Bummer of a day - embarrassed to say - trying to make sense out of my CM bookkeeping - or lack thereof. Can't even talk about it here - too embarrassing. I can be so organized in so many ways, but for some reason I had an entire mental block about doing inventory and all that. What's up with that??? Oh well, time to pay the piper.

We had a great crop yesterday - Saturday Jan. 25th. Natalie and Alex came over at about 8:30 and stayed until about 10:20 when they had to leave for a bball game. They came back at 12:30 as scheduled and stayed until 8:30. We had fun - talked - got some work done on our scrapbooking projects. Sorry that others weren't able to make it but I understand too. I always enjoy having these crops - I hope you did too Nat and Alex and I hope Mom, Linda, Pam, Nicole can make it in the future.

I took a few tangents into a memorabilia box and putting away 6 mths worth of partial used stickers and diecuts and put things away. When I went to Ann Pieschke's crop I pulled out things I thought I'd use so I wouldn't have to bring my big books of stickers and boxes of die cuts. Lots of stuff to put away - and then I got a little carried away and put in the diecut boxes all the misc thank you gift die cuts I'd pulled for myself so that when I want to find something for e.g. a Dog page - I can find it more easily. We'll see if it works.

I was glad I took time to chronologically order Davids Kindergarten project box because I found a card from Dr. Sherwood our vet that she sent when Chelsea died. I had just finished these pages so I worked the card in by using an 8x10 sleeve.

See you next time -

Guess what??? David made it in the paper! You can see the article and the photo of David on my Angelfire site. Pretty cool!
Kolb Central Learning Site - a WIP

Cool things David said:

* He's reading a book about the Titanic - it's an historical fiction book. In the book there's a little boy named Davey - just to show you how he thinks some of the time....he said. "If this boys last name is Jones - I'm just gonna be laughin' so hard!" Now I know I've heard the expression 'Davy Jones locker' but to be honest I never knew what it meant. I got on Mom's website for kids and looked up 'Ask Earl' and found out that it was in reference to the bottom of the sea - the eternal resting place for men lost at sea. The fact that David was making a connection to that expression - the book the Titanic in which he knows the ship sinks and a kid in the story was just really impressive to me.

* Today on the field trip the commentator was talking about bluebirds and their history - how they eventually vanished in our area - and the role starlings played in that (they were brought in by Europeans as pets then set free and became serious predators of bluebirds). David noticed that it was a starling that was stuffed and on the bluebird house.

* When we watched Back to the Future with him - neither Rich or I noticed this, but David did - at the end of the show there's a mall - it was named the Lone Pine Mall at the end of the show and Twin Pine Mall at the beginning. We had the dvd with commentary and sure enough this was a deliberate change made by the director since in the beginning of the show when the kid went back to the future he drove over a pine.

Dear bloggers - no I haven't dropped off the face of the blogging world. Just been really busy in the non cyber world. Here's whats up!

David tested last Saturday (Jan. 11) for the 'gifted and talented' (G/T) program thru Bay City Public Schools. He did test in the 'very exceptional' category per the psychologist who gave the test. He said that the range they usually see is 8-12 and David tested 16 in vocabulary and 19 in non verbal. It amazes me how they do the testing. In a half an hour the psychologist asked him vocabulary words to see how high he could go and then he had David do block manipulation - put together patterns with blocks - timed and increasing complexity. So, he had suggested I call the head of the program to see about getting David in this year at semester break. I did - the woman was very nice and informative, however there are currently no openings. There are 2 G/T programs - one is called the magnet program, its at Kolb, is for the highest tested children and the classroom contains only the G/T kids. One is called the cluster program and its at McAlear (right down the road from our house) and it has G/T kids mixed in with other kids. I sort of thought maybe this would be the best, but the woman I spoke to who heads the program said not. She thought David's needs would be better served at Kolb. So right now that's the tentative plan for next year. So this year - I've talked to David's teacher and she is going to help me accelerate David's math so that he's hopefully ready for 5th grade math next year. She's also going to have David do more required reading. Of course I think we'll play this by ear in that if he starts getting overwhelmed we'll cut back, but right now he's just not working as hard as he could and of course he's fine with it - he's a kid afterall. And yes - I'll remember that as time goes on so that he can still enjoy his kiddom.

