6 year old thoughts

Our Bible studies the last year have been in different books about the children of Israel, currently in Judges. Our 6 yr old loves to read & write, and fills notebook after note book with all sorts of stuff. This page was laying on my desk yesterday, and tonight after meeting she brought it to show us, she'd finished writing. HMMMM I think we often underestimate the comprehension of these little people, and what they really do hear when we think they are playing, scribbling or wiggling in meeting!!
(Click on image to be able to read it)

Kaela's school birthday

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At our little school they celebrate everyone's birthday by inviting any family members to come and have lunch with them. Kaela's birthday isn't till July, but they designate a day during the school year to celebrate the summer birthdays, so no one gets left out! Leon has always done this before, but today he is out of town, so the honor fell to me. They have a separate table set up for the birthday child, siblings & guests, and after everyone's done eating they all sing happy birthday. I stuck around a bit afterwards to watch the kids. Before they go outside for noon recess, the younger kids all sit on the floor and wait while the older (4th & 5th) grade boys mop up the floor & fold & put away the tables. Kaela also got to be helper today, by holding the door for the clean-up crew. Here's a few scenes from my hour at school with the kids.
**As a side note here, "Our" little school is one that was formally a Class 1 school. In other words, one of those schools "THEY" did away with, deeming them unnecessary expenses, among other things. Some of the highlights of this school were: (some have remained because of long term teachers & attending families)
*children all saying grace together before noon meal *Children responsible for chores around the school...as you saw in the pictures, also taking out the trash, cleaning chalk boards, room duty chores. Things we did back in the 60's & 70's when I was in grade school.
*All grades have recess together, and all the kids in different grades get along.
* Teacher ratio in each grade is 1-6, although we have 2 grades per room, 3 teachers.
*Parents volunteered their time for clean-up, & yard mowing.
I could go on and on about this one, it's a huge rant! The expense it's caused the school district here on just consolidating this school is huge. I can't imagine what it was state wide. They hired at least 4 more "employees"...after all, if a teacher is teaching the "3 R's", then surely she can't teach P.E. too!! (or do any office work, ect) oh yes, as these students defiantly needed the services of a guidance councilor! O.K...I'll stop. We still choose to opt out of district to go to this school because of the many advantages we feel like a small school offers, despite what we've lost!



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My garden work

Last week we had a couple of really nice days, so on Thursday the garden/dirt bit hard enough that it sent me out to work. I have a problem getting seeds planted. I like to buy them, but then they sit here, and by June, somehow they usually still aren't planted, and the Nurseries call loud & clear. I usually end up satisfying my craving for flowers by buying way too many plants. Even tho I try to buy perennials, they don't always survive, and my *budget* always feels the pain. This year (once again) I swore to do differently. I got one flower bed planted, and spent a good 3 hrs on some yard work exercise...for what? We'll see if it's worth it, two days later it snowed again, and got quite chilly. If this weather doesn't improve, I'll be buying plants again after all!!

Sunday evening at our house

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So tonight while I was having my catch up on blog time, my youngest decides to play waitress. She appears in my office with her offering in hand, announcing that she's made me banana bread!! I think it was low cal too!! For some reason my kids tend to get rather bored, and therefore extra rambunctious on Sunday evening, and of course if I'm glued to the computer screen not paying attention, that doesn't help matters.
So on tonight's schedule was make banana bread, insist that we all try it, eat all the ice cream, make freshly squeezed orange juice (and leave the mess for mom) go biking, & of course, ask for mom's phone to make the daily phone call to boyfriend!

Relyssa at KU Relays

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http://www.runnerspace.com/eprofile.php?do=videos&pg=2&event_id=67&video_id=2654&folder_id=221&offset=2#video
I think that will get you to the right video, it should be:
"Girls shuttle hurdle relay Heat #4.
Pretty interesting, I'd never seen them do one before! These girls quickly outdistanced the other teams.

