Brief family update:

Bruce:  About to finish up his 2.5th year with IPS.  This year he has worked at Margaret McFarland Middle School.  It was an alternative school for 6th grade students who, for various reasons, were not succeeding in a traditional classroom.  It has been a tough year for him.  However, he's been happy with IPS and he did get to teach what he loves--Agriculture.  (Last year he taught Bio at Arsenal Tech.  He loved Tech but isn't as crazy about the Bio.)  The alternative school is disbanding so next school year he will be placed elsewhere at IPS.  Prayers for a great position are welcomed!

Bruce is also president of the soil and water board for Fountain County.  He's gardening as per usual. 

Me:  I just finished my 7th year back at SEFE.  I've now been a speech-language pathologist for 17 years!  (You'd think I'd be good at it by now, eh?)  I'm playing piano for church full-time, vice president of the Hillsboro Harmony club, and secretary for Psi Iota Xi.  Mostly I drive people places, though.

Andrew:  He just graduated 6th grade with all A's.   He was in both math bowl and spell bowl this year.  He got 2nd place in the state for crops judging.  Soon it will be time for soccer!   I'm excited about a computer camp he's going to attend at Purdue this summer.  Hopefully he can learn some programming skills.  His dream is to be a video game developer.

Erin:  Just finished 4th grade, also with all A's.  She went to Dream Dance studio this past year and loved it.  She is competing now on the Fountain Aquatic Swim Team (F.A.S.T.)   Soccer will start soon for her, too. 

Family:  We currently have 2 dogs, Echo (outside) and Duke (in/out/in/out/in/out).  We also have 2 cats, Cookie and Marzipan.  Erin is trying, extremely unsuccessfully, to get us to take on ferrets.  Or hamsters.  Or fish.  Or guinea pigs.  It's not going to happen. 

We will be going on a family vacation to Fort Wayne later in the summer.  Our last four vacations have been sans Bruce so we're excited to have all 4 of us able to go!  The kids and I went to North Carolina over spring break.  We want to go back; it was lovely. 

We have now acquired 3 different properties (New Richmond, Roachdale, and rural Attica) and are renting out the houses on them.  Hopefully all of this will pay off in the retirement years!

OK, boring update over.  Erin has decided she wants to blog as well so you can catch her at "All the 'normal' days of my life". 

Jill

His father's son

Drew asked for a screwdriver today so he could take stuff apart. I think he managed to dismantle 3 things this evening before bedtime...and naturally has only reassembled two of them. Bruce said he took apart half the items in his house as a child, so I guess it's genetic. I still prefer the "it's magic" explanation to how things work myself. Everything from electricity to phone lines to how they get those little ships inside bottles. It's all magic and if you try to actually explain it to me you'll likely find me covering my ears and saying "La la la la la la" at the top of my lungs.

Another Drew funny for today. I saw him with a box of Cheese-Its and asked him to put them away and get a fruit or vegetable instead. He said, "But mom--it says right here on the box that this has a full serving of vegetables." And sure enough, it did...because he'd taken a pen and written that very information right on top of the box.

From March 13, 2011

Me: "Erin, your giant stuffed polar bear will not come to life and attack you in the middle of the night. Get some sleep."

Erin: "All right! All right! But if I wake up tomorrow and I'm dead, you'll be sorry!"

Mad about MAD

Drew got introduced to Mad Magazine awhile back now. It was love at first sight. He got a CD with all the old editions, a subscription to the new ones, and faithfully watches the 15 minute tv program now airing on Cartoon Network. The fold-ins in particular intrigue him. He loves printing off the old ones and folding them. Even more than that, though, he likes making his own. Seriously, the kid must make 2-3 a day (down from the original 5-10 he was cranking out at first). Most of them are pretty darned good.

From January 30, 2011

You heard it here first, folks: Andrew informed me of his desire to be a "Sensation" and has been working over an hour on lyrics and music to an original song called "C-O-O-L Spells Cool."

New member of the family

Our house is literally turning into a zoo. Sometime last fall Bruce picked up a couple of rabbits (Alex and Hopper). Hopper met an untimely demise a few weeks ago, so now we have 2 new ones in its place: Katelyn and Black Beauty. As it turns out, I think rabbits are absolutely adorable--from a DISTANCE. I'm terrified of them close up and have barely touched them. Go figure.

Our cat count is up to 4: Salem, Tanner, Cookie, and Streudel. Salem is too old to tolerate the others but the youngest 3 all get along famously. They have great personalities and are adorable as the dickens.

Since Drew just signed up for 4-H, we now have pigs. He named them "Leonard" and "Sheldon" in honor of The Big Bang Theory. Because of the cold, they had to stay in our garage in a makeshift pen for several days. Now they are in a larger, more pig-friendly location down the road (Bob and Jeannine Quirk's). I think Bruce takes care of them a heckuva lot more than Drew does.

Our newest member is a Yorkie named Sillery's Paducah of York, or "Dukey" for short. We got him from Eric and Jainy Gulley's litter. He is a typical terrier--yippy, half nuts. He's also as cute as a bug. So far he's doing great with his pen (and sleeps all night) but the house training thing is another story entirely. He goes potty outside just fine, but then he potties inside as well. His bladder must be the size of a pea. Anyhow, I'll be happy when his puppiest days are behind him and we don't have a million chewed up things on the floor to vacuum up anymore.

Reading Counts!

Andrew was one of the top 15 Reading Counts points-getters in 3rd grade this year! We were so proud of him. He was supposed to get a cool free field trip to a movie and McDonald's (followed by halftime recognition at the F.C. basketball game that night). Unfortunately, that date fell smack dab in the middle of the nasty snow/ice storm that plagued half the midwest in late January/early February. They did not reschedule, although Mrs. Orr did reward the students later with a Subway lunch at school. Recently Drew told me that he's reading books that are mostly 6th grade level. His library teacher complimented his reading ability and said he's doing fantastic. Maybe I'll quit nagging him about only reading comics at home.