Yesterday we decided to make our annual trek to the country in search of bluebonnets. These wildflowers are our state flower and yet in the Houston area are very hard to find. So we decided to take our one free Saturday (without a soccer game!) and just go for a drive. We grabbed the camera, dressed the boys in shirts that would look good w/ the background we were looking for, and took off. We hit all out usual spots to no avail....seems like this year all we saw were Indian paintbrush and while they are pretty, it just doesn't look the same. So on we drove....we found ourselves up near College Station and decided to forget the bluebonnets and just go to A&M to show the boys where Daddy went to school. And it just so happened that we ended up seeing a decent patch right near the campus so we still got our pictures! Go figure!
Our first top on campus was at George Bush Presidential Library. What a beautiful place. Behind the library is a beautiful pond with a walking path and little benches all around. A very romantic setting! There's a footbridge that leads to a winding path back to where the President and Barabara will be buried. Already there is the stone for their daughter Robin who died at the very young age of 4. Even the Bushes know the heartache of saying goodbye to a child too soon.
From there we decided to go see the memorial for the 1999 Bonfire victims since it had just been erected last fall and we hadn't been back for a while. We got in all this traffic and realized we'd come on Parent's Weekend! Yikes!
The Bonfire Memorial was so moving. Not being an Aggie myself, I don't totally understand all the traditions involved, but I have attended Bonfire and it was something I'll never forget. I thought I had school spirit but the Aggies reign supreme in that department. The Memorial is right where Bonfire was always held, and there are 12 archways in a circle...each one facing the direction of the student's hometown. On the inside of each archway is a bronze plaque with the likeness of the student, their name and hometown, and poems, letters and quotes by or about them. What was amazing is that most of the families said their sons and daughters died doing what made them happy...preparing for the Big Game by building Bonfire, a tradition that had been going on for many many years.
I kept thinking to myself, what would I have done if I had been one of the moms recieving the call at 3 am that my son had died in this horrific accident? And as I was thinking that, I moved to another memorial to see a grieving family, touching the face of their lost loved one, with tears streaming. part of me wanted to go up to one of them and say I'm so sorry for your loss, and yet I didn't want to disturb their time of grief and remembrance. Even though it had been 5 years, it was obvious that their son was still greatly missed.
http://bonfire.tamu.edu/
Sunday, April 10, 2005
Friday, April 08, 2005
I Fell in Love Again Last NIght......
You keep doing everything just right
You're the reason my heart keeps beating
And every morning it keeps repeating...
I fell in love again last night.....
(Forester Sisters, 1984)
Now, the next line says "when you kissed me," but in my case, we weren't even in the same room. In fact, E was outside and I was standing at the kitchen window. It was a PERFECT spring afternoon. It was one of the rare occasions when T didn't have soccer practice, and we had nowhere to go, so I told the boys they could go out and play for an hour before dinner.
E decided to go outside with them so I stood at the kitchen window and watched them play....K immediately went for his little car and T grabbed his soccer ball to show Daddy what he's learning in his private training sessions. It wasn't long before all 3 of them were laughing and playing and that's what caught my attention.....
There's something about seeing a man playing with his sons, even if it's just pushing the little ones on the swing or kicking the ball back and forth that I find appealing....maybe it's just because my dad, who as a truckdriver, wasn't home much and when he was was always too tired to spend a lot of play time with us growing up, that being a hands-on dad was a requirement for my husband. Whatever it is, even when I'm upset or frustrated with my hubby, all it takes is seeing him interacting with the boys and I see why I fell in love with him in the first place. Maybe that's why that afternoon was so important to me....I needed to once again be reminded of the man I chose to marry and spend my life with.
then I decided that dinner could wait and I grabbed my trusty camera and joined them outside, so that not only could I savor the moment, but also save it . My boys won't be this age for long and soon they may not want to spend time kicking a ball or playing with cars in the back yard.
You're the reason my heart keeps beating
And every morning it keeps repeating...
I fell in love again last night.....
(Forester Sisters, 1984)
Now, the next line says "when you kissed me," but in my case, we weren't even in the same room. In fact, E was outside and I was standing at the kitchen window. It was a PERFECT spring afternoon. It was one of the rare occasions when T didn't have soccer practice, and we had nowhere to go, so I told the boys they could go out and play for an hour before dinner.
E decided to go outside with them so I stood at the kitchen window and watched them play....K immediately went for his little car and T grabbed his soccer ball to show Daddy what he's learning in his private training sessions. It wasn't long before all 3 of them were laughing and playing and that's what caught my attention.....
