Parton my Dust: Happy September!

This weekend was the return of the “Weekly Walk” for a variety of reasons and situations over many weeks we did not get out and walk. But Rob brought it up that we should go out for a stroll Sunday (just us) so that is what we did. Since it had been raining and we didn’t want to encounter another bug attack we kept to the roads. It was challenging to walk on Kings Mill because they recently dropped massive amounts of gravel down. I started feeling muscles I forgot I had. For simplicity’s sake we just made a large loop: Kings Mill to Jefferson to Snoblin and back down Lake Pleasant to Kings Mill, probably about 3 miles total. The sky was blue, the air was crisp, but if you stopped for too long (like to get a picture) the mosquitoes were on you immediately. Rob munched on wild grapes, too sour for me, but I did have a delicious apple from a tree that was bursting with them along Snoblin Rd.; heard some odd animal noises and spied a group of herons in a field.

Last week I sat through the junior high orientation, although I appreciate the counselor trying to explain how the tween brain functions I felt like it was a lot of blah, blah, blah and my butt didn’t take kindly to sitting on those wooden bleachers for an hour and a half! Tonight we go back for the Open House where teachers will be around and the kids can find their classrooms. The only schedule amendment we’d like is to take him out of ‘Reading Club’ and put him in an Art class instead. The kid does plenty of reading, and has tested at the 12 grade level so I think he’ll be fine, and he’d rather have experience in an Art class since we haven’t been able to get him into one this year. Last year he did a Cartooning class at the Paint Creek Art Center in Rochester which was very good. He’s also taken homeschool art classes with Don West in the past. Yesterday was his first practice with the Cross Country team (although they actually started last week). Communication among school departments is not the best; I left a message with the athletic secretary at the end of last year about Fox wanting to be on team but apparently she didn’t pass the info along to the Coach. Fox said it was pretty grueling but he hung in there and was glad that he had been running throughout the summer to prepare. Thursday is Fox’s 12th Birthday! I can hardly believe it!

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Ben and Ethan have their school Open House on Thursday evening and we are working on pulling together school supplies. I have an abundance of pencils, markers, crayons, etc here at the house already so I am determined not to go out and buy new stuff when we already have items that are still perfectly usable. I will have to invest in some more glue stix and a couple binders though.

From the Kitchen: Veggie Sautee, Zucchini, peppers, & red onions all home grown, with a few tablespoons of butter some dill and garlic salt. Yum!

Alex turned in a request at Burger King for her back-to-school hours, looks as though she’ll be staying on Fridays and Saturdays 4-8 until the play goes into rehearsals then she’ll switch over to Saturday and Sundays. She also had an opportunity to earn some dough watching the kids during Membership Class at church, which met three times this month, so she banked $45 for that. In relationship news the ‘birds’ are off again. He was kinda acting jerk-ish which started her not liking him as much, they still talk but really just as friends at this point, which is fine by me. Nuff said.

Sunday while Alex was kid-sitting I worked on getting my new bulletin board finished. It wasn’t exactly how I planned it originally but I think it nicely overviews our ‘Heaven on Earth’ VBS. I also spoke with Pastor Jeff and Pastor Bethany about coming in to work on a new choir song with the kids starting next Sunday and got the go-ahead from both. This one is a little meatier musically than the pieces we’ve done in the past so I want to have some time to work on it properly before we minister it sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s called ‘God Will Be Exalted’ by Joseph M. Martin adapted from Psalm 46:10. Other musical updates: apparently Mr. S has decided not to do ‘Grease’ for the fall play so that is off the table for now.