Yesterday proved that I was wrong.  I really thought our school issue had little chance of passing.  But the people of Northwestern Local School District thought more of the children of the district than their own personal pocket books.  We passed a 7 mill property tax as well as a 1 percent income tax all rolled into one school issue!  With that, we will get two new schools, Grades K-6, and 7-12, as well as have the money to operate those schools and  both will be built in the next three years on the same campus where the current schools are located.  This is amazing, and only took one vote!  The school district where Ron and I grew up again turned down their school issue again. 

Beautiful fall day here at my house!  A little breezy but sunny!  We saw a deer in our backyard yesterday.  She came up the hill behind the pool and put her foot on the pool cover.  I was so scared she'd walk into it.  But she's smart---just pushed it down to get water to drink.  Then she turned and Megan and I saw that she had been shot with something.  She has a huge fluid filled bag hanging on her chest that was bloody at the base of the bag.  No arrow showed so we're not sure what shot her, but she's fine and walking around eating and drinking.  The deer here are pretty protected as the land behind us is a no hunting zone but she may have come from across the road or down on someone else's farm property. 

I just looked out our kitchen window by the sink and all the beautiful fall colored leaves are raining down.  The winds have picked up and the only things still stuck on most of the trees in our yard at the back of the house are the still greenish-yellow ones.  Actually they're quite ugly compared to the splendor of the trees that were on my beautiful tree picture from a few posts ago.  Most of the trees facing the meadow down the big hill behind us are empty of leaves and now we can see the main road again.  However, there is something growing in the yard that I'll have to take a picture of and try to identify soon.  A few years ago, we noticed that something new was growing along the edge of the woods.  At this point of the fall, they are green shrubs with red berries on them, and they are multiplying across the woods like crazy.  I saw the same things at Megan and Sam's new house at the back of their property only they had grown HUGE.  Almost as tall as a tree and had choked out everything around them.  If that's what is going to happen here, they'll have to go!  Even Sam mentioned that he's going to cut them down too!   For us, unless they are something special, they'll go.

This morning, James and I were sitting on the couch, watching "Word World."  What a wonderful show for pre-school children to watch to learn letters and putting them together to make words!  I'm a big fan of it, as is James when he's not watching "Handy Manny" or "Imagination Movers" on the Disney Channel.  "Word World" is on PBS.  Today they were doing the Letter P, and putting together words like Pillow, Pail, and a few other easy ones.  All the sudden, James said to me, "Grandma, POND starts with P."   That word hadn't even been discussed on the show.  Sort of a break-through moment, when you can tell that the pre-school work that Megan is doing with him and another child, is working!   They're not that far in the alphabet, so that was totally new to him.  By the time he's 4, if this keeps up, he'll be doing great reading words!  And Grandma can't be happier for him! 

I love to read, love books, and everything related to words. I taught Language Arts (Spelling, Reading and English to 5th and 6th graders) for five years before having Megan.   But I'm a disaster at numbers!  Always have been, always will be!  Sad...  Mom, Melissa and I had lunch together on Wed. and that subject came up.  They are both very number oriented people.  My sister does column addition in her head.  I can't even add two large numbers in my head.  Mom's checking account checks within a penny each month!   And she's in her 80s! Ahhhhhhhhhhhh! But that's how God made me and I guess I'll just be happy with that.  My sister doesn't like to read, so we're total opposites.  She struggled as a child with spelling so badly that her 2nd grade teacher made fun of her to my mom who taught just down the hall from her.  No wonder she hates spelling and dislikes reading.

Having breakfast tomorrow with a special friend!  Looking forward to it!!!

Beauty in the woods, planted by God.

I had to put this picture on my Xanga page today.  In front of our flaming red- orange and yellow maple tree is a still green hedge apple tree filled with hedge apples.  But behind is one of the few gorgeous trees on our 1.25 acre piece of land that we call home.  It must have just started to turn colors this past week because last night, while doing dishes, I just finally saw it.  This morning, before the sun got all the way up, I wanted to get a picture of it.  Good thing too, because we're to have 1- 3" of rain here in the next 48 hours.  Who knows what this tree will look like after being hit by rains for two days.  And this afternoon, the skies turned gray with no sun peeking through.

More beauty sent from God:  Answered prayer!  My mom is cancer free.  Her biopsy results came back negative and she got that wonderful call this morning.  She called me about 9:10AM with the happy news.  It's really interesting too, that the timing of her call came right after she had a long talk with the Lord about worrying and how she was going to put the entire thing into His hands.  Within just minutes the phone rang with the call from the Dr.'s office.  God is so good!

Thank you to all those prayed.