There's something about seeing a man playing with his sons, even if it's just pushing the little ones on the swing or kicking the ball back and forth that I find appealing....maybe it's just because my dad, who as a truckdriver, wasn't home much and when he was was always too tired to spend a lot of play time with us growing up, that being a hands-on dad was a requirement for my husband. Whatever it is, even when I'm upset or frustrated with my hubby, all it takes is seeing him interacting with the boys and I see why I fell in love with him in the first place. Maybe that's why that afternoon was so important to me....I needed to once again be reminded of the man I chose to marry and spend my life with.
then I decided that dinner could wait and I grabbed my trusty camera and joined them outside, so that not only could I savor the moment, but also save it . My boys won't be this age for long and soon they may not want to spend time kicking a ball or playing with cars in the back yard.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
The frustrations of a junior high teacher, part 2
Ok....it's the end of the six weeks and I'm grading unit tests. I teach Texas History and we've been studying Native Americans, and the Cattle Kingdom era. We've discussed the Trail of Tears, destruction of the buffalo, cattle drives, the invention of barbed wire and the difference between tenant farmers and sharecroppers to just name a few things. We've spent 4 weeks studying this and I really thought I'd done a pretty good job of sharing my vast knowledge about cowboy life. So naturally, I was quite perturbed when I read some of the following answers.....
- The purpose of a cattle drive is to help the cowboys stay in shape.
- The cattle drive is when we ride a cow from Texas to Louisiana so that the farmers can take their cotton to market. I'm not sure why they had to ride cows--what was wrong with their cars in the 1880's?
- The cowboys went on cattle drives so they could go somewhere fun and it was faster and cheaper.
- A cattle drive was the only type of transportation before railroads were invented.
What's really sad is these students are often pretty bright, and can "spit out" answers that I've given them, but when I asked them to think or to apply the knowledge, they can't do it.
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
*K* isms
I'm the absolute worst mom when it come to writing in baby books, but I want to remember some of the cute things my boys say, so I think I'll just write a few of them here......
**K has just recently become potty-trained and when we were at a soccer game, we were nowhere near a bathroom so I told him to potty on the tree. Now he thinks he needs to potty on every tree around. :o) This weekend I was looking at some houses online and commented that the backyard had a lot of trees. K got excited -- he clapped his hands and said "I can go potty on all those trees!"
**Last week, E called and said he was stuck in traffic so K and I were going to have to take T to soccer practice and K did NOT want to go! He kept saying, "oh no! what am I going to do? what am I going to do???" LOL--can you tell he's been watching Vegie Tales a lot lately??
**K has just recently become potty-trained and when we were at a soccer game, we were nowhere near a bathroom so I told him to potty on the tree. Now he thinks he needs to potty on every tree around. :o) This weekend I was looking at some houses online and commented that the backyard had a lot of trees. K got excited -- he clapped his hands and said "I can go potty on all those trees!"
**Last week, E called and said he was stuck in traffic so K and I were going to have to take T to soccer practice and K did NOT want to go! He kept saying, "oh no! what am I going to do? what am I going to do???" LOL--can you tell he's been watching Vegie Tales a lot lately??
Thursday, March 31, 2005
What happened to my little boy?
Today I dropped my older son T off at school. This is something I do every weekday morning, but today I really looked at him as he walked in the school.....My mind drifted back to the day we came to meet his kindergarten teacher. He was so excited and I fought back the tears. I knew he was ready for this new step in his life, but I wasn't sure if I was ready to allow him to make that move.
