When I sit down to write these newsletters I try to give each child equal time. It doesn't always work out that way each week but I figure over the course of time it will. Most of what I remember this week involved Jenna.
GOOOOOD MORNING EAST ROBERTSON. At Jenna's school each homeroom class takes turns doing the morning announcements on the intercom. Jenna's class had its turn this week. She asked me to take her to school on Wednesday so I could hear her do the thought of the day which was "Speak kind words and you will hear kind echos." I was really proud of her as she read her part clearly and with confidence. But she should have had confidence because she has been practicing it for a week into her toy microphone. On Friday she introduced the moment of silence. I was glad I had a computer to repair at her school on Friday.
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE. Jenna came in from school and began to tell Vicki about her day. At one point in the conversation she told Vicki she heard a bad word. "It was on the bus and it was the "s" word," she reported. She kept on talking about it so Vicki said, "You can tell me what it was. You won't get in trouble." So Jenna replied, "It was in a little rhyme and it went like this: 'Girls go to college to get more knowledge. Boys go to Jupiter to get more s.'" It sure is nice to know that for now the "s" word is "stupid" in her mind ("stupider" in this case).
ALL ABOARD! Ben got a motorized Thomas the Tank Engine railroad for Christmas in 2003. We didn't leave the set up very long because Nate was just learning to crawl then and kept crashing the set as soon as I would get it assembled. I put it away but the boys found Thomas, took him to Pauline's house and pushed him around on the carpet until they stripped the transmission.
Since then Vicki had been on the lookout for another Thomas set and found one at a consignment sale. Nate got this for his birthday. Friday evening we took his new set and the track from Ben's old set and combined them to make one large railroad on the floor. You should have seen the look on Nate's face when I turned Thomas on for the first time. Enthralled doesn't capture it. Thirty minutes later I announced it was bedtime. Talk about an emotional roller coaster! It seems like we go through a battery a day.
FEED THE BIRDS. We have two bird feeders that I have hung in the pear tree outside the kitchen window. It took a while for the birds to find it but now we have customers all day long. These include cardinals, blue jays, wrens, red-headed woodpeckers (Vicki's favorite), doves and quail. They are really fun to watch and there are several varieties we can't identify (we just found my old flash card set of birds though).
One day I went out to refill the feeders. This lady cardinal must have thought I was removing the feeders because she gave me a real talking to until she saw what I was doing.
Joe
