A poem about reading

As part of a continuing education course I'm taking, I had to write a poem about the importance of reading and sharing books and I had to publish it on a blog. This is probably not the type of blog my instructor had in mind, considering it's a course on teaching. But since I am not currently teaching, and don't have a classroom blog, here is the poem. If anyone actually reads it, please judge gently. ;)

An Invitation

By Kristen Johnson

Taken from a good friend’s hand

And carried to a strange new land.

But not so different than my own,

For the stars and sun and moon still shone

And the people tried to make wrong things right

And seek for justice in a hard fought fight.

While others shared smiles and laughter and fun,

Where stalwart friendships couldn’t be undone.

Some had eyes blazing and faces of red,

Too frustrated to share what was in their head.

Mysteries unfolded before my eyes

As I pondered the actions and thoughts of the wise.

Yet I marveled at the weakness of a boy or girl

Who lost from their grasp a priceless pearl.

These people, these places, these happenings

Stirred and awakened my imaginings.

Until I became them and they became me

A welcoming, beckoning community.

And I feeling curiously incomplete

Invited another to retreat

Away to this strange yet familiar land

By putting it in their eager hand.

WHO YA GONNA CALL?

Happy birthday to me!!! I turned eight on November 22nd and had an awesome Ghostbusters party! Mom decorated my bedroom door with balloons while I was sleeping. They were all supposed to fall on me when I opened the door, but just one minute before I came out in the morning, they all fell out of the streamer. But it was still cool to see all those balloons.

Ghostbusters decorations for the party:

I made this ghost trap out of Legos all by myself by looking at a model from the movie.

Party favors for my friends: slime, twinkie, lollipop ghosts that the boys found as part of a game, and a portable proton stream, aka. silly string.

We started off making Stay Puft marshmallow men out of marshmallows and toothpicks.

My friend Isaac's turned out really cool.

Then we had pizza and watched a little clip from the movie.

We played ghost stomp where we had to stomp on the ghost balloons tied to everyone's feet.

It was pretty crazy in the beginning when we were all stomping at the same time.

Then we had to stick our hand in slime and find the objects Mom had hidden in it. Gross!

I got some great presents, including five Nerf guns and some Lego sets.

My cake was AWESOME!!!!

I had soooooo much fun with my friends, and then later that night I opened some family presents. And look what I got! Emmet's Constructomech from "The Lego Movie"! Talk about a great birthday. I am such a lucky kid.

Mom and Dad wrapped up a note and hid the set in the bathtub to try and trick me.
It totally worked. I had no idea I would get this.

And now that I'm eight, I'm getting baptized this weekend! I'm a little nervous that I'll get water in my eyes, but other than that, I'm excited!

Halloween!

So, we like to pick out pumpkins, and we like having jack-o-lanterns glowing on our porch, but the whole in between stuff isn't all that fun. You know, scraping the guts out of the pumpkin and cutting out all the pieces to make the face. Luckily, Mom took care of most of that for us.

We picked our faces and marked them up on the pumpkins...

And then Mom carved them out.

Pretty cool, huh?

Mom made us a yummy Halloween dinner: corn dog centipedes, witch's brooms string cheese, and our traditional mad scientist potion and candy corn fruit cups.

Then it was time to head out!

Pocahontas

Ghostbuster

Here's a close up of the proton pack Mom and Dad made for me:

Peyton loved her monkey costume.

 And just so you can get the full effect of her overstuffed belly...

Peyton loved taking pictures. She wanted to be in everyone else's picture and kept saying, "Cheese," over and over.

Peyton also loved carrying her monkey bucket and going to the doors for candy. She only went to a few houses with us, and then she spent the rest of the time passing out candy with Mom. She loved that too. Every time the doorbell rang she would make a beeline for the door to see who was there.

And after two hours of trick or treating, this was our final haul--11 1/2 pounds of candy. Oh yeah!

Pumpkin Patches and things

October was a fun and busy month. We visited THREE pumpkin patches and took way too many pictures which you get to enjoy right here!

First up, I had a day off school so Mom took us to our first pumpkin patch of the season.

Sydney went for a ride on a cow train.

I swung a giant hanging tunnel while kids were crawling through it.

And Peyton loved putting giant beanbags into giant holes over and over again.

Then we headed to the giant corn maze. It took forever to get out of that thing. And Peyton kept trying to go the opposite way that we all wanted to go.

 We played in a HUGE bin of corn.

And I drove a giant four-wheeled bicycle.

It was a really fun day, but we ran out of time to actually pick pumpkins in the pumpkin patch. So the next weekend, we took Dad with us and visited a small little patch that didn't have any activities, but had lots of cool farm equipment to check out.

I didn't go to the last pumpkin patch because it was for Sydney's preschool field trip. But I Syd said they had fun. It was raining, raining, raining, the day before and the morning of the trip, but they got lucky and it stopped raining during the two hours they were at the patch.

Peyton loved the puddles and kept trying to play in the mud. Unfortunately, she didn't have rain boots on like Syd did.

I didn't go on Syd's field trip, but I did get to go to her preschool pumpkin party because I was home sick from school that day. I don't look very sick (and didn't feel too sick), but I was coughing a lot. And the cool thing is that her preschool is the same one I went to when I was three!

The kids all got to dress up in their costumes. Sydney was Pocahontas.

Peyton liked the party too. The kid in this picture is lucky Mom picked Peyton up before she helped herself to his snacks.

Lucky for Peyton, Sydney didn't finish everything on her plate.

It was ridiculous trying to get 15 three years old to look at the camera and smile at the same time. About two seconds after this picture was taken, these kids were done. Ah, brings back such memories.

And of course we decorated a pumpkin and took it to Cooper. It had been raining for days before we went to visit him, but the afternoon we took him his pumpkin, the rain stopped. In all the years we have been visiting him, we have only been rained on once. Amazing. Putting the hat and goggles on the pumpkin was my idea. But we only left them on for the picture. I needed the goggles for my Halloween costume. :)