Giggles

Last night Katie woke up screaming "I don't want to" at 3:00 AM and did that for a solid hour.

So today this made me laugh and laugh and laugh.

And this was a good thing to watch.

That time I saw Dwight Yoakam

I never told you about my super awesome bonus gift!

My sister-in-law Margaret came and brought her whole family to spend the weekend working hard because this family loves each other AND she took me with her to the Dwight Yoakam concert in Dodge City.

This is what front row center looks like.  If you've ever wondered if it's worth it, I'm sorry to say that it is.  It's like having your very own concert.  I made eye contact with everyone in the band.  It's so fun.  As if you couldn't tell from my goofy smile.  My face hurt from smiling.  

Before the concert, a lady came and said "Are you the VIP seats?  Here's your information about your Meet and Greet with Dwight".  That was a fun surprise!  

It's always nice to see Reeses just because I love them all, but sharing this treat with Margaret and Linda and Spencer and Joanna was cake with extra frosting, ice cream, and sprinkles.  

This was my favorite song of the night:

Alan Katz

We're having an author visit today!

(I'm nervous-I've never done anything like this as a librarian)



Alan Katz writes the Silly Dilly song books.

  

Our kids have been having a fantastic time with them.  We all learned one of the songs to sing to him as a welcome, we've been reading the poems all month in the library, and I sold a bunch of books at cost to kids so they could get them autographed.




We're looking forward to a fantastic day!

So much stuff...

The basement is a disaster.  

But MJL is healthy this winter, and we have grand plans.  Hopefully by Spring all this mess will be turned into another bedroom, a storage room, and a bathroom.  

The first step is that I need to get it empty so that he can start work. *sigh*  It will be awesome once I get started, but I've been having trouble with that lately.  

No more!  

Time to take a deep breath, straighten my shoulders, and get to work!  

(wish me luck)

11-12-13!

It's a great day!

11-12-13!

Apparently lots of people are going to be getting married.

And these people are promoting acts of kindness.

We have stuff going on in the evening, so I'll only have a couple of hours with the kiddos, but we're going to

• build towers with 11, 12, and 13 blocks
• eat 11, 12, 13 snacks (probably fishy crackers, raisins, and M&M's)
• try to think of words that start with 11, 12, 13 letters
• see if we can teach Katie to count to 13
• run for 11 seconds, hop for 12, and skip for 13
• and whatever else we can think of.  Hopefully homework won't take more than 11 minutes.  ;)

Let me know what fun you have!

Book Cover Folders

When we get books from Bound to Stay Bound (that's where you get the "library" books that are all nice and don't fall apart - I always wondered) they send us the book jackets, but the books already have the picture printed on the cover.  So we have lots of extra book jackets.  You know I couldn't throw those away.   I looked around on Pinterest to find some ideas of things to do with them, but didn't find anything!

I decided to just wait until I had an idea.  Finally it occurred to me that I could glue them to the outside of pocket folders (get a bunch for a penny each at the beginning of the year) and then laminate them.    

The kids get to choose one as a prize when they finish a reading challenge.  THEN-they use their cool folder to keep track of future reading challenges, which is a huge bonus, AND they'r walking around advertising all of our new books all the time, so other kids come in asking for the book on so and so's folder.    

I have tons of kids completing challenges-every single first grader finished the first one!  

The folders are a huge hit and they didn't cost the library a thing.  That is my favorite kind of victory.  

Could you be an elementary librarian?

Pop Quiz:

A Kindergartener walks into the library and says to you*:

"Our teacher is gone and a new teacher is coming and she wants to know how far the sidewalk goes?" while pointing outside at the playground.  *Ummmms and 30 second pauses omitted.

What do you do?

I'll give you the answer in the comments at the end of the day.  :)

(I got it right)

Best of the B's

There were a lot more books with B authors than A's!  I read all the Cliffords, all the Arthurs, all the Berenstain Bears, and they were all good.  Here are some I didn't know about that I loved.  

Lorna Balian wrote 5 books that we have in the library and I loved them all.   Strange and sweet stories.

Actually this is one of the first books I purchased for the library, and then it won some awards last year!  It's about a little girl who makes things out of yarn.  I still love it.  

This one I immediately checked out to Anna as soon as I finished it.  Just a really lovely little story.  

We have bunches of Eve Bunting books and they are all tear jerkers!  I loved this Christmasy one the most, but I liked them all.  

I actually discarded a couple of books from the B's because they depicted such meanness between siblings, without ever redeeming anything.  This one was just the opposite.  Brothers being brothers, but also being kind.  

I love everything by Virginia Lee Burton.  This is the only one we have.  I may have to remedy that.  

