Terri’s Soapbox
I *do* believe in the coffee fairy!

On Labor Day, we packed up the car and headed north to Niagara Falls, ON.  It was the first time I’ve seen the falls, and they were absolutely gorgeous.

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You cannot use an electric pencil sharpener to access more of the eraser.  It will, in fact, destroy the sharpener when the little metal shards jam things up.

Grrr…

Every now and then, we stumble across a lesson that I either forgot to teach or didn’t realize needed to be taught.  Today’s little lesson?  If you’re going to give your 6 year old his own stapler, you might want to make sure he knows that he doesn’t need to separate the staples before loading the chamber.  Ugh!

Today is our first day back to school for the 2008-2009 school year.

This picture pretty much captures what the day was like.  

This is Dexter.

We are all over the moon for this little guy and can hardly wait to take him creek walking with us.

I’ve temporarily uploaded pictures from our summer here:

Summer 2008

We’re dealing with some hacking issues, so the site may act a little wonky until we figure things out.

I just shooed J and R (a visiting friend) outside because they were annoying P. Previously, I had been watching 2 squirrels running up and down the tree and all around the yard. As I was sending them out, I said, “If you see the squirrels, make sure you leave them alone and don’t go near them.”

J immediately says, “Yeah, especially if they have herpes!”

It took me a minute to realize that he meant RABIES… but I eventually stopped laughing long enough to correct him.

I asked him, “Where did you hear the word ‘herpes’?”

“From a Little House on the Prairie episode,” he says.

Must have been one of those very special episodes, huh? lol Upon further inquiry, I learn that he was remembering the episode where Laura adopts a raccoon and they have a rabies scare.

The best we can figure is that he heard the word herpes from one of the drug ads on TV and mixed it up. At least - I hope that’s what happened!

J brought me flowers for Mother’s Day that he picked out himself. Even better than the flowers was his enthusiasm. He came into my room and announced, “Hey mom, guess what! The flowers that I gave you have flowers whose colors haven’t even seen the Earth yet. They’re baby flowers!”

Yet another reminder why I have the best job in the world.

Happy Mother’s Day, everyone!

Woke up this morning to discover that J had dragged a push pin  through the brand new, $100 bulletin board we mounted in our hallway. It’s the one I wanted since we moved in and waited until I had a  kick-ass coupon and it was on sale…  then had to wait a month  for  my dh to hang it.  Anyway - three grooves going all the way down.   Needless to say, I was angry and he couldn’t tell me why he did it,  so I made him stand there and look at it until he was inspired enough  to come up with a reason.  This is what I got:

“My body is made up of different parts.  One part wanders and does stuff without telling my brain it’s doing stuff.  One part doesn’t wander, but it wants to be bad all the time.  The third part is the  one that wants to be good all the time.  I think the wandering part  and the one that wants to be bad all the time were working together.”

The results are in and P is very excited that he and his partner earned 2 medals at this year’s Elementary Science Olympiad!

1st Place - 4th Grade - Don’t Bug Me

3rd Place - 4th Grade - Interpreting Graphs

 In all, I believe the Tri-State Homeschool team earned 10 medals for the day.  Great job, everyone!