Picture posts coming as soon as I have time to re-size my images:
-fireworks show that Ray worked on
-peek-a-boo with Sam
-apples

So, tomorrow is my weigh-in day and I’m dreading it because I know that I’ve done poorly this week and I don’t want to face the scale. The worst of it is, it’s not just a scale, I’ve been using my wii balance board for this job so every time I weigh in it starts with a skinny little mii and increases it’s girth while declaring, “That’s obese!”. You’d think they could have programmed it to use it’s records to know that I was already obese, I didn’t just suddenly puff up to my current size this morning.

Anyway, it’s bedtime. I’ll try to get some pictures up tomorrow but Saturday is a busy day, so we’ll see.

^ Samuel watching the kids greet Rosie

It’s a long lonely day when everybody else is at school.

Today they only had a half day. I’m not sure why this school does it that way, but it was good for my kids. They were all pretty nervous about starting the new school and so kind of warming up slowly was a good thing. Tomorrow is going to be really weird for me.

Just Samuel, Rose, and me for 7 hours straight. We’re going to be really lonely. That wasn’t sarcasm, by the way. I really do think we’re going to be lonely and it will take us a while to get used to having them gone so long. I think it will be a bit rough on Samuel. But, once we adjust… it’s going to be awesome.

It’s not just her size. I’m afraid we’re ruining her by not being wise/knowledgeable enough to know how to deal with her puppy antics. Particularly biting. If we can’t teach her not to bite we’re not going to be able to keep her and I really don’t want to have to let her go.

^ Well, not that he’s 1 1/2 he’s ready to start working

^ We pay him in ice cream

^ He approves.

^ Big sister Jessica with her ice cream face

^ Poor, sweet puppy. No ice cream for her.

The End.

On one of the first few days after we moved into the house, Jessica had gone, alone, to the playground to play. (In the city, I had not allowed her to go alone, but this is a small, old-fashioned town. And, besides, I can see the playground from the dining room window. I can’t see it clearly enough to watch her play there from the house but I can watch her travels back and forth and see her if she’s on the top of the equipment.) Anyway, she had gone alone, but I was nervous about that, I really thought (and think) that is it reasonable for her to go there and play without me — but it’s a new and scary thing for me, letting her be so independent.

So, after a little while, I decided that perhaps I would just walk over and see how it was going.

But, when I got to the park, she wasn’t there.

I am now going to deny panicking; I didn’t really think that anything had happened to her. My main fear was just that she had wandered off and lost her way. I called for her and she didn’t answer. I stood at the corner of our yard, at the intersection, wondering which direction to go to look for her. Ray had the van at work, I was stuck looking for her on foot. I sent Sarah towards the school, perhaps Jessica had thought to go there to play on the equipment. I returned to the park, I don’t know why, I guess to see what she would have seen from there so that I might better guess where she might have gone.

And now the anti-climax.

As I looked out from the park, heart in my throat, ready to call Ray home from work to help look for her, I saw her in a yard across the street. She saw me and started running toward me. She knew that she was in trouble. She started explaining as she came; I met a new friend, her name is Kaley, she lives right across the street from the park. I went to her house and we played inside. She’s really nice. And look, her Mom gave me her phone number.

And the mother had. She’d written her name and phone number on a piece of paper and sent Jessica home to let me know where she was.

My timing in checking on Jessica must have been just exactly wrong, she couldn’t have been gone longer than 15 or 20 minutes. Unfortunately, that was 15 or 20 minutes that I had to get all worked up.

So, the day that Jessica met Kaley, Jessica was grounded and did not get to play with her new friend until 3 days later.

*not her real name

It’s nice to have a yard, a driveway, a carport, trees… not to mention the house.