So Emma has a blog now. Her first post is on Rock Band, which we played the other night at Randy’s house.
I will probably have to be working on some parental comment moderation type plugins (or modifications to existing ones like SK2), since I’d rather not have her dealing with the subject matter of most blog comment spam.
Last Friday, I took Emma to Simi Valley to compete in the district speech meet, since she won in her category in her local school one. This is her and her friends from school who were also there competing in other categories.
She did very well. I thought some of the other kids were way too over-exaggerated in their presentations, but apparently the judges like that sort of thing, because those were the ones that received the highest scores. All the kids were seated up front with the parents and judges at the back of the room, and each kid in turn stood up at the front facing the rest of the room to give their speeches.
One kind of funny but eventually uncomfortable part was one of the girls that was sitting in the back row of students would turn around and make faces to her parent after some other kid would do something that she didn’t think measured up to her standards. At first her mom laughed, but then it got pretty embarrassing as she realized that the parents of the kids she was mocking were also sitting right there watching her do so.
Afterwards we went by the T.O. mall for lunch and some mother’s day shopping, which Emma enjoyed. She got the day off of school because of it, but she was very concerned at first and we had to assure her that, since it was a school activity, this would not count against her perfect attendance record.
Martha was going over Emma’s history homework with her tonight and she saw a bunch of random words highlighted in her textbook. She asked Emma why those were highlighted, and Emma said that she highlights the ones that people pronounce wrong when they’re reading aloud in class.
Yesterday Riley had a “play date” at the park with a friend from school. Since Martha had to do some last minute shopping, I took Christian and Emma along too.
It’s nice that Riley and Christian and Emma play so well together, but this time it was kind of weird because Riley kept wanting to play with Christian and Emma instead of the kid from his class, so it was kind of awkward having to keep telling Riley to play with his other friend.
Christian and Emma had their spelling bee tonight. Christian ended up getting 5th (I think because he’s still a bit nervous about doing stuff like that in front of people), and Emma got second in her class.
I’m helping Emma with her history homework right now and she forgot her book at school. Thank goodness for Wikipedia!
Did you know that the commonly told story that people didn’t believe that the world was round and that Columbus was trying to convince them of it was false?
The widespread notion that Columbus encountered opposition based on the idea that the earth was flat is a literary myth created by Washington Irving. Educated people in Columbus’s time agreed that the earth was round; anyone familiar with seafaring certainly knew it, since the roundness of the earth forms the basis of celestial navigation. The main debate was over whether a ship could circumnavigate the planet without running out of food or getting stuck in windless regions.
Couple new (and some old) pictures I pulled off my phone today:
As always, you can see all my pictures by using the “Photo Gallery” link at the top of the side menu.
Christian is still having a tough time with recovery; hasn’t been able to eat yet, etc. They are looking at all kinds of things to figure out why, but it has been a long, hard week for us. Primarily Christian of course, but also Martha since she has been staying down there with him since Monday and lastly the rest of us as we wait. We went down to visit yesterday, when they had to put a tube in to drain the fluid that had accumulated in his abdomen. Emma and Riley got to come, but Christian wasn’t in much of a mood to converse, and Riley has also been sick for the last couple days.
Luckily we have the support of family/friends (especially Kristi) to help us get through it. Emma is sleeping over at Ashtin’s tonight too, which is good since she was breaking down last night (or the night before I think) because I couldn’t read her a story at bed time since I was cleaning up Riley’s barf. She was mad because Riley couldn’t play with her and Christian wasn’t there, and then I’m sure missing her Mom was a part of it too.
Anyway, I better stop before this seems too much like complaining, because it’s not. Just looking for the light at the end of the tunnel…
