January 27, 2014

Dinner.  Tonight we had spaghetti and homemade sauce.  I make pretty good sauce, and I make a bunch and freeze it.  The noodles, however, have always been store bought.  And they can be undercooked (usually) or overcooked (not so often, I'm usually in a hurry to eat).

So tonight we had homemade noodles.  (Thank you James and Solitare for Clyde's Christmas present.)

I took one look at what he was doing, and thought "this is a mess....Store bought have to be easier".

But then, he cooked them, AND cleaned up the mess.  So pretty good!

 

Now, I suppose he's going to make lasagna noodles, and I'll have to make more sauce since that was the last container.

January 26, 2014

OK, next grandchild.

No more grumbling about school discipline.  Maybe someday I will write about my thoughts about homeschooling.  Thank goodness I don't have any kids still in school!

So Friday night, I took Gabe home and picked up Miss Molly.  She wanted to come out.  I thought there would still be snow on the skate park, so we didn't bring the skateboard.  That was a big fail, there's no snow on the skatepark.!

Instead, we fed the ducks.  And there were a lot of ducks.  Molly had to wade thru them and drop the cracked corn in little piles.  The ducks were pretty aggressive about the food!.

As you can see, they came right up to her.  The big one in this picture tried to take the bag away from her.

After the ducks, and hot chocolate we went home and painted.  Then on the way to taking Molly home, we stopped at Wendy's for lunch.

Grandpa brought his Kindle.  I have to say that since he got that thing, he isn't very good company.  He's always reading now.  But it sure is a lot quieter around the house too.

Miss Molly.  Her shirt says "if mom says no, ask dad".  That's pretty much how it goes at that house.  Molly has had her dad wrapped around her little finger since she was a day old!

And me.  Molly took the picture.

January 24, 2014

Babysitting, schooling, teaching...

Yesterday and today, I have Gabe.  He's not in school, because he's suspended.  He is not being rewarded with time with Grandpa and Grandma because he has school work to do.  Only, the teachers that were supposed to email the assignments to Bekka took them to the office instead.  So she had to go and pick them up yesterday afternoon, while we floundered around with the History day project.

Just trying to understand the project, and getting information from the kid who was obviously not paying attention (or maybe we weren't asking the right questions in a form that he could understand) was a reach.

Well, digging thru his binder, and with the information that Bekka got from his teacher and typed into email for me, we are off and running.  We have a stack of pages from the web on the topic that are printed out so he can read them and take notes  (another foreign concept that I had to explain to him).

We are on our fourth 45-minute session today of note taking.  We set the timer, he reads and takes notes, and when the timer goes off we get a break.  Breaks consist of being a boy and going outside and playing fetch with Rosie.

If I had to compare Gabe's personality to a dog breed, I would have to say that he is a Lab like Rosie.  He is intelligent, but sit still and concentrate isn't built into his personality.  This kid will be sitting quietly, and all of a sudden he's making noises, shifting around, getting up, perusing the refrigerator with the doors open, looking for a snack.

Like Rosie, he can sit for a treat, but his attention span is limited.

I've already raised one kid like this, and he was 13 before he could sit all day in class.  Gabe has a couple of years to go yet.

And I don't understand why the school system thinks that suspending kids is going to help them make better choices.  Sometimes the suspension is just a reward to the kid for misbehaving.  Just ask Molly who thinks it's unfair that Gabe is spending Thursday and Friday with me.

January 12, 2014 Ducks and skateboards

They look cold and hungry, don't they.

The day dawned bright and clear.  A little cold, but not too bad.  Besides, the sun was shining and the sky was a beautiful blue.  By the time  we had breakfast, and fed all the animals it was about 10:30.  Still bright and sunny.

We headed out to feed the ducks and go to the skateboard park in Monument, a mere fifteen miles to the west.  By the time we got there, the mountains had disappeared behind a wall of clouds, and it had started snowing.  Also, the wind started up, right from the north pole, and it was getting cold. 

Molly and Grandpa got out to feed the ducks.

Gabe got out too.  He got right back into the truck.  Way too cold!

So on to the skateboard park.  We've had to wait since Christmas, because it's been covered with snow.  Now most of it is gone.

Gabe sorta on his skateboard.

Molly on her skateboard.

The white dots are snowflakes.  We went over to Serrano's and got hot chocolate.