Answers!

We had a great 9 day-I celebrated 9 with all of my classes, yelling "nueve" with the second graders at 9:09:09, playing 9 games with everyone else.

Matthew and I drove around town looking for a tasty #9, finally settling on Taco Bell.

Then I worked on my class for what felt like 9 hours. :)

Now I know you've been waiting with bated breath...


9 Quiz answers:

1. William Henry Harrison

2. New Hampshire

3. Here's a list

4. Kazakhstan

5. 1 Kings 9: 9 And they shall answer, Because they forsook the LORD their God, who brought forth their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and have taken hold upon other gods, and have worshipped them, and served them: therefore hath the LORD brought upon them all this evil.

6. Self-checking.

7. Hotel Room Service by Pitbull (but I'm checking at night, so is it possible it has changed? Linda answered with something different earlier today) (additionally, I have never heard of the band or the song. Does that make me old?)

8. Another list

9. Fluorine

I was tempted to try and make something for prizes, even entertaining the idea of 9-patch quilt blocks...I could make potholders, or table runners! Thankfully I was able to reign it in.

I made up little prize baggies of 9 each of 9 different flavors of Jelly Bellies. I'll be sending those out to all the participants; Linda, Mary Ann, Sarah, and Sara, thanks for celebrating with me!

And, because the point of the day was to commemorate 09/09/09 and really enjoy it, I'll also be sending out a baggie to Michele, who celebrated by having a baby boy...9 lbs! Made my year. :)

Now, I've got 4 gifties left...leave me a comment and tell me how you celebrated, and I'll send you one!

09/09/09

*********09/09/09*********

Wednesday's not a great day for a party because I have my online class on Wednesdays this year, and I didn't get anything organized in time. :(

But we'll still be celebrating-you can count on that! Hopefully 9 people for lunch, ordering 9 number 9's from somewhere.

And here's a 9 quiz:

1. Name the 9th president:
2. Name the 9th state in the union:
3. Make a list of 9 9 letter words that begin with the 9th letter:
4. Name the 9th largest country in the world.
5. What's the 9th verse from the 9th chapter from the 9th book in the Bible?
6. Write a math problem using only number 9's.
7. What's the number 9 song on 09/09/09?
8. Name 9 countries that speak Spanish.
9. Which element has the atomic number 9?

First 9 correct answers win a prize! Answers tomorrow, so hurry!

Fail

For the past couple of weeks I've been working on a skirt I found at Goodwill. This is a 70's style skirt, made to be to the floor, worn high on the waist. Since I don't want to wear my skirt high, and I'm short, I thought I could just cut it off and redo the waist band.

8 million tries later, I'm putting the skirt away until I learn a bit more about sewing. I think I need to put in a zipper. phooey.

I did replace the lining so that it would be machine washable. At least I got that part figured out.

I need a time machine

In one of the boxes of cards I bought (I know! I bought boxes!) I found this advertisement.

(When reading, please use the British pronunciation of advertisement. It will be more fun for you).

I think that is something I would really enjoy. And I definitely would enjoy taping a quarter to the form and mailing it in. Alas, those days are gone.

I found a couple of copies online here and here, but inflation has taken its toll. *sigh*

Wrong

A couple of weeks ago Anna and I had a disagreement about whether or not she needed a nap. Matthew offered the opinion that maybe she didn't need one.

Anna seized upon that immediately, and then drew a picture to illustrate...

Matthew filmed it.

Breaking my own rules

I stopped by the Sunflower Thrift shop today...you know, just for a minute.

Found my nemesis, cute old cards. They only take cash, and I actually ran over to the ATM so that I could get the cards. Ridiculous.

And I broke my only real rule: no Get Well cards. Because I just don't send them out. Everything else, I can use, but those Get Well cards, maybe we just get well too quickly these days...I never end up sending them out.

But really-how could I resist this?

Leaving the store I decided I would just start sending out Get Well cards for other occasions. So if you get one for your Birthday, just admire the cuteness and ignore the inappropriateness. :)

Otro comercial

Found this commercial last night, it's pretty fast, but the vocabulary is very basic. The accent is not familiar, I think it might be from Argentina? Someplace further south than Mexico, anyway.

Elementary School Secrets

Every once in a while, when I'm chatting with a fellow Mama, I'm reminded that as parents, we only have access to a few kids in any given age group, and it's hard to know what's normal. No, that's not it, there's no such thing as a normal kid. Maybe, it's hard to know what generally comes with the territory for any given age group.

One of the advantages of teaching Elementary School is that I get to see loads of kids every day, and at all different ages, and watch them grow and develop. I love that part. It's been so fun to see the kindergartners I started with, now 4th graders, through all of their growing up. I love seeing all of the kids every day. But that's not my point.

My point is that there's some stuff I know. Maybe you'd like to know it too.

1. Kids fall out of their chairs until about halfway through 2nd grade. It's not that they're being naughty, though sometimes it does happen because of wiggling. It's often inexplicable, and just as surprising to the kids as to you.

2. Those jeans with the metal snap buttons are really hard for kids to fasten. Teachers are helping with that, often through 1st grade. The first time I saw a kid fiddling with his button I couldn't figure out what was wrong for 15 minutes. I just knew he was really concerned, and it had something to do with his pants. I finally pulled him into the hall to find out what was going on. Coming from the High School, I was awfully surprised at the problem, and half scared to help him. I finally shook myself back to reason and buttoned his pants. He was awfully relieved.

