Waiting in Ambush

One of our neighborhood hawks thought he was cleverly hidden near the bird feeders yesterday. After awhile he flew out into the open, but he finally left without any dinner.

 

 

Words of Wisdom

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Difficult Conversations

On Monday, a student at our high school took his own life. We live in a small town with a small school district. It's one of those towns and schools where everyone feels connected in one way or another, either through sports or school parties or the community pool or the locally owned businesses. As you can expect, it has hit the community pretty hard.

The boy lived with both parents who were involved in his life. He played baseball, was in band & choir, had lots of friends, and seemed well liked. It's hard to wrap your mind around why a child who seemed to have so much would decide his life wasn't worth living. From comments by his friends and his dad on FB, it sounds as though this boy had been dealing with depression. His parents thought they were doing enough by talking to him about it, but apparently his depression was deeper than they realized.

I'm sure houses all through our district have had dinner conversations and bedtime talks about suicide the past two days. I know we have at our house, and honestly, I never really thought a lot about having those conversations. At least not at our kids' ages. As a 40 something who is pretty content with life, I take it for granted that my kids know their problems, issues, and concerns aren't going to last forever. Thinking back to jr high and high school, those fleeting days were an eternity at the time and they felt like they would go on forever. And, of course, the world revolved around me and my issues. At least my world did, and that's really the only point of reference I had. It was good for us to have these difficult conversations with our kids.

Right now Tyler and Danielle may not understand how someone could come to a decision to end his life, but there may be a day when they do. I certainly hope not, but if that day comes, I want our words to ring in their ears: No matter how horrible a situation is, it will pass. No matter how horrible of a thing you've done, it will probably be fixable. If it's not, we'll face it together. No matter how alone you feel, you won't always feel that way. No matter how dark the night seems, day will break. You are valuable. You are loved. You have a purpose to fulfill on this earth. If the day comes and you start to feel like death is your only option, tell someone. Talk to someone - us, a friend, a teacher, a grandparent. Someone. Do not suffer alone. If we can't help, we'll find someone who can.

I can't even begin to imagine how this child's parents feel. Honestly, I can't spend much time thinking about it because the sadness is overwhelming. I hope the dinner conversations going on around town bring good to this tragedy and prevent anyone else from going through this.

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Snow Day #6

Bball Highlights

Here are some highlights from Danielle's game Wednesday night. She is black #0.

 

Awards Day

We finished the second grading period last week and are half way through the school year now. Grade cards came out this week, and Danielle's school had their end of the period rewards assembly today. Generally speaking, I hate this award ceremony. I hated it when Tyler was in 5th grade, and I hate it now that Danielle is in 5th grade. I would be ok with one cumulative ceremony at the end of the school year, but every grading period is too much. Also, I can't help but feel badly for those kids who try their hardest, yet their best efforts will never get them more than a C. They are forced to sit and watch their classmates get called forward and rewarded, while they tried just as hard but get nothing. There has to be a better way...but I digress.

Danielle earned a straight As award (again) and an award for getting all outstandings on her conduct scores (again). She also earned a special award today for demonstrating outstanding teamwork in class. Only 5 kids in the entire 5th grade received that award today. Danielle does work very hard, and I'm proud that she earns good grades. What I am most proud of, though, is her character. Her character will take her farther in life than her grades ever will.

Success!

This guy had some success today, but I don't think this is our regular feeder stalker. I didn't see what he caught, but I'm really hoping it was a house sparrow and not one of the downy woodpeckers that's been hanging around lately!

My Teen

Tyler finally had his 13 year old well check visit today. We're behind because our pediatrician always seemed to time her maternity leaves with his well check visits, and we always waited for her to return. 3 babies over the course of several years throws you off quite a bit.

He's past the point of me discussing these visits like I did when he was little, but I wanted to mention today's. If you look at Tyler, you know he's growing up. He grew 5" this past year!! He is now 1/2" shorter than me. His pediatrician says he's on track to be at least 6' tall, which I think is a very nice height for a man.

Puberty has hit, and so far, it suits him well. Other than when he was 2 and just discovering the world around him, this is my favorite age with him so far. He is getting taller, thinning out, shaving, and dealing with the intermittent squeaky voice. I absolutely love his personality and his sense of humor. The way he relates to me is subtlety changing, too. I knew it would change, but I didn't really think about what that would look like as it happened. I'm not sure how to put it into words. It's like he's suddenly more thoughtful and protective of me. For example, at school every morning he hurries to move the heavy milk crates so I don't have to do it. When I got home from the grocery store the other day, I opened the door and heard heavy footsteps stomping up the stairs to greet me. He voluntarily carried all the groceries in for me, then went back to what he was doing. Ron and Danielle didn't even know I was home. It's those little things he does to take care of me that show he is growing up in more ways than one.

