Good Stuff: Honoring Veterans, Enjoying Snow

This hardly looks like a real photograph (probably because my ISO was at 5000) and it's hard to tell that its even a picture of a huge moon over the mountains, but lately the full moons have been so amazing. Thursday night I was out at about 3:00 am after an ambulance call and it was so bright out it seemed like the sun was actually nearly up. You could see everything.

: : Veterans Day Reading

Thursday night the kids spent the evening reading and deciding what they wanted to include in our veterans video for this year. I love that we have all these stories and oral histories collected from when my high school classes did local history projects and needed people to help with their research. I may need to go back to teaching high school English for awhile so I can have some help with gathering more family history.

Some time this year I need to work with the kids to add my uncles to the collection. We have a few more family members we should be including in these things.





: : Honoring Local Veterans

Friday afternoon Lex and I went up to Mission's small veterans honoring.

Lex brought his superheroes and set them up on the sidewalk by us so they could watch what was going on too.

Afterwards, we went and found our grandfathers' (Lex's great-grandfathers) names on the wall.

The older kids didn't get to go to this part, but they were all pretty excited to bring DVDs of the video we did the night before to share with their classes.

: : First Quarter Awards

They had a big awards assembly Friday and all the kids got a stack of awards.

Actually I think all the kids in the school got stacks of awards which I suppose in theory is good, but it appears many of the awards they are giving out are for things like just getting your work done most of the time or showing up for a couple of weeks in a row. These seem like things we should just expect rather than reward. My lack of enthusiasm for a marathon length, all-morning assembly to reward a lot of mediocrity is probably another reason I'm not teaching in public school right now.

The kids were happy about their stacks of rewards. Zoran was especially happy about his pile, because he had more than most people, and any time it appears he's winning, Zoran is happy. As I talked with him about them, I realized he had really no clue what any of them were for, which seemed sort of funny. He did have certificates for all his reading/ language and math testing—in everything he was in the top quarter in the nation. He also has perfect attendance. Zoran doesn't like school, but at least at this point he likes doing well so much that he gets things done. I'm hoping he keeps that up longer than the older two.



 : : Let it Snow, Let it Snow!

Now we have snow.

It's always exciting when the seasons shift.

 Zoran was really excited to make a snowman. I went to a meeting, and by the time I got home he had one all put together and in our yard, ready to greet people.

 


: : Winter Days

I'm never really a fan of getting up in the morning, especially when I have to leave the house when it's still cold and dark, but this is the view from my car while I'm waiting for it to warm up.

It's not as bad as it could be.

It warmed up a bit the next day and Zoran's snowman started to droop.

He wasn't too happy about this. Zoran even gets angry at the weather when it won't cooperate with him.

After school snack with the boys.

I sure love these two.


And outside, everything is cold and frozen.

But it's also clear and crisp and really beautiful.