Tim C. - Fossil Hunter!

    Tim likes nature. By nature, I mean his idea of nature, which is sticks shaped like guns or swords, random rocks, and leaves of any kind, no matter how bug-chewed or icky.  He looooves to explore. We have a big wooded area right outside our door, but it's so often swampy that we don't venture in far. Tim loves to poke around in the edge of the woods whenever he takes out the trash. (The dumpster is near the wood.)

   Recently, he and Miko started fossil hunting. They found a huge rock with a few surface shell fossils, and dragged it across the sidewalk, clunking it repeatedly in an effort to break it up into smaller chunks. You can imagine the sidewalk, chips everywhere, drag marks, and dirt in a meandering trail to our door.  There they were, sweaty and excited about finding fossils, and there was the apartment complex's beautifully trimmed and mulched sidewalk, rather worse for wear. I gently suggested that we make a "rock garden" with their collection of rock hunks next to our door, then swept and collected the chips in the grass, so the mowers wouldn't hit them. They really wanted to keep this rock.  I tried another tactic,
   "Let's take pictures of it instead, and leave it here for everyone to enjoy."

A Fossil.

Another Fossil.

   This turned out to be a good compromise.  The next day, Tim came home all excited. He had found an old ball-peen hammer out in the grass. It was pretty obvious that no one would be looking for this thing. It was rusty, and filthy, but he was adamant that it was a fossil hammer, and he must keep it. So he and I dug out some sand paper, Murphy's oil and good old rags to clean his hammer. It really came out nicer than I expected. I did have to insist that all hammering be done outside and with adult supervision. I expect some exciting finds this summer.

Kid has a better GPA than I did.

On the school front, Tim is showing more enthusiasm for the end of school than actually going to classes, but that's normal. He's shown great improvement all year, and is even going to and from the bus stop by himself now! He's very good about going and coming straight there, and not picking up any nature on the way. For now...