the wisdom of solomon

so we have a lot of fights at our house. there has been lots of discussion concerning how much we as parents, ought to be involved in the settling of these fights. here are a few examples of the complexity of sifting out justice:

case #1 : one child, we will call her larcy, couldn't find a ring. immediatly another child, we will call her bydney, said, "o, i took that from your drawer!". did she tell the truth? or did she she steal? or both? "i am really proud of you for telling us! now go sit on the stairs, i am really disappointed."

case #2 : one child, we will call him weric, needed to go to the bathroom. he hurried in, very interested in making good time to the toilet. bydney was standing in the bathtub (fully clothed- another story) and refused to leave. weric really had to go, but couldn't because his sister was standing right there. he yelled and screamed, but she still wouldn't go. so in his desperate situation, he did the only thing he could think of to influence her: he punched her right in the gut. it knocked the wind right out of her and she came gasping and howling injustice.

who gets in trouble?

i keep threatening to cut colin in half, but no one is listening to me...

harder than i thought..

Does anyone remember this girl on the right? well, she is gone! gone, gone. instead i have this girl on the left, who i just dropped off at school to go to 6th grade camp for a whole week! 5 days without my darcy. o dear.

it was nice while it lasted.

what a big girl.

SO weird!

It's a Mad, Mad World

How do YOU choose your teams?

Lucy:
1. Once the ranking system is explained to you, accept it as gospel. Become annoyed if anyone, especially your parents, suggests a different strategy.
2. Go with the team that has some kind of cat for a mascot. Especially if that team is a one seed (see rule #1). But not if that team is the Vermont Catamounts.

Carrie:
1. Do the opposite of whatever you did last year.
2. Think long and hard before picking against Kentucky. They sold their soul to the devil a long time ago.
3. Never believe the hype about Stanford. They will not be your ride to success.

Jerry:
1. Look at what the experts say (those guys are sooo smart!) and do the opposite.
2. Ignore the overall records. A win against Davis doesn't mean anything.
3. Each game decision is final, even if it is close. If you change it you'll regret it even more when you get it wrong... which you will.
3. Always bet against teams with too many white players (Duke I'm looking at you). I don't call it racism, I call it "looking for teams with that NBA quality."
4. Middle America always deserves to lose to the coasts. Anytime Middle America wins it is an accident or bad officiating.

Claire:
1. Don't pay any attention to basketball until Selection Sunday.
2. Read every online article you can find in 3 days predicting the games' outcomes.
3. Use a very complex, yet totally unscientific, system to weigh the different experts' opinions, and mix it with your gut feelings.
4. Choose the opposite of any predictions given by any writer who uses the phrase "wreck havoc."
5. Carefully weigh how well you think Duke will do, with how badly you want them to fail.
6. Pick a couple more upsets than you're comfortable with in the first round, to make it just a little bit more exciting for you.

Beth:
1. what sport are we playing?
and
2. go usa!

Vivian:
1. Choose every 5:12 upset
2. Every Utah team goes down in the first round (this trumps rule #1).
3. Hold serious grudges against teams who let you down in a big way in previous years. (Pitt, Gonzaga)
4. Never change your mind.

Ted:
Other things I have learned to build my brackets:
1. Err on the side of the upsets, especially when the lower seeded team is from a small conference that never gets on ESPN. The lack of media coverage usually means they are much better than seeded.

2. While there might be plenty of room for Cats in the S16 and F4, there is only room for one Bulldog. (But Georgetown--you should be representing those dogs, not Butler.)

3. If you hate a team, go with your gut and bounce them early. (I knew I should have picked Notre Dame to be upset.) Even if you are wrong, at least you will have good motivation to root against them in the later rounds.

Lucy learned about adjectives this week.

My family


is smart.

My dad is funny.
My mom is good at thinking.
My little brother is crazy.
My hamsters are playful.
My cat is mean and fat.
and...
I am good at learning.

A Diamond In The Rough

Recently we went to play around at a hotel near our house. We started out on the beach, but the waves were pretty rough, so we moved up by the pool. After splashing around with Theo for awhile, I lifted him out of the water and noticed that my hand felt weird. Exposed. Too light. When I looked down at it, I didn't see anything. Nothing. Most especially nothing on my fourth finger where my wedding ring was supposed to be.

I love my wedding ring. It's different than everybody else's. It's little, so I can wear it at work, but pretty, so I like wearing it. Not to mention that I got it on my WEDDING DAY from my HUSBAND. I really never take it off.

So we scoured the pool area. We trudged around the shallow part where I'd been with Theo five or six times. We walked around the deck chairs a bunch. I annoyed people using the shower where we'd showered off the sand from the beach. I said a lot of prayers. I looked down at the ocean...was there really even any point to walking back down there to look for a tiny ring in the raging surf? But I had to try, so with a heavy, pessimistic heart I walked back down to the approximate area where we'd been playing. And I looked down at my feet and saw this:



What are the odds of that?

syd vs the dog

i was recording a bit of the kids in the canoe, but when i watched it back i saw something else going on... watch the dog... then watch the second to see who wins..

at the end she sits up and yells, "he took my pants!!"

a thought..

i had an epiphany the other day and wanted to write it down before i forgot it. in our bathroom, we have a very tall, narrow mirror that sits on the counter behind tim's sink. every time i clean our bathroom, i wipe down that mirror. i am a medium good house keeper, wiping off all the muck i could see when it got too gross. till the other day when tim, trying to show me with out being rude, turned the mirror upside down. i realized i had been cleaning the part that i could see, up to about my forehead. everything higher than that was filthy, but it was too high for me to notice, b/c it blended into the ceiling. i got up on a chair and put myself at tim's height, and i could hardly see myself.

is this making sense? i was cleaning tim's mirror for my height, not for tim's. carrie has tried to explain this to me before ("but beth, maybe tim doesn't think that is as fun as you do"), but the mirror situation was a good lesson.

this is a good analogy for thinking of what others need, from their perspective.

that's my marriage thought of the day...