He's like Ben.

(Micah, wearing his dad's glasses.  He doesn't wear glasses himself.  Yet.  It's only a matter of time.)

Ben haaaaaaaaaates napping.  If he accidentally falls asleep on the couch or whatever, he wakes up feeling kind of nauseated and dizzy and weird.  This concept is completely foreign to me.  I loooooooooooove napping.  And I wake up feeling really happy, content, and loving.

I'm thinking Micah is like Ben with naps.  He wakes up crying and fitful and really unhappy.  He fell asleep today on our overstuffed green chair, and when he woke up, he was pretty weepy.  I was hugging him and asking him what was wrong, and he said, "Mommy, I feel like cwap."  Hahaha!  It made me laugh.

An Early Valentine's Date

Ben and I took great pains preparing to go to the temple yesterday.  We lined up baby-sitters, arranged for Ben to come home from work early, packed our temple bags, got all dressed up, lost the car keys, found them, packed the kids up, dropped the kids off at the sitters (thanks again, Brooke and Ken.  No doubt this will be the last time you will ever want to watch them.  They're evil sometimes...I'm so sorry...), drove to the temple, parked, got out, walked across the parking lot, pulled out our temple recommends....

And I realized that mine had expired in December.

Yikes.  Bikes.  (This shows how un-often we go to the temple.  And that's sad.  But, in my defense, I was recovering from surgery at that time...  However, I have no defense for the entire month of January, when I should have realized it had expired and gotten it renewed.)

We stood for a moment in the temple parking lot, looking at each other, mouths wide open.  After all of that work...

So....we decided to have our Valentine's date a week early. 

Ben always plans our anniversary (and plans things I want to do), and I always plan Valentine's Day (and plan things he wants to do).  So for our anniversary, we went to Jack Reacher (my movie of choice over The Hobbit [I hate Tolkien]) and to Johnny Carino's (Italian food).  For Valentine's Day, we went to Warm Bodies (his movie of choice over Lincoln) and to Blue Hashi (sushi [I hate sushi]).

I really don't like zombie movies, but I had heard this was a funny one, so I was like...okayyyyy...  Ben, on the other hand, loooves zombie movies.  His new favorite game on the ipad (also Dylan's favorite game and Sadie's favorite game) is called Minecraft.  It involves architecture and zombies.  Which is why it's Ben's favorite game.  At least that's what he's told me.

Warm Bodies was surprisingly really, really funny AND...cute.  Yes, I said "cute" in correlation with a zombie movie.  It's a must-watch.  And an eventual must-buy.  For reals.  The main dude on it is that cute little boy from About a Boy.  Do you remember him?  Well, now he's a tall, 23-year-old handsome glass of water.  When did that happen??  That is so weird to me. I stay the same (I get a little fatter and more wrinkles under my eyes, but mainly, I stay the same), and all the children grow up.

The sushi restaurant wasn't a problem for me, because I had teriyaki chicken and veggies with noodles, so I was a happy camper.

Speaking of tall, handsome glasses of water:

On my to-do list for next Tuesday - go get my temple recommend renewed. :)

The Blessing of the Snowball

My seester in dee weendow, Beads, is here this week with her hubster, Spence.  We've been partying hardy. We went sledding yesterday and had big fun.

Gage was in a reeeeally bad mood.  The kid wouldn't take his nap, preferring to jump in his crib and sing in jibberish to himself, and when it was time to go, I think that's when the tiredness hit him.

Getting four kids suited up for sledding is not a fun thing.  And then listening to a two-year-old screech for 15 minutes while you drive to the hill is also not a fun thing.  By the time we got there and got unloaded, I was done. 

My mom, Beads, and Spence could sense this, I think, and they took Gage and worked with him:

(Gage wouldn't even look at me for this picture.  He was really upset with the world.)

I walked down the hill a ways and started building a proper jump.  Sledding isn't as much fun without jumps.  That's my opinion on the matter.

Somehow, Spencer found a way to make Gage happy.  He would make a snowball and show it to Gage.  Gage would tap it with his hand:

And then Spencer would throw it at someone:

We thought this was just hilarious.  Really, it looked like Gage was bestowing his holy blessing upon each snowball:

And it made him really happy.

