This is Halloween from several years ago. Brian is a dinosaur and Max is a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup (which he hates, btw, ha!)
Category: family
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Report cards came today!
Brian is doing well in school. The kindergartners don’t get a regular letter grade. Instead, they are evaluated on 100+ skills and knowledge. He’s right where he should be for most things, with a few he excels at and a few he’s still working on. The one “area of concern” is when the routine is changed. I guess he doesn’t handle that well. The last couple of weeks, Brian has been reading to us, which has been a thrill!\
Max received all A’s in the Core Subjects (Math, English, etc), yay! Better yet, all of his grades improved, except for the subjects he got a 99 in last quarter. His actual scores were: Language Arts- 99; Reading- 99; Social Studies- 99; Health- 98; Science- 97; and Math- 95. Max was like, “No 100s?” Kevin said, “That is just to give you something to work for this quarter.” Ha! His grades for the Specials (Art, PE, Music, Spanish) were all “Exceeds Expectations.”\
I should treat my kids for a job well done. What should it be? -
Brian is cute, and he knows it!
Brian’s school is asking the kids to earn a dollar at home doing chores and then donate the money to the school’s Help Haiti fund, which will be given to the American Red Cross. Brian and I discussed what chore he could do for his dollar. It has to be something he doesn’t normally do, but something he can do. (Duh.) We settled on wet-swiffering the bathroom. Later he piped up, “Maybe I could get an extra dollar for being so cute?”
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No mo’ babies!
Last week Max said he wanted another baby in our family. I don’t want to disappoint my kids, but seriously? Not happening. At least not if I get to be in charge. I love that my kids are no longer babies. I no longer have to worry about:
- SIDS
- Whether to get the 18 month vaccinations/Autism
- Car seats being installed incorrectly\
The lack of worry about baby-related deaths and illness has been such a relief. It’s like going on vacation, all of the time, in my brain!\
My kids can use the bathroom and dress, feed, and entertain themselves. We can go out and have fun as a family and go on vacations together. Right this very minute, Brian is reading a book to Kevin. BRIAN IS READING. \0/\
So yea. Just had to share.\
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Spelling bee!
The bad news: Shawn and Gus didn’t show up. The good news: no one died.\
Max won his class spelling bee, so he got to participate in the school bee. The winner will be sent to the regional bee to compete in the 4th-8th grade group. I went to the school bee today and cheered Max on. It lasted an hour. The coordinator said this was one of the longest bee’s they’ve had. Kids kept getting the answers right! The bee started out with 14 students. Half of the kids were eliminated in the second and third rounds. Max, and everyone else except the winner and the alternate, were eliminated in the 5th round. He misspelled “enormous.” He told me he was glad he didn’t win. The PTA provided donuts for afterward, so at least the kids got to sugar-up for their effort. -
The Coriolis Effect
The Coriolis Effect from Kevin Lawver on Vimeo.
Max and I made this little movie yesterday as his visual aid for his report on the Coriolis Effect. I figured out that it took us about an hour of work for every ten seconds of end product. I hope the boy gets an A.
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Weird Dreams
I had a weird dream last night (two, actually, but I’m only concerned about writing down the first one). In the dream, I was back at AOL sitting through a horrible product requirements meeting when I lost it and started yelling about how bad the requirements were, how they didn’t do anything original, were a waste of paper and no one would use this thing even if we built it (I don’t even remember what it was now). I got in a fight with the product manager, and all I remember of the screaming match was that she said something like, “You’re not the only ship on this sea, pal,” to which I replied… and I remember me screaming it: “Not the only ship?! I’m the sea!“\
Then, I got fired. It was a strange experience, watching dream me pack up his crap in boxes and get escorted out. I lost it a few times in my thirteen years at AOL (wait, sorry, now it’s “Aol.”), and one or two of them almost got me fired, but those were early on when I was still in tech support. I lost it in meetings a handful of times (which I think is a pretty good record considering how many awful product meetings I sat through) and called BS where I needed to, but I don’t think any of them ever got me close to the “terminating offense” line.\
Yeah, I don’t know what it means either, but I thought it was a pretty good comeback, especially for a dream.\
The other one was a nightmare where I was Doctor Who. It was so scary, I actually woke up and had a hard time getting back to sleep. This robotic zombie fell on me, had me pinned to the floor and kept saying “I know what you are” over and over again. shudder. -
My Best Photos of 2009
Funny, there seems to be a theme here. Well, three out of four ain’t bad.
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Building Whuffie – My Slides from Geekend 2009
Building WhuffieView more documents from Kevin Lawver.Max and I had a great time at Geekend, and I had a blast presenting some thoughts on building reputation systems. It was fun partly because I don’t have all the answers yet and there’s a lot way to go before I actually have a system I’m happy with. But, it was great to hear good questions from the audience and consider new stuff.
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Halloween Happiness
Kevin gets his Father Of The Year Award early this year for saving Halloween.\
We bought beautiful pumpkins to make jack-o-lanterns, but wanted them to be fresh for Halloween so we waited until Saturday to carve them. Only by then they were rotten! 🙁 Kevin went out in search of new, unrotten pumpkins but he didn’t have any luck. Instead the kids carved watermelon and the baby pumpkin that didn’t go bad:\
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The kids had funny dressing up, pretending to battle, and exchanging accessories:\
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You can see more pictures by clicking the “Photo” link above.
