Toy Story

(Above photo has absolutely nothing to do with today's post)

A favorite nephew, Connor-man -

Exhausted after a hard day's play at the beach

(photo taken by his mom, summer '09)

Must relate a story a teacher friend emailed me earlier this week. At the school where he teaches there are several classrooms for each grade, and as a rule, all twin units are put in different classrooms if at all possible. The curriculum is the same across all the classes, but having twins in different classrooms lets each shine (or not) without the pressures of sibling rivalry or influence.
Case in point: The 2nd graders keep a written journal of what goes on in their lives. On Mondays they record what occurred over the past weekend. While he was at lunch, he started to tell the other 2nd grade teachers what one of his students had written. He said this little girl wrote about a trip she had taken to the toy store with her dad and twin brother. It caught his eye because she wrote about how she was so sad that her dad hadn't bought her the "little" toy that had caught her eye. He wondered why dad had been so hard on her. With that, another 2nd grade teacher looked up and nearly spit out her lunch. Turns out the twin brother was in her class and she'd just read his journal entry of the same family trip. It was supremely different from his sister's:
"Mom was out of town and dad, sister and I went to the toy store. I was in the shopping cart and my sister really wanted this toy. Dad said no. Sister got really mad and started screaming and running all over the store. It was bad. She was screaming really loudly. And dad was mad and yelling too. And I was in the shopping cart that she was pushing that dad was chasing. He couldn't catch us. So I started yelling too because I was scared. It was bad."

You just can't make this stuff up!

There's always three sides to every story:

My side.

Your side.

And somewhere in the middle, the true side.

~~~

xoabb

expect anything!

Sunday Serenity...

Sometimes (and gratefully) means all my children and local family are gathered 'round our dinner table...

On a Friday, not Sunday night, but still,

Absolutely nothing better...

However, it took a bit of yelling on my part (unruly gang!) to get their attention for the above photo moment....

The before yelling pic :

And then there is our youngest (and cutest) family member...

Miss Ella* in the

Kitchen sink, she really knows

How to use that soap!

*aka Little Miss Magic

~~~

xoabb

expect anything!

Field Day

Saugatuck Field Day

Fun's had by ALL of us. It's

The day we wait for!

Water slide! Other

Stations of watery fun!

Then...it's tug-o-war!

The Thrill of...

VICTORY!

The Agony of...

DEFEAT!

And...

For your enjoyment of the above*...

~~~

xoabb

expect anything!

*faces cropped & changed to protect the chillun'

My Tote

Sippy cup. Safely

Within Mom's reach. Just in case

I have a melt down.

(Which I certainly will...

I'm just sayin'!)

~~~

And now a definition: 

I've been asked what makes a haiku poem, well, a haiku poem. According to wictionary.org: 

haiku (plural haiku or haikus)

1. A Japanese poem of a specific form, consisting of three lines, the first and last consisting of five morae [syllables], and the second consisting of seven morae [syllables], usually with an emphasis on the season or a naturalistic theme.

2. A three-line poem in any language, with five syllables in the first and last lines and seven syllables in the second, usually with an emphasis on the season or a naturalistic theme.

Haiku, a poem

five beats, then seven, then five

ends as it began.

~~~

xoabb

expect anything!

P. S. Community Garden update:  WE HAVE TOPSOIL! A big delivery came today, and it's such a very marvelous thing! That garden of ours is gonna ROCK! Soon! (Shut up, MPM!)

Cuuute!

ABC Wednesday - It's a C! Today I'm sharing with you two definitions of the word ~cute~. The first is the sarcastic version, the second, the adorable version. 

Yesterday as I was driving up my street, what did I see? THIS, on the side of the neighbor's yard...cuuute! What's going on? Is this the new place to exercise, or is there a new dump yard I don't know about? Whatever it is, it's tacky! 

~

Cute: endearingly attractive in the way that some children (see below) and young animals are.

Little Miss Magic wants help putting on her princess slippers. 

She wore them the entire evening. 

It improved her bowling game immensely!

~~~

xoabb

expect anything!

ABC Wednesday

Do join us!

An Update, A Lily, & Cuteness Overload

An Update:

I'm baaaack!! Got my computer. It's working brilliantly. It has nothing on it. (It would have cost between 2 and 3 thousand to retrieve the data, and frankly, though I'll miss a lot of what I had, not $3000 worth!) My hard drive just up and died deader than dead. It was defective from the factory get-go so it was just a matter of time before it ceased to work. That'll teach me to be lazy about backing up!  Getting my external hard drive set up with Time Machine asap and am making it a point to backup at least every few weeks!  Thank GOD my hubby had the good sense to buy the extended 3 year warranty!  Smartest thing ever!  Soooo...2000+ pictures -gone...genealogy program with all the relatives listed on it - gone (I do have an older version on my other computer. The pictures?  Nope, those I took off.)...music - gone.  You get the picture, I'm sure.  

A Lily:

My eldest daughter, Rem and I stopped by to see our Little Miss Magic and her mommy.  There are the most beautiful lilies blooming in their yard! This one was so intensely pink it almost looked like it was fake.  I've never seen that color before. 

A cuteness-overload moment:  

Little Missy loves her Auntie's (that would be me) glasses!  She immediately starts looking for them when she sees me.  Once she has them, on they go and on they stay!  Isn't that little girl just the cutest thing you've ever seen, stained shirt and all??

~~~

xoabb