Spence started throwing snowballs at his wife, who was trying to take pictures:

She's a good sport.  She just kept laughing and taking shots.

Sigh.  They're the best.  (I wish they lived here.)

Cheese or Belize?

So.  Ben's friend, Nick, with whom he has a bromance, is going with his adorable wife, Kathleen, to Belize in April, and they invited us to come along.  Nick's been there before and really loves it.

We actually still have about a zillion sky miles (there are some silver linings to the whole Ben-in-China-for-ten-months-without-us experience), and hotels are ridiculously cheap down there. 

 (It looks like a horrible place to be, right?) :)

Then a guy at work was like, "If you want, you can use your sky miles and stay at my condo on the beach in Grand Cayman for free."  And then another guy at work was like, "If you want, you can use your sky miles and stay at my house in Jamaica for free."

Gulp.  Mother may I?

So we've talked it over and decided that we're going to save up to go to...one of those places.  (Feel free to tell us in the comments any experiences you've had in any of these three locations or what you vote for.)

We discussed that, in order to save up what we'll need for food, possible hotel costs, and entertainment, we'll have to really be strict with our grocery budget for the next couple of months.  Not one penny over.  No trips to Michael's or trips to Los Albertos to get a burrito for me.

Which is hard for me.

So last week, as a result of eating cheese quesadillas for dinner for a couple of nights, and as a result of poor planning on my part, we ran out of cheese on Tuesday.  We shop on Saturdays.  I was like, crap.  How are we going to survive until Saturday without cheese??  I mean, we have four children.  Children and cheese are like...The Lone Ranger and Tonto.  Like Nutella and bananas.  Like Batman and Robin.

So I called Ben.  "Bennnnnn, we're out of cheese.  Can I please, please, please go get some?"

"Yikes, hon, you know how much cheese costs.  And we've already hit our budget for this week."

"I know.  But it's cheese, Ben.  Children and cheese are like..."

"Dawson and his creek?"

"Yes."

"Well, do you want cheese, or do you want to go to Belize??"

"You're killing me, smalls."

So we went without cheese until Saturday.  But only because we had plenty of bread, peanut butter, and clementines.  Those are other staples for children.

But it was hard for me.

I complained to my sis, Lex, via text.

Me:  Because we want to go to BELIZE, we can't get CHEESE.

Lex:  Feeding your family is probably a higher priority than travel!  Haha!

Me:  I know.

Lex:  I would say until buying cheese isn't a budgetary worry, no Belize.  No CHEESE, no BELIZE.

See, the thing is, I want BOTH cheese AND Belize.

Therein lies the problem.

When I get grumpy about giving up certain things for a dream vacation, I think, "Is it worth it?"  But then I see pictures like this...

...and talk to my hairdresser about it (she's been there a few times and adores it)....I think, okay.  I think I can give up the proverbial cheese for Belize for the next two months.  There will be sacrifices, but then there will be...

The Lesson - Why is learning an important part of Heavenly Father's plan? - What I Did

*Before class, write on the board, "Why is learning an important part of Heavenly Father's plan?"

1.  Plan of Salvation - Review

My darling friend, Rachel, sent me this link, which has printable plan of salvation diagrams.  I printed them out, colored them, cut them out, and put together one baggie of pieces per person:

Then I had my students do something that the Redheaded Hostess does in her seminary classes - have them actually assemble a plan of salvation diagram correctly.  The kids loooved it.  And it led to some good questions and discussions about what happens when and what comes before what.   Here is a sample of what they came up with:

 

 2.  Making Connections

I gave each student a slip of paper that asked them to write down everything they knew about a certain aspect of the plan of salvation.  Each kid had a different topic.  Here are the slips I passed out: 

What do covenants have to do with the plan of salvation?

What does obedience have to do with the plan of salvation?

What does the Atonement have to do with the plan of salvation?

What do you know about life after death?

What do you know about pre-Earth life?

What does the Fall have to do with the plan of salvation?

What do you know about the resurrection?

What do you know about mortality (life on this Earth) in relation to the plan of salvation?

We had a few students missing, so I took one of the extra and filled it out.  It's good to be a model of what you want your students to be doing.  Then I had each student (and myself) share what we wrote.