Then there's the sidebar with the whole 'Roles of Men and Women' discussion. Wow! Thank you all for your input regarding this subject. I've always had problems with the way the WELS won't let women vote or hold leadership positions so a while back one of our Pastors gave me a bible study called "A Bible Study on Man and Woman In God's World" written by John F. Brug. The very first scripture reference was 1 Timothy 2:1-15. It is really very troubling. (the reference is below). I've been reading a little about the background of 1 Timothy. Actually it is written by the apostle Paul to Timothy. Paul had asked Timothy to head up his church in Ephesus and 1 Timothy is from a letter written by Paul to Timothy instructing him in how to lead the church. I've been reading from the People's Bible (interpretation by (I believe) WELS theologians and scholars) because they give you an idea of what was happening during that period etc. and tell you a little about the players. Interestingly Timothy was the son of a mixed marriage (Jewish mother and Greek father), and from early childhood his grandmother Lois and mother Eunice taught him the Old Testament Scriptures (2 Timothy 1:5). He was taught by women ..........hmmmmmm. It says that he (Timothy) was "young and inclined to be timid..." Perhaps these two things put together made Paul feel it was important to put down women. Remember, even though Jesus was Jewish - Jews never really believed that Jesus was the Savior - the man God - sent for our salvation. Maybe it was more a message not to listen to his own mother. All of this is pure speculation on my part I know - and really what I believe is that the only way we'll ever know is when we meet Jesus, Paul, and Timothy one day in heaven on our own. Interesting in the meantime though.

David participated in a spelling bee at our Home and School Society meeting - all the words were 4th grade words from the spelling word list that the 4th graders were just finishing up with (6 lessons worth). We'd only gotten the list the night before the spelling bee. David competed against the 4th graders and in the end it was David and this nice little 4th grade boy , Jarrett, who is a friend of David's (he's had him over to play and stuff). Well, David spelled daughter wrong and so the 4th grader won. David didn't cry until he sat down, and then only very briefly, he did finally congratulate the winner and got over it. Everyone was very impressed that he'd made it to the end. The other 4th grade boys even said, "David, you spelled better than any of the other 4th graders". He's a bright boy, but he has to work on sportsmanship. We're proud of you David!

Hi everybody. Well, I switched my work days and decided to work tomorrow and took off today. I had a piano lesson, wanted to practice, wanted to vacuum my floors before our piano teacher came, dog hair you know, and I wanted to call Bay City Public Schools and get David set up for testing for the academically talented. I did all that. I did want to work on getting the trees down since Nat's coming tomorrow to clean, but to no avail. I got side tracked with.....Javascript and HTML.

1Timothy 2 - here it is:

http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?passage=1TIM+2&language=english&version=NIV&showfn=on&showxref=on

Just found out I'll probably have to work next year's Christmas Eve. ONe of the bummers of not having any seniority and starting your career all over. But - on Dateline they had 400 people in a food line getting free food so I guess I'll have to count my blessings such as it is. Monday night I was paged at midnight and up until 5:00 AM fixing a problem. Still recovering from the damages of no sleep. I did sleep in until 10:30 then and went into the office. Just got done practicing the piano - so little time to do all the things you want to do - you know what I mean??? Met with the Pastor today. I might as well tell my blog because the person I live with - yes the grown up person - not the child - didn't even ask me about it. You'd think he'd care a little since it has to do with me and David continuing to go to the church he's gone to all his life. Not sure what to do. I basically told him all the reasons why I was thinking of leaving and therefore not continue to work on the website. Basically in the end he just said, maybe its a good idea to take a break from all of the 'doing' of things and just attend church for a while to get something out of it. So I guess he'll be looking harder for someone to replace me. Signing off - and no - I haven't even looked at my new books. I was reading up on this bible study of the roles of men and women in preparation for my meeting with Pastor - all that did was make me question the truth that the Bible is the word of God - read 1Timothy Chapter 2 for kicks. Let me know what you think. Maybe the reason its so hard for me is that I have so much trouble keeping quiet - Now I'm really signing off - bye

Hi bloggers! Thanks to you all who have tagged my board. It's pretty cool isn't it? Guess we have a pretty cool Mom to help us learn such stuff - even at our age it's nice to be able to ask your Mom stuff and have her so willingly help. Natalie, Alex, David and I went shopping today. David used his Media play gift certificate from Natalie and Alex. Then we had Chinese and used Natalie's buy one get one free coupon - 2 dinners for 9.00 - thanks Nat - and then we went to Barnes and Noble and got some HTML and Java Script books - wish me luck. You may not see blogs the next couple days - may have to reformat my drive. It keeps flaking out on me. Darn Windows ME - I think I'll take it down to Windows 98. Talk to you soon! Love to you all - family.

