A few Sunday's ago, Knox went into the nursery to stay with Hamp. Hubby and I had to run home to get food for the potluck after church. When we got back, we found the boys sitting at the table with snacks and a huge Lego structure in front of them
Knox was the construction engineer but Hamp was the creative consultant!
If we had been another 15 minutes, they would have used every single Lego in the nursery!
Hamp went to school this year, be it only 3 days a week. We enrolled him in the 3 year old class at First Baptist Church Preschool. He loved it! We weren't sure how he was going to adjust but he was a pro! Hamp has speech problems that make it hard for you to understand what he is trying to say. It can be frustrating for him but he as learned to cope with making you understand what he is saying. He started speech therapy going once a week.As the school year went on, he started talking more and more. The amazing thing was that you could understand what he was saying! Between his speech therapist, Ms. Jennifer and his 3 year old teacher, Mrs. Karen, Hamp has become a chatter box! Ms. Jennifer would give Hamp homework that we worked on at home and Mrs. Karen also worked on them at school. All of this has made it easier to understand most of what he says now. He has become more adventurous in trying more complex words and sentences. From this we have found a little Einstein! Hamp constantly tell us his numbers and letters. Colors are his favorite way to describe everything he sees. Every week Hamp would come home with new crafts that he had made. Watching him learning how to write his letters as been fun! I am amazed at his ability to go from tracing his name to actually being able to write it! It's so amazing to watch him grow... We will miss Hamp not being apart of the Pre School at First Baptist next year. We are excited that he is so well prepared to start Pre-K at Big A Elementary. We look forward to seeing how far he goes next year!
This year I not only remember the fallen but two men who came back from war and taught others that war is not all glory. They taught us that war should not be taken lightly. They taught us that through the worst of the battles comes great courage and strength...most you never knew you had.
These two men survived some of the worst battles of WWII and taught us that their buddies left behind were the true heroes, not them. They spent the rest of their lives here on earth telling their stories and those of countless men who never came home.
These men did this so we would never forget.
I will never forget them...
God Bless You
Jake McNiece and Reed Pelfrey.
May your first Memorial Day in Heaven be a great day of reunion and peace...
We hate Honors Day at our house! There I said it! I hate having to look at the eyes of my child when something is said about Honors Day at school. I melt... I cry... I stay away from Facebook... This year my son FINALLY gets something and I don't know about it. His school gives T-shirts to all the students who receive awards. When he showed me his award (which was for nothing academic, but not being RAC'd all year--this is a type of disciple system at his school), I asked where his T-shirt was and his words were, "They were all bragging with them." This meant that he didn't get one and he was upset. As a teacher I have always had mixed emotions about Honors Days. Its great to recognize our students but we seem to recognize the same ones over and over. Yes, they are the ones excelling in the classroom but for them, school is easy. What about the kids that struggle with everything and still are able to pass and even exceed the state tests! What about the kids that work harder than those being recognize and get no Honors Day T-shirt? What about those who have learning disabilities and are still able to not only pass but excess on state tests? What about those who worked, struggled, cried and worked some more only to be given a pat on the back... It's not fair. Only those in the gifted classes seem to be getting the awards...at least in my child's eyes! We struggle with school every year. I have a son that struggles with the riggers of school. The way public school is structured is not the structure that allows my son to excel academically. Every year we have cried over not being able to understand concepts as quickly as his classmates. Every year I tell him he has to work twice as hard as his classmates but that he can do it! Every year we cry together and yell at each other. Every year his surprises me with how well he pulls off passing his CRCTs! But no one from his schools have ever recognized him for academic achievements He's been recognized by his SPED teachers in his IEP meetings but never has he been recognized in front of his classmates. We have only been to one Honors Day in the eight years he has been in school and he didn't get anything for academic achievement. For his learning disabilities, he is achieving more than we ever thought he would be able to do. He will never be able to be in the Top 5% of his class...we have come to terms with that. But can't we recognize him for SOMETHING academic! Every year when he has to watch his friends get their T-shirts and walk across the stage, I watch him get frustrated. Every year it gets harder and harder to get him to work to accomplish what his school calls "basic" achievement. I see him struggling to try to keep a B average. I watch him every year sink to "why should I work so hard when no one recognizes me" mode. I work hard every year to pull him up and he does. But how long can I keep it up? It saddens me that he kept an 87 average all year and was never recognized for it. I'm speaking of my child. There are others in the same boat. They work hard. They keep their grades up. They pass and exceed state tests. They help their school to get high scores on state school wide grades. Why aren't they recognized? I know it seems like I am saying that every student deserves an award. That's not it. We seem to have forgotten that every student is special. Every student has something that is valuable. It takes every student for a school to get that "A" grade from the state. Every student is able to make some type of contribution to academic excellence of their school. For some students you just have to look harder for it. We put so much on those exceeding we seem to brush aside those that are the "average" student. Honors Day is not a good day in our house! We are proud of those who got their Honors Day T-shirts and awards. You deserved it! We just wish you knew how much we deserved it too!
