Building relationships with people are valuable ways to spend my time.  Speaking and listening help us to make connections with others.  Brian and Susan are in the process of teaching us traits.

The Traits of Conversation help us to connect with others through…you guessed it…conversation!  We use the Traits of Presentation to become better at not only speaking in front of others, but to present information well and read with fluency and style.  Today Brian and Susan took our whole staff through the Writing Traits and I felt great about it!  Something that I enjoyed was feeling as if I had gained some profundity on the subject.  Isn’t it great to finally have a sense of, "Hey, I think I’m actually starting to get some of this!"

Quickly, here are the 6 Traits of Writing:

1. Content and Ideas (what is the writing about?/what are the details?)
2. Organization (plan!)
3. Voice (can you hear yourself in the writing?)
4. Word Choice (are the words your using simple words, or do they show deeper understanding of what you’re trying to write about?)
5. Conventions (grammar, punctuation)
6. Sentence Fluency (how well your sentences flow together…is there variety in how your sentences begin and/or end?)

If you happen to be interested in the Traits of Writing because you’d like to see
more happen in your blog writing (or whatever) then google it.  Over 2,000,000 site come up in the search.  (By the way, it’s actually 6+1, but the +1 is presentation…I’ll write about the Traits of Presentation later).

Look through your own writing and see where you could improve. 🙂  Tonight I’m thinking about how my word choice isn’t so hot right now.  Then again, it is just about 11.30pm, I’ve been working all day, I’m tired, and I’m watching Seinfeld;)

Learn to love writing!  If you’re a parent, help your kids develop a love for writing!  The traits are just a guide to help us get there.

On a side note, one of my favorite teenagers from church called me today, primarily to tell me about his football game this Thursday.  Secondary to the grand game, he wanted me to know what classes he was taking this fall.  Within his many classes are embedded two writing classes.  With all that I’m learning right now, I told him that I’d love to try to help him implement some of the things that I’m learning how to teach!  Wouldn’t that be fantastic?  If only I can find the time in my schedule…:)

This is a time lapse of a child growing from birth to 14 years old. One picture a month! How cool! I want to do this with my future kids:)

Hey, have you ever “googled” yourself? It doesn’t hurt as much as it sounds like it might. It’s actually quite fun (if given the right time in the middle of a summer night:).

Tonight I found out that I was married to Jeff Burton, the famous racecar driver (also my cousin’s name…). I’m featured on ARTISTdirect. I’m a shining star .
I’m a professor in ergonomics (and apparently male) I’m a registered clinical counsellor I’m a Balkan expert Finally…that I’m an accordian player!

C’mon, you’re bored at work! Google yourself:)

I’m kind of going through withdrawal from my kids, so when given the opportunity to go on a little field trip with the summer school crew today, I gladly accepted.  It was really fun because there were 6 adults and only 30 kids.  (Piece of cake;)  Here are some moments from our day…
These are some of the kids that the aquatic center wouldn’t allow to swim because their bathing suits weren’t real. (SAD!)

Here we have a couple kids going down the slide.

And here we have some kids enjoying the wave pool.

This is Tony and Joi.

And this is me with one of our new staff members-Johnson.

Let’s not forget Mr. Sarvello-holding up some poor boy’s underwear…no one wanted to fess up to who
owned the tighty whiteys left on the ground outside:)

I love working at Hanley!!!

Short clip of B2M singing “Motown Philly”

Can I really post something to my blog, just by emailing it? Let’s see if this works…

So, in order to get to the places where we were building, we stood up in the back of pickup trucks…for about 40 minutes:) Check out a piece of our ride.

Sh-Sh-Sh-Sh-Shake it, don’t break it. Took yer momma nine months to make it. This is one of my favorite kids in the whole world, doing her rendition of ‘Hype Man’-I think that’s what it’s called:) ***I did get permission from Tal to post this…despite what you hear at the end of the video:)

Sometimes I feel that my blog is like a Seinfeld blog…a blog about nothing.

Do you ever feel like you want to blog about everything and then blog about nothing?  I guess that sounds funny coming from me, since I’ll easily go a week without do so, but I’ve said, "I’ve gotta blog about that," at least once a day since I started blogging.  I just don’t always get around to it. 

So here I sit tonight, and I know I’ve had things to blog about today, but they’re just not clicking today.  So I blog about nothing to blog about.  This is somehow amazing to me.  (Easy to please:)

This is Ryder…having a great time, as always:) The kid has so much fun in his little life! I can’t get enough of him!!!