Relyssa was one of 10 students from our high school to go to the KU Relays, and
the girls brought home first place trophy for the hurdles she ran in!
This is was her first overnight out of state school activity, so it seemed like a big event to me! She said the weather was cold & damp on Friday, better on Saturday.
The video shows the heat she ran in, and it follows her team. You can see how far ahead they are. There are two seniors, a junior, and R. is a sophomore. These girls are our school's top 4 for running hurdles. She was the last one to run, coming from the right side. They did a super job. Congratulations Lyss!!

For Katie, Courtney, Debbie & others!

Kimber, Becky, Elaine, Cyndie, Maxine & Misti
We joined the walk because of Cyndie. She has two daughters with MS, and each one of us know at least one other person who has MS! We've already decided that next year we're going to walk as a team, as this year we just signed up individually.
We had a great day for walking, it's just beautiful here. We also had a good time visiting, as social time with us all here is pretty limited!
ADDITIONALLY, THANK YOU FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DONATED IN MY NAME! Your contribution was appreciated!

MS Walk

Please do not feel in any way obligated, but I wanted to post this so you know what I'm doing, and if you do choose to support the MS society on my behalf, I thank you!

Dear Family and Friends,

I recently accepted the challenge to raise funds to support National MS Society. Please help support me in this important project by contributing. This has touched my life because of a dear friend with two daughters with MS and another dear friend who was diagnosed last year. That's the reason I have chosen to participate in the Kearney MS Walk.
I want to do something about multiple sclerosis now. Please help by supporting my upcoming Walk MS: Blue Cross Blue Shield 2008.
The National Multiple Sclerosis Society is dedicated to moving us towards a world free of MS. They fund research into effective MS therapies and also help people with MS to live powerful, meaningful lives. I believe in the work they do.For information about this volunteer fund raiser and its programs, you can visit http://main.nationalmssociety.org/site/PageServer .

It is faster and easier than ever to support this great cause by making your tax-deductible donation online using the link below. If you would prefer, you can send your contribution to the address listed below.

Whatever you can give will help. I greatly appreciate your support and will keep you posted on my progress. To make a donation online, visit my personal page to make a secure online donation

Sincerely,
Maxine Jelinek

To make a donation online, visit my personal page: http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/maxinejelinek


To mail a check on my behalf, please make payable to the National MS Society and put my name in the memo line. Send to: Nebraska Chapter NMSS * 7101 Newport Avenue Suite 304 * Omaha, NE 68152

Sunday

One of the friends here is retiring, and had planned a party on Saturday, however she canceled it because of all the rain/snow we got, too much mud where she lives, and some of us decided that maybe instead we could do a potluck here after meeting today.
Unfortunately I didn't take any picture of all the wonderful food & fellowship we shared, however I did get a picture of us 3 sisters and our mom together. We all coordinated so nicely, didn't want to pass up the opportunity!
Today was fairly nice, since our snow and rain, it's greened up the grass nicely, and now if we get some sun and higher temps, maybe our leaves will pop out! Even tho it looks warm out, we didn't stand around outside without our jackets for long!
Emmett is here visiting Relyssa for several days & over the weekend, so I'll probably have some pictures of them to post in a couple days.

Views from yesterday

Cold, windy & snowy!
We didn't actually accumulate very much snow here, it rained quite a lot, and then snowed quite a while also, however it was warm enough that not too much of it stuck. We have a light covering on the ground today and there is some very light flurries if I look close but the streets/sidewalks are dry.
I'm sure this will pass...but I am longing for sunshine & warm~
by the way, the beautiful house in the picture is only our view across the street, not ours! At least we can enjoy looking at it every day :*)