I pointed to the question on the board and said that we were going to explore this question in our lesson today, that today's lesson specifically focuses on learning and what it has to do with the plan of salvation.

3.  Diagram/Picture Activity

I gave each student a half sheet of paper with a scripture on it and had them draw a diagram or a picture that represents the principles in the scripture passage.  Here they are (I'm not putting the space on here for diagram drawing, but I did give them each half a sheet of paper with the following sentences on top): 

Read 2 Ne. 28:27 – 30. Then, draw a diagram or a simple picture that represents the principles in the scripture passage.

Read D&C 98:11-12. Then, draw a diagram or a simple picture that represents the principles in the scripture passage.

Read Alma 12: 9-11. Then, draw a diagram or a simple picture that represents the principles in the scripture passage.

Read D&C 50:40. Then, draw a diagram or a simple picture that represents the principles in the scripture passage.

Read D&C 88:77-80. Then, draw a diagram or a simple picture that represents the principles in the scripture passage.

D&C 88:67. Then, draw a diagram or a simple picture that represents the principles in the scripture passage.

Read D&C 93:36. Then, draw a diagram or a simple picture that represents the principles in the scripture passage.

Read D&C 130:18. Then, draw a diagram or a simple picture that represents the principles in the scripture passage.

Then I had each student share their scripture (we all looked them up and marked them) and then share their diagram or picture showing what it means.  

One girl gave me her diagram at the end of class - some kids like to keep their stuff; others don't.  Here is hers (just double click on it to see it bigger):

Again, because we were missing a few kids, I did one.  I think mine is funny:

I'm glad that I got this one, because I had studied Elder Oaks' article, which in part addresses this scripture (D&C 88:67).  Looking back, before giving this slip to a student, I would include this quote on it to help the student understand it a little better:

"Our efforts to learn must be combined with personal worthiness for us to receive the guidance of the Holy Ghost. We must avoid sexual impurity, pornography, and addictions as well as negative feelings against others or ourselves. Sin drives out the Spirit of the Lord, and when that happens, the special illumination of the Spirit is gone and the lamp of learning flickers.

In modern revelation we have a promise that if our eye be single to the glory of God, which includes personal worthiness, our “whole [body] shall be filled with light, and there shall be no darkness in [us]; and that body which is filled with light comprehendeth all things” (D&C 88:67)."

And then we ran out of time, dang it!!

I really do try to figure out how much time things are going to take, but I'm rarely right.  I guess it's better to be over-prepared than under-prepared, right??

So this is what I would have done, if I had had more time.

4.  For the Strength of Youth - Education

I was going to divide the class into thirds.  Every single person, however, was going to be given the excerpt on education from the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet.  (And there's a reason for each student having their own, which you'll see.)  Each group gets a different job.  One group needs to list things Heavenly Father wants us to do.  The other group lists the blessings Heavenly Father has promised, and the third group lists advice about education.  Here are the excerpts and instructions that I gave to them - each one is different.  Give one group the first worksheet, one group the second worksheet, and the third group the third worksheet:

For the Strength of Youth – Education

Read the following excerpt from the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet on Education with your group. Then, on the separate piece of paper provided, list things Heavenly Father wants us to do.

Education is an important part of Heavenly Father’s plan to help you become more like Him. He wants you to educate your mind and to develop your skills and talents, your power to act well in your responsibilities, and your capacity to appreciate life. The education you gain will be valuable to you during mortality and in the life to come.

Education will prepare you for greater service in the world and in the Church. It will help you better provide for yourself, your family, and those in need. It will also help you be a wise counselor and companion to your future spouse and an informed and effective teacher of your future children.

Education is an investment that brings great rewards and will open the doors of opportunity that may otherwise be closed to you. Plan now to obtain an education. Be willing to work diligently and make sacrifices if necessary. Share your educational goals with your family, friends, and leaders so they can support and encourage you.

Maintain an enthusiasm for learning throughout your life. Find joy in continuing to learn and in expanding your interests. Choose to actively participate in the learning opportunities available to you.
Your education should include spiritual learning. Study the scriptures and the words of the latter-day prophets. Participate in seminary and institute. Continue throughout your life to learn about Heavenly Father’s plan. This spiritual learning will help you find answers to the challenges of life and will invite the companionship of the Holy Ghost.

