6:52 am

Good morning! I was almost afraid to open this and see when it was that I last wrote. It is actually easier to write every day than it is only now and again because it gets to be a habit and when it isn’t, it doesn’t get done.

Life has been rather life-like around here as of late. Nothing too terribly out of the ordinary. I think I have some pictures on the camera that I need to transfer to my laptop so that I can get them posted and put a few in here. I don’t think it will be this morning, though, because I need to charge the battery in the camera first; it’s rather dead.

Last Monday we stopped all school work at lunch and after we ate, we went to Tully Lake. It took the cub scouts three hours to hike around it and I thought that since there were only three of us, perhaps it would not take as long. Well, it did. We might have shaved off a few minutes but we were also hunting for letterboxes. We were successful in finding one but not the other which is actually a set of two. Today is supposed to be nice. I’d like to go back and find the one(s) we missed. Maybe today.

Tuesday Amena went to the theater to watch a movie with some friends. We took her and the friends that had slept over and while they were at the theater, the boys and I went to Dunn Pond to see how many letterboxes we could find. We found one and then two of a set of three. I would have been happy to look for more but Cedric wasn’t finding the whole experience very enjoyable so we went to Ocean State to see if there were any plastic boxes we could use for planting our own letterboxes. They did have some and they had some plastic containers that were half-sandwich size as well so I got three and two. Cedric had been wanting containers for his sandwiches rather than just sandwich bags because his sandwiches get smooshed when they are just in a bag.

The rest of the week was rather normal and average with the exception of Amena missing the bus. She did so for a record five school days in a row. She missed on Friday the 31^st, then we had weekend. She missed it Monday, there was no school Tuesday. She missed it Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Today she broke the cycle and got out there in time. But barely. Cedric helped contribute however by not letting her in the bathroom to brush her teeth. Stinker. Anyway, the first Friday we ended up having to drive all the way to Barre. We caught up with the bus once but there were something like three cars ahead of us so there was no way Amena could have caught up to where the bus was before it took off. The funny thing about that is by the time I got out of the parking lot and driveway, I was behind our bus and followed him all the way to Ragged Hill. Monday we were able to catch up to the bus and Friday we were able to as well. Thursday we had to drive the whole way and I don’t remember about Wednesday but I think we had to go all the way to Barre again.

Last night we had Young Women in Excellence and it went well. The program lasted about half an hour. Everyone spent about that eating and visiting and clean up took about fifteen or twenty minutes (we started cleaning up while people were still visiting) and we were able to get home by 6:30. There were quite a few positive comments about the brevity of the program so I’m thinking we need to work on keeping them short and sweet in the future. I have warned several people that I would like to do it next year earlier in the year because last year we did it December and this year in November. In January we have New Beginnings. We also have Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. That’s a lot to fit into just a couple of months so I’m thinking that sometime in the summer or late spring would be good. Either right after school gets out or before it starts.

The microwave is about dead so yesterday while Amena and I were gone, Paul brought one in the house that has been on the back porch for about ever. It’s even bigger than the one that is about dead. Paul said that it is also a convection oven. I said that it was not likely that I would use it even so. There are no instructions and I’m not a big microwave user anyway. I might use one for warming up leftovers (on an individual basis) but I do not use them for so called cooking. So, in other words, I’m not really interested in this beast taking up more room than the one I don’t use all that much in the first place. Poor Paul, he really thinks that it being big is a bonus. For someone who loves microwaves and actually cooks in them, maybe big is a bonus. For me, it’s a negative aspect.

I don’t think there is much else to report. If I’d been writing regularly you’d have gotten more of an eyeful but such is life.

Have a splendiferous day!