7th Grade Handprint

The tradition continues! Every year since Ledger first started Preschool, we have gone to the craft store, picked out a new pain color, and put his hand print on the board. This year he picked out teal.

We keep the board downstairs, tucked away in the basement, only to be taken out the day before school starts. We put some paint on a plate, stick his hand in it, and make a new print each year. This is his ninth print. It's pretty cool to see his hand getting bigger and bigger each year. He's definitely getting more mature because he only puts the paint on the board now instead of all over himself!

The best part of the board is that we measure how tall he is on the back of it. It's really cool to see how much taller he gets each year. Usually its just a couple inches, but there have been some years where it's pretty dramatic how much taller he's gotten! Pretty soon he will be taller than his mother- he's already taller than his grandma!

(more pics)

7th Grade Intro

Unfortunately for Ledger, the summer is almost over. With only a few days of freedom left, the impending return to school was almost upon him. We went to the middle school open house to see what classes he was going to be in for this, his 7th grade year.

As usual, we had huge problems with getting his locker open. Last year was the first time he ever had a locker with a combination, so he really struggled with figuring it out, opting to just keep his backpack with him all day for the first week or two of school just so he wouldn't have to try to open it! Over the course of the year he got really good at it and it was no longer a problem at all, until now. This year he knew how to do the combination thing, but the little nob that he needs to turn to get the door open was stripped bare and for the life of us, we couldn't get it to turn! Argh! Well, we'll get that figured out later, but first we need to walk around to his classes and meet his new teachers. 

Ledge was actually looking forward to it. He doesn't hate school at all, and was kind of getting bored the past couple weeks, ready to go back and see all his friends. Some of them were there tonight and he got to talk with them and start planning the fun they would have this year. After meeting some of his teachers and talking with friends, I think he's ready for 7th grade to start.

Hot Dog!

The wife and kid are not much into playing card or  board games. Every once in a while I can convince them to play something, but not very often. We've tried Life, Skip-Bo, even a special Bill & Ted board game! It usually ends pretty quickly and one or both of them are pretty bored. There are really only two exceptions: Diana really loves Yahtzee, and all of us love the Hot Dog game!

What is the Hot Dog game, you may be asking yourself? Well, its a really dumb card game that was released based on the Dog Man property. It really simple and made for little kids, but I've got to tell you, we always have a blast when we pull those cards out! Some day I may be able to convince them to play a game that's not made for six year olds, but until then, we will be having a grand ol' time playing the Hot Dog game!