No idea how to summarize all this into a title...

Still in Simpsonville for Montessori training. Every single thing we learn is like..eureka...finally education makes sense. It always made sense before but the Montessori method takes everything...everything, that good education has and puts it in visual, kinesthetic and concrete terms. And the sequence...small, repetitive steps...everything done until mastery. Amazing.

More about me! Today was an taxing day on my body (and my phone), but still felt (needed) the desire to go to the world's BEST sushi restaurant. Blue Fire Grill. Wow. Little more pricey than I am use to, but such unique and scrumptious rolls and sashimi.. Julie and I found it from a recommendation from Nina, who was in our first class. She said her favorite roll was the Texas roll-steak, cream cheese and jalepeno. We scoffed too. The first night, we tried that just to prove her wrong and it was phenomenal! We ordered a second one for dessert. We've ordered one every week! We've gone every week too. Julie and I eat homemade turkey sandwiches so we can save up and go hog wild during our Blue Fire nights. Tonight we went with our instructors and one of their friends, whom we adored instantly. Tonight, Julie noticed a buttery delicious guy at another table, which led to one of our teachers going to talk to him, leaving Julie's number and then him buying all five of us drinks! Niiicccee.

So, the phone. Julie fell in love with Habibi, a CD rack of African decent, and we returned to Ten Thousand Villages to get him today. I, again, ran to the bathroom, where I proceeded to drop my BRAND NEW Blackberry curve into the toilet. Now that is actually the second phone I've disposed of via toilet water, but its been a while. My sweet little curve is only 4 weeks old! I've submitted an insurance claim, but will be, sniff, phoneless, until Friday at the earliest. This must be this week's test!

We had a great proposal for a birthmom this week, but the estimated total we 45K, so after a day of talking and thinking, we passed on submitting our profile for consideration. We are working hard to save, and our budget for this adoption is 35K. Another 10,000 would just not be wise at this point. So, we are thinking of the future and our financial safety. I hate being wise. We are sending another profile to a birthmom in Nebraska, but that is usually one of 6-8, sooooo...not high hopes. :)

Darkness...

So, Julie M and I are in Gray Court doing Montessori training again, and Monday night we were motivated and excited and goal-orientated to get some work/homework done. So, we're working along and I noticed a storm approaching (since I had the curtains open.) I continued working on my laptop, completely forgetting that A)I am here with my karma partner, Julie and B)her apartment was just hit by lighting. About the same moment that I decided I should for safety reasons unplug my laptop, the power in our hotel goes out. 1 1/2 seconds later Julie has flown down the hall and is knocking on my door. The monsoon has arrived and we could barely even make out the next hotel through my window. We did notice the rain flooding in my room, so a little break to take care of that. The trees were bending to touch the parking lot. The stop lights were out. Emergency vehicles were going down Fairview Rd. No business (except Pizza Hut-what kind of reprieve did they get??) had lights or power.
We really tried to pass the time. We looked at every file on my laptop, including every picture with Julie viewed with utmost patience. Then we started to drink. That wasn't on the agenda, but what else can you do in a power outage! After raspberry drinkies were consumed, we made our way down 4 floors to the lobby. There congregated every smoker in the building. Actually it was soooo hot on the 4th floor that anything was better than our room. As the night progressed, we drank more, we tried (honestly!) to share our stash, and we talked to random strangers. It is always interesting to talk to people that you ordinarily would not have the opportunity to talk to. That night Julie and I were sitting on the luggage carts right inside the doors. Most of the evening I talked to Randy from Delaware. We talked about superficial things, as new conversations go-they were there because his and his mom's car broke, the mechanics screwed up, mom was ticked off that they couldn't check in, he was on an 8 week leave from Chrysler because no one is buying the Durango. Later, as we drank more and more and more, Randy talks more (and his mother finally loosens up some). He has a 13 year old son that he hasn't seen in a year. His ex-wife probably has borderline personality disorder, and has forever. He asked me, el drunko on the suitcase mover, if that was bad. I gave him the most of my ability, that borderline was the worse of the mental illnesses because they are so resistant to treatment. He said that finally, I, drunkard on the furniture mover, finally explained things in a common sense language. Who KNOWS what I said! I hope I don't wind up on Jerry. We were talking about his son, and I urged him to get his son from his crazy mother, because time was a'wasting. He said, almost an admission of defeat, that he felt it was too late and he could do nothing. I tried to convince him that he could make lots of changes if he would get his son, but he didn't want to hear what I had to say. Interestingly, there are over 150 kittens at his work site and he risks being fired to save them. Interesting. Can't/won't save his son but won't let a cat die. Interesting.

