Gregarious

gre·gar·i·ous

  [gri-gair-ee-uhs]

adjective

1.

fond of the company of others; sociable.

2.

living in flocks or herds, as animals.

3.

Nathaniel Welling.

4.

pertaining to a flock or crowd.

Today is Nate's 9th birthday.  I am so glad that he is in our family.  He loves people, all people, especially people who have time to listen to him talk.  At school, all the staff members know him well and comment to me about the kind things he has to say to them.  I love to watch him on sundays as he "makes his rounds" before church.  He tells all the older ladies how their outfits make them look "just like super models", and has hugs for all.  

He is good at math and is seeing the results of his efforts to be a better reader.  He tries to be kind to every one (even his "smelly" sister).  He has recently found  a niche for helping me around the house, he has taken over maintaining the garden.  He has weeded and watered and harvested all winter for me.  It was a pretty little garden.  This week he has been pulling up the last of the garden and we are preparing to till it.  Seeds are ordered and Nate is looking forward to planting lima beans.  I have never grown lima beans before.

Fastness

The elementary school held a track meet (in February).  All 4 of our elementary kids participated. Abby won several of her races, and got a ribbon for the running long jump.  They all got ribbons and had a lot of fun!  It was well organized,  I heard nothing but positive comments from the parents in the stands with us.  All the kids were happy.

The funniest part was the first race was the kindergarten 50 meter race.  The kids ran through the ribbon at the finish line and just kept running.  The announcer told them to turn around and come back.  So they all turned around a raced back to the starting line, where they finally did stop.  Then they had to walk back to the finish line to receive their ribbons! Too funny...

Also funny, while the kids were getting organized for the last race of the day, the announcer said that it was time for the parents race.  Kenneth said he would run.  Sydney asked me if she could run as a parent.  I told her she could.  There was a family behind us and their kids (19, 20 year olds) wanted to be parents too, so I graciously told them that they could.  The 4 of them went down to the starting line and were hanging around.  No one looked like they were in charge of the race, so I let the announcer know that there were some "parents" ready to run.  He laughed and told me that no one in 7 years had wanted to run in a parents race.  "It's a joke".  They threw a relay together and there were 5 teams of parents and teachers.  It was a great race!  Kenneth, Syd and the 2 kids that I told could be parents made a team together and won the race.  It turns out that the 2 kids are serious runners, they were really fast.