Anna M. Aquino

  Last week my youngest daughter had her artwork chosen to represent her school at our local library.   We were all excited and went to the opening of the art exhibit.   We happily took a couple of pictures, saw her work, said a round of “hello’s” and came home.   The next morning when I dropped the kids off at school, the art teacher practically ran me down.   Given the problems we’ve had recently at my children’s school, I thought Really?   What now?   Evidently the art show had been independently juried, and my daughter won 1 st place in her division.   Evidently they’d had an awards ceremony that we hadn’t known about and unfortunately missed.   Had we have known all of this we’d have happily stayed for the awards, but we hadn’t known.   My daughter was so excited to have won, but we all felt bad we missed the ceremony.   Though there were several things roaming in my mind, when the art teacher chased me down, I aut...

My family sat around and played UNO together a few nights ago.   Friends of us have taught us a new spin on the rules; if a plus something card is put on the pile then the next person can defer their picking up those cards if they have the same plus number card then the next person has to pick up the total amount.   So to explain that if I threw down a +4 card, and the next person threw down a +4 then the third person had to pick up 8 cards.   Whether these are actual rules or made up rules it certain amounts for some fun card games.   However the other night the +4’s kept being laid down until my youngest daughter found herself stiffed to pick up 16 cards.   Laughter, hoots, and cries could have probably been heard from several houses away.   She cried, “That’s it I quit!” She wanted to quit.   She decided it looked hopeless.   But, I wouldn’t let her quit.   “No, you’ll finish this game.”   So we finished the game, and she...