Today we do home birthday things, in addition to trying to get the chain saw running, splitting wood, and sorting out school clothes for next week. Wednesday we do school birthday things, which sadly, are much quieter and simpler than in Kindergarten. I sort of hope they’ll get a little more elaborate in future years. This year John and I go, taking a fruit snack (Logan says orange and Kiwi) at snack time, and get to sit and tell a little about Logan’s life. She’ll have a candle and card on her desk for a day or two around her birthday. That’s it. There’s also a class book which each family puts a page of pictures in — we have something like a dozen to choose from so far, and none of Logan as a newborn yet. Our albums of all those first years haven’t resurfaced since the fire, along with the albums with all the pictures of life before that time. What I have is a handful of loose pictures and what’s on the computer. So I’ll be taking a USB drive to Kinko’s or Staples and printing pictures there for the scrapbook. In theory our albums survived the fire and are simply in a box in the shop somewhere, but with each rearranging my hope dims.



Logan plans to get out early to dig potatoes today. We’ll do presents at lunch time, and then home made sushi (cucumber and avocado, avocado alone, and quail egg for Logan) for supper along with birthday cake — unless the birthday cake gets done earlier. I’m still debating the benefits of afternoon birthday cake vs evening when it’s dark and you can really enjoy the candles birthday cake. Presents at lunch time will help make going to bed easier, I hope. She also has a card from each Grandparent family to open already waiting at her place at the table. Jasmine and I wrapped presents in bright tissue Waldorf style (kindergarten used tissue and no tape, and it worked well for most things, for some I resorted to tape), and John still has a couple to go. I’ll have pictures to add or stick in another post later on today.



This post is going in both blogs — the regular one is back up and running, at least in theory.

So I’m sticking a post here to say this is in fact the place I just redirected you to. Now I’ll have to write something more to post here later — like we went to a First Grade pot luck and found out the welcome back to school class meeting happens at 7pm the night before Jasmine theoretically would have her first day of school at 8am. Ha. No go. The pot luck was fun though.

At 7:30 when we would have been leaving, except I was trying to eat my oatmeal, I saw emergency notice email saying cars were sliding on ice on the freeway in Eugene. And Cottage Grove schools were on a two hour delay due to road conditions. Then the 4J web page slowly, over 15 minutes changed to say first snow routes, then snow routes with a two hour delay, then no kindergarten — at which point I left Eugene Waldorf a message saying whether they canceled kindergarten or not, we wouldn’t be there. And canceled my dentist appointment. At ten after eight I got the call to let the five folks on my part of the phone tree know kindergarten was canceled for the day. Kindergarten doors normally open at 8:15, but the weather was changing pretty quickly, so school probably didn’t know much before that. I caught one dad on his way out the door! Most folks were gone already.


This is the weather camera for cottage grove — with freezing rain making it a bit blurry. Just for all you folks in the warm areas.


John’s on a delay for work too. At least. This is the freeway camera just south of roseburg going southbound:


And northbound


If the weather continues as it is, john may have a full snow day too.


UPDATE 12:09


Chains are now required to drive on I-5 over Roberts Mountain Hill, the last big hill before john’s work. John stayed home, work told him not to come. Someone leaving work couldn’t get up a hill going in one direction, and there’s a bad wreck in the other, so the people there are considering themselves stranded. I’m glad we didn’t leave today!


We have snow on the ground, and so no school today. Eugene’s district 4J schools closed due to snow, as did many of the Roseburg area schools, and when the 4J schools close, so does Eugene Waldorf School.







We had falling snow off and on yesterday while we went to our tooth cleaning appointments. (John no cavities, slightly bleeding gums — he told the hygienist any part of his body would bleed after being poked and scraped at for an hour! Go John! Me, minor cavities in three teeth, one or two (surfaces against each other) that have been watched for a year and a half now though, so no surprise there. I get fillings at ever visit. Logan no cavities, no x-rays due to the size of the films, and the dentist has no concerns about anything. Her teeth will get sealed at our convenience, per the dentist. He wasn’t in a rush, but I’ll feel better, just in case she’s inherited my teeth and it just doesn’t show yet.) It even snowed during outside time at school to the Rose Kindergarten’s delight. We got to hear the office people at Logan’s dentist declare falling snow “a blizzard”. The snow wasn’t sticking to anything at that point, and we were all very entertained by that idea.







Over night the snow stuck. We have something along the lines of an inch, if it’s not under a tree. Logan slept late (7:30!) and appeared down stairs naked leaping around chanting “snowie snowie snowie”. She was not prepared to play in the snow naked at least. She did want to get dressed and go jump in to the snow as soon as possible. Two shirts, a dress, tights, snow pants, boots and a jacket later, off she went. I’ve got to knit her mittens since last years have never resurfaced. Or gloves, which I dread, since I imagine fingers made up of four stitch rounds. Maybe I could make them of I-cord.






On Tuesday this week I got to make two trips to Eugene for the pleasure of going to the preliminary “First Grade Readiness” meeting at school. Parents were all asked not to mention the prospect of first grade to children just in case those that were potentially going didn’t for some reason. This doesn’t take in to account that Logan comes home more than one day a week telling me her plans for first grade, what she’s doing in Rose Kindergarten that will be a project for first grade, who in her class will be going, and so on. It may not be talked about officially, but there must be an underground grader information railroad there somewhere.







The meeting was interesting, although the scheduling was at an unfortunate time. We had a letter from Rose Kindergarten telling us about the meeting the day we returned to school, and then received a letter from the school itself in the US Mail the day before the meeting. I had misunderstood the time from the first letter and called to find out the correct one (7 to 8:30 at night!) and was told it was set at that it was set because “most parents work”. John left work significantly early in order to attend the meeting, and be the person who drove, since I don’t drive after dark unless there’s an emergency. Aside from general information on physical, social and intellectual development of six and seven year olds, we got a little information on the search for a first grade teacher. Parents evidently have little to no input on this, which concerns me. A teacher may be selected approximately as soon as the spring break, or not until after school ends for the year. And there was a mention of a chance of children not meeting the teacher until the first day of school, which would seriously effect my willingness to have Logan continue there. There was also a reference to the chance of the teacher making home visits to meet children. My reaction is that if that is suggested it would only happen if a reciprocal home visit did. I dislike the idea of my home being inspected implicitly. Some aspects of school I agree with, some I’m willing to play along with, some I’m willing to challenge. We had the pleasure of eating grocery store sandwiches for our supper, and collected Logan from Nonny Susan’s shortly before 10:00 on our way home.










UPDATE: The nose of the small snowman, since 9:30 or 10, when we made it, (it’s now quarter past eleven), has been eaten by a doe. Logan went out to get snow for molasses candy (like in the original Little House On The Prairie book), and found a deer eating the snowman’s nose. She tried to shoo it away, and the deer stomped it’s foot at her!



Logan says she’s taking Cosmo the dog out with her the next time, and maybe Papa, so he can get the deer and she’ll have it for supper. I’m not sure what exactly he’s getting the deer with, although it sounds as if he might just be able to tackle it. And, since I’m not one who eats venison, I’ll just stay out of it. Unless I can get a picture of the deer and Logan facing off. I did whittle the snowman a new carrot nose.