Day 14 ~ The Gift of BEING A GREAT NEIGHBOR

I love Fridays because it represents the end of the week and the start of the weekend.  I am so ready to be FREE of everything here and ready to start making our life SIMPLE again. 

Today's prompt for the gift of giving is .BEING A GREAT NEIGHBOR.  Cook a meal, leave a nice note, put their papers on their porch, clean the snow off of their driveway, bring them some cookies and hot tea, take their trash out...you can come up with something fun today.  I got mine done early today while I was waiting to pick up an extra child for school.  Love starting my day out like that too.  Let me know if you join me today and what you did, k?  Thanks for doing your part to make the world a better place today, one person at a time, one random act of kindness at a time!!!!

So today I am going to try and focus on the good in our lives instead of the frustrating part of school for Dem and I as her mother.  Today I read the book "The Book Whisperer" by Donalynn Miller who is a 6th grade teacher here in Keller, Texas.  Love love this book.  Demi has been struggling in reading.  I think she has no confidence when it comes to this class.  I think there are many reasons but the biggest one being that for the last 2 years all the focus is on testing and testing and TAKS.  When they were younger the focus was on fluency...read read and read to see how many words you can read.  Read and Read as many books as you can and then test on those books. Well that is no longer but somewhere along the way she has lost her desire for reading books at school and therefore probably does not focus in at school.  I really felt like we had taken 2 steps forward only to take 3 back last night and today.  I totally believe her teacher is missing the boat and is more interested in teaching lessons which I think Demi already knows.  But I am not her teacher so in the meantime as her mom I am struggling to do all I can to help my daughter out and to help her find an interest in reading, any reading!!  Anyway I am just grateful the rest of her teachers are awesome and just so you know I like this other teacher but feel like no matter what I say it really doesn't matter.  I hope when her dd gets to this age that she gets it because right now I don't think it will be possible until then.

Anyway other then tutoring and this reading class, Demi is having a great year as she alwasy does.  She is a model student and I love that about her!

So tonight we are selling Girl Scout cookies at Blockbuster.  Demi loves this and really enjoys the sales process or in her sweet way talking to ALL of the people she encounters.  She doesnt have any problems asking everyone if they would like to buy some cookies.  I enjoy it but am not looking forward to doing it in freezing weather outside.  The things parents/moms do for the good of their kids, right?

And then we are off to 456 at church tonight.  A time for Demi to share Jesus with her friends both believers and non-believers and to experience worship and fellowship with some friends outside of her regular school friends.  If my truck would hold more kids, she would invite her entire grade.  Just gotta love it right.

Have I mentioned how glad I am that it was only 1/2 a day of school and work today, thank goodness with the schedule ahead.

So what plans do you have for the weekend?  Me, boxing, packing, throwing out, listing items on craiglist and staying warm.  I am going to try and get a layout made and uploaded to http://www.noelmignon.com/ and their msiting challenge.  Have you ever seen her kits?  They are jammed packed full of goodies.  I love the kits at http://www.scarletlime.com/ too.  Christy's are so full of color and life, the colors I love working with so I really miss getting the happy mail these days or in my case, years!!  Some day soon....hehe.  By the way, Christy is into ART on CANVAS these days, if you haven't seen her latest work you should venture over there to see all she has created.  It will bring a big smile!!

Have a great rest of your Friday and I hope to be back soon with some scrappy goodness.