Foreign Language Envy

Jane’s grandchildren are smarter than my grandkids? I hate to admit to that but it has to be so as here is what they’ve been doing.

Maia really is getting pretty fluent in French and her accent is wondrous. She can't say normal "r's" but can sure pronounce those gutteral French r's. She read a book to me Sunday when they were here. She was just so proud of herself.
Cian goes to a Jewish pre-school, which shares the campus with Maia's LILA school, and I went down to his family shabbat a few weeks ago. I loved it. They have special shabbats honoring each kid and their families, and then all the kids go into the temple for songs and fun with the cute female rabbi.

Lucas makes sentences like this for example, “Sorry, I didn’t ment to” while Miles says, “No, I don’t want to” but only in English which clearly doesn’t equate to speaking in a second language.

And Eddy is bringing the family up to the reunion and I will miss it as I’ll have the twins here for the weekend. I would just talk myself hoarse if I went anyway. I can’t stop myself and the time goes by so quickly.

I was amazed and surprised with your China photos. They were very good and I could see some changes in Xian since I was there in 1991. The visit to the local home was similar as well as the skyline of Shanghai and the new buildings in Beijing. Now when you get the hang of orienting the horizontal photos vertically your gallery will be perfect.

Betty and Brice are celebrating their 60th anniversary this weekend. Leslie and family are in DC, Willie moved out, and Diana is having a birthday Monday. Write and tell me what you remember about that wedding 60 years ago.

Memorial Day Group

I’ve been anxious to get this group photo but I don’t know why when you can’t see any of my family. I am proud of Cydney and her boys as they’ve been trained to sit still and smile around a camera but I think Brett and his family need work on posing. It could be that the matriarch is a poor role model as none of us are very visible with Anna Marie winning the prize for hiding.

How are Miles and Lucas ever going to bond with the extended family when they can’t visually refer to their place in it? Is there anything about the group photo that you like?

Scaffolding

Just this word is empowering to me now that I’ve been climbing around on this stuff for just a few hours at a recent Habitat Blitz Build. I want to know why we didn’t learn more about construction from our fathers when we were at a young age. While I was walking around on the second story I thought of Gayle walking on bridge girders high across the Columbia River. Really I guess any hands-on work gives a feeling of accomplishment as we also hauled gravel and that was fun too.

Maybe the best part of construction now is the fact that no man steps in to help or treats women like we need to step aside for the real workers. The foremen consider all workers equally when assigning jobs and let the workers select their preference.

So you have been going to outdoor summer concerts and picnics! I think summer has finally arrived here too. Yesterday the kids went swimming though first I had to give a drowning lecture using the squirrel I fished out of the pool as a main character in the story. It went kind of like this, “This squirrel could not swim now he is so dead that he will never wake up and is in a sack in the garbage.” They ask often to see the squirrel again and again but soon the garbage man will take the squirrel away. Miles needs the story and it has made its impact I think as he is asking for his life jacket regularly.

Saturday was the annual Manito Plant Sale and the crowds flocked in to get the early jump on the big flowers we had been transplanting, grooming, counting, and tagging each Wednesday for the past few months. Gas prices may be high but money is no object when gardening fanatics think they need more plants. It is good for our park as all the proceeds go for more improvements.

My mom has outgrown some clothes so I offered them to the staff to share with other residents. The other day she remarked that I should close her door as some people take her things. She said she sees others wearing her clothes! And she’s right about that.

Lucas and Miles love their hand made MD shirts. They wear them often and sometimes beg to keep them on for bed. I hope they turn into MD affectionatos so they’ll keep the family reunion going. Mostly I’m waiting for our group photo so they can look over the group and name a few. Miles was carrying around Willie’s photo so maybe he’s working on names and faces. I wonder when the photographer will send the digital photos or do we need to order them from Patrick?

Jim Buckmaster

Warden High School’s graduating class of 1958 is having their 50th anniversary this year so he is just one of the class members that mentioned he was planning to attend the reunion. Phyllis Bowling Wahl is trying to locate all the class members and I think she has found them all, maybe names like Gene Christianson, Rosie Bartol, Jim Felton, Fred Babcock, Sharon Thomsen. I suppose you are like I am and wondering, who are these people?

Now I understand better when I mention names from the past to my mom. She knows the names all right but she thinks Brett should be eight or nine not 41. She won’t stay at my house now for any length of time unless the food is ready to eat and soon after that she is ready to leave. Sunday she was here for maybe 30 minutes and then she kept asking and asking when she could go back to her place.

Lucas just graduated from his preschool to head out into real world. It was quite the emotional event when his class sang “Graduation Day, Graduation Day” to the tune of “Dinah won’t you blow, Dinah won’t you blow? I love graduations more than weddings so I’m happy to get all the graduation announcements this time of year.

Yes, speaking of weddings, get ready for the onslaught of company next year when we all arrive for Regina’s wedding. I mostly want to see Mimi Smartypants and go to the Empty Bottle. Now you know my life revolves around the computer and reading blogs about people I don’t even know.

I was afraid Nancy might become a Wii expert so I put one in my basement so I could practice to compete. In order to make room I pawned off a small slide to Katie the other day. Mckenna was so cute and busy while Katie remains the low-key mom.

Is your weather ready for outdoor concerts?