For the Strength of Youth – Education

Read the following excerpt from the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet on Education with your group. Then, on the separate piece of paper provided, list blessings Heavenly Father has promised.

Education is an important part of Heavenly Father’s plan to help you become more like Him. He wants you to educate your mind and to develop your skills and talents, your power to act well in your responsibilities, and your capacity to appreciate life. The education you gain will be valuable to you during mortality and in the life to come.

Education will prepare you for greater service in the world and in the Church. It will help you better provide for yourself, your family, and those in need. It will also help you be a wise counselor and companion to your future spouse and an informed and effective teacher of your future children.

Education is an investment that brings great rewards and will open the doors of opportunity that may otherwise be closed to you. Plan now to obtain an education. Be willing to work diligently and make sacrifices if necessary. Share your educational goals with your family, friends, and leaders so they can support and encourage you.

Maintain an enthusiasm for learning throughout your life. Find joy in continuing to learn and in expanding your interests. Choose to actively participate in the learning opportunities available to you.
Your education should include spiritual learning. Study the scriptures and the words of the latter-day prophets. Participate in seminary and institute. Continue throughout your life to learn about Heavenly Father’s plan. This spiritual learning will help you find answers to the challenges of life and will invite the companionship of the Holy Ghost.

For the Strength of Youth – Education

Read the following excerpt from the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet on Education with your group. Then, on the separate piece of paper provided, list the advice given about education.

Education is an important part of Heavenly Father’s plan to help you become more like Him. He wants you to educate your mind and to develop your skills and talents, your power to act well in your responsibilities, and your capacity to appreciate life. The education you gain will be valuable to you during mortality and in the life to come.

Education will prepare you for greater service in the world and in the Church. It will help you better provide for yourself, your family, and those in need. It will also help you be a wise counselor and companion to your future spouse and an informed and effective teacher of your future children.

Education is an investment that brings great rewards and will open the doors of opportunity that may otherwise be closed to you. Plan now to obtain an education. Be willing to work diligently and make sacrifices if necessary. Share your educational goals with your family, friends, and leaders so they can support and encourage you.

Maintain an enthusiasm for learning throughout your life. Find joy in continuing to learn and in expanding your interests. Choose to actively participate in the learning opportunities available to you.
Your education should include spiritual learning. Study the scriptures and the words of the latter-day prophets. Participate in seminary and institute. Continue throughout your life to learn about Heavenly Father’s plan. This spiritual learning will help you find answers to the challenges of life and will invite the companionship of the Holy Ghost.

I would have given each group a colored piece of paper to write their list on, and then I would have had them tape the papers to this poster, like so:

When I studied this excerpt, here are things I found and listed in my own notes:

1.  Things Heavenly Father wants us to do
*  become more like him
*  educate your mind
*  develop your skills and talents
*  develop responsibility
*  develop your capacity to appreciate life

2.  Blessings He has promised
*  education will prepare us for greater service in the world and in the church.
*  provide for yourself, your family, and those in need.
*  wise counselor and companion to your spouse
*  informed and effective teacher for your future children
*  open doors of opportunity
*  find answers to challenges of life
*  invite companionship of the Holy Ghost.

3.  Advice about education
*  plan to obtain an education
*  be willing to work diligently
*  be willing to make sacrifices
*  share your educational goals with others so that you have a support system
*  be a lifelong learner
*  study scriptures and words of prophets.
*  participate in seminary and institute
*  be a lifelong spiritual learner.

Have the students share their lists, and add the above things to them if the students missed one or two things.

Educational Goals

Then I was going to hand one of these handouts to each student:

This is what it says:

Take a look at the section on the poster entitled “Advice about Education.” Pick one of the things on the list (or an idea of your own) that you need to work on, and write it in the space below:

Now write how you will go about working on the thing you chose. For example, if you decided you need to be a better lifelong learner, how would you go about it?

I probably would have given them a hypothetical to help them know what to write on this.  I would say something like, "If a person's goal was to be a lifelong spiritual learner, how would they go about it?  If a person's goal was to get a bachelor's and a master's degree, how would they go about it?"  That would probably get the wheels turning.  Sometimes they need little nudges like this.  They're usually tired and really sick of thinking all week long.  So I have to give them nudges. :)  They're funny.

