Last week, I spent a few hours alone with Emily and Joshua. I don't get to do that very often. When I arrived, Emily was sitting at the dining room table with her laptop, some kind of Texas Instruments calculator quietly doing her homework. Not exactly the way I or even my own kids (her dad) had done homework when we were in middle school...oh right, we didn't even have middle school, it was called grade school all the way up until high school. I could not believe the home work she was doing! Algebra! In the sixth grade? That was not even offered to us until we were in high school! I hardly even touched on it, taking only the basic math, saying "what good is algebra anyway? I will never need it. I am going to be a mommy." As the years have passed, I was right, I have not ever needed it. John was always there if the kids needed help in algebra and I helped them on the other subjects. Well, for the first time in my life, I realized that I DID need it! I mean how do you tell your 12 year old grand daughter that you CAN'T help her with her homework because it looks like a whole foreign language? (I wish it were a foreign language, I could have helped her on it.) So my advice to youth? YES, YOU DO NEED ALGEBRA!!! Why? Because you will NOT want to have your grandchild asking you for help and you have to say...I don't know anything about that.

Now Joshua is in the 3rd grade...his homework was a whole lot better for me! Times tables. I did do them and I still know them. He was not really too excited about practicing them with me. His comment still makes me laugh! "Times tables have just RUINED the third grade!"

If I had been forced into taking more math in high school, I am sure my comment would have been the same thing! (algebra has just ruined high school!)

x+y=z

definition- x(no algebra knowledge)+y(really smart grandkids)=z(one grandma feeling really dumb!)

We decided to go out for dinner. I didn't want the usual McDonald's or Taco Bell. So after a little convincing, we stepped it up a notch and went to Roadhouse. When the waitress came to take our order for drinks, Joshua was first to speak up and order himself a 'coffee, black'. And he really did drink it! Emily likes to take pictures almost as much as I do, she saved up her money and bought herself a really good camera. She had hers with her like I always have mine, so while we waited for our food to arrive, we used Joshua as our subject. He didn't let us down with plenty of poses to keep us shooting.