And more artsy fartsy photos

I am obsessed with line and color and patterns. These 'mingoes rock. I took tons more pictures of the smelly birds-here are just my favorite.

Zoo pics part 2

Oh, the meer cats! I had my zoom lens and could not get one of them to stand up in typical freaky meer cat fashion.




Um, he's one and has no fear. Feeding the goats.

P for Palmetto Tour- Z stop

We took the kids and met Joy and her kids to Riverbanks Zoo. Fun. Saw fighting bears, a baby flamingo, and the baby lion cubs!

P for Palmetto Tour-first stop

First stop, C for the state Capital. It was hot. Talia didn't have much patience for outside. After we finished with the state house we went to get frozen yogurt. She ended up getting some crazy bright colored vanilla ice cream that turned her poo blue! That's not normal!



Here are some of the 8000 pictures I took.


And of course my attempt at being an artsy photo-grapher. I really need to take a class, but I was obsessed with the patterns this made.

Smores

My parents dug a pit to roast things during the grandkids' visit. Tonight it was smores. Early enough so the sugar rush could be run out (and it didn't really work-Bella was rolling and convorting all over the couch at bedtime...)


Ode to a marshmallow...


I finally got one.



Bella enjoys each and everything she eats. And it shows.

Taint nothing better than a Mater!

My parents have a little garden in their backyard and they grown delicious tomatoes. It has been forever since I had a real tomato, not the kind forced grown by chain supermarkets. Ah, I vividly remember sitting on the front steps in our house in Quinby eating tomato after tomato like an apple. Obviously it runs in the family. The kids live for picking and eating tomatoes. I think they each ate two right at this moment.

World's Best Toy!

This post is another bit of evidence that kids really like the box better than the toy that comes in the box. Mom attached two leftover metalic streamers to a pvc pipe and a broken toy. Heaven. Talia, Bella and, yes, ME, played with this for the better part of a day. Fun. Fun. Fun.

Future Sheryl Crowe?

Talia got her guitar and got on "stage." (An aside, the shiny floor isn't for her stage, its to keep the cats from peeing on the floor. Actually I think we're past peeing on the floor, but Mike is convinced...)



Tuning up. Actually making it sound worse. I mean that in a sweet, motherly way.



Notice the technique!



She's been working on her bow, but still gets a little off balance. So she holds on, just in case.

Saturday....Just more rambling thoughts

So, its been a full week-at least in my head. Monday-Wednesday my teachers and I met to work on the curriculum upgrade. What a fantastic group of women! We kicked butt typing a Life Skills curriculum for our students that need a "other than college" focus in life. I am super excited about everything we will do this year! I also showed them some Montessori lessons and seemed like most everyone was hooked. The stuff speaks for itself. We also had an interesting discussion about brain research and deaf kids and how we teach. The book I am currently reading "Teaching with the brain in mind" says that we (teachers) can either have our students attention OR they can be making meaning. We (deaf ed teachers historically) have shoved language and vocabulary and words words words down our students with little improvement. In a Montessori lesson, the first presentation of the lesson is done in complete silence. The student is watching and thinking and processing. My teachers and I talked about if we provided some Montessori lessons to our students, in silence, allowing them to think and process-might that actually create a schema or connection in their brain that when we added the language and vocabulary, it would stick? Lots of us will be testing that idea this year.

