100% AI-free half-assed writing hand crafted by Kevin Lawver about programming, life, cooking and random nonsense.
It’s a big weekend for Max. He got his yellow belt last night, and it’s his 10th birthday on Sunday! Check out all the pics in the set on Flickr\
Also, my first blog post for The South is up! They asked real nice, and I’ll be posting geeky bits there every couple of weeks.
I’ve been sick the last couple of weeks and haven’t done anything other than the bare minimum to keep the household functioning. Sadly, blogging does not fall into the priority chores list. I did have to pop in to say, “Max made yellow belt in karate!” YAY for him. Hopefully Kevin will post pics soon from the graduation. Also, Max received all A’s on his first report card. Double YAY!\
Max’s 10th birthday is tomorrow, and hopefully Kevin or I will post about how awesome Max continues to be. Until then, just take my word for it.\
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Christmas in Mississippi 2006\
I want to complain some more about Max’s school. All of my complaints are sort of minor, but things I find annoying.\
I’ll just refer you to the post below to see my traffic-jam rant.\
The clubs have switched times from after school to the last 45 minutes of school. This happens to overlap with Max’s Gifted class. BOOOOOOOOOO. I really appreciate what Max learns in Gifted, but is that more important than what he could learn in The Philosophy and Art Club? The Robotics Club? Or the fun, friends, and self-esteem he could gain in Chorus?\
The parking lot is set up so that you have to walk a couple of hundred feet to get into the school, even though you can park a mere 10 feet from the building. It’s just a badly thought out design. One time when I needed to pick up Max from school because he was sick, he was too weak to make it to the car. 🙁 I left him at the curb and brought the car to him. Poor guy. That made me grumble for awhile. Actually, I grumble every time I have to go to the school when I see how badly it’s designed.\
Max has Gifted five days a week, where he is pulled from his regular classroom. The regular class is, of course, continuing their lessons. Last year Max missed Math. Everyday. No wonder he got his lowest grade in Math, claims it’s hard and is his least favorite subject. Ugh. This is the same problem that kids in ESL and other pull-out programs face. I think I need to talk with someone at the school about this.\
There is a club that is only open to girls- WTH? Discrimination! Discrimination! It’s a robotics club. I guess girls are still considered “behind” when it comes to this sort of thing.\
ETA- The Gifted teacher is canceling Gifted classes on Mondays and Fridays to accommodate kids joining clubs. Yea, that’s the solution. Oy.
Max’s Blue Man Group Audition from Kevin Lawver on Vimeo.
The boys and I went to Atlanta last weekend to hang out with my pal David and go to the Georgia Aquarium. We stayed in a hotel right downtown, went to the Children’s Museum, ate at Legal Seafood, went swimming, watched a movie and had a lot of fun. The pictures are here and there are some more videos to come.
Brian’s favorite thing in the whole world to play with is “finger friends.” Those are the little people that are made when you make a walking motion with your hand, making your fingers act as the moving legs. Get it? Luckily, Brian can take his finger friends with him where ever he goes. Even though I packed a bunch of toys and activities for the plane ride over the summer, Brian mostly played with finger friends (and ate candy, but that is a story for another day). Now that Brian is school, he plays with finger friends when he has recess or a few minutes of down time. He has recently been putting sand in his pocket during recess so he could play ‘desert finger friends’ while waiting in line to be picked up.\
I don’t really have anything to say about this new discovery. 🙂
(Exciting title, right?)\
Last week in Virginia, I burned the tip of my index finger while making a craft with a hot glue gun. It became a normal blister, with a squooshy, liquidy middle. It hurt immediately, so I stuck ice on it all night. By the next morning, it stopped throbbing but would hurt if I bumped it. It stayed like that for a few days and then slowly formed a hard brown cover. The liquid was reabsorbed into my skin and the pain went away. Now it looks and feels like a small piece of chocolate jellybean has been superglued to the tip of my finger. It’s weird. Weird, I tell you! I keep making jokes that I have leprosy or the plague. I just find this very odd and had to share. Aren’t you glad I did?\
My mother-in-law was tickled with my craft, btw, making it all worth it.\
Have a great Tuesday, everyone!
On the last day in Virginia, we prettied the kids up and sent them off to the mall to get their picture taken together. It came out really cute. Then Tim, Kevin and Grandpa Larry took the kids to the Air and Space Museum. Babba finagled the day into a flight theme and talked Grandpa into putting on his old flight suit and helmet. Brian made him pretend to be Darth Granpda. (Yea, I don’t know.) The kids had fun! In some of the pics, I can’t tell the difference between Max and Brian!! Big kudos to Grandpa for being able to get into his flight suit after more than a decade of retirement. :)\
Our visit to Virginia was short, but we packed in lots of fun and chatting time. Everyone got to play with the baby, meet the new girlfriend, and start planning for Thanksgiving, yay.\
In the next set of pics: Mississippi madness!
Instead of going on a real family vacation this year, we decided to check out Savannah’s fun spots. Besides the obvious benefit of saving money, we avoided the frustrating mornings and evenings in a hotel when everyone wouldn’t be awake at the same time. (I hate staying at hotels, can you tell?)\
We didn’t do everything on our fun list, be we did manage:
I took the end of last week off to hang out with the kids and relax a little. We had a great time going to the beach, playing video games, grilling things, going to the playground(s) and taking the boys to their first minor league baseball game.\
The Savannah Sand Gnats put on a pretty darn good fireworks show. We let the boys stay up impossibly late, filled them up with cherry lime-ade, sprite, french fries and hot dogs and tried to explain the finer points of the national past time (they know the ins and outs of the Star Wars story, but not the art of the sacrifice fly. It’s all my fault).\
There are ~~two~~ three sets over on flickr – at the playground, us at the game, and the fireworks show.\
Enjoy!