Kristal's 40th Redneck Ho-down

The weekend was a blast for sure. It was a bit cold at night so I'm glad the kids were able to stay in the terd with g'ma. The first night we froze and shivered half the night and were a bit tired the next day. The second night we ran into town and got a couple more sleeping bags to keep us warm and that did the trick. I cant wait to go back and explore more trails and when its muddy not dry.

Thank you mom for taking care of us all again with great food and for caring for the kids when we went on the adult rides. It was fun having the creek right there for them to go play in and goof around in.

Kort and Austin had a blast. Austin put hundreds of miles on that quad this weekend just riding around camp. He would spend 15 minutes cruising around then took a little break for a few minutes. Then off to put the helmet back on and go some more. I'm glad that he was able to ride it that much. G'ma is going to hook him up with some riding gear for better protection for his birthday so that will be a good thing. Kortne was a little scared to ride by herself on the little one but she wanted to ride an adult around on the big one all weekend. At first she was really tentative but before I knew it she was going everywhere with the gang. Even down hills which was big scary for her. I'm proud of her.

I guess it's true that Janet isn't afraid of dirt. The one of these pictures clearly shows plenty of it all over her face.

It was a blast and I cant wait for our next redneck ho-down.

Microblogging for geeks....

So I'm not into social networking, like Myspace and facebook but i'm kind of having fun with twitter. I've heard Twitter described as a micro blog for geeks. Actually it started out for geeks but people like Obama and others are using it now. Basically how it works is once you have an account you go find people that are interesting and follow them. It adds you to their follow list and adds them to your your following list. From my phone or the desktop computer I can pop in and take a peek at what the people are doing. Throughout the day people post little notes about what they are doing or tidbits of information that others may find interesting. You're limited to a couple sentences. For instance Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, is someone I follow and he twittered about the new startup company Good Guide where they analyze home products and rates them. They look at many factors all relating to health and environment. Its rather interesting and I encourage you to take a look.

If you get an account and want to add me my tag is kjchipmunk of course. There are a couple people following me and I couldn't tell you who they are. No clue. Probably some 42 year old unbathed immature pimple face geeks still living with their mothers. You can also see who I'm following. Yes, they are all technology related people.

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We have an answer, 2nd grade it is.....

We'll this whole summer we have not known which grade Austin was going to be placed in. Going back to Last November we started talking to his school about putting him directly into 1st grade when we moved and they couldn't because they didn't have enough information that supported the move. They were suppose to be monitoring him to re-evaluate him for skipping 1st grade and going right to 2nd grade, and it turns out they weren't. At the end of the year his teacher agreed with us recommended he skip a grade which apparently caught the Principal by surprise. She normally tests and monitors for a couple months to gather the backup data to support the move so we were in a pickle. Long story short we ended up scheduling a meeting with her today at 3:30 to discuss it and meet with the TAG (talented and gifted) teacher. We'll the TAG teacher met us and the principal was in a district meeting so she wasn't available. We went to a conference room and talked for a while and she explained how they look at many factors other than academics, which we were aware of. Then she flipped over a three page test to see how strong he was in mathematics. The test had questions that ranged from 1st grade through the end of 2nd grade level. He systematically picked off the questions and out of all three pages he wasn't able to answer just a few. An example of a question was 80-43 and he got it right. Another was a crap load of little blocks stacked, and he had to count the vertical and horizontal quantities and multiply. He got it right, it was 213. Very cool. Remember that he just finished kindergarten. He was doing the problems in his head and the TAG teacher was very impressed with that. Before we left she said she supports Austin skipping a grade and going right to 2nd grade. She talked it over with the principal and the school called us around dinner time to tell us that the Principal approved him going right to 2nd grade.

I'm very proud of my little dude and am looking forward to this year of school.

Go Austin.....

Kortne's Restaurant

Kortne loves to spend time in her room lately. I realize that as kids get older they spend more time in their room. Her room is very comfortable for her and she loves to do little crafts and activities in there. It makes me feel good that she is comfortable and happy playing in her room. In weeks past she has setup forts using the PVC pipe kit that I put together for the kids and blankets. I cant tell you how many times she put up different things in there that I had to put the clips on the blankets. This weekend she had a special project going on in there that she wanted to be a surprise. She worked hard on it for a couple hours. She grabbed a bunch of plates, bowls and silverware and dragged them into her room so I kind of had a clue as to what she was doing. She moved her bed around and setup a restaurant, emptied her bookshelf into the corner to put her restaurant stuff up and cleared out the closet to make it the kitchen. She thought out every detail from table, chairs, napkins, glasses, silverware, plates and menus. She hand wrote out two sets of menus for Austin and I and had at least 10 items on each for the appetizer, main course, drinks, and deserts. So when she was ready she asked us to be her customers. Austin and I knocked on the door and told her we had a dinner reservations. She smiled and showed us to our table. Austin was great and played along well. He put lots of thought into each menu choice which was kind of funny since it was pretend.

So we placed our drink order and she disappeared into the closet, er a kitchen. I heard dishes clanking and water squirting and I suffocated my normal "don't make a mess" instinct and let her just do her thing. She used a sports bottle full of water to fill up our glasses. I ordered diet Pepsi and Austin ordered lemonade, however the lemonade machine was broke so he had to pick a different drink. Its funny how she thinks of all these different scenarios and pulls them out for her pretend kitchen. So she brought out our drinks and took the drink menu and delivered the appetizer menu. We ordered each course and she delivered it full of beads representing food. When we were done she cleared our plates and took them back to the kitchen and prepared it for Austins turn.

Its fun to watch my kids grow up and use their imaginations. Another both kids did is made mailboxes that are taped to our doors. They are boxes made from paper and we can transfer notes back and forth in them. Austin even made one for my door and stuck it up. Its so darn big that I keep crushing it when I go in my room though.

This was the last full week of the summer the kids spent with me and its back to the school schedule. We had lots of fun this summer and were very active with our family. I'm glad that they get to experience many different things and hopefully they'll remember them.