Fences, Museums, and Report Cards (week 476)

After the last round of El Nino storms, which have been somewhat underwhelming, a part of the fence that separates our house from the Mize's fell down and had to be repaired. Actually, it was three panels of the fence that Kip and dad put in 8 years ago when we first moved into Carfax Avenue and the reason that it fell down was because dad poured such terrible footings. The water had been flowing into the footings for years and as a result, the wood at the base of the posts rotted out completely.

So this weekend, I got my first shot at helping to clear the old footings, drive new posts, and seal them with new Quickcrete.  Dad said that it would take us about 3 hours.  About 8 hours later, we finished our work...well, actually he finished the work on his own because I had to go to baseball practice from 1-3 pm, and basketball practice from 3-5 pm every Saturday.  The fence went back up--no worse for wear--and now Mom is happy again when she looks out the window at the side yard.  We expect another portion of the fence to fall in the next round of storms!

This week we also got our report cards.  It isn't something that Chris and I understand or pay much attention to, but Mom and Dad were very interested in the reports from our teachers.  They talk about math, reading, writing, and behavior stuff among other things. Apparently, Chris is already done with Kindergarten--reading, writing, and doing most everything at or above level with 4's across the board.  I, on the other hand, have some work to do. My teacher Ms. Valdez doesn't seem to like me or any of the 3rd grade boys very much (as evidenced by the fact that all the end of semester awards went to girls), and mostly gave me 3's and even a 2!  Dad says that I have to figure it out and that I am going to have bosses someday that feel the same way. I don't really like the report card thing as much as I like sports.

Chris also loves art.  Sometimes, Dad will take me to basketball games at the Pyramid and sometimes he will take Chris somewhere that he wants to go.  Last week, Chris chose to go to the Long Beach Museum of Art on his dad day.  They spent a couple hours while I was going to my basketball game, visiting the Museum and taking pictures of all the different art installations.  Chris can spend hours looking at art without complaining.  He just loves it!  I don't know what the big draw is, but we are finding out about what inspires him.