We walked in the classroom--it was all decorated with Blue's Clues and paw prints. T held on to my hand like it was his lifeline, until he saw one of his buddies from church. As soon as he saw Andrew, he took off and they checked out everything in the room. I stood there watching him flit from one center to another and suddenly this woman came over and introduced herself to me. She was so sweet--I guess she could see the uncertainty on my face. I was so happy and excited about T starting school, but on the other hand, I knew that meant he was no longer my toddler... Would he still want to climb on my lap and cuddle while we read a book or watch tv together? She asked me which one was my child--I pointed to the adorable blue-eyed blonde haired little boy that was laughing at something Andrew had said. She then told me it would be ok...she'd take great care of him and he'd learn and grow so much that year. She handed me a little baggie with a poem about taking care of my child. It also had a kleenex, bandaid, tea bag and other little things in it that she said were the mom's survival kit instead of the students. LOL Then the tears started--I tried to attribute it to the fact that I was pregnant with K at the time, but I'm sure I would have cried anyway. And that was the day before school actually started! The next day, I dropped him off at school and cried all the way to my school. I couldn't wait for school to get out so that I could go pick him up. The first thing he said was, "Mom! they have a library inside the school!!" LOL Just what a teacher likes to hear--that her kid liked to read! :o)
Year after year, I've dreaded and anticipated the first day of school....I was excited for him, yet hated to admit that my little boy was growing up. Today, when I dropped him off, he stopped at my window, so I rolled it down. He leaned in and gave me a kiss, told me he loved me and then said, "mmmm you smell good today!" I laughed and asked him, " Ok, what do you want?" He just laughed and said "I just want you to know I'm glad you're my mom." Once again, I cried all the way to school. :o)
We walked in the classroom--it was all decorated with Blue's Clues and paw prints. T held on to my hand like it was his lifeline, until he saw one of his buddies from church. As soon as he saw Andrew, he took off and they checked out everything in the room. I stood there watching him flit from one center to another and suddenly this woman came over and introduced herself to me. She was so sweet--I guess she could see the uncertainty on my face. I was so happy and excited about T starting school, but on the other hand, I knew that meant he was no longer my toddler... Would he still want to climb on my lap and cuddle while we read a book or watch tv together? She asked me which one was my child--I pointed to the adorable blue-eyed blonde haired little boy that was laughing at something Andrew had said. She then told me it would be ok...she'd take great care of him and he'd learn and grow so much that year. She handed me a little baggie with a poem about taking care of my child. It also had a kleenex, bandaid, tea bag and other little things in it that she said were the mom's survival kit instead of the students. LOL Then the tears started--I tried to attribute it to the fact that I was pregnant with K at the time, but I'm sure I would have cried anyway. And that was the day before school actually started! The next day, I dropped him off at school and cried all the way to my school. I couldn't wait for school to get out so that I could go pick him up. The first thing he said was, "Mom! they have a library inside the school!!" LOL Just what a teacher likes to hear--that her kid liked to read! :o)
Year after year, I've dreaded and anticipated the first day of school....I was excited for him, yet hated to admit that my little boy was growing up. Today, when I dropped him off, he stopped at my window, so I rolled it down. He leaned in and gave me a kiss, told me he loved me and then said, "mmmm you smell good today!" I laughed and asked him, " Ok, what do you want?" He just laughed and said "I just want you to know I'm glad you're my mom." Once again, I cried all the way to school. :o)
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
The frustrations of a jr high teacher....
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!! After school study hall is probably NOT the best time for me to decide to blog, because of course it's going to be about the frustrations of dealing with adolescents. Can I just say right here that something mysterious happens to children's brains between the years of 10 and 14? It DISAPPEARS! Gone...disintegrated into nothingness, leaving just a black hole in its place. Somehow, normal things like manners and common sense have gotten lost in the shuffle while rudeness, laziness and foolishness have taken over. A custodian was working on the water fountain today and left the cover off. Some "brainy" child decided to stick a cd case in the fan, causing it to stop the fan, which in turn led to overheating that caused it to start smoking and start a fire. Of course the kids weren't at fault (according to my students) -- it was the custodian's fault for leaving the lid off. Nothing is ever their fault---and that's what TERRIFIES me about this generation. What happens when they are adults and in charge????
Well study hall is over and I'm going home to my wonderful INTELLIGENT children that I am going to SOMEHOW keep from turning into adolescents......
Well study hall is over and I'm going home to my wonderful INTELLIGENT children that I am going to SOMEHOW keep from turning into adolescents......
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Our Day at the Rodeo...
You can't live in Texas without the annual trip to the rodeo......the one time all year to get out the old ropers and dust off the cowboy hat. Of course in our case, since none of us wear boots normally, the thought of walking around the carnival midway and all over the stadium grounds in tight-fitting, toe pinching boots is enough to make you want to run for the hills. So we get on our jeans and brightly colored cowboy shirts, dig out the bandanas & western jewelry...and then slip into our comfy nikes for the day.
For the boys, part of the attraction is riding on the "big bus" from the park&ride to the stadium. I don't think T was as impressed this year, especially since we got Metro buses insteqad of the fancy coaches that we normally get to ride. K, though, thought it was really something to ride on "Daddy's bus".
