Wed. & Thu., Oct. 17 & 18

A couple pictures from yesterday:

Natasha decided these medium-size buckets were drums, and went to TOWN. lol

The children have created a life-size Etch-A-Sketch. there happens to be a lot of loose sand/dirt right off the back patio. When the slide is pulled across it, the sand/dirt smooths out and leaves a perfectly pristine canvas. Sharks, trucks, butterflies, dragonflies, stairs, and all kinds of other things have been drawn into this section of our yard these past two days! When they're through with one set of pictures, one child or the other will push the slide across the ground to erase, and then they begin again.

The animal prints Natasha drew (today) include: dog, jackrabbit, cardinal, and camel.

Here is Jabba sleeping upside down ... which he does a lot. The hair on a Maltese's underside apparently grows much slower than on top (same as humans, from what I read), so when he's upside-down it's easy to see there is still plenty of pink in his coat - from the previous owners' dye job (gr).

I have weeded in the pack yard for two days in a row now! You know, for a place where people don't have grass in their yards, there are sure plenty of weeds to go around! Today's weeding was much more interesting than yesterday's though. Jeremy was talking over the fence to our next door neighbor, Antonio, about the excitement in their yard, including that his male Chihuahua (very friendly) was stolen a few months ago when someone decided to break down his yard gate. (The unfriendly female Chihuahua was not stolen; the thief probably decided she wasn't worth the hassle.) Then, two days ago his wife (who speaks no English) was trimming her rose bushes when a 5' rattle snack slithered out from underneath the bush and between her legs. Antonio came at her call and killed it with a shovel. They skinned it (quite a trophy - he showed us, of course) and ate it for supper!!!!! LOL Well, he said she wouldn't even try a BITE of it. So then yesterday he put a mesh screen over even the little drain of his back yard (It's already over the bottom 3' of his gate - to keep the dogs in) to keep the snakes OUT! Happily, he gave us what he had leftover so Jeremy can do the same with our gate and drain! Hooray! Antonio seems to be an EXTREMELY pleasant neighbor. His wife also seems as sweet as anything.

The children and I had an unusually large amount of reading time together today. Awesome. We are learning a lot about animals from a library book whose one foundational concept seems to be evolution.... It's creating lots of opportunities to read discerningly; happily, the children are pointing out parts of sentences that refer to evolution, so it's good that they're practicing recognizing it, at least. Meanwhile, this book is really fascinating. I'm not sure, exactly, from which material Natasha picked up the following knowledge, but when we arrived at Lucia's baby shower last Saturday there was no one else there whom we knew. We 'ooh'ed and 'aah'ed over baby Micah, and I asked, "Now, how old is he, exactly?" Lucia said, "Today makes one month." Natasha said, "Oh, well then you need to be very careful because his head is still in pieces."

!!

I spent an unusually large amount of time on the PHONE today!! I'm excited for that not to happen tomorrow so I can get more done. ;)