Were You in Ms Thomason's 6th Grade Class?

REMEMBERING THE CLASS

I could walk across the street to get to school!

Memorizing Robert Frost poetry

• The Road Less Traveled


• Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening

Edgar Allan Poe - The Gold Bug

Ms Thomason read the story to the class (You're never too old to be read to)

Gym Class -- Ms Thomason being 'beaned' by a baseball while everyone was yelling "Heads up!!"

Ms Thomason's comment about visiting the Jungle --

"Once you've visited the Jungle you're never the same again" (We all wondered about that!)

Math was hard that year.

Our State reports -- Each of us selected a state to do a comprehensive report on. I picked Arizona and had the pleasure of seeing that state on a cross country trip that following summer.

What do y0u REMEMBER???

What a Baby Costs

What a Baby Costs by Edgar Guest

"How much do babies cost ?" said he
The other night upon my knee;
And then I said: "They cost alot;
A lot of watching by a cot,
A lot of sleepless hours and care,
A lot of heartache and despair,
A lot of fear and trying dread,
and sometimes many tears are shed
In payment for our babies small,
But everyone is worth it all.

"For babies people have to pay
A heavy price from day to day--
There is no way to get one cheap.
Why, sometimes when they're fast asleep
You have to get up in the night
And go and see that they're all right.
But what they cost in constant care
And worry, does not half compare
With what they bring of joy and bliss--
You'd pay much more for just a kiss.

"Who buys a baby has to pay
A portion of the bill each day;
He has to give his time and thought
Unto the little one he's bought.
He has to stand a lot of pain
Inside his heart and not complain;
And pay with lonely days and sad
For all the happy hours he's had.
All this a baby costs, and yet
His smile is worth it all , you bet."

"It is never too early to begin impressing upon our children by both word and deed, the responsibilities of parenthood. Part of the job of raising children is raising them to be successful parents themselves." (William Bennett from Tnhe book of Virtues)

What's Facebook?

What's Facebook? Well by definition it must be a book of faces; so here's mine!
OK, so I'm a little younger than I am now, but this is me! Kinda cute, huh!

I'm new to facebook, and as a __aged new G-mom facebook has been an eye-opening experience. I know it's been around a while, but I was personally introduced to it by my daughter as a way of staying connected to family and get to see all those grand-baby pictures I adore!
(OK, so you guessed by now that this is a picture of me when I was a lot younger!)

A big plus to facebook is you can make friends fast! Which is definitely a plus if you tend to be on the shy side like me. I made 30 friends in 30 days! I've never been able to do that in my whole life! OK, so some of those folks are family, and everyone knows you can't choose your family , but it's nice to have a base you can count on! (I do have a relative who hasn't accepted me yet, but 'Oh Well"!

Another big plus has been the ability to connect with people from your past! You can type in your High School and the year that you graduated and VOILA! there appears a list of former class mates! Only catch is that they have to have preceded you on signing up on facebook!
I was able to connect with a good friend throughout school, including HS and also a friend with whom I had lost touch. She was my very first friend in the whole world! We used to play in the sandbox together! We even spoke to each other for over an hour in REALtime on the phone on New Year's Eve! You can connect with people across the country(probably the world) right from the comfort of your own home, right on your PC! Great! Right?

So is there a down side? Well, it can pull you away from the REAL world, and distract you from your real family and current friends. So much so that some would say it's addictive. I understand that some have adopted virtual lives for their real lives! I think that's sad! There are also games you can play on facebook that can be fun, but you can also get sucked into over-doing that as well!
There's also the potential to get hurt by your friends on facebook; either accidentally or on purpose. People can ignore you, people don't have to be your friends, people can say mean or catty things, and people can accidentally miss your posts, and that can make you sad. So when that happens you find yourself engaging in interactions just as you would in the real world.

So, facebook has to be taken with a grain of salt and kept in balance along with everything else that is going on in your life. It can be a vehicle for easy communication, but it can never replace the time spent in real world face-to-face interactions with family, friends and loved ones.
Nothing can replace having dinner with someone or picking up the phone and talking to someone one on one in real time!

HOPE

Let us all hang on to HOPE in the face of tragedy in the world today!

The news is full of images of misery, agony and tragedy in HAITI.

This rainbow was photographed on vacation in the Caribbean;

what a contrast to the images we're seeing now.

It's still the same Paradise....in Haiti, Paradise Lost!

Let's HOPE that with lots of help and rebuilding that

Haiti too can be part of Paradise...Regained!