Notes...

Marina caught her first bank mistake. I'm very proud. She noticed that the bank had started deducting $5 per month from her account but there was no reason given for the deduction. We helped her look into the issue and it was corrected. I don't know if I would have been that diligent about my account at her age. Wait. I take that back. I know I would not have been that diligent!

We've been watching the DVD series The Adams Chronicles. I remember my mother watching this program on PBS when I was a kid. She watched it, I saw historical figures and did other things. This time I'm actually watching it with Marina and I'm learning so much about how government has never changed. It is very interesting, as well as more child-friendly, compared to what I have heard about the more graphic cable series John Adams. The Adams Chronicles is a bit more ambitious than the newer series, covering four generations of Adams rather than just the life of John Adams. This is good for giving a sense of the family and bad as it glosses over some periods. In the scholarly PBS style I grew up with, narration helps bridge some of the gaps in time. I would love an occasional date flashed along the bottom of the screen as well.

Chase spent six hours volunteering at our church's annual Festa Italiana this weekend. He gave out sodas and water at the drink booth while the rest of us did our part spending money at games. Chase did the best at the games when he wasn't working. He won a skateboard and then later won a goldfish for Sierra, after Sierra tried unsuccessfully to get the ping pong balls to land in the little fishbowls. (Unfortunately, the poor goldfish didn't last too long and there was much sadness. But she gave it a good life for its short time with us.) When Chase wasn't busy, he spent a lot of time observing some of the games and said he thought the Fire Truck Race might be rigged, or at least gave an unfair advantage to number nine, because it won almost every game. That race involved rolling a ball toward holes that make the trucks move slow, fast or fastest. It's possible that if the game trailer wasn't balanced it would give the best advantage to a middle number like nine. Anyway, I had no luck at that game.

It looks like this week will continue to be busy. I just realized I also managed to create not one, but two scheduling conflicts over the next two weeks. And here I thought May was the busy month...