Two Things ?

Yesterday evening was Back To School night at the elementary school my middle children attend.  My wife and I were able to visit all of the teachers of our kids together (in previous years we had to split time because we had too many students at the school).  This was very nice, if not a little overwhelming for some of the teachers, who are used to just seeing one of the parents per child.  Two of the teachers had previously taught another one of our kids, so it was fun to update them on the older children's progress in their new school or grade.

My favorite experience was looking at the art outside my second daughter Savannah's classroom.  The children decorated an outline of a body with a variety of things that describe them: favorite word, favorite food, and my favorite - Two Things I Am Good At.

Invariably there were things like singing or playing an instrument, and other activities like sports or video games (one boy filled in every answer on his person as something related to XBox ... I am certain his parents are beaming with pride).

But I could NOT stop laughing when I saw the picture below ...


And ... ?
 

Clearly, the concept of counting to TWO is not in this child's version of "Math."  Or perhaps their second thing is "not completing assignments."


Song Of The Day:
The Plain White T's did a popular song a few years ago that might be of great use to this child.  It is titled simply "1, 2, 3, 4" and hopefully this student recognizes the pattern in those numbers ... eventually.
This song was also chosen as a shout out to my awesome wife whose birthday is today.  Happy Birthday Karen!  I hope you enjoyed our day together.  I know I did!  :)

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Where Does The Time Go ?

It's basically August now.

 

In 2013 ... which means it's almost 2014.

 

School starts tomorrow for 4 of my kids.

 

Next year I will have a child in high school!

 

Summer is over, for all intents and purposes.

Today at work my "empty agenda" quickly filled up with meetings and conversations and assorted busy work.  All of a sudden I looked up and it was 3:30pm.  The day was nearly over.

My landscaping project(s) at home are fast approaching their overall deadlines.

In so many different areas, I feel time just slipping away at a breakneck pace.  I am not sure why this is.  My time is being replaced with memories and experiences, but it just seems to move so fast.


Song Of The Day:
Nothing else like music takes me back to a time when minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months didn't disappear as swiftly.  One of my classic favorite time has gone so quickly songs is "Endless Summer Nights" by Richard Marx.  I am grateful for the memories I have collected in exchange for my minutes and hours, but I do sometimes find myself pining for long, lazy nights.

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Why Are They No. 2 Pencils ?

In a home with 7 children (5 of whom return to school this week) there is a constant need for an industrial strength electric pencil sharpener.  We have already been through two other models, but our current sharpener has withstood about a year and a half of aggressive use.  I am thankful for this because today was "Back To School Pencil Sharpening Day" in the Case Place.

As I sat there, sharpening what had to be more than a hundred pencils, my mind began a chain of thought that eventually led me to do research on a subject I never really cared about.  I don't hate that, but I sometimes wish my need to know the answer to certain questions wasn't so strong.

If you care, you can read Wikipedia or use a search engine like Google to learn more than you ever wanted to know about pencils, lead, numbering, shading, hardness, darkness, and so on.  For my purposes, it only took me about 30 seconds to find the answer to the title question of this blog post.

But then I read on for nearly 30 minutes about all sorts of other information I became interested in as a result of links and commentary and questions in the initial sites I viewed online.  I will almost certainly never use this information again, but now I know and ...

Song Of The Day:
When life puts me in situations where I just have to find the answer to some silly question, I feel "Taken In" or perhaps sucked into learning is a more appropriate phrase.  But Mike & The Mechanics didn't have a popular song about getting sucked in so this will have to do!

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