This year, since K is now potty trained (YAY!!!!), we had to make many stops to the outdoor potty houses. YUCK and DOUBLE YUCK! Even K was too grossed out to go in them after a while, so we ended up making several trips into the area where all the shopping was just so we could use a "clean potty." He was so funny---the first time we went inside to the potty, he yelled out very loudly, "mommy--this is a keen potty...there's no yucky poopys in here at all!" Ya gotta love a 3 year old---they tell it like it is!
We went to see Martina McBride. She did a great show, but I had never realized how many of her songs deal with domestic abuse. She's definitely a spokesperson for the downtrodden woman. I was disappointed that she didn't sing her new song "In My Daughter's Eyes." I love the song, even though I'll never have a daughter of my own. sigh
K HATED the fireworks...as soon as the first one went up, he hid his face in my elbow and never looked up for the entire concert. The funny thing is he didn't like the loud booms, but instead of covering his ears, he covered his eyes....
When we left the carnival, K looked like an abuse case himself...he climbed out of the stroller and scraped his belly on something on the side of the stroller. He has a scratch that's probably 4.5 or 5 inches long. I had to put a "bambaid" on it as soon as we got home. Luckliy one was sufficient, because if I'd had to cover the whole scratch, it would have taken several "bambaids". He also came home with a huge ropeburn around his eye that bruised and gave him a black eye. He was climbing on the rope ladder and somehow scraped his face. Good thing I'd gone the day before to get Easter pictures done! LOL
I always enjoy these days, where we get to just relax and have fun as a family. It seems like they are few and far between lately, so I always treasure the times we do get. I realize once the boys are older it will get even harder to schedule family days, so I'm trying to make the most of them now while they're young.
For the boys, part of the attraction is riding on the "big bus" from the park&ride to the stadium. I don't think T was as impressed this year, especially since we got Metro buses insteqad of the fancy coaches that we normally get to ride. K, though, thought it was really something to ride on "Daddy's bus".
This year, since K is now potty trained (YAY!!!!), we had to make many stops to the outdoor potty houses. YUCK and DOUBLE YUCK! Even K was too grossed out to go in them after a while, so we ended up making several trips into the area where all the shopping was just so we could use a "clean potty." He was so funny---the first time we went inside to the potty, he yelled out very loudly, "mommy--this is a keen potty...there's no yucky poopys in here at all!" Ya gotta love a 3 year old---they tell it like it is!
We went to see Martina McBride. She did a great show, but I had never realized how many of her songs deal with domestic abuse. She's definitely a spokesperson for the downtrodden woman. I was disappointed that she didn't sing her new song "In My Daughter's Eyes." I love the song, even though I'll never have a daughter of my own. sigh
K HATED the fireworks...as soon as the first one went up, he hid his face in my elbow and never looked up for the entire concert. The funny thing is he didn't like the loud booms, but instead of covering his ears, he covered his eyes....
When we left the carnival, K looked like an abuse case himself...he climbed out of the stroller and scraped his belly on something on the side of the stroller. He has a scratch that's probably 4.5 or 5 inches long. I had to put a "bambaid" on it as soon as we got home. Luckliy one was sufficient, because if I'd had to cover the whole scratch, it would have taken several "bambaids". He also came home with a huge ropeburn around his eye that bruised and gave him a black eye. He was climbing on the rope ladder and somehow scraped his face. Good thing I'd gone the day before to get Easter pictures done! LOL
I always enjoy these days, where we get to just relax and have fun as a family. It seems like they are few and far between lately, so I always treasure the times we do get. I realize once the boys are older it will get even harder to schedule family days, so I'm trying to make the most of them now while they're young.
My Safe Harbor...
This is my blog....a place where I can share......
* thoughts about my life
* cute things my boys say and do
* anecdotes about my students
* and a place where I can vent my frustrations whith whatever is ticking me off today! LOL
I think the harbor design is so appropriate, because in the midst of the storms of my life, I NEED a safe harbor to come home to. That harbor is often my family--my husband, sons, mother or sisters--but it is ALWAYS my God. If it wasn't for the everlasting presence of My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, I really couldn't say what my life would be like today.
* thoughts about my life
* cute things my boys say and do
* anecdotes about my students
* and a place where I can vent my frustrations whith whatever is ticking me off today! LOL
I think the harbor design is so appropriate, because in the midst of the storms of my life, I NEED a safe harbor to come home to. That harbor is often my family--my husband, sons, mother or sisters--but it is ALWAYS my God. If it wasn't for the everlasting presence of My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, I really couldn't say what my life would be like today.
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