We are moving to West St. Paul on April 2. We close on our house and the new house that day and have 24 hours to be out of our current house. Last night we started packing up the basement and I’ll probably start on the bookshelves today, but we need to get more boxes before we can really do anything.

If you want more details of the house, you’ll have to e-mail me. And if you have an overwhelming desire to haul furniture and boxes let us know.

Lexi had her one year check-up today. For those of you just dying to know she weighs 21 lbs 6 oz and is 30 inches long. Which means she’s in the 50% for weight and 75% for height. She had to get two shots which usually results in a 5 second silent scream and then all out screaming and sobbing. Tonight however she got the first shot and was a little startled but it didn’t bother her. By the second shot she realized what was going on - she cried, but the crying lasted until she was sitting up again. Not bad for getting stabbed twice in less than 30 seconds.

One entertaining thing about the visit, the clinic updated their system to make appointments more informative and to keep better track of patient information, etc. However, our doctor did not quite understand the system yet so she kept entering things wrong and had to go and get the staff member that was doing the training to come and talk her through it. If I was in a hurry or Lexi was crabby I would have been really frustrated waiting for her to figure the computer program out, but since Lexi loves to wander around in only her diaper and we weren’t in a hurry, it was mildy amusing watching a normally self-confident, competent doctor muddle her way through the new system. In the end we did get a neat print out of our visit (after 2 attempts at trying to print…).

Well, it’s not officially sold yet, but after a day of negotiating, offers, counter-offers, counter-offers to the counter-offers, the buyers accepted our offer. They will have an inspection done on the house this week and we will close on it in April. So it’s basically sold (basically meaning we can’t consider any other offers made unless these buyers back out before the closing).

Now we have to start the negotiating process all over except this time we are the buyers.

As of tomorrow we will have had 18 private showings of our house. Today alone we had 4 showings. Now all we need is one person to make an offer…

A couple weeks ago we celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday in my classroom. It was a very eye-opening lesson for our kids. I started by talking about racism and injustice. We did an activity to try and explain segregation. I put a circle of masking tape on the floor and all of the kids whose names started with the letter “S” had to stand in the circle. The rest of the class got to pick whatever toys they wanted to play with, play where they wanted, basically had free-reign over the room. The kids in the circle could only stand there. (I’ve never heard the phrase “but that’s not fair” said so many times or with so many syllables.) But it got the point across - it wasn’t fair that they couldn’t do what the other kids did, just because of their name. It really helped them realize how unfair racism is (they couldn’t chose their name, just like you can’t chose your skin color).

Then I read them the book Martin’s Big Words. It’s a great book that explains what Dr. King did for America as well as give a brief biography. The kids have never sat so still while listening to a book. After it was over the questions started: Why did they bomb his house? Why did they shoot him? Why do some white people like him and some hate him? Who shot him? Was he scared? and on and on and on. They were great questions from kindergarteners. I was really proud of them. For about a week after Marting Luther King Day, they asked me to read the book every day. And I did. It’s dropped down to an every other day request, but almost 3 weeks later they are still talking about how Dr. King “was really smart” and “a really nice man”.

It’s hard to put into words how emotional and passionate the class got while discussing his life and asking questions about him. They really understood the injustice and what Dr. King was trying to accomplish. They talked about things that they don’t think are fair in their lives. They talked about how they wished he were still alive today.

The next best thing to a snow day is the day after. I have 17 kids on my attendance list. Today 11 came to school on time. One more showed up about an hour late. And the 3 most annoying stayed home.

12 is a great number for a kindergarten class.

When Lexi was born we got a whole bunch of coupons for various free offers. One of them was for a series of pictures at 3, 6, 9 and 12 months. It was at “professional” photo studio (as opposed to JC Penny’s or Babies R Us). The deal at this place was if we came in for all 4 sessions they give us 1 picture from each session for free. The sittings are also free. Basically, they are hoping that we will buy a package of pictures for family and friends at each session. But their prices are really high (I think a 5×7 runs about $40 - sorry, I can get 10 pictures and 24 wallets from JC Penny for $30) so obviously we didn’t buy anything.

Today when we went in for the last photo shoot the photographer asked us how many outfits we brought. We only brought one. He made a comment a long the lines of “so this is only for the panel of pictures then?” It was in sort of a “thanks for wasting my time” tone. He took about 15 pictures of Lexi standing up - not really putting much effort into getting her to smile or making sure she was posed right for the picture. At one point I made the comment that she was leaning over sort of far and so he stopped and suggested we move her closer to the stool. He shot that one pose and then said, “well I think we got one you can use” and went to get the appointment book to schedule a time to pick a picture. Kevin asked if we could try some of her sitting. He let us, but didn’t tell us how to pose her, basically told us it wouldn’t look very good, and grudginly took about 5 pictures of her, again making the comment about thinking we got one good one. I know we didn’t get any good ones of her sitting since she was sitting funny and barely smiling in those.

Alright, so I know that we weren’t dream customers because we only came for the free stuff and had no intent of buying anything, but he still should have treated us like we were going to buy a huge photo package. He doesn’t know if I’m going to recommend him to my friends or come back for a family photo.

If you are looking for a photo studio in the twin cities, go to JC Penny’s in the Rosedale Mall. The actual sitting is fast, they let you change outfits 2 or 3 times, they take suggestions from the parents on poses, props, etc, and you can pick/order your pictures on the same day. On top of all that they are completely affordable. You can go to the website and get coupons for $3.99/picture sheet.

Don’t go to Ron Burg Photography.

Reason #68 - Snow days.

It’s not really a snow day, but because of the cold they couldn’t get our busses started. When I got to school they told me it was a 2 hour delayed start. Whoo-hoo, two hours of prep time. 5 minutes later we were told school was cancelled for the day. I stayed for about an hour cleaning up my room and sorting a few things out and then headed home. Now I’m just watching t.v., working on some lesson plans, and hanging out with Lexi. Not a bad way to start a week.

Because I just got an e-mail dated October 17, 1980.

We had another house showing tonight and when we got home there was a message on our answering machine from our realtor. The couple really liked the house and they want to see it again but bring friends with to look. Now I’m getting excited, maybe the house will sell sooner than I thought…

So, who wants to help us move?