So that's all I have, folks!  This might be too late for you this year, but maybe it will help you next year (I know I'll be looking it up on here to refresh myself.  And to keep myself from re-inventing the wheel).  I have next week off for ward conference - the stake Sunday School dude will be coming into my class and teaching the lesson "Why is teaching the gospel an important part of Heavenly Father's plan?"  So I won't have that for ya next week.  But on the 17th, I'll be teaching "What is the role of agency in learning the gospel?"  and writing about it a few days later, probably. :)  Life is busy.

I have PTSD from driving Ben's truck.

Kay.  So.  Maybe the day after New Year's Day?  Something like that?  Ben got a "new" car.  New to us.  Old to the world.  It's a 1968 Ford Something.  (I really don't pay attention to cars.  I have to think for a minute when people ask what kind of car I drive.  For reals.)

We really needed a second car, and Ben got a small Christmas bonus, so he decided to use it to get an, um...more mature car.  This way, we have no monthly car payment, which is nice.  I was thrilled to have a second car.  It uncomplicates things - I can take Micah to preschool, take Dylan to taekwondo, etc. without having to arrange to drive Ben to work in the wee hours of the morning and load up all the kids to pick him up at the end of the day.  I'm very grateful.  And I think it's really cute:

And yes, I know that "cute" should never be used to describe a man's car.  But it is.  I like the boxy lines on it.  And Ben's friend, Tim, a grease monkey (I've always wanted to use that term) gave it a two thumbs up before Ben bought it.

It's had a few issues in its past month with us.  The heat wasn't working, and this happened to be during that unfortunate cold snap we had for two weeks, when degrees plummeted to -25.  So that wasn't too fun for poor Ben.  He figured out that he had to flush the something.  (Again, I know NOTHING about cars.)  So he got our frozen hose from our garage and brought it into our house to thaw the frozen ice inside of it.  (Ben hadn't put it away before the first snowfall and it sat under the snow, on our lawn, until Christmas.)  So it eventually thawed out and leaked all over our floor. Which was fun for me.  Then he hooked it up to our hot water pipe behind our clothes washer into the basement, trailed it through our front door and to the truck, and did some kind of....flushing...which then fixed the heat. 

We had fun inside during this time.  It was, as I said, in the negatives outside, and the garden hose is, like, maybe an inch in diameter? So the door couldn't close.  So I kept stuffing towels in the crack that was letting the subzero wind into the house.  And then Ben would come in, and all the towels would fall, and then I'd stuff them in again while he was adjusting the hose downstairs...it was special, special times.

Something else was wrong with it, so Tim came and they fixed that issue:

And then something else was wrong, so we took it to the shop for a couple of days at that point...

But I figured, hey, at least we have a second car.  I'm grateful.

It smells like an old truck my grandpa had when I was a kid.  Just a very distinctive smell.  It brings back pleasant memories.  I loved how big the seat was inside, and I loved when my grandpa would jerk the steering wheel back and forth wildly when we were out on the country roads.  I thought it was so funny.

I learned yesterday that Ben should be the only one to drive this truck.  He took our more reliable car down to Pocatello yesterday afternoon.  Dylan had a Taekwondo rank test down there, and this was going to be Ben's first experience seeing Dylan in a rank test.  And he didn't think his truck would make it to Pocatello and back.

In the meantime, Micah kept begging and begging for us to go get some pizza at the Pizza Pie Cafe.  So did Sadie.  They adore the dessert pizza.  And heck, so do I.  But I kept thinking, "Do I dare drive that monstrosity across town to get it??" 

In the end, my greed for Oreo Dessert Pizza won out over...common sense...and I ordered some for takeout (they don't deliver).  I thought, "Dude, I can drive this thing.  I learned to drive on a stick, and we had a stick clear until May of 2011.  No big deal."

OMGeeeeeeeeeee.  Never AGAIN.

I started 'er up, and it started great, so I thought, cool.  I should have gotten the hint within the first few blocks, when we were driving out of our neighborhood, that we were going to have a problem.  There isn't any power steering, so I'm pulling the dang steering wheel as hard as I possibly can, and it makes really, really wide turns.  It takes about a block of pushing down on the brake as hard as I can to actually STOP.

