It Takes a Village

Today was my last "official" day of school!!!! YAY!!! However, I did not finish everything in my room that is in need of being finished, so I will have to "unofficially" work tomorrow as well. It still feels pretty good to be done though! Now I can come and go as I please, which is always a much more pleasant way to work in my opinion.
My daughter has been enjoying summer break for about 4 weeks already. In that 4 weeks, she has not been home very much at all. I have had great neighbors and friends who have helped look out for her while I've been working. She is going into 7th grade, so she doesn't need a babysitter, but it's still nice to know that others are looking out for her. She's been invited to spend the night, eat lunches, suppers, and hang out various people over the last few weeks. It reminds me of the book, It Takes a Village by Jane Cowen-Fletcher. If you've never read that book, I highly recommend it. I'm not sure why it's so expensive on Amazon; maybe it's out of print or something. Anyway, I feel very blessed and fortunate to live in the community I live in. It's nice to have such good people in our lives to help us out without even having to be asked!

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day! I have been blessed to have not one, but three great dad's in my life. First of all, my dad, who I've talked about quite a bit already. He is always ready to help me out in any situation. I love to fish and play sports with my dad (although it seems this happens less and less as the years go by). I like to tease my dad; the poor guy gets a LOT of this! Especially since he was the only man in our family until my sister and I got married--even all of our pets were girls! I have to admit, even though I am grown up and on my own now, I still think my dad is the strongest, toughest, handiest dad of them all. My dad is also a wonderful grandpa. My daughter definitely has grandpa wrapped around her little finger!

Secondly, I have a wonderful father-in-law. Even though my husband and I have only been married a little under three years, I have known and had a good relationship with my father-in-law for about fifteen years. He was like a grandfather to my daughter long before he was officially her grandfather. He is sweet and sensitive,(even when he's gruff) and loves his family. The best part is that he loves the Lord and raised his son to do the same!

Finally, my husband. He has been a great father to both of our kids. I love to watch him out playing ball, riding bikes, swimming, and jumping on the trampoline with them. Instantly becoming a father to an eight-year-old girl is not an easy thing to do. She has definitely given him a run for his money! She knows how to push his buttons and enjoys doing so! :) I freely admit that my job of becoming a mother to a three-year-old boy was a much easier task than what he did. It's so rewarding to see the fruit of his labor. When The Girl makes her own Father's Day card for him and tells her friends how lucky she is to have him as a step-dad it makes it all worth it!

These pictures are a few years old, but since I absolutely INSISTED that the Dad's wear tuxes in our wedding, I thought I'd post them at their finest! As I looked for a picture of Husband with the kids I realized that I didn't really have very many! This is a really nice picture of them, even though both the kids are so much more grown up and Husband weighs about 85 pounds less now! You know what I'll be doing when we are all together in the next couple of weeks!!! Get your smiles ready guys!

Same Day, Different Project

Whenever my dad comes over, I try to squeeze as many projects out of him as possible. Husband and I just aren't very handy people. I think my dad's favorite saying is, "What are you going to do when I'm gone?!" I try to think of clever answers to this question like, "I'll just give you a call and you can come back!" Of course, this isn't exactly what he means, but oh well!
Anyway, the day he finished the clothesline he also hooked up the water and ice maker to our refrigerator. This may not sound too exciting to you, but to me, it was GREAT!!! We have been without ice for probably four years or more. My old refrigerator's ice maker quit working, and I didn't ever have room in the freezer for ice trays. The old refigerator finally died, but fortunately for us, my sister and brother-in-law, Chloe (pronounced Schlow) and Skeeter, were getting a new fridge at the same time. They sold us their old one, and now, thanks to Dad, we have ice! The entire project went relatively well, and I even got to drill the hole in the floor with my own drill. I did use my dad's drill bit, though, because he had some fancy thing I had never seen before. All in all it was a good day. I can't tell you how nice it is to have ice again. You just can't truly appreciate the little things until you go without!

Clothesline Progress

A week after my dad came and started the clothesline project, he came over to finish it. It wasn't a very nice day because it was raining, but he persevered nonetheless. My mom decided to supervise from the house by watching out the windows and occasionally opening the door and hollering something out. I decided to be a tad more helpful this time and withstood the rain outside with my dad. It was a little slick and muddy trying to get the old posts out of the ground. As always, though, my dad used a little ingenuity and found an easier way to do it. After a couple unsuccessful tries with the jack, he found a long pole to use as a lever, and the old poles came right out!

My mom helped my dad string the lines on the poles, then he took us for Chinese! Yum!

Today is the first time I have had a chance to use my new clothesline to it's full potential! My daughter has hung out a load for me a couple times, but since I'm still in school and it has rained faithfully every weekend since the completion of the project, I have not had the chance to do all of the laundry at once. I'm happy for the most part; completely happy with the posts and spacing of the lines, but disappointed with the line itself. All they had at Home Depot was the white plastic line, and it's TOO stretchy! I need to go to a couple of other places and see if I can find the green stuff with the wire in the middle. Then I believe my lines will be perfect!

Random Thoughts

You never know what a first grader is going to tell you. Here are a few thoughts from this week.

• I think aliens eat cheese.
• I'm going to swim class. Just don't tell my mom. She told me not to tell you.
• (At 8:45 AM) Is it lunchtime?
• Texas is the hottest place in the world, and they have really good sticky candy.
  

More Fingers, Please!

As the end of the year approaches, we have final assessments to give. I've mentioned before, I have been really surprised at how much first graders are expected to know. (I have taught middle school for the last 6 years. I'll have to share the story of getting to teach first grade sometime.) Anyway, we are in the midst of a very large math assessment. We break it into parts so it's not quite so treacherous for the children. I can only read the directions for them. I am not allowed to help them on any of the actual computation, but of course I do my best to answer questions as they arise. One little girl raised her hand and when I went to help her, she said, "I can't do this one." It was
12-6= ____. I said, "Why not? It's just like the other ones you already did." And she answered, holding out both hands, "Because I don't have enough fingers!" I asked her if she could think of another way that she could do the problem. She thought for a second, then her face lit up. I could see the light bulb flick on! She said with a huge smile on her face, "Can I use some of yours?!" Now how was I to say "No" to that??!!!
A few minutes later, the little boy next to here was having the same problem on the same question. She leaned over to him and asked, "Do you want to use some of my fingers?"

Jesus, Bring the Sun, Blue Skies, and a Rainbow!

It seems ever since the Jesus, Bring the Rain post, bring the rain He has! It's been a really trying couple of weeks, hence, no recent posts. I will still stand by what I wrote and will still praise Him, however, some sun would be greatly appreciated!!