Spring Break project

This was our spring break project, and why I took my youngest 4 kids to their sister's and left them while Leon and I worked on this for 4 solid days!
Up until last year, I didn't have any of my scrapbooking things at home, and we didn't have an office for Leon's business stuff either. When Luanne and I closed the scrapbook store, we were faced with the dilemma of where to put left over things we needed to store & sell, along with all of our personal accumulation of scrapbooking items & supplies. We both had our problems, because where Luanne has the ability to throw out/get rid of stuff, I seemed to have missed that quality, and I have a terrible time letting go of anything that I MIGHT use someday. However, where she was lacking for space to expand her home to accommodate extra supplies, I have enough bedrooms I turned one of them into a scrapbooking/office. Later when another child moved out then I had another bedroom free, and I decided I liked it better for working in, space & light wise. SO, now I had two rooms full of JUNK!
My kids seem to move in and out of our house on a semi annual basis, so about the time one of the older boys moved back home, and didn't want his little brother sharing a room, then of course I was stuck again, and we ended up with a mattress on the floor for him in the middle of my mess, and it was time to seriously do something different!
Spring break was the perfect opportunity to tackle the mess when the kids could be out of the house. The job was actually a much bigger mess than you see here, because we had to take everything out of my "room to be", take counters & cabinets out of the first office to put in the new one, and in the middle of playing musical rooms, my living room was piled full with a path through it!
I still have some sorting & getting rid of to do, and next project is turning the other room back into a bedroom that is usable, because it still is piled with all the re-jects & misc that I refuse to pile back into my nice clean spacious and very usable scrapbook room!
I had a hard time trying to figure out how I wanted my finished room. The last picture shows a picture of a scrap room I found in a book. When I saw it, I knew what I wanted, and it worked perfectly. The only thing we had to buy were the shelf brackets for the closet. When I showed Leon the picture and told him what I wanted, he said he had a counter top in the garage he'd hauled away for someone, and thought it would work. Wow, just the thing! And, for those of you who are considerate enough to wonder if Leon got ANY office space out of this...Yes he did...3 of the cabinets are his, and we agreed to share counter space :*)

Little boy full of mischief & on the go!

O.K...don't want to be accused of playing favorites here, so the other pictures were my favorite baby girl, these are of my favorite baby boy!.
Right now I don't have any new pictures of my favorite "big-little" grandaughter...hint, hint!!
I took these pictures a couple weeks ago when I went to Lynisha's to take the kids there for spring break week. Instead of removing him from the no-no of climbing in the fridge & on the dishwasher, I did a grammie thing and grabbed my camera & took pictures. You know, some things never change, cuz my 3 boys 11, 20 and 23 might not be climbing IN the fridge, (anymore) but believe me, they're still poking their heads in, looking for something to eat every time I turn around!

Jessi--Isn't she darling?!!

Of course she is, she's my grandbaby! Dalayna, you did an awsome job on these photos! I was just wishing for updates, and hadn't had a chance to do my whine about it yet, and wow, look what I got! Can't wait to print them out!!

IT'S APRIL! NO FOOLING!!

Yeah!! I'm so happy April is here! Yes, I realize it's just a mind set, but when the calender says "April", it just SOUNDS so much better than "March"! It sounds like spring, green, flowers, grass...kinda like my header picture up there, which obviouslly isn't going happen around here by tomorrow, but I've sure enjoyed looking at it while it was busy being nasty cold & grey outside!
I'm so ready to go out and dig in my flower beds again, & get my garden tilled up. I have great expectations for my garden & flower beds this year...That's a good thing, because I won't begin to reach them, but that way I'll get further than if I didn't.

Right now we're in the middle of installing new rods, white-out liners, sheers, side-hangs & valances in one of the motels here in Kearney. I've never been free to help on one of Leon's big motel jobs before, so this is a new experience for me, and not a bad one, especially since it's awesome exercise! We're almost 1/2 done with it, and Leon just told me that our next job in Hays KS has to be done by the first of May. It's a new motel, so it will be a little easier and faster to do since we won't have to take down old hardware & treatments, and won't have to work around rooms being vacant like we are here for this one.
Well, I'm off for the day, maybe I'll take my camera today and see if I can get some pictures of what we're doing!