Happy Veteran's Day!

Today was our annual Veteran's Day visit to the WV National Cemetery in Grafton.  The photo above is a memorial plaque outside the office and gravesite locator kiosk at the entrance to the cemetery.

Some views of the graves of those who served our country.

 The above is the gravestone of the husband of one of my mother's friends.

 Above and below are photos of the oldest grave in the cemetery, a soldier who fought in the Spanish-American War.  This grave was relocated from the original National Cemetery in Grafton (which we have yet to visit; perhaps next year) which is closed to new interments.

One day I'd like to go to Arlington and witness the wreath-laying at the Tomb of the Unknowns there, but until then this is a very fitting substitute.

If you served our country, in any capacity, during war or peacetime, please accept my heartfelt thanks and know that you are in my prayers today.  If you are the family member or loved one of one who served, thank you also.  If you didn't serve, please thank someone who did!

This evening we'll be attending the Veteran's Day parade, in which Birdman will be marching as a member of a color guard.  I'll take pictures and post them in a future entry.

Pardon my Rant, Please.

I went downtown this morning to pick up some work from a boutique for which I do "overflow" tailoring, and when I came back home the pictures below are what greeted me at the entrance to my neighborhood.  Our neighborhood, while not as historically 'pretty' as some others in my town, is a really nice place to live, relatively quiet (unless you live on the hill below me; then you have to deal with college students' loud raucous parties at intervals throughout each semester) and has some nice old - as in over 100 years old - homes.  I know about the 100+-year-old homes because I live in one of them.

Anyway, about a year and a half ago our neighborhood association decided to commission two signs at the most-used entrances to our part of town, this sign is the larger of the two and is two blocks from my house.  the other sign is very similar but is about 1/3 the size.  The original sign was designed by Jamie Lester, who used to live about 3 blocks from me and who designed the scene found on the West Virginia state quarter.  The sign was installed, a nice flower bed was designed and planted, and we Woodburnites were quite happy with it until about a month after it went in, it was stolen.  Someone dismounted it from the brackets that hold it to the posts and just carried the whole thing away.  If you look at the pictures you can see that this would not exactly be a 5-minute job; it was held in place by a whole bunch of lag bolts and the posts are 4x4 lumber.  No trace of it was ever found, so the NA had a replacement made and installed around the beginning of last summer.  Now this.  I am just disgusted that someone thought this was a fun thing to do.  It's one thing for college students (yes, I think this was a college 'prank') to throw plastic cups around in the street after a wild party, to hold mud wrestling bouts in a kiddie pool in their back yard, to carouse until ungodly hours when their neighbors (including yours truly) are trying to sleep - those are things that the Litter Control Officers and Police Department are quite capable of doing something to deter.  But this is unconscionable.  I hope by some miracle of the internet, the perpetrators' parents happen upon this post, realize THIS is what their kids were vaguely bragging about, and haul their sorry butts to the police station to turn them in. 

Oh, and you can see in the bottom photo that they stole the street signs from the pole at the intersection (and pushed the pole over too), as well as signs from SEVEN other intersections within 3 blocks of my house.  Yeah, real mature.

Things to Think About

My high school graduating class was the last to get all the way through primary and secondary education without any influence from the federal government via the Department of Education.

What do bishops and cardinals talk about when they are not being bishops and cardinals?  I occasionally have a mental image of a few bishops around a kitchen table in some episcopal rectory somewhere, playing Monopoly; a couple of cardinals in a hotel room after some sort of synodal session, arguing over who is going to go fill the ice bucket and yelling at the tv over a game of football.

My yard looks naked without any endorsement signs.  I am forcing myself to wait to publish a congratulatory post until the election results here are certified.  It's very difficult, but I could always use more patience.

I am very thankful that I only have one more Tuesday night of Reader's Class (I got another 'that was beautiful' at last night's class).  Being a Church Reader is a lot more than 'pick up the book and do the reading.'

You meet the nicest people in the unlikeliest places sometimes.

Catching Up

So.  I'm one round from being done with the gusset decreases on sock #1 of a pair of "Sunday Swing" socks, knit on US0 needles with 72 stitches.  I tried the sock on and the heel flap on these socks is very tall, which means that if you have a high instep towards your ankle these socks will fit very well.  I do, so that's a good thing!

We've begun having a math test every Friday.

Last Friday was the Homecoming parade for the university here.  I ended up with the Republican party contingent near the front of the parade, the boys were with the pro-life entry towards the middle, and a little further back was Velvet with the riding stables.  After I finished the route I walked back up the street twice and walked back down with the kids.  I have been to every single parade here in the past 4 years, and have only sat and watched once - the rest of the time I have been walking with one entry or another.

We had our second "Culture Club" meeting last week too.  Our country was Canada; the other mom whose idea it was to have this neato group is from Alberta, and she had all kinds of books to look at and even some Canadian money for the kids to see.  We had salmon, crepes with broccoli filling and cheese sauce, fresh rhubarb and blueberries, and cheese beer bread for our covered-dish lunch.  Lightning McQueen did a short presentation on sports played in Canada (complete with a drawing of a hockey rink) and Velvet told us about Candian wildlife.  Next month our country is Kenya; we wrote the names of countries the kids would like to study on slips of paper and drew from a bowl.

