MWNews 76

It was Juanita's birthday yesterday. We did not do a lot. Opened some presents, went to the club, went shopping and then came home. I did not even make a cake but I have not been feeling well for a few days, so we stayed at home and ordered pizza for dinner. William wanted to know where his presents were, he thought it was his birthday again. I gave him a present to take to Juanita and he was happy to do that but then turned to me and asked where is my present. We had a hard time convincing him he was not getting any presents.

Juanita got a lot of clothes and a game for the Xbox. She has the Pinata game and plays it all the time. I rarely get a chance to play any of my games. Only if I get up really early or she is out taking the kids somewhere. She plays this Pinata game all the time and I think she is a level 57 gardener or something. Not that means anything to me, I have never played it. She might be even higher than that but she lets Maeghan play her game and Maeghan likes to buy and see things she is not suppossed to. She looks for things that look funny and buys them. Since everything looks funny, she buys a lot and uses up all of Juanita's money. So then she sells the same things she has just bought and I think that is probably not good for the game. But as I say, I don't know anything about the game.

They came out with a new version of the game. Pinata's in trouble or something like that. I bought it for her for her birthday. She has been playing that ever since we gave it to her. About 16 hours straight now. I think she came to bed last night, but I am not all that sure.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Not that we will be doing anything, but it is thanksgiving day here, not in the US, that is Friday, but I am not going to celebrate it on Friday just to be like the US. No one in AU celebrates thanksgiving and for some reason, when I bring it up, they want me to explain what thanksgiving is. I say, 'its Thanksgiving', but that does not seem to suffice. They seem to think it should have some special meaning or something. I get tired of trying to expain it.

For the first few years, I tried to have Thanksgiving over here. I even invited a few people a couple of years, but it was never the same and, of course, there was no football on TV and I had to all the cooking. And I mean all the cooking. They wanted things like pork roast and prawns and other strange things. And it is not really cold or even chilly over here, not that it was that way in Texas either, but when it is really hot and you are trying to have roast turkey and mashed potatoes and dressing, they just are not as good when you are really hot.

And don't get me started on the dressing. They have no idea what it is or what you do with it and I am of the tradition that you make enough to last to almost christmas day but when I did that, I was the only one to eat it and there was a lot to eat. They have no concept of cornbread over here, so making cornbread first and then turning it into dressing was just really strange to everyone who saw me do it.

So Thanksgiving is out. It is just too much trouble to go to just for myself. And I always thought of thanksgiving as the best holiday. I suppose I could try to get the kids into it, but they will probably be made fun of at school and with the anit-american spirit that permeats the world, they might get more than just being made fun of. Not that there is a lot of anti-american sentiment in the schools or in AU for that matter, but you do run into it more than you could imagine. I hear american jokes all the time at work and then I hear them mentioning that I am from america, so the jokes get a little quieter then. I don't mind, but bringing thanksgiving into the picture and having the kids have to explain it to their friends is probably not something I should put them through. So, no more thanskgivings for me, or at least no more unless I am in america.

William is in the other room hassling Juanita. She is trying to play her game and he is jumping on her. He just wants someone to play with all the time. He has his new cars and his new car track, but since the batteries do not last long, he doesn't get to play with that a lot. We spotted his favorite car today when we were cleaning his room. It is a red Cars car, from the movie and it is the one he carries around the most, or whenever he can remember where he put it down. We are going through potty training with him right now and his room has to be cleaned several times a day so he does not have an 'accident' on any of his clothes or toys. We had him mostly trained last year but Juanita had to go away to Tasmania for a couple of weeks and he wore diapers that whole time, so he forgot about potty training. Now, we are going through it again. He is good most of the time, but sometimes, he just forgets what he is suppossed to do and does wherever he might be standing at the time. A lot of times, he does actually go to the bathroom, but he doesn't manage to get his pants down in time and goes all over the floor. I guess we should be thankful he actually makes it to the tiles in the bathroom instead of on the carpet, but we now keep a mop in the bathroom just in case.

Maeghan has her ballet program next week, I think. She has been having extra practices on Saturday and after her normal class. She apparently has been choosen to do something special for the show but I have not been told what nor do I know if she is doing it alone or in a group. She is learning some Rockin Christmas song or something, the name of which escapes me at the moment, but I have it on a christmas cd that I have been playing in the car and whenever that song comes on, we repeat it several times so she can sing along and learn it. I am not sure she will learn it in time. Which is strange, because she sometimes comes home from school and she is singing a new song we have never heard of, so she does not seem to have trouble remembering new songs. I think it is the hand actions and other things she has to remember to do during the song that is confusing her. At some point, I know she pretends to be playing a guitar, but other than that, I know nothing about it.

The show this year is expensive. I have some idea why but as this is Juanita's church, I will just say the price of the tickets tripled this year. Last year, they had it at a school. This year, it is at the church, which the teachers parents own and are pastors of. You would think it would be free, but I suspect they are trying to make money off of this show while the school only charged a nominal rental fee for the hall. But I am sure there are other ligitimate reasons for the increase in price. It will be the first time I have been in the new church building. They only recently opened it and it is not quite finished yet, so I am sure they are looking for money to pay off the debt.

Maeghan has started being a little shy at school lately. She does not want to attend morning assembly. She will stay with whomever has dropped her off until the classes start to go to their rooms. I don't know why this has occurred but I have also noticed that more and more of the kids are grabbing her and trying to pick her up and do things to her or with her. Maeghan can be running and playing all the time but there are a few kids that as soon as they see her, they try to grab her and hold her and Maeghan will immediately come back over to one of us and hold onto or hide behind us. I suspect it is only a few kids that do this, but the ones that do are so persistant, they have even tried to pull her out of my hands while I am carrying her. I would like to say something to them or their parents, but then they will probably take it out on Maeghan while I am not there. Some of these kids are really annoying with what they try to do to Maeghan. These days, she does not even try to play with her regular friends unless the teacher or one of us is around to keep the annoying kids off of her.

If you look at the youtube movies, you can see her standing with her class and see how much smaller she is than everyone else. We have always had the problem of everyone coming up to Maeghan and ooohing and ahhhhing over her. I think it is finally starting to get to Maeghan and she just wants to be left alone. I am hoping either she gets over it or something happens that allows us or the teachers to tell the other kids to leave her alone without alienating her from the rest of her class.

Next year, she gets a new teacher as her teacher is retiring. I have not me the new teacher yet, and I don't think we actually know who it will be yet, but I hope she will be okay and maybe even get away from the kids that treat her like a little doll or something that they can play with all the time.

Anyway, she still seems happy and does not say anything about any problems even if you ask her about it. So we will just have to wait and see what developes. School ends for the summer in about two weeks, so she will have a lot of time to be away from her friends and she will be in first grade after the holidays. Maybe things will be different then.

There were some other things I was going to write about, but I seem to have forgotten once again. I am thinking of putting a little pad next to the computer where I can write down ideas I have to talk about so I can look at it when I have the time and am in the mood to write. I haven't done it yet but I might at some point so I do not forget.

It has gotten quiet in the other room and I here the door opening and closing. I am not sure what is going on but I should probably go check it out.

So, until next time,

Talk to you later