This and That

We've been busy trying to get acclimated to school routines and have had little time for much else this past week. Danielle is struggling to get used to all day/every day school plus cheerleading practice 2 nights a week. She is a kid who still needs 11 or 12 hours of sleep to feel fully rested, and she's just not getting it. That makes for a very grumpy...and mouthy...7 year old! Tyler seems to be doing just fine. His biggest complaint is not being allowed to stay up and read in bed. (But I know he still does.)

I am in charge of volunteers for the lunch room this year. Since volunteer forms aren't due back until this Friday, I've been trying to help out a lot. If it wasn't so terribly hot in there, it would be kind of fun. I enjoy seeing Tyler & Danielle, and it's fun to listen to the kids talk. Today someone almost caught the microwave on fire. A girl microwaved her bagel...for 2 minutes. We were just seconds away from flames. It was kind of exciting. :) The other day Tyler's class was done eating lunch and wanted to go outside for recess. Their teacher had stepped out for a minute before dismissing them. One boy was impatient and, wanting me to dismiss them, asked me, "Um, are you allowed to, you know, boss us around and stuff?" I got a kick out of that. Today I overhead a couple 2nd graders talking about how disgusting boogers are but sometimes you just have to get in there and dig them out. I suppose they're right.

Other random things:

We saw the International Space Station when it was visible last Friday. It was very bright and moved very fast. Ron swears he could see the solar arrays with my high-powered binoculars. I read online that that is possible, so we had to believe him. Although the kids only saw a bright light, they thought it was pretty cool. (We showed them online pictures of what it really looks like.)

I managed to finally get a couple pictures of our hummingbirds. One picture is a little blurry, but I thought it was cool because you can see his tongue. (He doesn't have a red throat because he is a juvenile. He has a red dot.) The first 2 pictures are of the male. The last picture is a female.

We have 10 chrysalises on 2 plants. (There are 6 in this picture.) Unfortunately they will probably all eclose while we are out of town this weekend. We moved them all back outside once they made their chrysalises, so they will probably be long gone by the time we get back.

The butterfly is a pearl crescent.