Sadie started getting a really worried look in her eyes, and Micah learned to scoot closer to Sadie to avoid getting hit by my elbow as I shifted the, like, six-foot-long stick.  Every time we would brake, Micah would let out a little scream.  I kept thinking, "If someone darts in front of us, I'm not going to be able to stop fast enough.  We will plow right into them." 

The main road we were on is a little rough, and the tires are kind of wide, so we were wiggling all over the lane.  I was literally having to jerk the steering wheel back and forth, like a bad actor in a movie scene does.  You know, when they're supposed to be going straight, but they're kind of wiggling the steering wheel back and forth? And you're like, "Dude, if you're going straight, you don't jerk the steering wheel back and forth."  Parenthetically, Ben wants to get new, thinner tires.  I vote for, you know, fixing the braking system first.  Or, you know, fixing the spedometer so that you actually know how fast you're going.  Then we can talk about the thickness of the tires.

The heating system had these weird, complicated knob things that you pull in and out and turn right and left.  Luckily, I figured out how to turn on the defrost, but I couln't figure out how to turn it down, so we were roasting in there.  Or at least I was roasting, because I was in a nervous sweat...

I had to run to the bank first, so I slowed very carefully at the turn-in for the bank, and then grunted as I tried to turn right, hand over hand.  And then the truck stalled.  So I was trying to start it again, and I put my foot on the brake to keep it from rolling anywhere while I did that, but I forgot that you have to stamp ALL THE WAY DOWN to make the brakes actually work, and I rolled a little backwards into a lady who was waiting on the road right behind me. 

I actually didn't feel it at all.  I had no idea I had even touched her car until I looked into the side view mirror and saw how close she was to the back of the truck and the look on her face.

I was able to re-start the truck, and then pull into the parking lot.  She pulled in next to me, and we both got out to assess the damage.  There was just one teeny scratch on the front of her car, maybe 1/8 of an inch long.  I apologized profusely and asked if she wanted to exchange information, and I explained that this was my first time driving my husband's piece of crap truck, and she just started laughing and laughing.  She said the scratch was no big deal.  "After all," she said, "This is a 2008.  It's not like it's new or anything." 

I smiled.  Um, it's newer than a 1968...

I should have just done my business at the bank and GONE HOME, but the kids were still begging for their Oreo Pizza, and against my better judgement, I decided to still go get it.

I was white-knuckling it and praying the whole time.  Please, light, stay green.  Please, car in front of me, don't brake suddenly.  Please, Heavenly Father, let us survive this ride...

We picked up the damn pizza and managed, somehow, to get home.  I've never been so happy to exit a vehicle in my life.  I am never, ever, ever driving that thing again.  I'm very aware of my mortality and not interested in putting it, nor my kids' mortality, in jeopardy ever again.

I was supposed to drop Sadie off for a sleepover after we ate our pizza, and we chose to walk her there instead of drive there.  None of us was interested in getting into that thing again. 

Ben and Dylan ended up returning early from the Taekwondo test (Dyl chickened out and wouldn't test.  Which is weird.  A different post for a different time), and I told Ben about our adventure in what I'm deciding to call The Baby Blue Beast.  He laughed and laughed and told me he couldn't believe I tried that. 

The man is so much braver than I am.  I can't believe he has to drive this thing across town twice a day.  And he acts like it's no big deal.

Today, Sadie and Micah went grocery shopping with Ben.  As they went outside, Ben said, "Hey, should we take my truck?"  Sadie and Micah both yelled, "NO!!"

As I was driving to work this evening in my nice, normal, power-steering, regular-braked car along the same road we traveled yesterday, I was having traumatic flashbacks and shivers.

Never again.

A Reluctant Writer

Boy Scouts is a mysterious thing to me.  I grew up with all sisters, so all of this Pinewood Derby/Den Meeting/Pack Meeting/Blue and Gold Banquet/Court of Honor stuff is tooooooootally new to me.  And, honestly, I still don't understand a lot of it.

