this year, but he is planning on entering some of his maple syrup. 

Now that's something that I can appreciate.