Ray Bradbury

The library that I work for has an monthly book club and we invited Ray Bradbury to come speak since the April book was Fahrenheit 451. He graciously accepted and we decided to make it a public event instead of just for the book club members. We had over 300 people come and it was a great success. Mr. Bradbury even said that he would love to come back next year and speak again. The icing on the cake was that this morning when I got into work he had left a voice mail for me. He asked me to send him some of the tickets that I designed for the event. He said he loved them and would like to have copies to keep for himself.

A clean room is worth a picture.

Yes, it truly is worth a few pics. I love my daughter DEARLY and would not trade her for the world, but she is a slob. Coming from someone who is compulsive about cleaning/organizing (picture Monica from Friends) it drives me insane that Riley is such a slob. She leaves shoes, toys, books all over the place and has to be reminded constantly to pick up after herself. So I try to look at her room as HER space and let her do what she wants, but once a week she has to clean it so it can be vacuumed and dusted and change her bedding.

However, her equivalent of cleaning is pushing things under the bed, in the closet or into the four corners of the room. So every once in a while I just can't take it anymore and step in. Today was one of those days. I could have used a rake to clear things out from under the bed and the closet doors would no longer close. So after much time spent together we got it looking fairly presentable which required a picture because it won't last long!!!!

Her bookcase is even in some sort of order and since I have worked in a library for the past 15 years it just kills me that she won't keep them in some sort of order. That borders on sacriledge. LOL!

So for now I'm just trying to enjoy that the floor is not a hazard to bare feet, the closet doors can close, the books are in order and even the holes in the wall have been filled. The holes were courtesy of my Mom's dog Maila whose digging was not confined to the outside.

We went on a safari today!

Riley's class went on a safari today. They visited the savannah, the rain forest, the ocean and the desert. The kids all made their own jeeps, well I think some dad's made the jeeps, and they had binoculars made out of empty toilet paper rolls and of course they had to have safari hats.

They all walked from the school to the park next door where the parent volunteers had set up each "region" with stuffed animals that the kids had brought in. I was the customs agent in the savannah stamping the kids passports and telling them "welcome to the savannah". Then the kids got a clipboard and had to check off the animals they saw and whether they were a mammal, bird, insect or reptile, etc.

They had to search the trees for animals lurking above and make sure not to get to close to the ferocious beasts. Riley and Sierra had a close call with a tiger and had to "run for their lives".

After all the fun it was back to the school to watch an animal planet movie at the "drive in" while in their jeeps.

Dyeing easter eggs

We dyed Easter eggs tonight. Erica brought Luke over and he and Riley had a great time. Zachary decided he was "too old" for dyeing Easter eggs and preferred to have a friend over and ignore us completely (really not liking the pre-teen stage). Riley and Luke had lots of fun though and I'm glad we put them in old white t-shirts because it was quite a mess.
Luke preferred to THROW his eggs into the cups and then retrieve the eggs with his hands. We let him do his own thing and ended up with tons of broken multi colored eggs that will probably just end up in the trash, but they had fun. Everybody stayed for dinner and it was not until we were already grilling the hamburgers that I remembered it's Good Friday. So we were very bad Catholics because we ate meat on Good Friday.

We're going to have a new member of the family

Of our EXTENDED family that is. My niece, Erica (Luke's mom) is pregnant again. She is due around Thanksgiving and we are all very excited. Riley can hardly contain herself and has nicknamed the baby jellybelly. Zachary is much more subdued in his excitement, but when Erica came over yesterday he was talking to her tummy which I thought was so sweet. So I keep thinking that before Christmas we will have a new member of the family to love.

Longer school year?

We got a letter in the mail from the school district and they want to extend the school year. The kids would still only attend 180 days, but they would start in early August and end in early June. Right now they start in the end of August and go through mid-June. They want to extend the year and give the kids one week off for Thanksgiving and two weeks off in spring. I'm liking the idea since the kids will have a shorter summer and less time to get bored and also more breaks during the year when they really tend to need them. I guess all of this started because the high school is on semesters and they want the first semester to end at the winter break so they don't have finals right after winter break. So we have to vote this week and wait to see the results.