Colin's Sixth Birthday

We celebrated Colin's Birthday last week - twice. First on Monday on his actual birthDATE with just the four of us. This is Colin and Megan on Monday.Then on Saturday we celebrated with a bigger crowd at the Power Rangers party. We didn't have as many folks as usual. So it was a calmer atmosphere.


I made up a party game the kids seemed to like. In fact, last night before bed Colin and Megan wanted to play it again. It was a version of a scavenger hunt. Here's how it went.

1. I took a picture of 5 different things in our house like the blue chair below.
2. Then I cut the pictures into 3 or 4 or 5 big pieces.
3. I put the pictures into envelopes.
4. Wrote a number on each envelope.
5. Then hid the clues at the appropriate locations.

So I gave the kids the first envelope. They put the "puzzle" together and saw it was a picture of Megan's doll stoller. They went to there and found the next envelope. Lather, rinse, repeat. At the last place (the blue chair) I was sitting there with stickers as a prize. And every kid loves stickers!

This is just a funny picture of Megan being silly the other night...

New Mexico

As part of the RailRunner project, they sent me to New Mexico this week. It was a pretty beneficial trip - workwise.

Otherwise, WOW! I was expecting something like San Antonio, I guess. But New Mexico is completely different. I do love San Antonio, don't get me wrong. But I have never seen ANYTHING like where I was this week. So beautiful. Unfortunately my camera was dead. But I found a few websites with pictures of some places I saw. These first two links are my favorite. They scroll through different pictures, so be a little patient.

http://www.abqstyle.com/bernalillo/bernalillo_photos.htm
http://www.abqstyle.com/rio_grande_bosque/rio_grande_bosque.htm

http://photo.net/travel/us/sw/new-mexico

http://www.milebymile.com/main/United_States/New_Mexico/highway_photos.html

One of the amazing things about where I was is how far you can see. 50 miles...100 miles...maybe more. And I saw real mesas. I always pictured them to be ~1 acre in size on top and ~50' high. What I saw were the size of a county on top. And height - hundreds of feet tall. I saw mountains. Desert. Canyons. A lush, green strip about a mile or two in width along the Rio Grande.

I can't wait to go back. I still love Indiana. I always want to live here and raise my children here. But God has created some pretty amazing places in the world. I want to see more of them.

School Bus Update

Monday has turned out to be the worst day.

Tuesday was better. He got to the daycare 2 hours and 15 minutes after school let out. But they had told me what bus he would be on, and that is the bus he got off of, so I give them credit for having a plan and working the plan. I was still pretty mad after he got off the bus at 5:55pm.

Wednesday (today) has been dreamy - an answered prayer. They started a new bus. The "Snake Bus" (they assign an animal to each bus to help the kids remember which to get on). Or as Colin said the "Shortcut Bus"! This bus picks the children who attend the two daycares up at the ECC and goes directly to the daycares! No switching buses. No stopping to pick up kids from other locations. No sitting there while 40 other kids get dropped off at home. He returned to daycare today by 4pm!!!

Colin's First Day of Kindergarten

It was bound to happen eventually...Colin started Kindergarten today. As you can see above, he was nervous. In his words "I'm so nervous I can't stand it." He is a student at the ECC (Early Childhood Center) of the Decatur Township Schools. He is enrolled in All Day Kindergarten which is going to be great for him. His teacher is Mr. Dennis. And everyone at the school has been great. Almost everything has gone on without a hitch...

Let me start by saying everything is fine. Colin is safe. But today, my worst nightmare almost came true. The school was scheduled for a half day today with dismissal at 12:40. I called around 1:15pm (before my 2 hour meeting started) to check and see if he made it back to the daycare center where he is to be bussed to. Nope, not yet. I thought that was still pretty reasonable, especially given that this is the first day of school and things might have been a little more chaotic than usual.

I called back after my meeting about 3:25pm to make sure he made it back to the daycare. NO!!!!!!!!!!! HE HAD NOT!!!! You can only begin to imagine the terrible things racing though my head. The daycare had 19 kindergarteners missing. The poor daycare director was trying everything she knew to track these kids down. She said she would call me when he arrived. She said she had heard there was some confusion getting the kids on the right bus. In my mind, at least they all were missing...that was strangely comforting.

She called me at 3:55pm saying that Colin had just been dropped off with most of the other kids. Thank you, God.

So here's what I'm wondering...
Since when is it ok to have kids on the bus for 3 hours and 15 minutes? The school is a mile, MAYBE 1.5 miles from the daycare. And it was HOT today. Wouldn't it be reasonable for the school to call whoever was expecting him to be dropped off (in this case the daycare or the parent) and say they're running late? And wouldn't you halfway expect some kind of explanation phone call this evening? Nothing yet...

I've left a voice-mail with Colin's teacher, the ECC principal, and the bus garage. Tomorrow, I'll be getting to the bottom of this. I don't like to be mean. But he is my little boy. If they can't be trusted with his care... Surely we can get this figured out.

Jen made the HNTB News Flash

Below is the contents of an internal news email that was sent out today. This type of email goes out whenever something great happens. Maybe this will give some of you a glimpse of why I've been so darn busy lately...Lots of other folks I work with helped too - including Nate. Now that we've won the project, I'll likely be working on it until around the first of the year.

HNTB-Kiewit Expands Design-Build Experience
with Mega Rail Win

**Content Deleted**

Indiana State Fair

Colin, Megan, Lindsey, and I went to the Indiana State Fair yesterday. It was pretty fun. The weather was beautiful aside from it being a little warm. We went early in the day, before it really heated up.

We ate some fair foods...corn fritters, corn dog, milk shakes from the dairy barn, dippin dots, deep fried snickers, popcorn... plenty of the once-a-year junk food.

The fair theme this year is "The Year of Corn." They had planted corn all over the place.

In the midway, the kids rode a couple rides and thought they were awesome.
You'll notice that for whatever reason, Colin has started to pose for pictures like a pirate...not sure where he's come up with this idea.
We saw plenty of tractors...
And we saw lots of animals...cows, pigs, horses, mules, donkeys...This little baby donkey took a liking to Colin and Megan - and vice versa.

Remote Control Tarantulas

Colin and Megan want to give a special thanks to our friend Joyce who gave each of them these super fun remote controlled tarantulas!