[day 119 ... april 29]

UPDATE: At last! A photo of Phoebe (far right) and her family to include on this page. This was taken on the occasion of Phoebe's son Scott's swearing in to the US Air Force in early August. Steve and Beth (Phoebe's sister) came to witness the swearing in as well.
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Today is Phoebe's 60th birthday. Happy birthday to her! I'm breaking with "the rules" to post this without a photo-of-the-day because I don't have any digital photos of her, and my scanner isn't accessible to add an older picture. But when I find something, I'll add a photo here as well.

For now, I just want to say many happy returns, and let her know that I've been thinking of her all day and remembering wonderful things from my teens years when she was my stepmother.

[day 118 ... april 28]

This old-fashioned enormous dictionary is in the Little School library. Brings back fond memories for me as my grandparents had a similar one in their home. I loved the indented tabs for each letter, and the sheer size of the book: so many words in small type on such thin paper. Just always impressed me, and made me think how small my vocabulary really must be compared with the whole of the English language.

Now I receive daily Word-A-Day e-mails that also remind me how little of the language I know, but in a smaller, packeted way. I do learn from them, as I did from browsing through my grandparents' dictionary. I'm glad my kids also love to look up words in a real, hardcopy dictionary too, even if it's less efficient than searching online.

[day 117 ... april 27]

Cory made this little "catalog" of belt colors that you can earn (as you can in Club Penguin), and then made the belts themselves from different colors of construction paper. He's industrious, this guy is.

[day 116 ... april 26]

Cory continues his streak of making any and all things from recyclables, which we collect by the bagful. I take bags to school for his classroom nearly every week, but Cory often raids the stash to make things.

He also loves to make things out of plain construction paper. Here he's made a guitar out of black paper, tape, and string. It's amazingly realistic, too (if a bit floppy :-). He then proceeded to make a "case" for it out of lots of colorful paper. He's indefatigable in his construction endeavors these days. I love seeing what he comes up with next.

[day 115 ... april 25]

This is one of those "reality" posts: the true view of life and laundry in the Snapp household. I love my new washer and dryer (the old Maytags lasted almost 20 years but finally gave up the ghost last summer), and they do get a workout.

[day 114 ... april 24]

Tonight was the long-awaited PSCS Student Showcase! Candi took Niall and Cory home after Extended Day, and I picked up Grandma Shannon and we drove to the event together. The Showcase was at the Wing Luke Museum, which I had never been to, so it was an extra treat to see bits of the museum as well.

But the prime delight was watching and listening to these fabulous kids show off their stuff! There were art, drawing, and photo displays. Several slideshows running on laptops. A lovely arrangement of the kids' short explanations of what PSCS means to them, written up with calligraphy and mounted - really nice, and such wonderful summaries. Tynor's note mentioned living out his grandmother's dream for children being free to learn unhindered, or something along those lines. It was really sweet, and she was so touched to read it.

Tynor performed a duet with Murren (in this photo) and also drummed in a set with one of the school bands (can't remember the name offhand but it'll come to me). He was outstanding! He had practiced for weeks but was still a bit nervous about it. No need to be - he did just great.

Kellen and the other seniors (this is Josie with him in the picture) all had presentations about their senior projects. Kellen displayed photos about parkour, laid out his wonderful essays about what parkour means to him, safety in parkour, and so on (that he's been writing out on his blog), and also had a slideshow of himself and other people doing parkour. People shared compliments with me all evening about how impressed they were with his work (and him in general :-), which I appreciated so much. He's worked so hard to conquer all his schoolwork to earn his diploma and now this year, to hammer out a senior project that was workable *and* meaningful for him, and then to complete all the work. He has earned every bit of the accolades coming at him now; none of it came easy.

[day 113 ... april 23]

Today was observation day for Niall's class. This is his classroom in the Woods Building. Didn't get a chance to have my conference afterwards with Niall's teacher, which is typically how it works, because I had to dash off to a customer visit. But I enjoyed, as always, observing in the class, watching the kids as they work and interact.

Niall sat at a table with several other children working on a paper, then lined up to have Joyce review his work.


Later at meeting, I got to watch him present his sharing. This week we printed out a photo collage he made of recent pictures of the hens and he brought that, along with one of their feathers. Every child shares once a week in Joyce's class, and sometimes it's a bit of a struggle to find something meaningful to share about. But somehow he (or he and I) come up with something.

[day 112 ... april 22]

Meadows Building to the left, Woods Building to the right. At The Little School, the Meadows Building houses the youngest children: half-day classes of 3 to 5 year olds and full day classes for 4-5-6's. Cory is in Meadows this year.

Woods has the older kids, and the classrooms are laid out very differently. Maybe I'll remember to include a compare-and-contrast on another day. Niall spent three years in Meadows and is now finishing up his second year in the Woods Building.

[day 111 ... april 21]

I love the cloud formations around here. So many dramatic and striking shapes and textures, hanging overhead or windswept across the sky. I could probably take a whole book full of cloud photos and never get tired of them.

This photo was taken over Woodmoor Elementary just after Cory and Niall's swim lesson this evening.

[day 110 ... april 20]

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Tynor and Kellen bus back to Woodinville from school and we swing by the Park-N-Ride to pick them up. Once in awhile they bike or walk up the hill, but they prefer to get a ride.

[day 109 ... april 19]

It was Maia Jade's birthday today! Pirates and Princesses - great fun. I dropped off Niall at Colin's, picked up Allison (Colin's sister and Cory's classmate), and drove the two younger kids down to Fall City where Maia lives. It's quite a ways down the valley - pretty drive.

The kids enjoyed swinging (three at a time!) in the hammock, climbing on the play structure and pretending to be (you guessed it) pirates and princesses, and swinging (Allison's favorite, hands down).

Cory and Allison were a darling pair in their outfits. A great time was had by all!