I own a house - not that it cuts any off of my monthly rent

Like any good home owner, I've used part of my long Labor Day weekend to work on my house. Specifically, I put on roofing.
I got a relatively good deal on it: I'm thinking it cost under 10 dollars. Not that I bought anything I used for the direct purpose of roofing my house. I used scissors, kid's glue, and a cereal box. :) Yay for cheap recreation.
Here you can see more of my painting efforts from the past week. Thanks to my mother for loaning me paints and paintbrushes, this has been economical for me as well. I did buy one thing of white paint, but it was in the one dollar range. Mixing grey with dark color of choice just doesn't work the same as adding white. But it does produce interesting colors.

Here is a picture from an earlier Saturday. I went sailing with siblings. It was neat watching my brother direct the sailing of the sailboat.

Greetings. It has been a month and a day since I last wrote. And I'm not checking to see if that's true or not, but you can.

In that time, I've finished my language development class. I will attempt to continue to bring whatever information I gained into random and less random conversations.

I've decided to take a break this next semester. I'm very excited and a little nervous about that. It will be so nice! But what will I do with all my free time? "All" that free time. Yes. I'm sure it will disappear quickly. But I hope I enjoy it, too.

I've started excercising. Amazing, really. But only twenty minutes, plus or minus three. Except Saturday and/or Sunday and/or a non-working day. Then I might take a longer walk if it was for fun. I have occasionally tap-danced instead of walking. So far, no neighbor has complained to me, but I will continue to avoid tap dancing at midnight (unless I do it on carpet so no-one can hear me).

Actually, I've taken up cooking, too. I actually made a casserole and cooked it in the oven twice this summer. I hope you are sufficiently impressed. I have also baked muffins and cornbread from mixes - you don't need to be very impressed by that, except for the fact that I actually did it instead of just heating up frozen pizzas. Said frozen pizzas take too long to prepare when I only have an oven to do it in. I did make pancakes "from scratch." You can be impressed because I actually did it in spite of egg germ anxiety. And I used whole wheat, which means I remembered to buy whole wheat flour at the store.

Greetings again. Yes, again, I am delaying my online homework assignment. The hated "I don't care" thought has attacked my schoolwork. If I only have 60 minutes left on the computer, I tend to get a little more focused, but I still have 66, supposedly.

Today, I helped advertize my childcare center.

Speaking of which, here are more useful tips for childcare providers.

IF there is sticky rice on the floor, spray it with the bleach water solution. As long as you get it wet enough, the rice should sweep up easily. Thanks to my coworker for that idea. It has saved me some stress.

IF you need to plan an art activity, I'm sorry. Unless you want to, and then I'm happy for you. This week, I made hand-print octopuses (retrieve handprints from children while they finger paint, cut out while children are napping, apply sticker eyes, tape them on with packing tape because their glue is of questionable strength, and hang from the ceiling, tape to the wall and/or leave in a pile on your counter to do something with).

I also made foot-print fish. This idea came about with the help of another teacher. This might not qualify as good art because it was exceedingly teacher directed and I didn't even let them fingerpaint freely on the side. They did get to help pick the colors for their foot, but their choices were somewhat limmited. We will call it a sensory activity with some social-emotional development thrown in. The fish are comprized of foot-prints and a fin added to the outside of the foot by the child's thumb (with more or less direction from the teacher's hand). Then (during nap time) the fish can be cut out to look a little more like fish, the eye-stickers can be applied (my eye stickers came in pairs, so I had to cut them appart). The packing tape can be applied, and a nice smile can be added. I like happy fish.

Finally, we started on Jellyfish. They are, of course, made from paper plates cut in half and fingerpainted. I haven't gotten any further than that. The only down-side is that I had paint out three days in one week, and that's alot. But we are having fun with our oceany theme. (Okay, so the Bumble Bee song doesn't really match, but they sing it so nicely!)

Speaking of music, there is the Shark song I learned at camp (so I just never get to the part where the shark bites me). I think there is another one about fishies and a shark that I should finish learning, but I don't feel like I know it well enough to teach it yet. Then there is the Little Indians counting song. I think it is probably politically incorrect, but it has a lovely tune and involves counting, so I have changed it to the Little ______(insert theme-apropriate object here) song. We have sung about Sea Turtles and Octopuses so far.

Now there are only 51 minutes, so I will consider my homework again. My mood has improved some, too, which might help. :)

Greetings friends. I have 13 minutes before I have told myself I must get serious about finishing (starting) my chapter review assignment that was due yesterday. Instead of schoolwork, on Saturday morning, my alarm clock went off at 3:55 a.m. (think 4 hours of sleep, because of course I was excited enough between the final VBS evening Friday and the adventure to come on Saturday that it was hard to get to sleep). I drove with the sunrise overhead through flashing yellow light intersections (it was about 4:30 a.m.) to my family's house. I got to see the newest goat kid - a pretty white female goat - and observe my brothers make breakfast and finally, an hour after arriving, we left. We drove and drove and drove. We drove into another state, past beautiful mountains, to a camp where friends of my dad were helping out. We visited with them a while and then drove and drove and drove back to my family's home so that the goats could be milked. And finally, I drove home past a police car sitting on an off road (I was going 2 miles under the speed limmit) and past another one that had pulled someone over. I drove with a sunset over me. Sunrise and sunset and it's the middle of summer, so it was a long day! But a nice one. Worth losing one point in my college class (not a grade point, just one of the points used to come up with the grade point). Now I have 5 minutes until I really need to get serious, so maybe I'll just start early.

It's been awhile and I wanted to update my post.

Meanwhile, I'm "chatting" on Facebook with my not-so-great Spanish. Unfortunately, that limmits my conversation. But it's a fun challange.

I live in town now - transportation time to church is under a third. Transportation time to work is between a half and a third? Save on gas, not on rent. :)

Back to the Spanish conversation, I thought the person scrambled the spelling of a word (switched to letters around), but really it was another word! Online Spanish dictionaries are helpful...

Back to my English blog... (I do not have a Spanish blog...) my class is going well. Yesterday I got my online assignment submitted with 2 minutes to spare before the library computer cut me off! Praise God.

Lord willing, I'm starting my next class next Monday! I decided to take it. Then I decided to drop it, but procrastinated until what I thought was the last day, which, incidentally, was a week too late. So then I had the options of being dropped from the class for non-payment or paying. I paid. So now I will study again! I'm even excited (somewhat). But it's only three credits, so it shouldn't be too bad. I think there are fewer weeks in the summer term, and there are only three exams but there are more essay-type things involving my writing something down. This may mean more effort goes into this class compared to last class (which was set up almost perfectly for me as far as being easy for me to do right now).

So anyways, THIS week I can do stuff that I might not have quite as much time for next week; hence the blog post. However, once again, three credits shouldn't take too much time.

Anyway, it looks like I'll be moving soon-ish. Possibly the beginning of June. I'm expecting to have around 60 minutes of driving less per day Monday through Friday (unless we end up with hour lunch breaks, which could add back in maybe 20 minutes of driving - 10 somewhere and 10 back to work? Not sure I like the hour lunch break idea) and maybe 40 or 50 minutes less driving on Sundays (but then, I might make short trips in the afternoon that I ordinarily would not have because they wouldn't be short while I live here).

The place my potential appartment-mate and I applied for is little and cute. I like it pretty well. We'll see what happens.

new kid on the block

Missy is a very attentive mommy.