Wednesday, December 31, 2008




You Remember 60% of 2008



Okay, you were somewhat paying attention during 2008.

But you're not going to impress anyone with your knowledge of what went down.



You know the basics about what went down, but little else...

Let's just say you won't be writing the history book for 2008.

Keep praying for Coleman!

After a trip to the Children's hospital in Des Moines, they are home, in hospice care, but also according to his mom:

Coleman is on a new oral chemo, because…. Well… “Team War-sin NEV-VA divs up.”
We aren’t finished yet…

So please keep praying!

2008 A year in review

In no particular order.....

Wordless Wednesday

From Our life as an Air Force Family


Imitating Z... and Z's brother and cousin who we sat with at the football games, ok so not so wordless this week.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

Click on the picture to see what it generated for my blog! :)

Please keep this going.

All you are asked to do is keep this circulating.
Dear God, I pray for the cure of cancer.
Amen
All you are asked to do is keep this circulating even if it's to one more person. In memory of anyone you know that has been struck down by cancer or is still living with it.

Monday, December 29, 2008

Finding a religious place in my life

Has not always been an easy thing for me to do.



Growing up, I was the good little Catholic kid. I went to church every Sunday, and CDC classes every week during the school year.



Then I got pregnant with Kelsey, and had the priest at our church chastise me for setting a bad example for the younger girls.



And 2 years later, had him give me grief about marrying Jerry.



After we got married and moved away from my parents, I stopped going to church. I can count on two hands the number of times I have been to mass, since my wedding day. Which is sad when I think back to the way I once was.



With the kids we have always told them that if they wanted to attend services with their friends we would allow them to go. And rarely have we backed down from that promise. I can think of a couple of times in the last few months, mostly because of gas prices and the churches that they wanted to attend are on the other side of Macon (where friends from school attend).

Then the Saturday before Christmas the girls and I were out getting all of the last minute shopping done, when we drove by the Catholic church here by the house. I slowed down to see the times for Christmas Eve services, and Kelsey asked if we could attend service the next morning.

The next morning I woke Kelsey up about 80 minutes before the last service and told her that she had about an hour to get ready. Then she and I went to mass.

Its amazing how fast everything came back. The songs, the prayers and just how to be in mass.

I am going to make a concentrated effort to start attending services every Sunday, even if I go by myself. I want to get more involved and to bring myself back to the church community.

Hoping to find that religous place in my life. Because I know that I need the peace and serenity that going to church provides me with.

Christmas Pictures

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Geometry math lessons

We started the Geometry unit in Math right before break. Monday we didn't have our really cool manipulatives that were bought for us, so we did the lesson from the book.


Which worked, but I am afraid that they will forget it all by the 6th when they come back to school.



Tuesday we had the manipulatives, so we did the geometry snowflakes.


We started with this:

From Our life as an Air Force Family



And ended up with this:

From Our life as an Air Force Family
(different students)




Wednesday we did the symetrical snowflakes. You start with this:and you end up with this:
Thursday, we missed recess before lunch, due to cleaning up from our art projects. I really was dreading having to keep them cooped up inside, when the weather was once again beautiful outside.
Then I remembered a suggestion that was made in one of our math conferences. Use the math around you to see what they can tell you about the shapes and angles that are in their every day lives. So we went outside for 30 minutes. (15 for the assignment, 15 for play for most of them, there were a few that it took all 30 minutes to find what they needed).
Their assignment was to take their writing notebooks and write down at least 20 objects that they found in nature, and what shapes and angles they were.

Here is a small sample of what they found.


Radio transmitter, sphere. Dandilions/circles, leaves/diamonds


Rock, parallelogram







clouds, triangles






light pole/cylinder, basketball backboards/squares, basketball hoops/circles





bell on the building/circle










bricks/rectangles









light/square, building/cube










scoreboard/rectangle, fence panels/rectangles, trees/cylinders/triangles
All in all, it was a great lesson. The weather was perfect (mid 70's) and they had a great time. It worked out great to show them that we use geometry every day, in everything that we touch. We just may not know that it is geometry.

Friday, December 26, 2008

How did you spend Christmas Eve?

We spent about an hour of ours ice skating! :) By the third time around DJ was willing to let go of the wall and hold on to me, but of course he was also done after that time.
Natalie got into reading her book after about 45 minutes, and two times falling down.

Kelsey was helpful with Mr. H's daughter.








We met Kelsey's math teacher and his children at the rink for a play date, and I think we all had a good time.








Sky watch Friday 17

From Our life as an Air Force Family

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Has he grown much?

2004 2005

2008


I wish I would have thought to do this every year! I am only missing 2006, and 2007 with the stocking.