“We should carry a symbol that reminds us of a happy moment. Whenever we look at it, we should stop for a while and think about what it stands for.” I was enjoying the ________ in the book when my wife called me to help our neighbor, Mrs. Fitzpatrick.

I opened the front door and saw Mrs. Fitzpatrick sitting on her porch, ________ her lawn (草坪).

“Ah, Tom! Good to see you!” she waved at me and smiled ________. “Here, come and sit with me for a while. It’s a beautiful morning!”

“Er, yes, it sure is.” I said. I hadn’t expected her to be so ________ with a broken leg.

“Look at my lawn! Isn’t it just beautiful?” she said.

“Beautiful...?” I looked around. Weeds(杂草), dandelions...

“Look at those dandelions. What a ________ symbol for happiness!”

“I’m not sure I can ________ you. A dandelion as a symbol for happiness?”

“Look at that bright beautiful yellow color! If that isn’t a happy cheerful color, I don’t know what else it is! And it ________ just like happiness. If you are really happy, you do good things that bring ________ to the people around you. Once they become happy, they do the same. ________ the happiness spreads. And just like a dandelion—it blooms, sharing its sunny color with everyone and sends its seeds (种子)into the wind. Before you know it, you have a hundred________ of the sunny little flower around you.”

“But it is a weed... ” I said.

“A weed? That’s funny. I’m always watching everyone work in their garden. And I mean work. It doesn’t look very ________ —just working to make the lawn look short and thick and green. I never see any of the neighbors sit and just look at their beautiful lawn. They just work on it and don’t ________ it.”

Well, she surely got that one right. I never heard anyone talk about their lawn ________ it was to complain how much work it needed.

And then I thought of the words in the book. Later, I always write them on the first page of all my calendars when the new year ________, and glue a little picture of a dandelion next to it.

“What a bad day, they say. And I look at the dandelions and see a thousand little ________.

【推荐2】One’s education starts from his or her family, especially the mother. Here is a _______ that happened in my childhood.

One Saturday morning, I was watching TV in the living room with two brothers. My mum _______ several apples of different colors and sizes. She put all the apples on the table, then _______ me and my younger brothers, “Which do you like?” All my younger brothers and I wanted the biggest one. _______ I could say “The biggest one”, one of my brothers stood up and said what I wanted to say.

My mum _______ the biggest apple and said to us, “It is good to get the biggest apple. Many people want the best thing, but few really get it. Now let’s start a _______. Look at the lawn(草坪) in front of our house. I’ll divide(划分) it into three parts. Each of you must finish pruning(修剪) _______ own share. The best and quickest one will get the biggest apple.” I won the apple finally.

Since then, I have learned to try my best to succeed whenever I get a chance. I work _______ to get what I want. That was what my mother _______ me to do. I feel very thankful to my mum because she taught me a very basic but the most ________ lesson. It is quite fair that we can get what we want by competing. My mother kept teaching us in this way and we followed her advice all the time.

I do believe that mother is the first teacher of children, who can teach them to be a No. 1 pursing(有追求的) person.