What a wonderful birthday surprise from Grandma Bodden and sister!!!$$$$$$$$count your blessings!

a picture magnet and money from her and from Grandma!!! What a rich fellow you are!

Learning to wake yourself up?

Mother, I get up at 5, you said at 5:30 this morning... I am not responsible for that. You are. You were behind schedule 2 days in a row. Expecting your mother to carry you from your bed to your shower, etc. Making lunch and leaving it behind, you caught the bus, by the skin of your teeth. This is not good. You have an alarm. You have a very distinctive alarm, which is waking all the other members of the family up, but not you. Over the weekend, we must practice the wake up call. You should be playing taps for everyone else, whose schedule is later in the day.

You can do this, my good young man. Learn from the mistakes this week and turn it around to get out of the house at a responsible timely manner.

And, don't forget your lunch!

THE NERVE OF YOU! Freshman Impetuosity? Or a personal bent to jump in first?

I am starting to see a trend, I think. This, nearly fourteen years of mothering you, Ezra: has afforded me the privilege of seeing that you jump in and then ask what the composition of what you are jumping into is. NOT GOOD!

Fourteen years ago, it was birth. Forget about waiting for your lungs to be fully developed or your spine fully strong, it was time to be born, when you said so...a month ahead of schedule. Freshman open house- it was time to go to meet the teachers on your time-table. This morning, in the pitch black early rainy morning 6:30am, you ran headlong, nearly into the traffic of the main street to catch a bus that was nearly out in the traffic of route 73!

NOT GOOD!

I could yell till I am blue in the face about waiting and watching both ways and knowing that there is always somebody here to take you to school another way and you would still run out there, "halfcocked"! NOT GOOD! I will need to compose a homeschool camp to help you see safety as more important than getting there, even if on time. I know you have been instructed about bus safety. Those rules don't change in High School, son! You still have to wait for the bus driver to see you, before you board the bus. Don't ever, ever run behind a bus like that!

You will be a car rider one way or another, if this behavior is continued! NO LIE!