12 Years of Teaching Materials

Last week, Andrew "helped" me sort 8 giant bins of materials I collected over 12 years of teaching music. We had a little fun, well, mostly just me. We got the pile down from 8 bins to 4 and a couple of tiny boxes. Can't help but ask myself why I have kept and been dragging around every single piece of crappy choral music from reading sessions since 1996. Anyway, since this blog is all about gratuitous use of Andrew pics, here he is with some of the junk: a boa and some scarves.
Post Script for the music teacher friends: Did not mean to imply that scarves were junk. Many cool things can be accomplished with scarves. Now, a feather boa on the other hand...

Molars, Motion, and Markdowns

Andrew is getting both upper first molars at once - OW. He's still managed to remain in pretty good spirits for most of the day. The latest, as evidenced in the three videos: revising and perfecting his technique for descending the stairs, paying homage to the "big blue monster" (aka vacuum) whenever he sees it, and the very symbiotic relationship of playing ball with Dora.



Also, no house news yet. We even planted our St. Joseph in the yard a month or so ago and still nothing. We sign paperwork this afternoon to lower the price (again) to our very bottom line. We have thrown in a conveying refrigerator and alarm monitoring service through April of next year. An offer before Jon has to begin teaching in SC next month would be really, really great and a huge weight off our shoulders. However, we know that with each passing day, I inch closer to life alone with a toddler and two dogs in an obscenely hot part of the world that I am completely and utterly sick of. We are majorly stressed about the house situation now and have vowed not to talk or think about it until Monday so we can enjoy Friday (our 5th anniversary) and the rest of the weekend. All hail the temporary state of complacency!

Father's Day Dinner

Our Auntie Christina visits are numbered, so we went to a new restaurant in town tonight for a fun Father's Day dinner.

Bittersweet Memories and New Ones in the Making

Happy Father's Day to all the current and prospective dads out there. Finally, thanks to Andrew, this day can be a happy one again for Jon and me; my dad has been gone now for 12 years and Jon's for 4. Of course, we think about them each day. I was recently reminded of one of my dad's favorite Robert Frost poems, and it seems particularly appropriate these days since, as Charles Andrew Welch would occasionally say, the world seems to be going "to Hell in a hand basket." Here's Frost's Fire and Ice:
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire,
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Houston, we have a walker.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Watch out, world!

As if ginormous beetles weren't enough excitement for an evening...

...Andrew fell into the corner of the stair baseboard tonight and has a lovely bump on his forehead. It will be a nasty bruise tomorrow morning. That, coupled with multiple bruises on his shins from various rambling mishaps are sure to send CPS straight to us tomorrow after the pediatrician sees him at 9 am for his one-year checkup.
On a positive note, we saw the shuttle/space station again tonight! It was very clear out and NASA told us precisely the time to watch (yeah, NASA and I are very close). I know I have said this before, but that precision always amazes me.

Things I'll Miss About South Texas, Part IV

The "Wildlife" in Our Yard
We had quite an adventure this evening soon after noticing two snake-sized holes a few feet apart in our backyard. We had no clue what type of living thing was under there, so as true idiots, we flooded the holes and poked around at them a bit. Sure enough, in a few seconds, this guy emerged. As near as I can tell after a little research, he is a member of the rhinoceros beetle family; more specifically, strategus antaeus. Scary-looking, but gentle, unless you are a plant. You can see the scale next to Andrew's foot - he was about 3 inches long! We hung out with him for a few minutes and then evicted him to the neighbors' yard (shhhh!).




And as long as we are talking about backyard critters, here's a St. Andrew's Cross spider Jon unwittingly came eye-to-eye with while weed eating back in November. Again, a fierce-looking guy but totally harmless to humans and beneficial because of the bad bugs he ate.