The other day when Hubby was cutting grass, he stopped and quickly came in the house. He was in a hurry (if you know Hubby, he's NEVER in a hurry) and had a somewhat panicked look on his face. "Quick, I ran over a rabbit's nest! There are baby bunnies in the nest!," he spouted out. "What do I need to do?" I wasn't sure. Together we went back up to where he had run over the nest. There Hubby uncovered a nest with four tiny baby rabbits...
They were all huddled together and it was hard to tell where one started and one ended. But you could see their cute little ears! Hubby said two were outside the nest just after he noticed it. He put them back in the nest when he came and got me. We decided to cover the nest back up and wait. If the mother rabbit was still around, she would be back and would move them. If she didn't come back, we decided that we would try to raise them.
We left the nest and waited. Not long after we left, it started to rain. I found a large pot and placed it over the nest but with a way for Mama rabbit to get in. We just waited again and hoped for the best. As evening set in, Hubby came back with news. Two of the baby rabbits were gone but two were still in the nest. The two in the nest just didn't make it. Mama rabbit, we hope, has the two surviving babies and is raising them to be full grown rabbits!
Some days are just not good days.... Sunday was one of those. As we went about tending to the chickens and goats, it was business as usual. We moved the large chicken pen with the tractor and had just finished refilling water and feeders. I went to crank the tractor so that we could move the goats. We hand crank our tractors partly to make it harder for the boys to start the tractors. Hand cranking is not terribly difficult but must be done correctly. The most important thing to do is to make sure that the tractor is not in gear when you crank it. Because as soon as you crank it, it's ready to go. And if it's in gear it will take off with you. This is what I found out the hard way. So if you hand crank your tractor and it is still in reverse, it will run over anything in its way. Even if that's a metal chicken pen....
I must tell that no chickens or humans were injured during the ordeal. Only the chicken pen was damaged and hurt. The tractor only had scratches on its tires. And the chickens aren't as dumb as people would like you to think! Humans on the other hand.... Now we begin the process of building a new chicken pen....
The last Saturday in March is the start of our tractor show season. So this past Saturday, we packed up and headed across the river to see all our friends at Farm Days at Astabula.
This use to be the old Pendleton show that was started in part by a couple of brothers Norman and Ernest Durham. We have know them for quite a while and usually camp next to Norman and his wife Elaine when ever we can. The Durham's are quite knowledgeable about hit and miss engines and both have traveled around the US pulling old iron from the scrap yard into working history again. We consider them almost family and our kids look for them even before we get out of the truck at every show we go to.
Ashtabula is a charming two-story clapboard plantation house built c. 1825 by Lewis Ladson Gibbes (1771-1828) and his wife, the former Maria Drayton and later owned by their son Lewis Reeves Gibbs, the famous SC naturalist. The house was expanded to 10 rooms by later owners and the farmland expanded to over 1,000 acres. The orginal 2-story brick building on the site dates to before 1790 and was the site of a traveler's tavern prior to the building of the main house. This building was later attached to the main house with a breezway and was used as the plantation kitchen, and other rooms are interpreted as servant's quarters and a school room. Ashtabula is a house museum situated on ten acres of open ground with its colonial period brick dependency and well house. The house was restored by the Pendleton Historic Foundation and furnished with antebellum antiques and family artifacts.
The show is set up under in the grove of oak trees with the house in the back ground. It's really neat to hear all the engines popping and grinding under the trees. It makes you feel as if you are on a working plantation in the 1880s. There was an 1883 working cotton gin, blacksmith demos, and all types of toys from the 1800s for kids (and adults alike) to learn how to play.
Here are some of the sites we saw and were apart of at the Farm Days at Ashtabula...
First thing Hamp did was get on Mr. Norman's wagon right between two girls!
This is a corn shucker. You put in dried corn and this machine will take the shucks from the cob.
Another view of the corn shucker.
Hubby talking with the celebrity at the show, Lyn Ellis. Lyn was on American Pickers. I had to leave...I didn't have my boots on. The conversation was "getting pretty deep."
This is an antique hay bailer that Sam is filling. Later on, Knox joined Sam as they bailed some more bails. These two boys are always finding something to do at every show we go to.
Ernest Durham (on left with black hat) is showing his latest engine he has rebuilt. It belongs to the man on the left, Dean Hunter.
Some of the kids at the show were trying to make some money. They were selling Corn Dogs...ears of corn with faces put on them with a string tied around them. Sam was handling marketing.
Hamp worked all day at trying to fill up that water bucket.
This is a very rare, single cab steel hauler by International. To the left you can see the engine that runs the corn shucker.
All day Hamp worked at grinding corn for Ms. Linda. At the end of the day, I caught Hamp and his Daddy racing to empty the corn grinder. It was a great end to a great day!
