first week of school 2009

everything went off this week without a hitch. i have to say i love to see the progression of my kids year after year and am so proud of them. it doesn't make me sad to watch them grow up and become more responsible, it makes me very happy. i am enjoying every stage of their childhood. as avery was getting on the bus the first day of school, i noticed that he was wearing his old shoes from last year (they are in pretty poor shape), i said avery where are your new shoes and he just looked at me and smiled and said, "sorry." he likes to put the old ones on better because they are "broke" in and easier to get on. my dad was hopeful that he might receive free lunch that day and we had a good laugh about that even though i had packed their home lunches that morning because my kids refuse to eat school lunch. when i got home from my bike ride the first day of school around 7:30, anna had done the dishes, made avery scrambled eggs and toast, got him up and made sure he practiced his violin, and practiced all of her own instruments (3 in all). lets just say she was up before the rooster because she was so excited about school. i have to tell her sometimes that i'm the mom and she does not want to be in charge of avery, it is a lot of work. cassey says that i am spoiled and hopes the next one is rotten. i explained to her that that wouldn't be fair because now that i am spoiled it would be even worse, plus who cares "i have anna." she is such a delight. avery is embracing his life as a 1st grader. the whole concept of homework has not sunk in yet and its usually time for bed when i ask to see his folder and he says, "oh, i fogot." i am going to put stop to that really fast because i am a firm believer that it is not the parent's responsibility to make sure that he does his homework everynight. i think it needs to be the first thing done as soon as he walks in the door and then he has the rest of the evening to do whatever he wants. i have already explained to him that i don't get bad grades when he doesn't turn in his homework, that he does. i have no problem helping him with it or listening to him read for 15 minutes, but he needs to take the initiative to bring it to me. okay, enough with my ranting. i hope everyone else's first week of school went well. have a great weekend.

2009-10 school year and homeschool

i always give my kids the option of homeschool. ever since the 1st grade i haven't been able to talk anna into it again. so this year avery says to me, "i haven't made up my mind whether or not to go to school or do homeschool." i was a little taken aback because he is my social child and loves friends and people. i always inform them that they need to make a decision and stick with it, there won't be any bouncing back and forth between home and school but avery being the kid who always comes up with the 3rd choice then asks me, "mom, is it really against the law not to do any school?" i just had to laugh because he is a thinker and he is thinking that staying home and having summer year-round sounds like a good idea to him.

what if?

avery is my what if? boy. he is always asking what if? i find it very amusing because it is always the most off-the-wall ideas. i'll have to start posting some of his what ifs? today he asked me what if someone tripped over that tire and did flips all the way to the next tire and then tripped over that one and did front flips all the way to the next one (the tires are in the road because blake cut around the valves and they were around the valves). i just have to tell him, "that would be crazy," a hundred times a day.

hauling hay and gathering eggs

this summer has been filled with many hot days hauling hay (by hand). blake usually hires a couple local boys and they bring friends and we spend 3 hours babysitting more or less. avery loves to get right in the middle of "the boys" and feels like he is 14 already. i have been explaining to him when he tells me that he isn't strong enough to lift a bale yet that unless he continues to try he will never get any stronger. this has made him totally obsessed with muscles. i told him that you have to work your muscles for them to grow. this has motivated him and it is the cutest thing in the world watching my boy struggle to push the bale over to his dad so that blake can throw it on the trailer. he is always saying that his muscles are "teeny" and that his dad has mountains for muscles (again, he is blake's biggest fan). we had a couple of people come out from vegas this week to load hay and avery watched as they counted out $500 to pay for their truckload. he was determined to get his hands on a little big of that money explaining to his dad that he deserved at least $100 for moving each bale out from the one beside it because his hands were little enough to fit in the crack and grandpa pulsipher's and dad's hands were too big. i was convinced, his dad not so much, but he did end up talking him out of $8 which he took and added to his jar of money which was a pint jar, but after adding the $8 bucks he now needed a quart jar to fit all of his money. i tried to show him how you could roll all the dollar bills together but anybody who knows him knows that he is a negotiator and ended up with the quart jar filled with almost $52 (he made me count it). this is all he made this summer gathering eggs and hauling hay, but his interest has been piqued and his dad has already explained to him that if he keeps up the hard work he will continue to become more valuable and his hourly rate will go up.

anna is a saver and hoards everything so we won't have to worry about her blowing all of her money at the book fair like avery did last year. she is pretty smart and has figured out that if it isn't worth my money, it usually isn't worth her money either. i am proud of her frugality and her realization that material things have no real value. she will complain about gathering the eggs that blake then takes to work and sells, but she loves to deposit the money into her bank account. avery has decided that he is never putting any money into the bank again because you can't withdrawal it whenever you want. last time we were at the credit union i let him withdrawal $5 and he wanted to empty it, i am going to have to watch that one.

losing teeth

anna just lost her last 2 baby teeth. it is kind of sad to think that the tooth fairy rain on anna is over. she always lost them in pairs. the girl is so tough that after pulling out one on one side, the other side would usually be loose too, and she would just yank it out also. she told me that all it takes is a couple of rips and i remember those "rips" from when i was a kid.

avery on the other hand is a little bit different (a little more wimpy). he had his front tooth so loose that while he was sitting and watching tv with a piece of floss tied to it, blake walked by and pulled down and it came out. avery said ow, but then after looking down and realizing that his tooth was out, he was ok with it.

he is quite the character, he doesn't like giving his teeth to the tooth fairy, his primary motivation of getting his teeth out is not money. he came in and asked me after he lost his first tooth this year (he's lost 4 total, but if you ask him, he's lost 5, story to come later) "what if i don't want to give my tooth to the tooth fairy?" i just told him not to put it under his pillow and that he probably wouldn't get any money, but that he would be able to keep his tooth and seemed okay with that idea. i forgot to inform blake about the arrangement and so he got to keep his tooth and received a couple of dollars from the tooth fairy. a couple of days later when anna lost a tooth blake said, "what is up with not being able to find our kids teeth under their pillows?" i guess she also decided to hold onto her teeth long-term also, who in the heck knows why they want to keep them.

one last story: when anna lost her first 2 teeth avery was maybe 3 or so and again she lost both of them together and he wanted to lose one too. he brought me the scissors and wanted me to cut one out so that the tooth fairy would come to him too (he is totally over this part) so i asked anna if avery could have one of her teeth to put under his pillow but he was determined to lose one of his own teeth. sooo, i yanked hard on his front tooth and produced a tooth (pretty tricky, i thought so anyway) but immediately he wanted to see where he lost his tooth (anna had been examining her space for the last hour or so). while looking in the mirror, he determined that he had lost it in the middle and we never corrected him (he is still wondering why it hasn't grown back) so when you ask him how many teeth he has lost, he says 5, even though he really has only lost 4.