Hand Wash Only

In my quest to figure out what kinds of clothes I really love and actually wear, I have made some pretty strict requirements about care.  I generally never ever iron anything, and I don't take things to the dry cleaners.  Even remembering not to dry things can make me cranky.  

But I have some sweaters that I love love love and I wear them all the time and they are wool and hand wash only.  So....I've never washed them.  I just wear them to school and come straight home and change and call it good.  But I'm trying to be a grown up and some of them are a couple of years old and (are you really disgusted?  They're cardigans, worn over something else...I know.  It's bad)

So one Saturday MJL had Katie on the tractor and Anna was reading and I just had Jimmy and I ran out of excuses.  I put water and a little soap in this big bowl because I didn't want to wash the sink.  (Normal level of laziness or excessive laziness?  I couldn't decide)

I swished the sweaters around in the water for a while, and then rinsed them out.  When I dumped the bowl, there was a very surprising amount of brown in the bottom.  Huh.  Clothes do actually get dirty!

I just washed two of them.  Baby steps.  

I laid them out to dry on towels on the bed just like I remember my Mom doing.  

It really wasn't bad.  Maybe I'm growing up or something.  

Daddy!

Two more weeks until Daddy's home?

What Does The Farmer Say?

Have you seen this yet?

What Does The Farmer Say?




I miss my farmer.  Two more weeks?

Halloween 2013

 Ooh-I like how that rhymes.  Halloween 2013.  That's fun to say.

Anna was Cosette from Les Mis.  She wore balletish slippers under her tights to look barefoot and actually fooled someone in the dark!  She put ashes on her face and looked sad and cold.  :)

Katie bug the ladybug.  She did not like the hood, but had a lot of fun.  

Jimmy the Garden Gnome.  He wore his hat all night long, and was a little unsure about the whole business until we got back to Poppa's house and he started eating candy.  

I cannot believe I got all three looking at the camera in one picture.  We had a great night.  

Halloween

Dad sent me this poem last year and I liked it.  (If you have little people who can read looking over your shoulder, it has a few bad words).  It's a special Mama kind of terrifying.

Halloween

Her face, blood-streaked, is no longer my daughter's.
She'll wear no lace this year, no tiaras, no bows.
She bobs, fangs bared, through the thin skin of water.
She's bitten the apple.  Triumphant, she goes
to collect her prizes.  And I'm left to remember
my own father sewing, under my collar,
a blood-stained cape.  His warning, like thunder,
still rings in my ears.  With each stitch he'd holler
Beware the God-damned sons' a' bitches
with their poisons and candy bait.  Now I wait
for my daughter, who has entered a night full of witches.
Gone, before I could kiss her goodnight,
and the doorbell keeps singing:  too late, too late.
Even the full moon is missing a bite.

Richard Michelson

Streaming TV

I just call it all Netflix, like all tissues are Kleenex.

We actually are using Amazon Prime, and I'm pretty happy with it.

Right now we're watching Doc Martin, as recommended by my friend Sarah.  It's about a fancy surgeon who develops a phobia of blood and becomes the GP in a small village in Cornwall.




It is wonderful and hilarious and sweet and perfect.  Though perhaps the story of a teacher falling for a wonderfully intelligent but socially difficult man is just something I would like.  ;)

Jimmy and Katie and Anna all love Shaun the Sheep, but surely you already know about Shaun.



I just started watching The Pioneer Woman's cooking show, so, you know, I'll be a better cooker and stuff.



I asked MJL if watching this show was going to magically make me into the sort of person who makes delicious food.

He said no.  It was sad.

What are your TV recommendations?

My Closet

My closet has always been one of my favorite rooms in this house.  In the beginning I thought it was because it was one of the first places that was "done".  I convinced MJL that we could go in before we were supposed to and hang shelving, so when we moved in I could put my clothes away right away and it was lovely and organized.

That's probably it, it's the only place in the house that no one else messes with so it stays nice.

So it's odd to me that it's also one of the places where I'm the most "wanty".  Or maybe it's that I know these things are ridiculous so I'll never buy them for myself but they're also super boring so MJL is not going to buy them for me.

I want clear shoe boxes from the Container Store for my shoes.  So I could see them and they would all be in the same size box.

I've pared down my shoes-wouldn't they be lovely in clear boxes?  

Although it would be more obvious that I have 9 pairs of pink shoes.  

I love these velvet padded hangers-I have 6 I think, all from thrift stores, in all different colors.  I don't even know if you can buy them new.  (I Googled it, you can, but I didn't see any lovely hot pink velvet ones)  I like to hang my most precious sweaters on them.  

I love clothes.  I notice what people wear.  I could definitely tell you what sorts of things people wear before I could tell you their eye color, for example.  But I hate shopping.  I would really like to figure out what I like to wear, and only buy that, and have just a few things that I love that I wear over and over and over.  I haven't quite figured it out yet.  Except I know I love pink shoes.  

