The Spider Who Grew Ten Feet Tall
Grayson came home with a story he had written in October. He has written short sentences or paragraphs before, but this was the first full story. If you click on the image below, you can see it in a fuller size. Here is a translation if you need it:
(Skip this and try reading it first, if you like)
The spider who grew ten feet tall
On a dark and gloomy night five scientists were thinking about a great spider. The spider had been there for centuries. It had laser eyes. The whole town was destroyed. The scientists had been making a lazer. To destroy the spider. The spider lived in the old castle. Five months later the laser was finished. They got it ready they aimed it they shot the laser. At the old castle. The castle exploded. The spider was dead they cheered!! After that the people grew again. I was one of the scientists.
Soccer Boy
Grayson just finished his third season of soccer and LOVED it. He is already missing playing with his team. We have been fortunate enough to have a wonderful coach who teaches the game, but also makes it fun and seems to really care about the boys. We have stuck with this coach since the beginning. This season, the dad of a new player on the team brought along his very fabulous camera and took many pictures of all the boys during both practices and games. At the last practice he gave everyone a disk of the best images. Wow! He really did a great job. We have taken soccer pictures in the past, but it is hard to zoom in. Plus, this year, our camera had a bit of an accident. Anyway, I love these pictures and wanted to share some of Grayson. If you click on them, you can see a larger version. Enjoy these and we’ll see you at spring soccer practice. 
Biking in the Fall
Over the weekend, we loaded up all the bikes and headed up toward Galax, VA, to find the New River Trail State Park http://www.dcr.virginia.gov/state_parks/new.shtml. It is the most beautiful place we have found to go on a day trip to bike. It takes about one and a half hours to get to from Winston Salem. It used to be a rail road line, so it is almost completely flat and has little water falls, big trellises and dark tunnels. Fun for us and for the boys. This latest time, we were able to bike five miles out and back, taking along plenty of grapes and apple chips to put into any little mouths that thought about whining. 
Since it is so flat, even 10 miles is doable for all of us, although we were ready to get back in the car by the end of the journey.
New School Year already?
It has been a long time since I have sat down and made a blog post. Since I work from home on the computer now, it is not as fun to sit down and play on the computer. It’s hard to believe, but Evan is a big fourth grader this year. Only one more year in elementary school after this one?? What a thought. He has a second year teacher who looks about 12 years old to me, but who really keeps him on his toes. She works very hard to find vocabulary words to challenge him. He said this is the first year that he has words he doesn’t already know. Nice. Grayson is in second grade now. His reading is really taking off! We sit together and read the Magic Treehouse books. We are both enjoying that. He says that all he does is read and write all day long. I love seeing his progress! Here is their picture from the first day of school this year. Do they look taller? They get to ride the bus in the mornings now and we have a nice little walk down the road together in the mornings. They watch for the bus pretty eagerly. I love that they are still looking forward to school.
Painting
I procrastinate very well when it comes to painting rooms. I have talked about wanting to paint the kitchen for well over a year. Recently, though, I became inspired. First, I painted the downstairs bathroom a fresh coat of yellow. It had started looking dingy to me. Then……I started the kitchen! I began with the ceiling. I sprayed and scraped off the gross popcorn that some lovely person had sprayed up there long ago. After that I primed it and took a break. The boys and I were picnicking in the mess the next day and I happened to look up and see that the primer was cracking along the places that had mud (spackle) on wallboards. I climbed up, picked at it, and the primer pulled off! I c
ouldn’t believe it. Talking with the man at ACE Hardware, he thought that when the mud was put up that it was coated with an oil based sealant. I was using an acrylic primer. So….. I had to scrape off all the primer that was over the mud, which was 1/4 to 1/3 of the ceiling, and then sand to get below that coating. THEN, I primed again and held my breath. It worked that time. After taking a day’s break, I painted two coats of ceiling paint and thought that everyone should only eat while lying on the floor and looking up. Ben thought I should paint the walls anyway since I had patched and primed them, so I got up my nerve and started that. It took f.o.r.e.v.e.r to go around all the windows and corners, but I finally did finish. I guess now you don’t have to eat while lying on the floor.
Family Photo
Our church is getting its directory updated. We missed the last update, so in the one before it, Grayson is about 18 months old. It is time for an update! A member of our church has a business who does just this sort of thing called re:Member. We were pleased with the very talented and silly cameraman who got such a great smile out of Grayson. 
Synonym songs
When I was in third grade, my teacher, Mrs. Bobo, put a very funny synonym song up for “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” It began, “Propel, Propel, Propel Your Craft.” Evan and I were sitting together tonight laughing about that song. I started to wonder if we could make up synonym songs for any other tunes we knew. Amid an awful lot of giggles, we came up with these two:
Small male azure
Hither toot thy instrument
Thy mutten romps in yonder field
The milk bearers tromp the maze
Whither is the youth who tends the mutton?
Look beneath the bales
A snoring.
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Blink, blink tiny fireball
I often ponder your meaning
Beyond our Earth
Such as jewels in Oaronos
Blink, blink tiny fireball.
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