3. The cool eraser IS that important. I keep waiting to find out when they're going to outgrow that, but it doesn't happen before 6th grade is over. If there's one pencil with a cool eraser, or one pencil with an American flag on it, they will fight over it. And if you give them a big pink eraser, it's not possible to avoid folding it in half until it breaks in two. I've never seen anyone resist.

4. Coloring and scribbling and tearing paper are really important things for little ones to do before they come to school. It helps to build up the muscles in their arms. Lots of our little K's get tired and sad and complain about their arms hurting.

5. They tell us everything. My favorite so far is "My Dad wants Mom to have another baby, but she says we're enough."

Know of any others?

Crochet-along!

Craftzine is doing a yarn month and a Crochet-along to make this adorable panda. (A crochet-along is a group project. There's a teacher, and instructions, and everyone follows the same pattern, making adjustments and changes as they'd like, and everyone posts pictures and discusses the project. An internet craft party)

I'm excited. I think lots of us should participate. Amigurumi is really pretty simple, using just a few stitches, and it doesn't take too long. Those of you with nice tight stitches will do really well. Mine usually end up much too floppy, but I'm going to try!

Here are the instructions.

Any other takers?

Monk p.i.

It's one of the best weeks of the year.

Monk on Netflix.

We don't watch TV on TV (no cable out here, plus I hate being tied to schedules), just on Netflix, so we can burn through a whole season in just a couple of really wonderful days. We just finished Season 7, and I think there's only one season left....sniff...



Anyhoo, this promo was on the DVD, and it makes me laugh every time I watch it. Natalie with the towel! Disher rolling in his chair! Monk's wink! Enjoy.

Craigslist in SW Kansas!

Matthew refuses to be excited because Craigslist is "morally reprehensible" but I am.

It seems like everyone else in the country uses their Craigslist all the time and finds wonderful deals and I'm excited we have one now too.

Southwest Kansas Craigslist

Even if there are postings from Lenexa. Sheesh.

Thoughtfulness for Cheaters

I wanted to make a blankie for the new baby boy who's coming to Everything Beautiful, but I've been buried beneath school and projects, so I just whipped up this cheater blanket while Matthew read Anna a bedtime story. It's a nice project, and super quick!

1. Buy a yard each of two cute flannels.

2. Wash, Dry, fold into quarters and even out the edges so they're the same size.

3. Lay them out, right sides together, and stitch around the edges, leaving a hand sized hole for turning.

4. Turn right side out, finger press the seam in, and stitch the hole closed.

5. Sew a few lines of stitching to hold the two pieces together.

6. Part with an adorable/strange baby card (scan it first, because you're card crazy) and pop it in the mail!

All done in less than 30 minutes.

Dress to Skirt

I bought this dress at Target because it was 75% off. One of the other teachers at school had one similar, and it looks cute on her, but she's about 8 inches taller than me.


On me, it didn't really work. I'm too short to be cut in half in the middle, I think.

The skirt part had this nice elastic band, so I just got out my seam ripper and took the top off. Now I have a nice gray skirt.

The top was really soft, and I tried to sew a longer skirt to it, but it still looked funny. More on that skirt project to come...

Tia McGraff

She debuted at Tumblweed last year, but I missed it because of the great and terrible sickness.

My favorite song was "Tumbleweed", not written for our festival, but beautiful nonetheless.

(pic from TiaMcGraff.com)

I can't figure out how to embed that song--maybe not possible--but here's her MySpace, and you can just choose "Tumbleweed" on the player.

Brennen Leigh - Bluebird

This was my favorite of the new songs. So pretty.

Brennen Leigh - Backslidin' Blues

We were so excited to have Brennen back at the Tumbleweed Festival. She's been a family favorite ever since we saw her 4 years ago at the Festival.

Susan and I went to Austin to see her on our Spring Break trip back in 2007, and Dad has her playing nearly constantly when we go to the cabin. We have 5 CD's (here are four), but what a treat it was to hear new songs! She has a new album coming out sometime soon: The Box. We're all eagerly waiting...

Here's one of the songs-maybe called "Backslidin' Blues"



More tomorrow!

¡Baila!

We don't take Anna to many of the fun things for kids because we enjoy the music so much, but she has a good time too, I think, running around with cousins and listening to good music herself.

We all especially enjoyed her dancing to Del Castillo. (Where on earth did she learn booty shaking?)

Del Castillo

Oh Tumbleweed, you are so wonderful.

We had a fantastic weekend. Wish you were there. I'm posting all this week about the festival, and next year I'm going to start bossing you all early. Seriously. All of you should be coming home for a visit or coming to town just to see the music. If you're friends with me, you probably like live music too, so there's no reason for you not to enjoy it cheap, in a beautiful setting, with good friends. Great stuff for the kiddies too, so no excuses!

This band from Austin; Del Castillo, was amazing. This was my favorite song: Rios misticos



I bought a CD, I'm making the kids learn something from it. (drums fingers together slyly)

Hopelessly behind the times...

Probably you've already seen this, but just in case...

Extreme Crafting

Wedding Dress made from wool from her own sheep. Full article here.

(via Craftzine)