I am a big believer in education. Going to school is not my favorite - it disrupts life too much - but I do see it as essential so we live with it. I also believe that a parents involvement in education is paramount. So I try to be involved and supportive of all the programs the school thinks up to educate my children. Some things I whole heartedly agree with, others, well not so much. Mini society falls into both categories.
So ever since kindergarten Taylor has been excited to be in the 5th grade so he can do Mini society. I've been looking forward to it too - kind of- part of me has also been dreading it. It's the lazy, tight wad part of me that's not so excited. But I guess the excited part of me has prevailed because I now have a freezer full of 6 of those big buckets of ice cream, 20 liters of rootbeer as well as chocolate syrup, sprinkles, cookie crumbs and enough cups and spoons to feed an army. Hopefully that is what we will do, that is if Taylor's business model proves to be successful.
So now mini society is over - so I though I would report. It was a success. Taylor did really well. He sold ice cream sundaes, rootbeer floats, candy, and paper mache. He also hauled over our air hockey and Foosball table and sold time on that. He sold quite a lot and had a blast doing it. I think he did learn a bit about business and finance although I don't think he got the concept of watching his overhead. My guess is things would be a bit different if it wasn't mom's money he was spending. The neighboring stores would have suffered too since they ran out of cups and spoons pretty early on. Being the kind soul that he is Taylor gave them some. Once again it is easy to be kind and giving when it's moms money. I on the other hand tend to think a bit more like a hard businessman - if they didn't come prepared and spend enough of their mom's money on cups and spoons too bad for them - nothing personal, it's just business.
Mini Society is a lot of fun and a great learning experience - it is kind of messed up that you spend real money to buy supplies that you sell for fake "minibucks". But I guess what I was really buying was a smarter son - and in that case I got a great deal.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Hershey track meet
Once again the 4th and 5th graders in the area met at the high school to run, jump and throw. Rachel, Ryan and I went to watch first Dallin and then a few days later, Taylor. Both boys did great - winning their heat and doing really well overall. Taylor once again got first in the long jump. He jumped 81 inches - down from his 84 inch personal best. I was a bit disappointed he didn't try a little harder. He played with his friends at the meet, when it got to be his turn he went over stood on the line and jumped then went back to his playing. No stretching, no practicing, no stressing over it - nothing- he just seemed to not even care. But he got first so I guess that is ok.
Well we found out the next meet is while we were going to be gone to New Mexico. I asked Taylor how he felt about not going to the meet. He said I don't really care about going to the meet - but I do really want to go to Nationals and I want even have a chance if I don't go to the meet. I decided to check out last years results at the National Hershey meet to see if they were a lot better than him. Turns out he would have placed 10th in the nation with his best jump. That's not too bad I thought - (although I think lots of kids don't go to the national meet because it is so far away- so there is not so much competition) so I decided to let him take the chance and just see how far he can go. I am not really expecting him to go to PA - but I am hoping he can get to state.
It is exciting to see my kids grow and develop talents and skills. It kinda bugs me that I can no longer beat them in a race. As toddlers I would race them and I would let them win. The older they got the harder I tried but I still would hold back to let them finish first. Well a few years ago I decided they were old enough to lose so I did my best and beat them - problem is I didn't start doing this soon enough because it didn't take to long before I was doing my best and still losing. I keep trying to get Taylor to run a 1/2 marathon with me - I am hoping that even though he is faster his body isn't strong enough to do 13 miles and I can pass him up and win. He won't do it - I think he knows he would lose and now he knows he can beat me fair and square in a race he doesn't want to give that up. I know how that feels - luckily I still have Rachel to race.
Well we found out the next meet is while we were going to be gone to New Mexico. I asked Taylor how he felt about not going to the meet. He said I don't really care about going to the meet - but I do really want to go to Nationals and I want even have a chance if I don't go to the meet. I decided to check out last years results at the National Hershey meet to see if they were a lot better than him. Turns out he would have placed 10th in the nation with his best jump. That's not too bad I thought - (although I think lots of kids don't go to the national meet because it is so far away- so there is not so much competition) so I decided to let him take the chance and just see how far he can go. I am not really expecting him to go to PA - but I am hoping he can get to state.
It is exciting to see my kids grow and develop talents and skills. It kinda bugs me that I can no longer beat them in a race. As toddlers I would race them and I would let them win. The older they got the harder I tried but I still would hold back to let them finish first. Well a few years ago I decided they were old enough to lose so I did my best and beat them - problem is I didn't start doing this soon enough because it didn't take to long before I was doing my best and still losing. I keep trying to get Taylor to run a 1/2 marathon with me - I am hoping that even though he is faster his body isn't strong enough to do 13 miles and I can pass him up and win. He won't do it - I think he knows he would lose and now he knows he can beat me fair and square in a race he doesn't want to give that up. I know how that feels - luckily I still have Rachel to race.
