Time for Winter Coats

or why we need a house with a yard. Werty's sister Dawn is the other person in the video. My bro-in-law took this video on his iPhone. Thanks for the winter coat Grammy!

Left on my board...

Yesterday a student wrote, "There ain't no party like an IB party cause an IB party don't...crap never mind I have homework."

Which House?

We looked at and made an offer on a second house on Saturday. Which would you choose if you were at our stage of life?

Small house with a big yard.
Big house with a small yard.

I will try to post a more in-depth comparison later.

Boo's Friend

There is a little girl at church that likes to share her snacks with the other kids. (She has an older sister.) Today she was sharing her cereal with BooBear. At one point, she even shoved the piece of cereal in his mouth when he wasn't taking it fast enough. So, naturally, he started following her around. Her cereal was a combination of sugar cereals - so much better than the cereal I had for him. At one point, he reached out his arms like he was going to hug her, and he leaned in like he was going to kiss her. Werty and I looked at each other, 'What is he doing?' But he didn't. Maybe he was trying to hug her. Maybe he just wanted her to give him more cereal. After Sunday School, I was told by one observer, "Your son is hilarious."

Some of the cereal must have had rice flour in it, sigh, because his cheeks are now a little splotchy and he was itching one of his ears - but I thought it was worth the risk to help him learn to share. He has been much more interested in interacting with other kids lately. He's growing up so fast! >sniffle<

BooBear has also discovered the Piano. He likes to sit on our lap and play, flipping the pages in the primary song book now and then. Then he plays with the different buttons that change the sound of the keys.

By Request

We have been taking more video than actual photos with our camera lately. Werty's been trying to catch him at his new trick - dancing to music. I will post a video once we're successful.

I woke him up from his nap, so he'd go to bed at a decent hour. Here he is five minutes later.

"Unnecessary"

This post might make Klari cry...but I gave fair warning. A little project I like to do in US Gov't class when learning about political "platforms" is to assign small groups of students to create presidential platforms, and they make a poster with a slogan and everything. They come up with some interesting things, and there's always the group that focuses on what they would change about the school, missing the "how would you change the country" big picture. And I am usually patient about lots of crazy ideas. But one group said, "We would get rid of all the unnecessary stuff they teach in school. We would only learn stuff we need for life. Like no more Math because there is no way that learning how to do an equation will be something I need in life." A simple equation? They can't do a simple equation? I couldn't silently listen, I had to ask, "So, when you want to buy a house, and you want to figure out what the APR is going to cost you, or the ameritization (which I don't really understand, but Werty was talking about it the other day, so I wanted to throw that in to show these kids there is more to Math out there than they know), what are you going to do?" "Whatever. We'll use a calculator." How do you use a calculator if you don't know how to make or solve an equation? Are they going to input random numbers into the calculator? And I remembered the awful fundraising we did two years ago, working BYU football games, and the students that pulled out their cell phones as a calculator every time they needed to add up someone's order because all we had was a cash box, no electronic registers, and how we quickly pulled those kids off the front counter and put them to work in the back making food instead...which was honestly chancey if they could do that right. How are these kids going to figure out a tip when they eat out? Are they going to think the credit card or utility companies are ripping them off because thy don't understand how to compute interest? Are they going to be taken advantage of? I guess it's all "unnecessary."

Same Old, Same Old

We are still waiting on the house we want to buy. Our agent told us that the lack of information is one of the hardest parts of a short sale. Not knowing when, not knowing what the bank is working on, not knowing what will happen. We went and looked at another house last night, one in a nice neighborhood in Provo. Bigger than the Orem one, but needs more work. Bigger lot, but less usable space. There were at least 6 other groups that came and looked at the property while we were there. It was like an unplanned open house. All these people milling around, not making eye contact with each other. Interesting. We put in an offer, but we still want the other house more.

At work, first term ended at the end of October, so last week I was busy grading and updating grades. I am embarrassed to admit that there were some essays I had collected a month previous for my IB class that I hadn't graded. So, I did that. One student wrote like a stream of consciousness, without paragraphs or adequate punctuation or organization. I wrote on his paper that if he wants me to seriously grade something, he must conform to using paragraphs and organization. On Friday, we have an IB teacher meeting, and I will ask his other teachers if they have received anything similar. If he continues in this manner, I will refuse to give him a grade. I think it would be a disservice to him to allow him to pass my assignments, and therefore, my class, with work that clearly won't allow him to pass his IB exams and receive college credit.