My Op Pic: 09.04.2005

Here we go!

Let's all take a ride! The other two decided piggyback rides must be fun. :)

Loompa playing piggy-back with Hermie

My snails. Hermie is the big one, then there are three smaller ones - Oompa, Loompa & Koopa. :)

stairsteps

my three sons

Here's Bradley & Baby Max!!

how weird are you?

You Are 40% Weird

Normal enough to know that you're weird...
But too darn weird to do anything about it!

How Weird Are You?

Housekeeping

Just a note to let you all know I had to add a comment verification thing to my blog. Now when you post a comment (which I hope you will continue to do, even more frequently), you will need to type a random word. There'll be a box, with a word in it, and you will be asked to type that word before you can post your comment. This is because people are mean & have been sending me unwanted comments - ads for spyware & other such things. So to keep my blog a safe place, I fixed it. :)
Thanks for commenting!!

Day 11

Today is the 11th day since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. We've all heard a lot about New Orleans, but have you heard about other places? I haven't very much. FOX tries to be "fair & balanced", but I think they are falling short here. They focus a lot of time on New Orleans rather than other places along the Gulf Coast. FOX does have people in Mississippi reporting, but they only get about five minutes an hour. Think I will have to do my own research. :)
We've been learning more & more about why help didn't come to New Orleans. I don't think I realized the way things worked before all this happened.
Did you know that it is the state's & city's responsibility to evacuate? I think I knew that one.
Did you know that the President couldn't help until he was asked? I didn't know that one.
Did you know that the governor of the state is in charge of the National Guard for that state? I didn't know that one, either.
Did you know it is then the Govenor's responsibility to send out the Guard to help in an emergency?
The President seems to be getting a lot of heat for "not responding fast enough". Even O'Reilly says President Bush was not "pro-active" enough when it came to dealing with the Govenor of Louisiana. Personally, I think he did ok. I think President Bush is coming from a standpoint that says the states need to have their own authority, and it isn't his job to step on toes. In any normal situation, we wouldn't want the federal government just jumping in and taking over. Well, ok, some people might, but I wouldn't!
This whole situation amazes me. Every day a new piece unfolds & I am even more dumbfounded. Here are things as I understand them. You all can comment & correct me if you think I am wrong.
It was Gov. Blanco's responsibility to send out the national guard and have them in place before the storm hit. She did not do this. She also could have ordered a mandantory evacuation, but she did not do this, even though she had been urged by President Bush on SUNDAY (the day before the storm hit) to do so.
It was Mayor Nagin's responsibility to evacuate New Orleans. A year ago, his office issued a DVD in regards to evacuating in case of a hurricane. This DVD said it was the poor person's responsibility to get themselves out. Even though he had a lot of school buses at his disposal, and public transportation available, Mayor Nagin did not aggressively encourage or demand people evacuate.
President Bush had no control over any of these things. These were all state- & city-level problems.
We found out just recently that the Red Cross didn't get in to the Superdome because city officials didn't want to create a "magnet" for more people to come to! They wanted to get people out, so they prohibited the Red Cross from entering.
It wasn't until Wednesday, I think, that Gov. Blanco decided to let the federal government take over. Even then she needed 24 hours to decide.
This whole situation just amazes me. I cannot get over it. If you want to see pictures, FOX News (click on photo essays in kinda the middle of the page) has photo essays from day one - when Katrina hit FL, and on to today.
Anyways ... fill me in on your views. How do you think the media is handling this disaster? How do you think President Bush is doing? Who do you think is most to blame, if blame were assigned?

First Day of School

Today was our first day of school. :)
To begin with, I took Nicholas to the Nature Alphabet at The Tacoma Nature Center on 19th St. (otherwise known as Snake Lake to natives). Their website said the Nature Alphabet started at 11:00a.m. Nicholas & I arrived at four minutes to 11. The only person there was the lady behind the desk (usually there are a lot of children & parents/grandparents milling about).
I asked her if I was late, and she said, "Yes, ma'am, you are."
I looked at my watch and said, "When did it start?"
"10:30," she replied.
"Your website said it started at 11."
"It did?"
Then we had this whole conversation on when the next class was going to be. She said it was at 9:20, but she meant it was ON 9/20. That one starts at 1:30. Grrrr.
So now, instead of having something easy to do every other week with Nicholas, we have this THING to remember. The first week of the month it is at 10:30a.m. The third week of the month it is at 1:30p.m. IF I can remember, Evva said she'd take Nicholas to the ones in the afternoon. Good grief, though - it's tough enough to remember a once a week thing! I don't know why I am making this into such a big deal. I am pretty sure we can remember this. Guess it is just that no apology was given, no "oh, dear, we'll have to fix that right away!" Only a "do you get our newsletter?" (because all the correct information is in the newsletter) GRRRR. Sometimes customer service (or lack thereof) really gets me.

Anyways, Nicholas & I came home. He was sad to come home, even though he'd been worried about going before we left. :) Jef had been teaching Jonathan about FTPing and other things computer-related. They worked on TostaCaffe's website. You can check it out, if you'd like. :)

Once I settled down (I was so sad this morning & the whole nature center thing really threw me off), we started school. We began with prayer & the pledge of allegiance. Then we talked about the 5 senses. We did an experiment on how fish hear without ears. Then we learned about Delaware, the first of our 50 states. :) The boys are learning how to sit still. They both read a couple poems out loud, and Mommy read one too. We talked about why you would write poems instead of just saying something.
It was time for Jef to go to work, so we had lunch. Then the kids did their paper work - math, writing, filling out a map of Delaware, and a word-search on Delaware. I did the dishes.
I let them play on Starfall for 15 minutes then it was naptime. Nicholas had fallen asleep earlier, so I didn't get a whole lot of down time. But that was ok.
Nicholas and I worked on counting. We talked about what horses, pigs & bunnies like to eat.

Now they've had supper so we are going to watch "The Velveteen Rabbit". After the movie, they will go to bed!

Tomorrow we will study Delaware some more, go for a walk, and do some poetry writing. :)

My Op Pic

Saturday, September 10, 2005

Friday, September 09, 2005

how weird are you?

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Housekeeping

Day 11

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

First Day of School

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