Cenneidigh and the Topsy Turvy experiment

Cenneidigh is going to grow a tomato in a Topsy Turvy and one in the ground with a cage. She is going to see which produces the most tomatoes. She has been very excited about this and finally we got the plants for her to plant and a huge bag of potting soil which she used all of.

We are going to make this a science project if we can keep up with the data. I think having the experiment done by September will be a vast improvement to the usual way of doing it the week of the science fair. Wow maybe we can beat procrastination this year.

We both also planted the fountain and Zeke bought two strawberry plants with his own money. We planted them around the fountain. We removed a few rocks to make room.

We are going to move the Topsy Turvy to the same spot as the other plant, we need Gunnar to do it and he was gone for the day. I have lots of lily's if anyone once to dig some up they can have them. I should dig up half of what I have so far, it will be too many otherwise.

Toy soldier fun in the sun

JT and his best bestest friend, who lives close, brought out all of their toy soldiers and put together a fun game. The sun was out and the weather was at least 70 degrees. A perfect day to play outside. Now I just need to get them to clean the porch up. Winter really does a number on the outside of the house.

City Pride Day and Community Clean Up

All done, time for donuts and home. We are soaked from the knees down.
Cenneidigh found a rock full of quartz so she brought it home to put in the fountain.
A dirty wet, not as cool as last year, job. We cleaned around East Side Lake, just like last year. The kids all whined when I told them about it last night, but they came excited to see what fun things we would find this time.

1. Large rusty electrical screw driver(Looked like a great murder weapon, but we never found a body, at least not a human body.)

2. Child's bow, but no arrows.

3. Top to a plastic garbage can

4. Poke balls they use to catch fish with(JT's idea for all the bobbers we found.)

5. Fishing lures

6. A few dead fish

7. Many unused paint balls(we burst them then picked them up for the garbage.)

I swear the park was cleaner this year then last.

Following a shower for everyone, the three youngest and I went to see The Unwicked Witch at Matchbox. Amanda won tickets on the KAAL morning trivia contest on Friday. I've entered several times and never have won. I need to send it out to the universe so I can win one of these days.

Be polite and fair

People work hard to get here, it isn't fair to allow everyone to go just because. Sometimes things need to be earned or they mean nothing.The choirs invited here were prepared and the music was beautiful. Allowing anyone to perform would not be fair to those who worked so hard to get there.

Being polite is important and even when someone asks me to do things I try to remember to thank them, politely. Qatar's first word was Thank You, we said it to him every time we handed him anything and he would take the item and say Thank You. It is sometimes not easy to be polite, especially when we are tired, but being polite is something anyone can do.(it may not have worked with everyone and we made many and still make many mistakes in this area)

Being fair is difficult because everyones idea of fairness is different. Is it fair that everyone is given the same opportunities without doing the same effort? We need to be careful here, being fair to Gunnar is different then being fair to Qatar. They do not need the exact same things and so giving them those is really not fair after all. Wages and education need to have some association. If you are willing to spend years in school then you should get a higher wage. It doesn't mean your smarter, it just means you can put the time in to learn something worth learning and sharing with others for a salary. I know plenty of smart people who did not go further then high school, but that extra 4 years makes a huge difference in jobs you can get and money you can earn.

After reading Nickel and Dimed, I've thought about this issue. It would not be fair to pay everyone the same or to raise the minimum wage. Raising the minimum raise will raise the price of things and give inflation something to sticks its teeth into and then we are making more on paper, but have less buying power then before. Be fair, but lets look at the big picture. I really don't have a good answer for you in this regard. What is being fair really?

Great Day!! Being 40 is making me happy!

I was subbing at the high school the other day. One women I worked with could not believe I had a 16 year old, she wanted to know if I had been 16 when I had him(I now love her). Then on the way out the door(I did not realize the door was locked on the inside) a man was nice enough to show me another way out if I got stuck at that door without someone with a swipe card. He then called me back to tell me something else and he said I quote: "Young Lady, there is ....." The rest is unimportant. Did you hear that, YOUNG LADY, David said it must have been an old guy, no he was maybe in his late 40's, got to love it. I think I will start telling people I'm 49ish, then I really look good for my age. Being 40 has not been bad at all. The alternatives to getting older are not pretty, so I'm OKAY with being 40 and all the years that come. If I start to feel bad about my age, I'll just lie and tell people I'm a few years older then I really am. Why bother with trying to be younger when it is more fun to have people tell you you look young.

Books 57 and 58

Good suspenseful story. Romance and thriller mixed in one.
Love it and cannot wait until the next comes out in August. Read this series, very well written and it keeps you thinking. Loved it highly recommended.

Do it now!!

Why? Why? Why? I don't want too, I will do it tomorrow, or maybe next week. I'm going to hate this one. Procrastination is my middle name. Yes it is, Lisa Procrastination Peters. I can't help it, I was born to delay. If you have any ideas let me know. I know the whole thing about how to eat an elephant, one bite at a time. But please, some tasks are meant to be delayed.

Example: Cenny needed to have her palate widened for braces, well I forgot to get the two teeth pulled, the ones needed before they could do the procedure, for over 6 months. Finally done and they then decided she didn't need her it widened any longer, see it works sometimes. Intermittent rewards are the worst for procrastinators like me. If it worked one time, maybe this time it will too.

Tell me your strategies, please do it now!

AHS Concert at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis

When we arrived we tried to get Gunnar's attention but he was more interested in talking to the girls around him.
All the choirs together at the end for 2 selections.
Gunnar singing along.
Austin Concert Choir after the performance. This is a once a year honor for the best choirs in the state.
AHS Concert Choir was chosen to perform with 5 other HS choirs at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis. It was a great honor and the booster club made it even better with matching T-shirts, labeled water bottles, and snacks. The water bottles were labeled with the choirs and the honor of being picked to perform. They had a guest conductor and spent the day at Concordia University for workshops. Gunnar was exhausted after the concert and so were David and I.

