My school

On Friday I drove out to UB to talk to someone about financial aid and to meet with the department of Library Science chair person. I had great plans to blog about it later that day...but meanwhile my poor son had broken his foot in gym class. Luckily my husband was able to get him from school. Between that event and Audra's birthday...I've hardly had a minute to myself.

Anyway. It took me about an hour and 40 minutes to drive there. I had never seen the campus before. It is nice. I walked around...(mostly inside), ate a lunch at the student union and visited the book store. They have coffee shops all over the place. I was able to enjoy a cup of southern pecan from Fingerlakes Coffee Roasters. Yum. Needed the caffiene for the trip home.

The 2 women I spoke to were very helpful and encouraging. I'm very excited to get started in the program. If all goes according to plan I will start classes during the first summer session, which starts on May 19th. That will mean a commute to Buffalo twice a week for 5 weeks. I'm pretty confident about this because weather shouldn't be a problem that time a year and having done the trip once, I didn't think it was too bad. Then I will take 1 more course during the second summer session for another 5 weeks. I hope to get 9 credits out of 36 under my belt by the end of summer.

I was afraid I would feel out of place there walking around with all of those young 18-20 something students. But it wasn't that way at all. Yeah...most students were young, but I noticed many that looked older. Who knows...maybe some of them were staff. It doesn't matter. I saw so many people from all walks of life and all different cultures. I noticed a high number of Asian students. (I just thought it was interesting.) Just before I left, I visited the book store just for fun. I bought Audra a birthday present. It was a reading lamp that that can clip onto a headboard. She had asked for one because she likes reading in bed. She has to get out of bed and walk across the floor to turn off the light and Alicia complains about the light being on. I think she was happy with the gift! (That wasn't all I got her just in case you think I am such a dull mother)

Happy Birthday to Audra!

Today is my daughter Audra's eleventh birthday. I love her very much! Here are 11 things about her.

1. She likes reading "The Series of Unfortunate events"

2. She likes Mr. Bean.

3. She is a swimmer.

4. She's adventurous.

5. She sings in the 5th grade chorus.

6. She's got a good sense of humor.

7. She has cute freckles.

8. She likes to control what her mother is typing about her!!!!!!!!!!!!

9. She's a good drawer.

10. She's an AWANA kid.

11. Everyone loves her.

Happy Birthday, Audra!!!!!!

The Continuing saga of Allen's foot...

I took Allen to the orthopedic department at our local hospital this morning....where they discovered that Allen's foot is actually broken, not just sprained. There are three cracks. One on each of the second, third and forth metatarsals. Dr Kenny put a cast on Allen's foot which he will have to wear for 4-6 weeks. We go back in 2 weeks to see how the healing is progressing. Some of you will be glad to know that I took Allen out for lunch afterwards. (Tim Horton's) I just dropped him off at school.

And now I must busy myself baking a cake and wrapping 2 gifts because today is Audra's 11th birthday. I will post later...just for her.

Later on: When I was picking up Allen in the loop outside of school today, I pulled up towards the curb to let him in. He opened the door and said, "Mom, you're kind of blocking traffic." I said, "Well...I should hope that whoever is behind me will see you on crutches and think, 'That mother cares so much for her son!'"...and then I glanced in my rear view mirror and saw Gudl in the car behind me. LOL!

Ouch!

On Friday Allen got hurt at school. He sprained the top of his left foot in gym class. I took him to the hospital emergnecy room to have it x-rayed. Luckily it is not broken...but it hurts and it is swollen. He has a fiberglass splint on it and he's not supposed to walk on it until it heals. He's been hopping around and also using crutches. Luckily he is not doing any sports at the moment. Only an occasional race....which now won't happen for a while. I took some amusing videos while we were waiting for the x-ray results...but I'm having trouble uploading them.

When they were little

Look at Allen and Sherman in 2003!
Photo by Rachel

Audra and Josh

Martha sent this to me today. Thanks, Mart!
Photo by Hannah

All tied up in 2004

So we had this tye-dye party in 2004. I had read about the idea in a magazine as a birthday party idea...and Audra wanted to do one. None of my children have a summer birthday, so we decided we would have a "just because we feel like it" party. So Audra and I made up invitations and sent them out to a lot of kids from our family, church and neighborhood. Everyone was to bring a plain white t-shirt (or another item they chose to tye-dye)

I bought a bunch of ice cream treats to give the children and Rachel brought peanut butter fingers. I provided the dyes which were purchased from Michael's and lots of rubber bands and other stuff to help us do out project. Everyone seemed to have a great time.

Unfortunately I do not have pictures of kids with completed shirts because they all took home wet, tied up shirts in pastic bags. They had to wait a number of hours before rinsing and washing their shirts. I made sure to print up copies of instructions for the parents. The shirts all turned out great. At least the ones I saw. I will have to hunt around to see if I have a picture of any of my kids wearing their shirts.
Maybe I ought to do another one of these parties before my children grow up!

A Boy in 2004

He was nine years old in this picture. Where has the time gone? He looks so little here. In less than 2 months he will be a teenager!

Another little girl in 2004

Alicia was only five years old in these pictures. Where did the time go? She is enjoying a peanut-butter finger that her Aunt Rachel brought to the tye-dye party we had that summer. We invited lots of kids and everyone took home a tye-dyed shirt. More on that soon!

Hey...my flowers and hostas look pretty good, don't they? It must have been fairly early in the summer! LOL!

Memories-Summer of 2004

I cleaned out 4 different drawers today. In one of them I ran across a disk of pictures Martha gave me from the summer of 2004. These were taken at a 4th of July picnic on Keuka Lake. Audra is 7 and Hannah...her accomplice is almost 9. They decided that burying Audra in the playground gravel might be lots of fun.

She turned out to be one very dirty little girl. I remember thinking, "Oh Audra!" after discovering this. Now I'm thinking that it really wasn't that big of a deal and they certainly had fun that day. It's nothing that a bath couldn't take care of quite easily.

A Fresh Path

It's a brand new year. What will it bring? Are you into New Year's Resolutions? Usually I am not...but this year I am. Do you know that saying that goes something like this: "If you aim at nothing, you will hit it 100% of the time"? That's kind of what I feel my life has been like for the last year or so. So I am changing my aim and aiming at something...rather than nothing. I have a new path to walk down this year.

An update on my plans: I have made a final decision to go to the University of Buffalo. Renewing my teacher certification was going to be more of an expense, time consuming and pain in the neck than I cared to take. So I will be getting a whole new teacher certification with School Library as my concentration. I have started the rough outline of an essay and have found one person who has agreed to write a letter of recommendation. I have another person in mind to ask. (I need 2) My submitted application needs to be in by March 1st. If all goes according to plan, I will start my grad courses in the summer. I'm planning on attending school full time. I don't see any need to drag my heels with this. That will be 2 courses this summer and 4 in the fall. Then we'll see from there.

And of course I have the usual promises....get rid of clutter, have a meaningful quiet time every day, get more exercise, eat better...(yawn). I always seem to start out well with these sorts of things and then...you know. How about you? Do you have any new goals or resolutions this year?

Oh....Happy New Years everybody!