As my friend Geri says, getting older is not for sissies. I am hurting this morning and moving very slowly. On Friday, we learned that our county's fire officials had lifted the outside burning ban since our rainfall has increased ever so slightly in the last few weeks. So on Saturday morning, we started raking leaves in our backyard and burning them.
We have an acre and while not all of it is cleared as yard (half is fairly thick woods), we still have a large cleared area with lots of trees, and lots of leaves. We haven't bothered raking them up since we had no way of disposing of them. We are outside of town limits, so there is no curbside yard waste pickup. Our private trash collection service will not accept yard waste. Even if the dump accepts yard waste, we would have a difficult time getting all of it there...so burning is our best option, an option that has not been available to us since last summer.
Saturday was a beautiful day to work outside and work is exactly what we did from 10 am to 5:30 pm. We were able to clear the side yard and most of the backyard; there was more to clear than we thought! We were three smoky, dirty, sweaty people when we stopped for the day.
I gave blood yesterday morning at a Red Cross drive so I was unable to work on the leaves the rest of the day - rats. Not! I kept J and A company as they raked and continued to burn. They were able to finish all but the far corner and now the backyard looks great.
Today my body feels the effects of the raking and lifting, and the loss of a pint of blood. I will be almost good as new tomorrow, I am sure, but for today, ow!
Monday, January 14, 2008
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
"Something smells bad, and it's me!"
Yesterday afternoon as I was preparing dinner, A was in the living room playing a game on the Leapster L-Max that he received for Christmas. I popped around the corner to check on him, and he said to me "Something smells bad, and it's me!" I stared at him with a curious look on my face, I am sure and he started giggling. "I farted," he then added. Good grief!
Yesterday he brought home his report card from the second nine week session. Once again, he scored at or above grade level standards in all categories of academic achievement. Hooray! He went backwards in only one category, from working above grade level to working at grade level in phonics, which is not a surprise to me. He struggles a bit with phonics and would rather learn to read the word than learn to sound it out.
A gets frustrated when working on phonics, which is one of the reasons that he got a "needs improvement" in the area of "uses self-control." He also needs improvement in "demonstrating responsibility" but is satisfactory in all other specialty areas. Again, neither of these "needs improvement" areas is a surprise to me and we try to work on them.
The teacher's comments this session were: "A continues to make excellent progress. Keep up the good work. He needs to work on not interrupting when others are speaking." And while this is starting to sound tremendously redundant, the interrupting issue is well-known to us and one we work on constantly. A seems to think he can just start talking whenever he likes, regardless of whether or not someone else is speaking at the time.
I am very pleased with A's report card. Of course he has areas that need improvement but overall he is doing well. He is developing a love of reading and words, and can already do simple math. I try to take every opportunity I can in our daily lives to help him practice math, spelling and reading. Even if he smells bad at the time!
Yesterday he brought home his report card from the second nine week session. Once again, he scored at or above grade level standards in all categories of academic achievement. Hooray! He went backwards in only one category, from working above grade level to working at grade level in phonics, which is not a surprise to me. He struggles a bit with phonics and would rather learn to read the word than learn to sound it out.
A gets frustrated when working on phonics, which is one of the reasons that he got a "needs improvement" in the area of "uses self-control." He also needs improvement in "demonstrating responsibility" but is satisfactory in all other specialty areas. Again, neither of these "needs improvement" areas is a surprise to me and we try to work on them.
The teacher's comments this session were: "A continues to make excellent progress. Keep up the good work. He needs to work on not interrupting when others are speaking." And while this is starting to sound tremendously redundant, the interrupting issue is well-known to us and one we work on constantly. A seems to think he can just start talking whenever he likes, regardless of whether or not someone else is speaking at the time.
I am very pleased with A's report card. Of course he has areas that need improvement but overall he is doing well. He is developing a love of reading and words, and can already do simple math. I try to take every opportunity I can in our daily lives to help him practice math, spelling and reading. Even if he smells bad at the time!
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