I am here

Wednesday, October 21st: Our playdate with Daisy and Anna went well. The kids were immediately attracted to the jello jigglers and crackers on the table when they walked through the door. After their bellies were full, they mostly played outside, which was nice. The kids only had about an hour to play and then I had to leave with Daisy and Anna for parent-teacher conferences. I met their mom at the school and then I went to meet with Eleanor's teacher, Miss. Gould.

Eleanor is doing very well in school. On Eleanor's report, Miss. Gould checked off excellent on everything except listening. Eleanor got a satisfactory on listening. Miss. Gould said there has been an occasion or two where Eleanor gets talking when she should be listening, but overall she IS a great listener. Eleanor is at level D for reading and by the end of the year she should be at level J. Some kids are at level B and C right now, so Eleanor is doing well with her reading. Eleanor loves to write. She often gets out a piece of paper and pencil when she has any free time at home and writes something. It can drive me nuts at times, but I try to remember that practicing her writing is a good thing. Miss. Gould has noticed that Eleanor substitutes h for c when she writes, so Eleanor needs to work on matching her letters and sounds. When Eleanor did a word exercise with her class where she had a certain amount of time to write as many words as she could think of, she wrote down 45 words. That was impressive since the average was 20 words. Overall, Eleanor is doing great. She loves to be in school and she loves to learn!

After meeting with Miss. Gould, I had a half hour before meeting with Emily's teacher, Mrs. Wight. I looked at some artwork in the school and then went out into the Yukon to read over some information that Miss. Gould had given me, and I enjoyed the quiet. :-) Miss. Gould was the only 1st grade teacher to have a table out in the hall for parents to look over some books that Eleanor's class had made and to have different papers for parents to take home to help their child progress in 1st grade. She had out a bowl of candy and bottles of water. Eleanor has a very organized and thoughtful teacher.

Emily is doing great in school, too. This is the second year that Emily has had Mrs. Wight, so right off this year Mrs. Wight knows Emily and her abilities. Emily does a lot of independent work after she finishes an assignment. She likes to keep busy, which I was pleased to hear. Emily is anxious to learn how to write cursive, so she has been doing a lot of cursive practice sheets. She has wanted to write in cursive since Zoe learned how to and she already knows how to write a lot of the letters. I encouraged Mrs. Wight to have Emily focus on writing neatly, and even Emily has a goal for herself to be neater in her work, so I know she'll work on it. Emily CAN write neatly, but most of the time she doesn't. Her writing stresses me out when I read it. It doesn't bother Mrs. Wight, but she is willing to have Emily practice writing neatly. Emily can blame me for the extra writing practice she will get during her independent work. :-)

I was supposed to meet with the school librarian this evening to learn how to help out in the library, but she had to cancel, so I went over to my parents' house instead. I had fun playing a game of Phase 10 with my mom and Victoria. We laughed a lot and at one point I was laughing so hard that I had tears in my eyes. We were being pretty goofy. We also watched an episode of "Reba" before I headed home.

Thursday, October 22nd: I'm pretty sure this was the longest day of my life! At 8:30am, I had been up for 3 hours and thought for sure the day should be half over, but it was only 8:30am! I had the same thought at 1:30pm. It was a rainy day, I had no desire to do anything, but kept busy puttering around, and I was in a blah mood. I decided to make chocolate chip cookies at 2pm because I was bored and eating cookies seemed worth living for. They WERE yummy! I had 2 or 3 or 4.

Zach and Kate played together a lot today, which was nice.

Eleanor brought my notebook to school today. My notebook that has my Christmas ideas in it. I am thankful that Eleanor could not read my list. She didn't even open the notebook, so finding out what the list said didn't occur. I need to hide that list.
I would have looked over my notes for my Sunday School lesson during my long day, but the notes were in my notebook, so I couldn't.

Matt went out with the missionaries after work, so my long day continued. I really enjoyed the quiet when the kids were asleep this evening.

Random Notes:
Kate's foot is all better.
Zach loves to wear hats and mittens around the house now that they are out.
I haven't counted WW POINTS since last Tuesday, but I am counting today. Maybe. I'm still undecided about how many pieces of pizza to eat for dinner.

Today:
The sun is shining. I woke up with more energy and a better attitude, so this is a much better day. I could laugh when Eleanor after being told that we are out of scotch tape used an old, sticky lollipop as glue for her craft project. Of course Eleanor would dive into a craft project 20 minutes before leaving for school.

I did some cleaning and got the pizza dough made this morning, went to the grocery store, and now I am done writing to you. :-)