My mom is the Bear Den leader in her ward.  And Dylan happens to be a Bear.  But Dylan's mom (moi) is too stressed out to try to get all of the little requirements done for him to get his Bear patch.  (I think the moms should get awarded those patches, instead of the boys.  Because if everyone else's boys are like mine, they don't give a rat's arse about getting their patches.  Unless they can just get them for doing nothing. Then they're all for it.)  So my dear mother offers to take her Bear grandchildren in with her regular Bear kids and do the activities that may not have been checked off the really long, really complicated list. 

The woman is a saint.

Honestly, the only reason Dylan got his Bobcat and Wolf patches was because of my mom.

One of their requirements in Bear is called "Jot it Down."  It's what Mom calls one of the "boring requirements," so she saves those for the winter.  They do the fun, outdoorsy stuff when it's not 10 below zero.  Which, you know, makes sense.

So I sent Dylan over to do the "Jot it Down" thing at Mom's house.  And, from all reports, for Dylan, it was like pulling teeth.  They had to write a thank you note, and I think they wrote something else, and then they had to take part in making a Den newsletter.  (Even though Dylan isn't officially part of their den.) 

So Mom sits the kids down and says, "Okay, you need to write about one thing we've done in the past year or so in our den.  Then we'll put them all together and print them out into a newsletter that you can give to your parents."

One kid wrote about the Pinewood Derby, one wrote about the Sock Ball fight, etc.  What did Dylan write about?  Basically, about how much he hates writing.  Here's the whole newsletter:

And here is a close-up of Dylan's "article":

Before we move on, may I point out two things?  1)  I am really crappy at using Gimp (the free, crappy version of Photoshop), so look how I made everyone's name private - by putting white labels on them.  I have nooooooooooo idea how to, like, virtually "white them out."  It's sad.  Just sad.  It took me two hours to figure out how to crop a picture the other day.  I'm not kidding.  I'm a technophobe.   And 2)  Notice how Mom called the newsletter the Bear News-Cessities.  How creative is she???  Love her.

Dylan's "article" - I feel the need to put quotes around it, not because it's grammatically correct to do so, but because I am feeling a lot of contempt toward it - reminds me of these journals I used to have my students do when I taught 8th grade.

Everything I had been taught in college was that, if you wanted your students to become good writers, they had to write a lot.  So this is what I did for "bell work."  I would put a topic on the overhead and make them write for ten minutes about it.  It shushed them down at the beginning of class and got them into writing mode.  And I did read every single one of those journal entries, first of all, because I loved learning more about each student.  And secondly, because if I didn't read them, they would've caught on, and then they would've written crap.  Or filled up the paper with stuff like, "blah blah blah blah" or "I'm writing I'm writing I'm writing I'm writing."  Trust me - I had a few try that on me.  They had all kinds of tricks.  I had to be all specific and tell them that they had to fill up at least ten lines on their paper, margin-to-margin.  So then they would write really, really huge.  So then I had to tell them that they couldn't write really, really huge.  It was ridiculous.

My favorite thing was when a kid thought I wasn't reading all the journals, and he (it was always a he) would write, "Mrs. S is making me write this journal, and I hate it.  I hate writing.  I don't know why we have to write all the time.  I think writing is stupid.  I think this class is stupid.  So that's how I feel about it.  The end."  But without periods or apostrophes or anything grammatical like that involved.

And when I say it was my favorite thing, I'm being facetious. 

It pissed me off.

So I'd write some snarky note at the top of the journal entry, like, "Wow, I really appreciated your attitude on this entry.  It was neat-o."  And then put a big, fat F on it.

The jerks.

They soon learned that I do read all the entries and that they do not want to piss Mrs. S off.

Good times.  Good times.

In "the business" of English teaching, we referred to people like Dylan as "reluctant writers."  We also had "reluctant readers."  Which were always the same people that were the reluctant writers.  Dylan has had very little writing homework, but when he has, he just....cannot stand it.  I practically have to duct-tape him to the chair to make him get it done.  And then he wants me to compose his writing for him while he copies from me. 

Um, no.  Not gonna do that for ya, babe.

He also hates reading.  He does the necessary reading time for homework, and that's IT.  Sadie's the same way.  Hates reading.  Hates writing.  Looooves math.  It's sad, really.  Maybe one of my other two will inherit my writerly gene.  (Yes, I like to write.  Have you noticed???)