President Monson?
No this isn't Thomas S. Monson - but it kind of looks like it, doesn't it? Dallin was President Monson in the 4th grade wax museum. It is an activity where the kids choose someone famous who came from Utah, a Utah hero. They do research on the life and contributions of their hero and write a little paper, make a poster, design a brochure and prepare a short monologue. And then the parents are invited to the wax museum. Each student comes to school dressed as their Utah hero and pretends they are a wax sculptor of that person. They have a little "button" near them that if you push the "sculpture" comes alive and gives you their monologue. You can also pick up a brochure and read all about the hero. It was a very interesting assignment that Dallin loved. He wanted a suit so he could look like President Monson. I just didn't really want to go and buy one for this one event but he persisted until I compromised and took him to DI. We found one that looked pretty nice, he slicked back his hair and he became President Monson. After the wax museum the 4th graders sang some songs and then showed us the square dances they have been learning. Each student then came and ask someone to dance with them. Luckily Rachel came with me and got to be Dallin's dancing partner. She loved it at first and then when they started stitching partners around and a strange man grabbed her arm to swing her around and promenade her she got a bit nervous- but she made it through the dance. Dallin did a great job dancing with her and being Thomas S. Monson.
The half
On June 12th Rick will be running the Utah Valley marathon. In preperation he has been hitting the pavement most mornings running between 5 and 20 miles. He has been killing himself running up hills that feel more like moutains and pushing harder and harder to beat the clock. He has done amazingly well. Well he decided to do a little practice race and run the Thanksgiving point 1/2 marathon. The kids and I went up there to watch him come in. He did great he came strong beating his goal time by several minutes. It was exciting to watch him and be there with the excitment of the crowd cheering on their runners.
They gave each runner and their family a day pass to Thansgiving point so even though I am sure Rick would have rather crawled in his bed we spent the rest of the day digging for dinosaur bones, riding ponies and strolling through tulip gardens. It was a really nice day. Thanksgiving point is a beautiful place with tons of things to do and see.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Page 1239 of Obama's heathcare bill
Apparently page 1239 of the new Obama healthcare bill promises some relief for breastfeeding women of America, at least the ones who work for a company with more than 50 employees. I just read an article on CNN about this. The link said "Breastfeeding page 1239 of health law" and showed a picture of a cute little baby. My first thought as I clicked on the link was oh good maybe the health care law has at least one good thing in it. I think breastfeeding in important and like the article said it does tend to be somewhat looked down on in our society. Well the article was all about how it is to hard and embarrassing for working mothers who want to breastfeed to pump milk at work so the companies with more than 50 employees must now provide a private place for them to pump. Nothing wrong with private places to pump - I definitely wouldn't want to sit on the toilet in a bathroom stall and do it. But I thought about this issue a lot and here is what I came up with.
Society and now the government are pushing companies to be more "family friendly". We hear that term a lot, "family friendly", one would think that would mean good for families. It would seem logical to me that a family friendly policy would make it easier to be a good parent and a good spouse. But I have to disagree, many, not all but many, "family friendly" policies, including this one, don't make it easier to to be a good parent it makes it easier for parents to be employees not parents. This whole family friendly issue really creates a big dilemma in my moral thinking. On one hand policies such as this breastfeeding one, paid maternity leave , flexible time off, or on-site day care seem great. Like I said I am a big fan of breastfeeding, I am also a big fan of having children and also of being an involved parent. But these policies also tend to make it easier for parents to spend more and more hours away from their children and to feel less and less guilty about it. And that is not the way that families are strengthened.
A conference talk I listened to came to mind while reading this. It said that Satan doesn't usually interrupt our church services he interrupts our families. I think these type of policies are one way Satan is doing this. It helps mothers be employees, not mothers - it helps mothers not be moms. A baby young enough to be breastfeed needs to cradled in its mothers arms while eating -not given a bottle by some paid day care provider, even if the bottle does contain breast milk pumped in private room at office. Now I know that the ideal of every child having a stay at home mom isn't realistic. There are many families where this just isn't a possibility. But I think in the name of "family friendly" Satan is making it easier for families to destroy themselves.