A Little Closer

After looking at the eagle picture for a little while, I decided I liked it better cropped a little closer. Here are a couple others, too.

 

 

Observing MLK Day

I really wanted to go to the zoo with the kids today like we did last year, but my tween and teen didn't want to do anything. Although we had nearly 3 weeks off between Christmas break and snow days, they both "needed" a day to stay in their pjs and not do a thing. Not me. I left the kids in their pjs and went to lunch and the park with my mom and brother.

We had very nice time. We saw lots of birds, about a dozen deer, and this big orange ball we recognized as the sun.

 

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(Acrylic scraps from a pen blank)

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Bball Highlights

Danielle's favorite thing to do in her two favorite sports is to steal- bases in softball and balls in basketball. Since I don't have anything else to post tonight, here is a short clip of one of her steals in today's game. It's not a great video, but it's the only steal I caught on tape. She had 4 steals today. (She is white #0.)

A Little Windy?

I took this through the window, so it's a bit grainy. He's holding his foot up in his feathers.


We actually ended up having another snow day today. We have a lot of rural roads in our district and we had a little more snow fall overnight. The snow with the wind caused some drifting and impassable roads this morning. The temps were supposed to fall all day until they were back down in the -20s, so I guess they just cancelled rather than delaying. Better safe than sorry. I'm good with it.

As of today, we are half way through the school year. Hooray!

Snow Day #3

We had school on Wednesday but were off again today. I could get used to this schedule - go a day, off a day, go a day, off a day, go a day, off 2 days!

We were closed today because the temps with the wind chill were dangerously low. Brrr!

It was dangerous for pets to be out, too. Clara's biggest problem is with her feet. She starts lifting them up like they hurt and finally she just lays down...which is not good either. After this problem last year I wanted to buy her some booties, but Ron made fun of me, so I waited. Today, though, she couldn't even stay outside long enough to do her business. So, I improvised. Ron thinks I'm nuts, but it made a huge difference! One of my coworkers has some dog booties for a dog she no longer has, so she's going to let me borrow those. Clara will be the envy of the 'hood.

Tyler's old socks and some of Danielle's ribbons

It was cold for all the outside critters today. We had to dispose of a poor mourning dove that froze to death. It looked like it cuddled up next to the house for a little warmth and just fell asleep.

There was a lot of bird activity at the feeders.

This window mounted feeder was a Christmas gift from my cousin.

Northern cardinal

Dark-eyed junco enjoying one of my Christmas gifts from the kids.

Carolina wren

Song sparrow

 

House finches checking out my gopro.

This guy almost lost his life. He was busy eating and almost didn't see this next guy swoop in with his talons out.

He missed, though.

Sadly it looks like there'll be school tomorrow, so I better get to bed!

Snow Day #2

We enjoyed our second snow day of the school year today. I think we ended up with about 3". Danielle was disappointed we didn't get more, but apparently it was enough.

I tried to set my gopro out to take time lapse photos last night, but I only have one battery and it just doesn't last long enough. I put it out when I went to bed but things were just getting started. It's too bad it couldn't make it all night, because it was buried under snow this morning. Short and sweet:

Ron was getting ready to go out to shovel but Tyler offered to do it for him. He didn't even seem to have an ulterior motive!

Danielle enjoyed playing in the snow with her best friend and her sister. I am so thankful God brought us to this neighborhood and this specific lot so many years ago. Our neighbors have become good friends. I'm so thankful for them and for the relationship our girls have.

The bird feeders were busy today. My favorites today were a pair of Caroline wrens that visited several times.

Did You Know...

... that Worcestershire sauce has anchovies in it?!

It Pays to Be Clean

The kids both got bars of "money soap" in their stockings. The little envelope has a $1, $10, $20, or $50 bill in it. This one is Tyler's. At least his fingernails will be clean.

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New Year, New Look

At Tyler's annual eye exam a couple weeks ago, we realized that Tyler wasn't kidding about his eyesight changing. His prescription totally flip-flopped from a year ago. Instead of just wearing glasses to read, he now needs to wear glasses for most everything except reading. A couple years ago he went from needing glasses to read, to not needing them at all, to needing them to read again. If it looks like he will need these for quite awhile, we'll probably look into contacts at some point. For now, he was content to pick out a new pair of glasses. We picked them up today.

 

Words of Wisdom