Fence post

Here's your public service announcement of the day. If you have a tree that has grown enough not to need a metal fence post embedded next to it, please pull it out before the roots grow around it and kids climb the tree and fall on it. We have had a post like that sticking up next to the tree that our kids (and all the neighborhood, really, as our yard is the bus stop) like to climb. No, no one has fallen--but there's the potential. (And a kid was just telling us how that did happen at their house.) So we're been trying to get it out. Speeded up heavily by the girls and their friend who grabbed shovels and started the job for me yesterday. Which meant I sort of had to finish it. Yes, I got it out--but it was extremely difficult, as the main tree roots had grown all around the things that stick out of the post at the bottom, and it was very hard to dig around large roots to loosen up the post and not damage the tree. I'm glad it's out--but I wish it had been pulled earlier!

Today's the last day of school. Snow is in the forecast. Yes, I live in Idaho.

On being well-rounded

The way we get our children to be well-rounded is to move often. Example: two years in South Carolina meant summer, summer, and more summer. Then we moved to Michigan, where it snowed every day for six months. The last place we lived, people would keep their kids back a year so they'd' be bigger for sports. The U of Arkansas, as an SEC member, is considered Ivy League for football. The school sold parking spots at $20 a pop during football games, and that was all the fundraising we ever needed. Today, the kids brought home the middle school yearbook. Pages and pages of photos of the band, the orchestra, the choir, and the chess club.

One page for sports. Yes, ALL of the sports crammed onto one page.

It's a good thing we move often, or our kids might have a really skewed view of the world...