Society and now the government are pushing companies to be more "family friendly". We hear that term a lot, "family friendly", one would think that would mean good for families. It would seem logical to me that a family friendly policy would make it easier to be a good parent and a good spouse. But I have to disagree, many, not all but many, "family friendly" policies, including this one, don't make it easier to to be a good parent it makes it easier for parents to be employees not parents. This whole family friendly issue really creates a big dilemma in my moral thinking. On one hand policies such as this breastfeeding one, paid maternity leave , flexible time off, or on-site day care seem great. Like I said I am a big fan of breastfeeding, I am also a big fan of having children and also of being an involved parent. But these policies also tend to make it easier for parents to spend more and more hours away from their children and to feel less and less guilty about it. And that is not the way that families are strengthened.
A conference talk I listened to came to mind while reading this. It said that Satan doesn't usually interrupt our church services he interrupts our families. I think these type of policies are one way Satan is doing this. It helps mothers be employees, not mothers - it helps mothers not be moms. A baby young enough to be breastfeed needs to cradled in its mothers arms while eating -not given a bottle by some paid day care provider, even if the bottle does contain breast milk pumped in private room at office. Now I know that the ideal of every child having a stay at home mom isn't realistic. There are many families where this just isn't a possibility. But I think in the name of "family friendly" Satan is making it easier for families to destroy themselves.
Monday, April 5, 2010
The Kindy 500
One thing I really hate is assignments for Mom's. I went to kindergarten, I even graduated, I still remember the day, I wore a blue dress with little strawberry looking things on it. So I just don't know why I have to be given an assignment by Ryan's Kindergarten teacher. For the life of me I can't figure that one out (she doesn't have any kids - I think this is a pretty important fact in the solving the puzzle.) She told us in January that we needed to start making a car out of a card board box. The directions suggested we let our 5 year old do as much of it as possible with a little help from us. The thing is they showed the movie from last years kindy 500 - I am no fool I know those cars were not made by 5 year olds. My 5 year old has a hard time drawing a recognizable car with a crayon let alone take a toilet paper box and transform it into a jeep he can ride in.
In January I showed Rick the assignment and suggested this would be a great Father son activity. He whole heartily agreed and planned to get right on it. Well he was still planning to get right on it when last Monday came around- so with 4 days left before it was due a little mother son time was in order. Rick had helped Ryan pick out what kind of vehicle to make, a jeep, so we at least had an idea to work with. We searched the Internet for images we could use for a design and then started construction. The first thing we had to do was cut the box. I had Ryan bring me a knife, he successfully carried it into the living room without cutting anything. That success didn't last long. So for the sake of all of our fingers and the carpet I made a rule I was the only one who could cut. He tried holding things for me and he fetched and carried but that wasn't his favorite job and I can sympathize since that is Rick's idea of a suitable job for me when we work on a project together - and it drives me crazy. So I sent him off to play and cut and folded card board for the next several hours till I ran out of ideas, and duct tape so I had to call it quits. I had managed to fashion a somewhat recognizable jeep. The jeep needed tires and a paint job so I took Ryan to the home depot and let him pick out some spray paint. He did a good job with that part. Next we stopped at DI and got some records to use as wheels. That right there was the most educational part of the assignment for Ryan - he now knows what came before tapes and cd's.
Later that night after getting the rest of the kids to bed I took Ryan out to teach him how to spray paint, but after realizing he wasn't so good at pointing the spray nozzle in the general direction of the jeep I gave up. By this point it was pretty late, my bed was calling me and my patience was long spent so I just did it myself.
Next came the tires. We thought the tires needed to be a little thicker than a record so we searched for something that we could attach to the record that would help it stand out a little and kind of look like a tire. We hit upon the idea of Styrofoam but had a hard time finding some. At walmart I spotted some pool noodles. Pool noodles could be bent into a circle and painted black, the texture was even similar to the tread of a tire. Perfect I thought. Well pool noodles are kind of hard to attach to anything - even themselves. They don't sew well, even liquid nail is no match for them, finally a combination of duct tape and hot glue seemed to do the trick.
Well a few more coats of paint and a few lights later the jeep was ready to go. Which was a good thing because it was due the next morning. I had Ryan try it on and take a few pictures which went great. He looked good and so did the jeep, a few minutes later it was time to load the jeep into the car and head over to the school. The tires, all four of them, immediately fell off. Apparently hot glue does not hold pool noodles together as well as I had thought. Well with only a few minutes to go I decided I better screw them in. I got some big screws and shoved them through the tire and into the cardboard box. This worked well - only problem was that it left 4 very long, very exposed, and very sharp screws inside the box where my son would be standing. That made me a little nervous but it was late enough the only thing I could do was pray we wouldn't need to make an emergency trip to the ER for some stitches before the day was out. All went well. The program was cute, Ryan loved his jeep, the wheels were still attached when I picked him up after school and most importantly no flesh had been cut. So all in all it was a success, and when Ryan gets his kindergarten diploma in a few weeks I will know a little piece of it is mine.
