A Light In The City

It's been a while since I've posted, turns out I'm kinda busy. Here's why- Monday: work 9-3. Tuesday: work till 1. Wednesday: volunteer in Dani's class then Alex's class. Thursday work till 12:30, have lunch with my 3rd grade mentor. Friday: work in Dan's room and Lincoln's class. I don't know how families with both parents working full time do it. And single parents? Can't even imagine. Hats off.

Then there's these two. They're a full time job in themselves and create more preparation, trouble, discipline and clean up than anyone else.

Moving on.  This Halloween was our first in nine years without Gram E and Grandpa Tom here :{  But Gram E was so good about keeping up with tradition and sent giant care packages with homemade goodies: applesauce from her orchard, pj's, skirt for Dani, and candy!

How is it possible that the pumpkins taste even better than than candy corn?!

Pre-pumpkin patch chaperoning. Dad got to ride the bus and hang out with kindergartners all day.

 

This year's costumes:  Snickers bar, ballerina and hot dog. Thank you Ebay, no costume creation for me this year!

On Halloween night, instead of Trunk or Treat, our church did an outreach to our city called Lights In The City. We volunteered our home to be one of nine host homes and were supplied with a bounce house, gobs of candy and flyers to hand out to trick or treaters in our neighborhood.  While kids jumped we chatted with parents and let them know about our programs and invited them to visit. We had a gorgeous evening and the bounce house proved very popular; we probably had 100-150 kids.

 

Our kids got a chance to do lots of trick or treating and came home with buckets full.  Lincoln left the bounce house to come inside and sort his. 




Alex's stash.

Halloween's done. Hold on, now we're on the spiral towards Christmas.
Last week was teacher conferences and both Scott and I were able to attend.  We are happy with the kids teachers and are very proud that none of them have behavioral issues and are leaders in the classroom.  We did learn that fourth grade will be challenging for Alex and Lincoln in that it is very writing intensive and focuses much more on the process instead of the end product. This is frustrating for our boys who do not enjoy writing and who work as fast as possible, with the least amount of work to get finished.  Another thing we noticed was the amount of testing and test preparation that takes place- district tests, state standardized tests.What happens is that teachers are having to teach to the tests. Very discouraging and frustrating for the teachers and kids who have to take them!

Danica's reading light bulb has turned on! It's so fun to see her reading everything, spelling words and reading every free moment she has; to us, to her dolls and with her friends.  She admits now that she likes school, yeah!!

The other day I found all her stuffed animals crammed under a table in the playroom and asked her why. She told me she was having a lock down drill (they practice these at school in the event they need to be kept in their classroom because of an outside emergency)!

While helping her with a worksheet she was supposed to circle the words with the long 'a' sound (cake, lane, etc). She couldn't sound out 'boat' so I gave her the clue that it starts with a 'b' and Grampa Gary likes them a lot. She guessed 'beer!'

One night D blurted out, "Mommy I want to tell you something; never give up and your dreams will come true someday."