We took the spectator bus up with many other parents. The booster helped with that, so it was only 5 dollars a person to ride up and 12 for the tickets. All the choirs sounded beautiful and the ride up and back was enjoyable with fun conversations. We all got home at 11:45PM and getting up the next morning was miserable, no seminary for Gunnar(too early) and as luck would have it, I spent the day at pre-school yawning the whole time.(I'm usually awake and getting breakfast and lunches made by 6:15 when I get called to sub, not today I answered the phone in a complete haze and was lucky to remember where I was suppose to go.)

Thanks to Amanda for watching the kids at home so we could share this experience with Gunnar.

Scouts and too many boys

Enough said.

Hair bleaching with Qatar

Not brassy yeah~!!

Very small amount of change, but it looks good and not brassy like last time
Tipping the ends, hard to look cool with the cap on

Let it go. Be happy

This one is a hard one for me. Sometimes I don't think about it and it goes away, but other times I dwell on the injustice of the moment. Why me? Why them? Why, do they think I do nothing but sit around and eat bonbons all day long? But, its amazing when I let it go. I don't think about it, I don't dwell on it, I just forget it and go on with my life. No bad feeling, no sick stomachs, no missed sleep. Let it go, you will feel better and you will be happier, I need to remember this next time something happens and I start to dwell on it. Just to let you know: The opposite of Love isn't hate, the opposite is apathy. If you hate someone, you are dwelling on it, LET IT GO!!!!!

Book 49 The Hunger Games, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55 and 56

First Keillor so far and it was OK, can't say I loved it, didn't hate it either. I want to go to Rome.
Be creative for you, not for the money and remember its yours and no one else really cares(at least until you make it big.) Listen to your creative drive no one else, it's what you need to do. Not for everyone.
Another favorite, actually the first book in the series. I started at book three and have worked backwards.
Very interesting, I will never hire a maid service after reading this. I bet that was not what I was suppose to get out of this book, but that is what sticks with me. Raising the minimum age is not the answer, goods will just go up and 5 dollars will be worth 1 dollar soon if we do. Something else needs to be done, education assistance and j0b training with a up in wages once you learn the job and stay put for a minimum of time.
Interesting, "Regard you soldiers as your children, and they will follow you to the deepest valleys. Look on them as your beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death." "In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not good. So, too, it is better to recapture an army entire then to destroy it." Destroy the enemy's plans and conquer without bloodshed and fighting. I enjoyed it, the historical information after the book was informative about what was happening during the time he wrote this book. This was suggested in another book I just read. Short, but interesting. Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys.
Look on them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death!"
This was a Playaway and under three hours, but it's following my search for Happiness. Great quotes: "I am beneath no one and superior to no one." "I am independent and above the need of the praise and acceptance of others," Nelson Mandela said. "Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies." He goes through the eight steps to enlightenment, I will listen to it again. Very good. Also a DVD that played on PBS. Some practice modes to follow. "We need to accept our shadows, if we have no shadow, we are standing in darkness. Accept them is the first part to letting them go and accepting others helps them let them go and rid the earth of more evil."
My teacher, Mrs. Graber, read this to us in 5th grade and I cried and when the movie came out I refused to go. Zeke brought it home on a Playaway, so I picked it up while I was making Gunnar's costume. I love this book, it makes me cry every time I think about it. Jess is sure he was selfish for not taking Leslie with him to Washington DC with his teacher, he loved being alone with the teacher. Leslie was dead when he got home, she had fallen on her way across the creek to Terabithia. He feels it's his fault, this story breaks my heart. I'm hearing different things this time around. The mother seemed mean, but now I see her as tired and beaten down by poverty. His parents love him, but they are so busy working to keep food on the table, that it seems to Jess that they don't care like they should.

Wow, lots of violence for a young adult book, but WOW!!!.. I started and finished this morning. I'm looking forward to the next one, I think it is a trilogy. Fast paced, I didn't put it down. I've got nothing done today and I really enjoyed reading it. Another place and time and the needs that drive us to do things we would otherwise never do. I loved it! looking forward to the next one.

Goofy happenings in the Peters house

David at the top of the ladder getting the plaster down.
Yuck it is hard to breathe in here.
Happy Birthday Bonnie, alittle over the top with ribbons and 54 pieces of candy.
Cenny;s idea of fashion.

Happy Birthday Qatar, now 14

Qatar is 14 today, wow how time flies. Happy Birthday sweetheart!!!!!! He's old enough for dances now, scary for me.

Act the way you want to feel

This one is fun, have you ever tried to smile when your head feels like it will explode? Exactly! But, if you are in a funk, smile and maybe you can feel good for awhile at least. If you want to be happier, then act like you already are. Some times people that are always upbeat and happy are looked down on as not being as intelligent as others who are critical of things and seem to know what they are talking about. Being critical is easy, try it. Barry Manilow, whats up with the hair?

So easy, you can think of about a million things to be critical of, but how many can you be positive about? It's not less intelligent, it's actually more. This is one I will strive to do better at. I love Barry Manilow and I can come up with a million reasons why, his voice is soft, his songs are sweet, they seem to speak to me, etc... There are many reasons to be critical of him, but I choose to see what I want.(even his hair)

Choose to see the good and the positive, it will be amazing. I'm starting right now. I have the fountain to clean out and it is nasty from sitting there all fall, winter, and a few warm days this spring. But when I get it done it will be blooming and beautiful, even if I need a new pump. I've never actually bought one yet, just inherited them, so it will be an experience too.