Can't wait to get SLIMED!

     Halloween means different things to different people.  For families that prefer to avoid the darkness that has been attached to the day but still love costumes - Harvest Parties were created. Sometimes they can pale in comparison to the trick-or-treading and Halloween Parties, but that can be changed.....
      Here's my take on it - I CAN'T WAIT for Sunday's harvest party!  I am looking forward to our whole family working together and playing together. Our usual family activity day - cranked up 10 notches. We are having a BASH at our church and the whole community is invited.
     15 families are setting up game booths, and mine has been rumored to be the one to beat if you want to win the gift card for best booth.  I'm pushing the boundaries with the staff and sneaking in 4 gallons of SLIME for the kids to dig glow-in-the-dark rubber bugs out of after they do my put-put golf game. (thanks Angie for suggesting that!) I made slime posterboards with glow in the dark paint,blacklights to get the glow, buckets with fake slime splilling out and a message that "Sin is Toxic - Let God Take the Slimy Sin out of Your Life", along with a verse about God purifying his followers. This has all been tested on my boys and they are loving it. I cannot wait to don my "toxic waste cleanup" outfit and get all slimed up with the kids Sunday night!

Shopping Spree in Barnes and Noble! Thanks Book Review Bloggers for all the great suggestions!

Okay, so I've been MIA lately - too much schoolwork!  However, my hubby has taken the boys to do some  winterizing at their grandparent's home and I stayed behind because of school and work. Of course there's a few blocks of time in between that will be minus four little voices, questions and quarrels so I took advantage of my birthday giftcard and went to town!

Firelight, Reckless, Life as we Knew it, Scumble & Dandelion Fire

I just want to say a big THANK YOU to all the book reviewers out there that tempt me and make me cave when I'm in B&N and find just one more book I'm dying to read!  Thanks Cleverly Inked, Bibliophilic Book Blog, Book Crazy, Book Buff, Bookanistas, The OWL, YA Highway, Reading Teen, Milk & Cookies, Shannon Whitney Messenger, Roots in Myth and all the other great book bloggers out there! And thanks, Angie, for the giftcard!

It's 11:30, homework's done And now, I'm off to live my dream.... I'm going back to bed to read all afternoon in my pj's until my night-shift starts at work!

....I read the first 5 or so chapters of each one - guess which one I couldn't (and still can't ) put down?

Just jump!



......at least in my imagination I would feel ike this!



It's the funniest feeling - to be told I have to schedule a mid-term grade review with my instructor. I was like, what? Do I need to bring my mom?  Wait a minute - I'm the grown up here. It's just me, my instructor and the truth of how I'm performing in class.  This is the moment my question will be answered, "After twenty years away from school, do I have what it takes to be on equal footing with today's high school graduates?" I assume many adults ask that question over and over, some let it defeat them. All those new freshman have been taught way more than we were in high school. It's just progress. I would hope that my kids will know more when they graduate than I did so I should be happy for them. Of course those feelings of inferiority are still there and I had to just set them aside and act as if I was confident until the semester ended.



 So, if you are thinking about returning to school, listen to what my instructor said and answer the question for yourself - does age take you down a notch in your education? Does life experience account for anything in a formal education setting?

She gave me a 100% on the hardest paper we have so far and said she rarely grades that high and only gave out two like it in her two classes. She said I totally got the book's meaning and assignment of interpreting it. She also said my oral presentation about the impacts on food packaging in our landfill had the best visual element she'd seen in either class. She loved it. My other instructor in Energy and Sustainability, a 3rd year level class, just lists scores and mine was at 94%. Am I saying this to toot my horn? NO! I am sharing this to back up what my friend (who just got her second degree) told me - "Just jump in and it will all come back to you." Even she started out with just one class. So go ahead, fill out that FAFSA - to get your financial aid and apply for school if it's in your dreams. Don't look back and wish you had - you can do it!

What does this mean?

Bozeman is like the Berkley, CA of Montana. There are medical professionals, outfitters and college-folk.   People wear sandals rain or snow. Dreadlocks and tie-dye are somewhat popular. Eco-anything rules.When you pull up to the Co-Op there are huge signs asking, "Did you remember to bring your bags?".  Even the local Town and Country grocery will even put your groceries in a box instead of - "gasp!", a PLASTIC bag. I live in a suburb of Bozeman, so within a few miles of our home things are more "corporate" when it comes to shopping. Still, I find these to be endearing qualities of the most amazing city and do my best to roll with it.

