arizona

so for thanksgiving i went to arizona to visit with my family. it was the first thanksgiving i ever had with my dad so that was really nice. usually my mom would have me on thanksgiving and then my dad would get me that weekend. it was nice spending time with the family and getting to see everyone. i hadn't see my brother matt and my sister-in-law jenny since their wedding (which was 2 years ago) so that was really nice. after spending the weekend with them all i was compelled to write a poem about my nephew george who is three. so here it is, hope you like it. i named it: life is full of them.

You run in with no cares in the world
other than who’s going to be playing with you.
My sister,
your mother,
walks in slowly behind,
carrying everything that you could possibly need.
You dash from person to person
giving high-fives and kisses to all who ask.
You show us your toys
and have us run with you on the jungle gym.
When you don’t get your way
you cry to your mom
begging and pleading that she makes it right.
And all she can tell you back is that
sometimes,
life is full of disappointment.

dictonary writing exercise

so this morning i did a writing exercise to just keep my mind working. this comes from the same book i talked about in this post, the daily writer by fred white. i put two different exercises into one. one was to build your vocabulary list and then the other was the at random open up the dictionary and jot down any word you didn't know and then use it in a poem. so i put them together and opened up the dictionary at random and wrote down any words i didn't know into my notebook. then after i have a bunch of different words i tried to use them in different sentences.

for example: ripsnorter - something extraordinary. sentence: marianne's wedding dress was ripsnorter.

so i did a bunch of those. and while writing those sentences different ideas come to me about what kind of story i would write that would use these kinds of words. i remember doing things like this in middle school and high school. and it seems like just busy work, but i think it is a valuable tool (now that i'm older) to help build my vocabulary skills.

ps- when i used spell check for this post, blogger said that ripsnorter wasn't a word.

manners part 3 - the rise of manners

so this past weekend my sister marianne and her son george came to stay. they are from oregon and are in town for a month. which i think is really nice. the great thing is that manners on my nephew are not forgotten. my sister has done a really good job teaching george to say please and thank you. it was amazing. so i will defiantly have to have a part in my manners book where some people/kids know their manners. and not just have everyone not know their manners. plus i think it will be a more believable story if some people do know their manners.