Frog & Toad - The play

Big Brother's 5th grade class put on the play Frog & Toad this week.


Arnold Lobel's well-loved characters hop from the page to the stage in Robert and Willie Reale's nmusical, "A Year with Frog and Toad". Conceived by Mr. Lobel's daughter, Adrianne, "A Year with Frog and Toad" remains true to the spirit of the original stories as it follows two great friends, the cheerful and popular Frog, and the rather grumpy Toad, through 4 fun-filled seasons, learning life lessons along the way - including a most important one about friendship and rejoicing in the attributes that make each of us different and special.

Big Brother played a squirrel.

At the end of the play with friends


The students worked very hard during and after school for 3 months to perfect their lines and parts. All of the hard work surely paid off!

The show was excellent!!

What do you see in the clouds?

For a few minutes today, we stopped everything we were doing - homework, cleaning, cooking - and went outside to sit on our back patio to sit and stare up at the clouds. This isn't something that we often take the time to do. It seems that we are all so busy these days.

This morning it was gloomy with forecasts calling for more thunderstorms. We lucked out and the storms passed us this time, leaving us with a sunny sky and big, billowy clouds. You can still see some leftover storm clouds hanging around but overall, mostly a light blue (or as they call it here Carolina Blue) sky.


(Not to be out done, if you take a look outside now....you will see a Steelers' black sky!) Haha! That's a joke with us around here!

It was so nice to hear the kids giggling innocently as they described what they saw in the clouds.

Little Sister saw a shark in the top, left cloud and a turtle in the far right cloud. Big Brother, on the other hand, saw a person in the top, left cloud and a rabbit in the far right cloud.

Below, Little Sister saw airplanes in the bunch of clouds to the left. In the big cloud on the right, she saw a fish with a big googly eye (pointing toward the left). Big brother saw a flock of birds on the left and turtle on the right.


As for Mom and Dad, we saw peace and harmony....if only for just a few minutes!

We really need to do this more often!

Twilight - Are you joining the craze?

Big Brother has just finished reading Twilight. I'm not sure what really drove him to want to read this book--the fact that he is a tween boy in search of a girlfriend and the girls in his class that "like" him have all read it; maybe it's the fact that he likes taking a stand and going against the norm by saying that no one -especially his buddies - can tell him that he "can't" read the book because it's a girl's book series.... or maybe it just the fact that the book is worth 18 points toward his A.R. reading goal for this nine weeks in school if he earns a 100% on the A.R. test.

Whatever the reason, he read it and enjoyed it. Now he wants to see the movie. He's prepared himself this time and realizes that the movie probably won't hold up to the book. He's learned that the movie on the screen will never equally match the movie that he created in his head while reading. Such was the case of The Series of Unfortunate Events. Talk about a shock. He still talks about how disappointed he was in the movie after reading the books.

On to New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn..... Looks like he's going to have some summer reading to do. And this is NOT a bad thing!

If you're reading this, please let us know if you've read Twilight and/or have seen the movie. We'd love to know what your opinions are on the book and the movie!

Weekend Family Fun

It's been a very busy week for us. Along with everything that we've been doing inside the house, the weather has been busy changing from sun, to rain, to sleet, and then back to sun ...now rain tonight. Very strange!

Sleet and rain before the sunshine





Big Brother and Little Sister loved watching it sleet! Believe it or not, the sun was shining brightly the next day.

Friday night we watched Bedtime Stories with Adam Sandler. My kids and husband thought this movie was hilarious. I fell asleep less than half way through it. -not my cup of tea. I like silly movies but this took silliness rather far, in my opinion. The rest of them are still quoting the movie and laughing about it today.

We rented it from Redbox. Have you tried this yet? It's a great way to watch movies for a really cheap price - and if you do some searching, there are free codes out there, too! Nothing beats a free movie!

Little Sister was busy on Friday night and Saturday night! She lost one tooth on Friday and another again last night! She is anxiously awaiting a visit from the Tooth Fairy.

Little Sister is Top Dog!

Little Sister was chosen to be their classroom's "Top Dog" last week! She brought home Charlie, the dog, and he spent the week traveling everywhere with us.

Little Sister with Charlie



With Charlie and his journal



Charlie's journal tells where he's traveled - here is what Little Sister had to say



Sorry for the dark picture but if I lighten it, you can't read it at all.

On the left page it says: I love my teachers! then there's a picture of Charlie at the library with her
On the right page it says: Charlie went with me to the library. He took long rides with me.I slept with him. We took pictures together. I will miss him.