Bozeman is also a pedestrian town. Bike, hike, walk, longboard, anything with wheels and no gas is king. I've even seen this a few times...

So, now you have an idea what the locals are like - can anyone tell me just what THIS is supposed to mean? It's right by the college.....

To make it more confusing - across the street (lower right of the pict) the arrows are placed 10 feet prior to the intersection. I'm thinking, "Does this mean if you plan to get hit by a car - by all means do it where the paramedics won't get smucked too?"  Any guesses??

The Fantastical Field Guide

The Guide (eeek!) Don't take it outside the circle!

Thank you Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi for creating the wonderful world of Spiderwick!  At first I was really creeped out by the movie, but this summer Dakota and I read all the books in the series and he just dove into them. He now chatters away talking about boggarts and goblins and the horrible Mulgarath.  I found a little foam circle and gave it to him for a "seeing stone" so he can see the goblins when he looks through it like Jared does in the book and sure enough he runs around with it all the time. His big brother, Dustin, even did him the favor of glueing it to his eyebrow!

Mulgarath

Not only has it uncapped his wellspring of imagination, he has also created his own Fieldguide from the website. Each day we'd print a different section and he'd do the activity or paint the picture, but then he started making his own drawings and writing in it like Aurthur Spiderwick. I bound it for him and he's been looking forward to sharing it during "show and tell" at school today. Even the big brothers are getting a kick out of it and feeding into his imaginative stories with the brownie, Thimbletack.

His birthday is just around the corner and he requested a Spiderwick Birthday. Well, they don't sell much with Spiderwick (which is one thing I love about it - forces him to create instead of buy), so we ordered the pop up Spiderwick board game and McDonald's Spiderwick figurines for him.....and of course an official eyepiece!

What books or series of books have encouraged you or your little ones to take it to the next level and make it "real" for you? Twilight? Harry Potter? Lord of the Rings?
 



Wisdom between the slices....

Around the age of 5 1/2 I encourage my sons to start learning to make sandwiches. We go through a season of gloppy messes and crumbs everywhere until eventually they get the hang of it. Once they are part way through first grade I start having them make their own sandwich and pack their own lunch. I don't just make them dig through the cabinets until they find something edible, but leave them a bucket of options and coach them along until it's done. If we are in a time crunch I may just jump in, pack it and get them out the door.
Sometimes I feel a little bad for not pampering them a little before they leave for the day, I mean, what if it's the last time I see them? But then again, if I'm sick or unavailable I can rest easy that they know what to do and won't starve. I imagine if I always did it for them I'd have a 17 year old showing up at school one day, without lunch money,  bugging everyone for a bite of their lunch because his mommy didn't fill his lunch box that morning.....

One of my older sons, Dustin, was commenting yesterday that his friend was complaining that he didn't like what his mom had packed him that day and Dustin replied, "Well why don't you pack your OWN lunch?!"   That's my boy!

Hat's off to me?

Hats are "in".

Hat's are all the rage.

The cat looks great in a hat.

So my question is, "Why do I have to take my hat off in class?"

I mean, is it an exercise in humility for everyone to see my hair looking like I just got out of bed?  Here in Montana, a hat is crucial. On any given day you could be rained on, snowed on, sunburned, or windswept. Not to mention the below-zero temps. 

I decided to look into it. The Bible says in the Old Testament that women should cover their hair and men should not. The reasons were more to prevent other men from lusting after their wife.

Customs and courtesies of the military mandate that everyone take off their hat in the presence of a superior.

When I was a kid, the boys had to remove their hats indoors, but the girls didn't. (although if you tried to keep it on, surely someone would yank it off your head just to get a laugh - up through 12th grade)

I posted before about leaving my hat on in the cafeteria of  my son's intermediate school and the vice principal asking me to remove it.

My classmates in college wear hats in class - male and female alike.

I found one article on the web that discusses hat etiquette: Andy

I don't care about fashion or if people think I look good or bad in a hat. I don't care about what people think about me in public buildings in a hat, but school's a little different. I'd like to know, what's "correct" historically in the US, what's polite to my instructor, what sets a good example.  Have things changed in the 2000's? Even though I feel like I'm being rude, should I just do what I want and  be comfy in my hat whenever I feel like it?

Hat anyone?

Crop Circle or form of Expression?

It's been an interesting year with Dustin mowing the back lawn......

Crop Circle?                        "i" for I exist?

Exclamation Point!