On Tuesday, I get a call from my AMAZING bank that they have a check of mine that appears to be forged! Bad. I went to the bank and met with Ms. Davis who was the floor manager. A woman came through the drive through with a $425 check written to herself with a signature of mine and Mike's that was obviously forged. Luckily my bank checks the signature and cares about its clients. Ms. Davis called me 5 times until she finally got my secretary, who tracked me down. ANYWAY, I immediately thought of my house cleaning service, which is the only people that have access to my house. So I called the owner, too. I filed a police report in that county and after picking up (super grumpy Talia) went to my county and filed the theft report. Turns out that my house cleaning service was trying to be good people and were supporting a DSS program that helps single women get jobs. That program was supposed to do a background check on the women, but the owner of the agency always does a second check. The woman that tried to cash the check had been a one day trainee in that DSS program and took a check from my desk! Grrrrrr. At least she didn't get any money, but I'm still making sure she is charged. Grrrr. In addition to the fun of being taken advantage of, and filing police reports, on the way home from the police station, I got REAR ENDED in my freaking RENTAL car! My car was in the shop from the little boy that ran into me 3 months ago and I get hit again in the rental car! Thank goodness I had insurance and extra rental car insurance. Dude. What a day! But my friend Lisa cooked a delicious dinner and have multiple Bud Light Limes on hand. Allll better. :)

Since then, life has been remarkably calmer. Ta and I went to my parents house for a couple of days. Always nice and relaxing. Fun pictures to come.

Went to my church's scrapbooking night with Brenda. Love it. 5 hours to actually craft! Heaven-no pun intended. There were 15 people there tonight. And a cool skateboarding ministry outside-so we had tons of skater boys all over the parking lot and skater boy-looking-girls on the sidelines. Cuteness. One random time, all the kids not attached to a skateboard lined up and "field tripped" to see what we were doing, like a museum exhibit. Strange. But I was looking just as hard as I dodged the boards going to my car. Funny. I am old.

Oh. Finally saw Juno Saturday night. Awesome music. I know I am a couple years behind movies, but I never get to go out. Actually from the time Talia arrived home in 2004, I didn't watch a movie in the theater until The Bee Movie. And that JUST came out. I digress (again). Cute movie. I had no idea it was about adoption. I watched it with a little more emotion that I would have if we weren't waiting for a baby via adoption, but it was so different than if we were waiting on our first. My sister, emotional goddess that she is, even cried. I didn't. Of course I don't tear up for anything. Julie said "You need your own Juno." Cute. Would be nice. A smart, funny, driven, mindful pregnant teenager that chooses to give us her child. All set to cool soundtrack music. And I actually think Liberty Bell isn't such a strange name.

Random

As I stated earlier tonight, I have a little obsession with other people's blogs. One blog suggested taking pictures of ordinary items in your world to remember that you saw them, such as the texture of the bark of a tree, the pattern of lights on a wall, etc. I'm trying to find "random photo worthiness objects" and this is my first. Not the best photography skills demonstrated here but interesting arrangement of the shoes.

Pop Rocks Rock!

Talia asked for chicken pops and this was as close as I could identify what chicken pops were. Little did I know there was a pop theme. We added the special colored sprinkles to the pudding and a noise errupted from the chocolate goodness-pop rocks! Talia dove in and I had to get pictures.

Here she is showing me the fizzing candy in her mouth.


Here she is trying to sign what it feels like in her mouth. Much the same sign she made up for carbonation after she first tried Sprite. She did enjoy the whole experience. And even left a few pop rocks for me to try!

Riverwalk

Cold, cold, cold water with three half naked children (my sister was off cavorting and taking my picture...guess I finally got in a picture!) Oh, this was just before random guy in the river CASUALLY said, oh, yeah, there's a snake under that rock (right where we were putting the children!!!) Needless to say, we removed ourselves from the water after the snake sighting.


Sweet Princess TaTa


All huddled together to watch an insect be devoured by a mass of ants.


Bella and her mommy. I just liked the swoopy curve of the sidewalk.