Thanks Mom for helping me get the tagboard working! Love Ya!

Linda - before I forget - Rich thinks that the bird may be seeing the reflection of himself, and sees it as another bird and is actually attacking it - pecking at it to get it to get out of his turf. He also wondered if maybe you have some certain curtains up or something that may be attracting it to that window.

The CM crop at my house was fun. I really enjoyed visiting with everybody. I didn't get a lot done during the crop, but the win for me is that I keep working on it for the remainder of the weekend. Thank you everyone for coming and we'll see you again on January 25th. Let me know in advance if you're going to be able to make it so I can get enough tables out.

Lots of have tos to do, but don't want to do those. Only want to do fun stuff.

Just got home from church at 12:40. We went to Trinity instead of our church. The pastors are really dynamic. The new pastor they have does a children's segment where the kids come up and he uses this puppet of a monkey he got and used when he was in Brazil. He has dialogue with the puppet and gets the point across to the kids in a really fun and creative way. There's no baggage there - I like that. Do you think I can go to another church and not get involved? If I get involved will I end up feeling the way I do now and have so many negative thoughts getting in the way of my being able to benefit from the message? And David's school - what to do there - some people have me scared about what he'll be exposed to in public school, and then there's the potential loss in self esteem due to the lessened confidence he'll feel initially. Is it worth making the change? So many hard questions. People say pray about it - too bad God doesn't come down and talk to you - maybe my mind is getting in the way of hearing the answer.

bitServe - Web Hosting

Dieting - darn hard work!!! Been off my diet - trying to get back on. They say if you share your journal with a friend you will do better knowing you've got some accountability for what you ate. So here goes.

Breakfast
WW 2pt bar chocolate ---- 2 pts
Peach Yogurt lite ----------- 2 pts

Lunch
Lean Cuisine Glazed Chicken in rice - 5 pts
Banana - 2 pts

Snack when got home from work - Danger Danger Danger
2 FF tortillas 2 pts
2 sl. amer. cheese 4 pts
WW Smoothie (chocolate powdered milk) - 2 pts
1/3 Cup dried cherries - 2 pts

21 pts - no official supper (total allowed 25). Did I save my day???

January 2 - Happy New Year Everybody!!! How's your new year going so far? The way I figure - its so new - it can't be going bad yet!!

We brought in the new year pretty quietly. At home - David, me and Rich - putting together a 3D puzzle I got Rich a year or so ago of a Star Wars Ship. It was pretty hard. David got a little frustrated. I reminded him that the age range was 12 and up - the gift was for Daddy and he did meet the age requirements. So David helped out a little and played with his Zoo Tycoon. Christmas vacation, we went to a couple of movies. I already mentioned the kick off movie - Santa 2 - then Monday, Rich was home with David so when I got home we went to see the Star Trek Nemesis, then Tuesday we saw Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers. Sunday after Christmas we all watched the DVD The Fellowship of the Rings so we knew he could handle it. It was pretty gruesome and a lot of fighting, but the characters, though pretty scary looking, were very definately fake so it helped David remember it was pretend.

Done with work for the week - yeah!

Pammy just called (still at work 8:45 PM)... she'd hoped for a moment there she'd be coming over for the crop. But.....as it turns out - she won't be. She has too much work to do. So I lived on the edge and told her that she should be thinking about how she's going to feel in 20 years when she looks at how she spends her time. If there's one thing I learned from Dow - a job is a job is a job. They just pay you for your services. Working more and longer does not give you more value as a person. You may temporarily be more important to a given project, but we are all so replaceable. If you are working your hardest most of the time and giving your company their fair money's worth you're living up to your end of the bargain.

So is a blog really for talking about what's on your mind or just for talking about safe things??? Read some things - thinking some things - should i write about what i,m thinkin?