Oh, I did mention I'd post about Cantor School in a previous post.  Our Church has a course for prospective Cantors (or anyone who wants to learn to sing our services well) that began in September at our Archeparchial seminary in Pittsburgh.  It meets five Saturdays per academic year for four years, and there is an additional component of Reader Instruction that meets six weeknights per semester at a parish in the Pittsburgh area.  I'm taking the Reader course this fall also and we're halfway through - I'm not so terribly fond of the late nights but I really am learning a lot.  It's definitely worth the time and gas money!

So that's my last couple of weeks......fall is here and we've had some chilly nights (and days, too), the leaves are colorful, and I'll be getting the kids' portraits taken in a couple of weeks.  Also need to get a new furnace filter and make sure all the windows are shut completely (when your house is 100 years old sometimes the windows take a bit of convincing).

I feel old and I don't even care.

I took Velvet and Lightning McQueen to see "Secretariat" this afternoon.  I remember seeing him win the Triple Crown, ergo the title of this post.  Seems hard to believe that was 37 years ago!
I have no idea whether the entire backstory to Secretariat's success is exactly as presented in the film, but I'd have to say it's more likely true than not, because if you were writing a story about a horse who won the Triple Crown and wanted him to have an interesting history, you'd be hard pressed to come up with anything even close to that of this horse.  The future of the Tweety family, and of the stables where he was foaled, literally rode on Secretariat's back.......and all nearly came to naught at the Wood Memorial, his last outing prior to the Kentucky Derby of 1973, where he only showed (and that poorly).
I think the film is well cast, the characters are believable.  And Disney didn't seem to make any great attempt to "p.c." the characters; a few of them are almost caricatures, they are so typical.  And the acting is good too; I admit to fighting back tears when Penny sits at her daddy's bedside after he's had a stroke, holding his hand as she tells him about her horse and he passes on.
Even though I knew exactly how events in the second half of the movie would transpire, I was not for a minute bored.  I give this movie an enthusiastic thumbs-up, and when it's available on DVD I plan to purchase it for our home video library.

aha....

Now I have a little bit of insight about what, exactly, to pray when I come across people who trumpet "I used to be Catholic, but then I became a Christian."

http://gkupsidedown.blogspot.com/2010/10/ex-catholics-and-protestants.html

Time Flies.....

whether you're having fun or not.  The past couple of weeks have been crazy busy for us, what with getting into the "new" routine of having the kids' Religion classes on a weekday evening, 4H starting back up, having to buy Lightning McQueen yet another pair of Sunday pants, my going to Cantor School (about which more in a bit) and trying to decide how regimented and scheduled we're going to be with schoolwork.

Rifle Club for Birdman has moved back indoors, so I have a slightly shorter trip to drop him off at the indoor range.  He now brings "his" rifle and equipment home with him after practice, so with all that lying around the house tends to occasionally look as if we're preparing for a raid by the ATF or something.  Add that to the couple of weeks when he had his fake rifle for CAP Color Guard here, and, well.......
I ordered and received his new Algebra I curriculum, which he'll be starting in a week or so.  I may have mentioned earlier that I decided this year to let the kids finish their old math books before jumping into the new books, so I am ordering curriculum as I actually need it, instead of having to remember to have all the funds available for a whole year's worth of curriculum for 3 kids all at once.  So far this is turning out to be quite workable.
I'm waiting on him to make up his mind as to whether he (Birdman) wants to take the Golden Horseshoe test in April.  I would really be thrilled if he did take it, and even more thrilled if he won, but I have made a conscious decision to try very hard NOT to live my life vicariously through my kids. (I was on the GH team for my junior high school back in the day, but my school ended up not sending us to take the test.  Long story.)
He's now into "The Fellowship of the Ring", having finished "The Hobbit" late last week. I think he's actually going to read the whole series this year.

Velvet is volunteering at a horse show on Sunday.  I had to get a green shirt for her, as the stable owner was fresh out of official shirts.  Fortunately I found a nice t-shirt at Michaels that I'm pretty sure is very nearly the proper shade of green, and this way she doesn't have to endure the ignominy of borrowing a polo shirt from one of her brothers.
She continues to plug along at math, although I still have yet to figure out what her real difficulty is.  I know she can do math in her head, because I sneak it in at the grocery store and other places when we are shopping or traveling.  It's just getting tangled up between her brain and her fingers somehow.
She's going to continue doing a horse project for 4H, and also do a cat project (using her grandmother's cats, as Lightning McQueen and I are allergic and we can't have them in the house).  Last year's horse project got a purple ribbon for high Division score, so I'm confident she'll do well this year.

Lightning is still on KP duty.  He did agree to re-do his chicken project on which he fizzled out last year, and also said he'd like to do a dog project - that will be relatively easy, since we of course have chickens and a dog. He's selling eggs pretty regularly, and he and I would both like to add to our flock (is two hens a flock?) in the spring, eventually having six hens.
He's doing fantastic in math, though.  He was pretty well finished with his 4th grade Math book back in the middle of the summer, so when we picked up again after Labor Day, I dug out the Saxon 6/5 book and had him start in that.  He's doing very well, so we'll stick with that for him.
He's reading through some Hardy Boys books right now; I'm not sure if he really enjoys them or he just can't find anything else he'd rather read.

I'm hoping to have a field trip next week, and of course there will be pictures.  They are also going to be in the college Homecoming parade that's coming up.

I've finished the scarf I was knitting for a swap, and have only to dye and block it and it will be ready to send off to my swap partner.  I'm also nearly done with the socks for Baby Juliet, which I need to get cracking on because I need the needles for another pair of socks for me!