Veteran's and Remembrance Day-Tomorrow

We are looking forward to a day off (we get our day off before you guys!). Madison and Ellie have been working to honor the "veterans" in their life.
Madison wrote a letter and a poem for Grandpa Gillam. Hopefully you can read them in these pictures Gene....sorry its her rough draft...

Ellie (doing her "peace out" pose in this photo) made a card for her Daddy.

Picture of his desk at work included....

We truly are thankful for the veterans in our family- and for all the others who fought for what they believed in. Happy Veteran's Day- and of course for my Candians I would like to wish you a peaceful Remembrance Day...... tomorrow.

Keeping Busy.

Sunday was, as usual, a catch all. Anything in the week not done will definitely have to be done on our Sunday, so it often turns into a mish-mash of chores. The one big job that was done (with many tears might I add) was clearing out some of the girls books and clothes. Books being very personal to Maddie are not easily parted with- but she did a very good job of clearing out some of the old and rearranging her shelves according to author and subject. What you see here is one of 3 set of shelves she has...

-but all to good use as she truly does reread books regularily (Bubby- she just reread yesterday the astrology sign book from her birthday shopping and one of her Shel Silverstein poem books). Ellie also did her shelves-with Mommy doing most of the arranging of books once they were thinned.

Ellie is reading Through the Looking Glass right now and is loving it- she is covering the first title in this picture because this book also has Alice in Wonderland in it- previously read and equally loved.

Clothes clearing out went well also. They were each able to thin out any of the outgrown or over worn clothes- so their drawers are now neat, and more important....they are close-able! Ever since I have had the girls being responsible for their clothes (wearing, putting in the laundry and putting away) their drawers suddenly don't slide shut properly - I wonder how that happens? Here is a finished example of the neat drawers....

Pretty nice eh? I think our clean out would even make Barb proud...

Thanksgiving is right around the corner. The girls have literally only 14 days of school in all of November- so many days off- and Thanksgiving is only two of those! Already shopping for Christmas- by the way Gene and Ann, Ellie was so sure you were coming for Christmas, I had to do my best to convince her you weren't.....broke her little heart :(

Ellie's class is already getting ready for Thanksgiving....

Ellie's turkey disguise?........a punk rocker dude. Very original.

Guest Bloggers- Mady and Ellie!

Mady here, yes, I’m the guest blogger. I decided to mostly write about the fish. If you want a variety you should go to Gab Gab, Haputo did not have as many fish. Anyway the picture below is a Greasy Grouper. The tiny blue one is called a Blue Box Fish. The blue starfish is, well a Blue Sea Star. Here are some pictures of coral… The fish that is very fuzzy that you can hardly see is a Singular Bannerfish. There’s me up above… there is Daddy’s arm down below… Some of the fish we didn’t get were, Harold’s Angelfish, Bullethead Parrotfish, and a Moorish Idol. Next time we will go to Gab Gab and I will try to get pictures of them for you!

Hope you enjoyed this guest blog.

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Hi, I am Ellie. I am writing about my sand castle. But if you have any sand castle equipment then I would be happy, because I don’t have any! I had to use baking equipment- a spoon, cup and a bin from the kitchen. The pond worked out well but the castle was small and I smushed it a lot. At the end Daddy smushed it. It was a very beautiful beach and I liked it because it had a lot of sand and water for me to use in the making of it. We got a really good picture of a very big lizard….we think it may be related to a monitor lizard! The sand castle turned out well….its going to be really fun looking at the pictures down below.

(look hard in this one to see the lizard)

From your guest blogger, Ellie- peace out :)

Haputo.....sort of.

Finally made it out to Haputo- as Kevin would tell you he had been looking forward to it all week...he really gets a kick out of beaching it. I don't want to say much about our day as Maddie and Ellie will be guest blogging all the events, but not until tomorrow morning (which would be this coming evening for you). So you will have to check back later to see it....sorry for the delay but they had to go to bed right after swim team- so no blogging time.

I will tell you that it was a nice -yes hot- but nice day. Maddie and Kevin loved their fish viewing time, and Ellie enjoyed castle building. This was a wavier beach than we usually hit. Kevin and Madison had to work hard to get out over the reef with all the waves, and equally as hard to get back in....there was a strong current.

I will say no more because I don't want to step on the toes of my guest bloggers......

Pictures to Follow

We are off to Haputo Beach (with only mild "its too hot" protests from me). Kevin and Maddie are taking an underwater camera so I am hoping for lots of neat pictures for you on my next post..... A friend of ours here has been taking pictures of eels that live in his backyard beach-

I am hoping for no pictures of them. Hope you are having a great evening :)

Poor Ellie

It took her until bedtime to admit to me that she had lost a smiley face today. The daily judgement of right and wrong.....there are a certain kind of kid that lose their smiley face- and Ellie is not one of them. This is highly disturbing to the kid like Ellie who treasure the fact that they are among the good "behave-ers". Lots of tears while she was describing to me that she had been sitting with her work all done, when a friend of hers asked her to play- apparently her friend (not a "behave-er" might I add) didn't have her work done. So Ms. Baza was smiley-face ruthless....all smiles were lost. I was appropriately appalled at her behavior- telling her its important to not help people to fail- and then quickly told her to not worry about it. From the child that behaves so well so often....its almost nice to have to deal with this.

Oh Southern High...

Went into work today only to discover that the principal was ousted. Poor guy, he is off island for a conference for a few weeks and loses his job while he is gone. They are blaming his not having reported the recent violence that made it to the ear of the Speaker of the House- there was a video of a beating that occurred at Southern on YouTube. The whole staff of Southern was shown it the other day- I heard a teacher behind me say "thats not the worst fight I have seen".

Seriously, right now I have a student who won't come back to school because she was threatened, and another gone permanently after being hospitalized from a fight. Apparently there was a boy beaten to death in the not so distant past-really so sad. The fights are not unusual- its just that this YouTube one went political so someone has to take the fall. Of course that is not even addressing the breaking into classrooms, starting of fires in the halls that goes on.....oy.

Its all such a shame- it seems to be the minority messing it up for the majority of students who are just trying to get an education. I am really hopeful for Southern making it into the papers for something positive- maybe the new acting principal has a plan? You never know.