 I'm trying that thing you read in magazines, where you turn your hangers around (only I have my hangers high and low) and when you wear something you move the hanger.  At the end of the season you have to get rid of everything that's still hanging up high.  It makes me kind of scared and sad, because I love all of these clothes, but I suspect there are things that I don't ever wear.  

And really, this is too many t-shirts.  

Katie and Daddy

In which we discover a new word in Katie's vocabulary--

(I could not get the video to load in blogger-so I'm trying YouTube.  Has anyone else had trouble?)

Ingleside 10/24/13

Whew-this was a very introspective week.  Not my favorite.  But I think we've made some good progress.  The college will be a great place to look, and I can talk to Abby and find out which of her friends are still in town.  Thanks for all of your help.  Meanwhile, here's what's been happening at Ingleside...

I made most of Jimmy's costume one day while Katie and Jimmy made giant messes in my craft room.  But we had fun together!

Jimmy still naps in his swing, but now he also climbs in and swings it himself-so high and fast, it scares me.

This bottle of something has been in the fridge for a couple of weeks.  An experiment with cousins.

Anna's work from PSR this week.  

Grammy Joan gave Katie this prayer cube and it has our old daycare meal prayer on it.  Very fun.

He did manage to take her down just after this picture.  Watch out Katie!

Anna's awesome piano teacher made a simpler arrangement of the Cosette song from Les Mis.  She's loving it, and it's really fun to hear.  

Anna vacuums on Thursdays, and it is my favorite thing ever.  I like how she vacuums right up to the gnome, but doesn't move him.  

Happy Weekend!  

Eureka!

Yesterday was so great-it was good for me to think about what the problem is, and think about what I really need to do, and I was reading your comments and thinking it all through (I do the 6 thing too at work Brandy), and then Melanie hit the nail right exactly on the head.

My problem is really the child care bit.  I don't like to ask people, so I put it off, hoping that by some chance Daddy will be free, but he's not ever free 9 months out of the year, and then it's a mess.

My family expanded while my crew of baby watchers contracted.

So here's my plan.

I have to look at the schedule every week and see what I'm going to need help with, and then, on Tuesdays, I have to call and make arrangements.  Yuck.

AND ALSO--

I think I have to find some babysitters!  So today's edition of "help Betsy figure out her life" features these questions:  How on earth do you find a good babysitter?  How does it work these days?  How does it work in the country?  Back when I was a babysitter, parents picked me up and took me home until I was of driving age, but that doesn't seem like it would work in the country.  And wouldn't we need a babysitter who could drive anyway, for emergencies?  Do kids still babysit?  They have so many activities!

And how much do you have to pay a babysitter?

This is all very overwhelming.  I think I'll be a hermit.    

Think Ahead!

Yesterday, as I was driving back to school for Parent Teacher Conferences, after making last minute arrangements for people to take care of Katie and Jimmy, because I completely forgot about Conferences, I remembered years of my Dad admonishing me to “Think AHEAD!” and I realized all of a sudden that this was not a new problem.  

I hate thinking ahead.  I really hate it.  I don’t like to make plans and arrangements and it is always getting me into trouble.  It’s why I have so much trouble with regular meals, and why I have trouble finding time to work on my classes, and why I am missing Abby so much these days.  I could call on her at the last minute and she could often help me out.  

I’m wondering if this is one of those things you really have to figure out how to do in order to be a grown up.  It makes me feel very grouchy inside, like it’s the last straw of responsibility.  

I don’t quite understand it, because I like making lists and goals and even elaborate schedules.  But thinking ahead to plan how some day is going to go, that is the part I don’t like.  

There are some advantages to my natural nonchalance.   It goes very well with the farming life.  Making plans is just plain foolishness with farming, because you never know what the weather or the machinery is going to do, or when the farmer is going to need to do something right this minute, or when something that should take a minute will take five hours, or vice versa.  So in that sense, it’s a very good thing, but I also suspect that it’s something I ought to work on.  

So, responsible friends, any tips?    (And do you all hate it too, you're just better at being a grown up than me?)

Instructional Media and Technology

I have three more classes, one more year of classes, and then, oh please, I think I should be done for a while.

This semester it's a truncated course, just eight weeks, and it just started.  It's all about technology in schools and social media and blah blah blah.  (I definitely need to work on my attitude about it).

I'm wondering though, what you all think about technology in schools.  You all have a variety of professions, and your children are different ages, and live in different places, so maybe you can help me out and I can use this in a discussion or a paper or something.

What is different about schools now than when you were in school?

What do you like about technology in schools?

What do you dislike?

What concerns do you have?

What do you think about kids using social media in school?

Thanks!