My oldest hedgehog Chippy died today. He was almost three years-old. We will miss him.

Hello there! I hope that you are all having a happy day out there. I am doing well. I finished another day at work. I only have three workdays left until I can meet our son. That will be exciting! It is hard to concentrate on anything else. I am really looking forward to all of that stuff. This morning I woke up to two surprises associated with owning an old house. My first surprise was that my kitchen sink wasn't working. Apparently the pipe that leads to the kitchen sink froze du...

Hey there! Kazuko and I just got back from the movies and from grocery shopping. When we got back home, the temperature on our thermometer said 10 degrees (-12C.) It is cold outside!! The movie that we saw this evening was "The Matrix: Revolutions." I enjoyed the movie. It was a lot better than I had been expecting according to the reviews in this morning's paper. (I will have to check Roger Ebert's website to see what he had to say. He is the movie critic with whom I am most apt to ...

Hello there! I hope that all of you are having a happy day. It has been snowing on-and-off here in Monticello, MN. The streets and sidewalks are basically clear, but there is a light covering of snow on the grass. It is beginning to look like winter. The sad news is that it looks like our oldest hedgehog, Chippy doesn't have a lot of time left. He has lost a lot of weight and he is very sluggish. The poor guy is almost at the end of his life-expectancy. He has been a really good pet....

Today is Tuesday. It is like a Monday because I spent all day Monday having meetings about school. So I come to work with a whole list of things that I need to get done. I find that downtimes during meetings are really good times to write to-do lists. So naturally the day after a meeting is an especially busy day at work. I want to get a lot of things done before the baby comes next week too. Who knows how much my life is going to change after that? So, did you all watch "Joe Millio...

Hi all! I suppose that I should start with the biggest news of the day. Kazuko just scheduled her cesarian section. Our baby will be coming out in the morning on Wednesday, November 12. I am sure that the days leading up to that date will be long, especially for Kazuko because she is awfully excited! (Me too of course!) I am home from work now. Today was full of meetings. In the morning we talked about reading, writing, and science in our school district. In the afternoon, I had a ...

Well, it is Sunday night. Back to work tomorrow... I had a happy weekend. Kazuko and I did some shopping, we watched some television, and we visited two craft sales. The second craft sale that we visited was at the Monticello Community Center. The community center is just a few blocks away from our house. Kazuko and I were really surprised at how nice the facilities are there. There is a really nice pool, a tall climbing wall, an indoor playground, a skate park, a gymnasium and weight...

Tonight, Kazuko and I watched the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." Surprisingly, that was the first time that I have seen that movie. I was really pleased with that one. I like Richard Dreyfuss. Besides "What About Bob," "Close Encounters" may be my favorite movie that he's in. I was never able to catch that CBS show he was in last year. That may be a blessing in disguise since it was cancelled rather quickly. This will have made two nights in a row that my wife and I have ...

Well, Halloween is over. We had about fifteen kids come over to our house for Trick-or-Treating. The kids who did come were really lucky, because each one got a pretty big handful of candy. The biggest surprise of the evening was that one of our visitors was one of my first-graders from school. He seemed happy to see me, so I felt good about that. I wasn't expecting to see any of my students from school since I live about eighteen miles away from my work. I woke up this morning with ...

Hey there everybody! Thanks for stopping by. I hope that everyone has a Happy Halloween! The day at school is sure to be an adventure because the kids usually go crazy on this day. Halloween is a little over-stimulating, and it is best to go with the flow. ******* Frequently on my way to work I like to stop by McDonald's to enjoy breakfast for the drive in. I usually order a coffee with my order. When I drink coffee, I like to drink it with cream and sugar. When my coffee is g...

Hello there and happy Thursday! It is rainy/ sleety/ snowy/ windy here. I don't think that the kids will have too much fun Trick or Treating tomorrow night unless they wear their ponchos. One of the most exciting peices of news in my life is that I have discovered a WONDERFUL website which helps early elementary school-aged children learn to read. The name of the website is starfall.com (www.starfall.com.) It is a fantastic place to have students read and practice with sight words, phon...

Well, Halloween is coming soon. Last weekend, Kazuko and I went to our friends' house (Larry and Kelly Poppler) for a Halloween party. Kazuko dressed up as an Asian lady beetle, and I dressed up as Ozzy Osbourne. I will have some photos up on my website as soon as they're ready. My wife and I aren't very prolific photo takers, so who knows how long it'll take to finally get them developed. That roll should also have some shots of my family, Maxim and Inna (from Ekaterinburg) singing k...

Well, I figured out the names of the ladies who I was referring to in the previous message. Cat from Germany Kateryna from the Czech Republic (I forgot the Italian lady's name, but YOU know who it is!) We had our last baby class tonight. Now all we have to do is wait for the baby to come out. How exciting! See ya!

Last weekend was a busy one for me. I tried to get as much work done around the house as possible. I didn't get around to raking leaves, but I was able to carpet some stairs and assemble a rocking chair for the baby. I tried to install a new ceiling light in the guest room, but previous residents of my house had installed the old light in a way that doesn't make changing it an easy job. In between all of that work, Kazuko and I were able to watch "Bend it like Beckham." I had wanted t...

Today is a Tuesday. I had the day off of work yesterday because I wanted to go to the hospital with Kazuko to have our baby checked-out. He seems to be doing fine, but he is still in the breech position. It doesn't look like he will be able to turn, so he'll have to come out via cesarian section. No matter what, I am really looking forward to seeing him. Last week, I spent most of my time at work giving my students a test. The test is called the TEST of EMERGING ACADEMIC ENGLISH (or T...