Fall news

Well, every September my photo album, journal entries, and now, blog, get kind of skimpy. It is just so busy.

I've been having a great year at school. I have some of the best kids in years. We are able to do some neat things like blogging and participating in a national penpal cultural awareness project. My students are really enjoying it and so am I. We even had a front page story (that continued to an inside page!) about our blog project. That was really exciting.

The kids are good. Lukey is starting to talk about preschool more, mostly about "Miss Jessica" and "Miss Bessany." Luke hasn't mastered "th" yet, so it is really cute to hear him talk about Miss Bethany. Apparently their first project of the year was "chairs" and Luke should be bringing home a chair project. I'm not sure what to expect. I didn't know they taught shop in preschool! But their project this week was robots and next week it is pumpkins. Luke tends to spend his time in the kitchen center or playing with the toy garage, trucks, and trains.

He's pretty funny. The other day I came home and the first thing he said was, "Mom I want to talk to you a minute." I was hoping to be told he pooped in the potty, but no, he just told me he wanted more Skittles.

This morning David put him in bed with me when he went to go take a shower. I woke up with Luke bear-hugging my back and drawing on it with his finger. He was grinning when I looked at him. It's nice when they are so happy.

Cailey and Mia haven't been so busy with homework this year! Yeah! That means more time to learn the way we want to, reading what we want to. We are reading the Little House books. We've read Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prarie, and are almost done with By the Banks of Plum Creek. It has been really enjoyable reading these to them. I'm picturing a nice little "Little House" road trip visiting Laura Ingalls Wilder sites sometime.

Mia even wrote about it today. In social studies they read a book about passing down culture, traditions, etc. So Mia wrote that I passed down my Cabbage Patch doll to her and passed down reading the Little House books. That was pretty cool.

Cailey has had a fun fall finding caterpillars, leaves, etc. Everyday she tells me what she found at recess. She and Mia also like showing me the new tricks they figured out on the bars at recess. Now that brings back memories!

The tooth fairy has now visited our house a total of 10 times, 5 for each girl. Mia is working on her 6th. The girls have quite a stash of tooth fairy money. Mia has a penchant for Bratz dolls these days. I'm not thrilled, but some of them are ok, so I steer her toward the cuter ones and away from the trashier ones. Also, Mia tends to gravitate toward pricier items. I have to laugh because Mia always wants the $30 playset and Cailey wants a $4 plastic animal. Cailey never minds though.

Tonight the topic of money came up. We were singing some Annie songs and Mia wanted to know why they were trying to kidnap Annie. Cailey explained they wanted money. Mia pipes up, "Why do they wanna be rich? Money doesn't matter... unless you're poor." It was interesting to hear her perspective. Basically we ended up talking about how we have food and a house, so we aren't poor. So there's hope for my little material girl.

I've enjoyed watching the gas prices go down. Unfortunately it appears house values have gone down too. Houses like mine are listed for what we purchased it for 6 years ago, about $30,000 less than what they were going for not to0 long ago. The economy is scary. I have hope though. I really feel that if Obama wins that hope will begin to restore the economy. Much of the economy is just based on faith anyway. I always think of the movie, "It's a Wonderful Life."

David and I have cringed while watching Palin give answers to interviews that wouldn't win her Miss America, let alone VP. I had seen the actual interview but David had only seen the SNL version. When I pulled the original up on YouTube, David was shocked it really was that bad. It might be funny if it wasn't so scary.

We went to the Howell Tree Farm last weekend. Totally beautiful weather. We spent the whole day there and we all had a nice time. Jaren got to go for the first time and seemed to enjoy being outside and taking it all in. Above is a scrapbook page my mom did.

We are now gearing up for Halloween. The kids got their pumpkins and then helped David get decorations out. They've got their costumes and are all superheroes this year. Cailey is Supergirl, Mia is Pink Supergirl, Luke is Batman, and David is the Joker. He'd like to see me in a Batgirl costume, but we'll see.