In January I showed Rick the assignment and suggested this would be a great Father son activity. He whole heartily agreed and planned to get right on it. Well he was still planning to get right on it when last Monday came around- so with 4 days left before it was due a little mother son time was in order. Rick had helped Ryan pick out what kind of vehicle to make, a jeep, so we at least had an idea to work with. We searched the Internet for images we could use for a design and then started construction. The first thing we had to do was cut the box. I had Ryan bring me a knife, he successfully carried it into the living room without cutting anything. That success didn't last long. So for the sake of all of our fingers and the carpet I made a rule I was the only one who could cut. He tried holding things for me and he fetched and carried but that wasn't his favorite job and I can sympathize since that is Rick's idea of a suitable job for me when we work on a project together - and it drives me crazy. So I sent him off to play and cut and folded card board for the next several hours till I ran out of ideas, and duct tape so I had to call it quits. I had managed to fashion a somewhat recognizable jeep. The jeep needed tires and a paint job so I took Ryan to the home depot and let him pick out some spray paint. He did a good job with that part. Next we stopped at DI and got some records to use as wheels. That right there was the most educational part of the assignment for Ryan - he now knows what came before tapes and cd's.
Later that night after getting the rest of the kids to bed I took Ryan out to teach him how to spray paint, but after realizing he wasn't so good at pointing the spray nozzle in the general direction of the jeep I gave up. By this point it was pretty late, my bed was calling me and my patience was long spent so I just did it myself.
Next came the tires. We thought the tires needed to be a little thicker than a record so we searched for something that we could attach to the record that would help it stand out a little and kind of look like a tire. We hit upon the idea of Styrofoam but had a hard time finding some. At walmart I spotted some pool noodles. Pool noodles could be bent into a circle and painted black, the texture was even similar to the tread of a tire. Perfect I thought. Well pool noodles are kind of hard to attach to anything - even themselves. They don't sew well, even liquid nail is no match for them, finally a combination of duct tape and hot glue seemed to do the trick.
Well a few more coats of paint and a few lights later the jeep was ready to go. Which was a good thing because it was due the next morning. I had Ryan try it on and take a few pictures which went great. He looked good and so did the jeep, a few minutes later it was time to load the jeep into the car and head over to the school. The tires, all four of them, immediately fell off. Apparently hot glue does not hold pool noodles together as well as I had thought. Well with only a few minutes to go I decided I better screw them in. I got some big screws and shoved them through the tire and into the cardboard box. This worked well - only problem was that it left 4 very long, very exposed, and very sharp screws inside the box where my son would be standing. That made me a little nervous but it was late enough the only thing I could do was pray we wouldn't need to make an emergency trip to the ER for some stitches before the day was out. All went well. The program was cute, Ryan loved his jeep, the wheels were still attached when I picked him up after school and most importantly no flesh had been cut. So all in all it was a success, and when Ryan gets his kindergarten diploma in a few weeks I will know a little piece of it is mine.
A professional scientist?
As you may recall, if you read my blog, that Taylor decided to find out which kind of soda would rot your teeth the fastest. His science fair project did well and he won at his school level, moved on to the district level where he did well enough to advance to the next level. It was held at BYU. Once again it wasn't the most convenient event to take him to - it was held over 2 days and we of course had several scheduling conflicts but we made it happen. Taylor was so excited to go and there was no talking him out of this fair - because of two things. He got to skip school and they served lunch. His standard response when asked if he wants to go to something is, "Do they have refreshments" The answer to that question always determines if he wants to go. , In fact I was praying for a new revelation during conference last weekend - I was hoping they would start serving refreshments at church. Many Churches do it, we could serve hot chocolate and danishes in the cultural hall after primary - I bet attendance would go up. I know that Sunday would surely rise from 7th to somewhere near the top on our kids list of favorite days of the week.
Well Taylor went to the fair - ate a bunch of pizza and snacks and walked away with 3rd place in his division. There were several 3rd place winners but out of 1000's of projects it was a great accomplishment. 3rd place also wins 20 dollars, so he has now been paid for his scientific mind- does that make him a professional scientist- I am not sure, but it sure made for a real celebration at the Carter house.
Well Taylor went to the fair - ate a bunch of pizza and snacks and walked away with 3rd place in his division. There were several 3rd place winners but out of 1000's of projects it was a great accomplishment. 3rd place also wins 20 dollars, so he has now been paid for his scientific mind- does that make him a professional scientist- I am not sure, but it sure made for a real celebration at the Carter house.
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