Day 259

Friday, May 19, 2017

Places/Activities: I finished teaching my online class - YAY! I enjoy online teaching, but I'm always so relieved when it's finished for the semester. It's amazing how much more time I have now! We've been keeping busy - though not as many sight-seeing type activities lately. Squeak had her dance recital and also her final school Spring concert. I got to check out Squeaker's new school at a Kindergarten meeting - such exiting times ahead! Back at Christmas, one of the requests Squeaker had was a volcano. I had set the volcano aside and kind of forgot about it, but then brought it out this week for she and I to do together. She really enjoys painting. We set it aside to dry and will likely do the "lava" part very soon! We've also been enjoying the lovely weather and spend most of our afternoons soaking up the sun on the deck. The kids really like the water table. I know they will be even more excited to play in the pool this year than they were last year!

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Reading: I'm currently reading The Industries of the Future by Alec Ross. I figure if he's running for Governor, I should probably learn a little bit more about who he is and what he's about. It's rather informative so far. He seems like an extremely well educated guy with lots of interesting ideas. That has to get him some points.


Random Thoughts: When I was young, I remember my mom and I spending time visiting my great aunts and uncles quite frequently. It might not seem like "fun" for a little kid to spend most of a Saturday sitting on a couch "visiting," but it was good for me. An opportunity to learn more about my family, to be appreciative of the things we had, and to be respectful to my elders. So many of my great aunts and uncles never had children of their own. To some this translated to not liking children much at all, and to others, it meant that I would receive an outpouring of affection when I walked through the door. All of them had one thing in common - cats and/or dogs. In fact, I always looked forward to visiting my Aunt Irma in particular, because I knew she would have a crazy cat story to tell me. She pronounced "meow" as "mow" and called me Dan-elle - putting a pause between the Dan and the Elle and leaving out the "i" (ee sound) altogether. She was sweet in her own way. There are many stories to tell here from those days, but I only share this snippet for one reason. The seemingly endless days I spent visiting with my family as I grew up taught me that there doesn't need to be a special occasion to drop in and say hi to a friend. Just walking through the door or picking up the phone to check in on someone might just be the bright spot to their day, their week, or even their month. Today we paid a random visit to a friend we haven't seen in a while, and I'm so glad we did. Hopefully my littles will see that the random phone call, message, or visit can really go a long way in someone's day, month, or year.

It takes approximately 3.5 min. for the room to go from clean to this...