Back at home.

As much as I enjoy seeing my family and I count my inlaws as part of that, I am so happy to be back at home. To be sleeping in my own bed (and have the kids in theirs). Having control of the kitchen and being able to watch tv shows when and if we want. Ah, it is just what we needed.

The kids had a fantastic time this year. No one got sick on the way down or back. They got to spend a day with their Nana just playing and playing. They spent the first evening we were there hanging out with their cousins having a blast. Nana watched all four grandkids on Christmas Eve. She told me not to stay, to just drop the kids and that I should come back to get my two before we headed over to my brother's house for our family open house because she didn't have enough room in the car for all 4 kids. The kids loved it. Even Lindsay, the lone girl had fun. I was able to make stuffed bread for the open house. Everyone loved it. I think I'm going to make some for home this week. It is so easy and delicious.

My mom was surprised to get gifts after she had told us not to buy for them. My sil didn't listen and I had already gotten her some stuff when she made that announcement last month. My sil got me seasons 1 and 2 of Dexter so I'm very happy. I also got some jewelry and a gc to Borders. I love books and the necklace she got me is cute yet appropriate for an adult with two kids to wear. I got her a book she wanted as well as some earrngs and the kitchen knife she has been wanting but felt she couldn't afford/justify. You'd be proud of me I remembered all on my own to tape the coin to it though I did call mom to make sure it was a coin, lol.

As much as I enjoyed the gifts I got, my favorite by far is the iPod Touch James got me. I even have a pink case for it so it is totally mine. Origninally he was getting one and I would get to share it. He had me play with it one day and I was enjoying the features so he asked if I wanted my own. It is going to replace my palm which I haven't been able to use for a while. There is an annoying hum when you turn it on and I end up with a massive headache every time. The man did good on gifts this year. He not only got the Touch for me, but he got a copy of Wii Music for the kids to give me. I wanted that after seeing it demonstrated and so am thrilled to get it.

This week is going to be spent cleaning my house, doing laundry (why does it seem to multiple when you aren't looking?), shopping and getting ready for New Year's Eve/Day and then our Christmas get together with bil and his family this Saturday. I am not even sure what I'm going to have on the menu. That is so unlike me. I'm just not feeling like turkey and we had ham three times this past week. I am considering taking the kids over to Borders for their Kids New Year's Eve Party this Wednesday. I think they would have fun, I'm just not sure how crowded it will be and I am not sure I am up to the crowd.

I'm off now to get the kids started on homework. Oh and I just saw it is 10:30 and Lindsay will be looking for a snack any minute.

Cookies!

Right now I am making cookies. Lindsay has a friend over and they are playing so nicely together that I was able to mix the cc dough and start baking them. The sugar cookie dough is in the fridge setting up so I can do cut outs later after I take him home. I'm waiting to do the cutouts because I can't decide on the shape and I will not have time to do more than one cookie sheet before I have to stop to head up to the school.

I have almost all of our shopping done. I'm rechecking my list to make sure I have everything I need and what I don't have I have listed out so I can go get it. I may be doing a late night shopping run tonight so I can get the Stocking stuffers and a couple of small gifts out of the way. I'm trying to decide if I have time to get some of that tomorrow while the kids are still in school. They get out at noon, and with the holiday parties I am not sure how much time I will have.

More cryptic shopping notes.

A trip to Costco and my freezer is stocked. My garage over runs with paper towels and toilet paper. And I have two more gifts down. Next up is a trip to Target for the legos but I'm waiting for Philip to be off of school so he can help me pick them out. It will be so fantastic when I finish this up. Next week I'm wrapping everything I have here. The kids will be in school so I can get it done without worrying about them coming in.

Oh no, I can not forget to get the stocking stuffers. I know what I want to get I just need to get it. That seems to be a common refrain these days. hmmm.

I think I'm half done.

Yesterday's shopping excursion while short got one big gift out of the way. I ordered and shipped the majority of my brother's families stuff. I need to go find a lego set (0r 2) for my nephews and need to ask about a couple of books that I think my nephew would like. I just want to make sure he doesn't have them.

I'll finish up getting my parents' gifts when we are in town because it is easier to get what they want locally.

We celebrate later with bil and his family so I haven't been as concerned about getting their presents but I think I might start and see if I can have it finished before the holidays.

We need to get Philip's present. I think we've decided on something but need to go get it. They need to tell me what they want to get each other and their dad and then their shopping will be done.

Hopefully dh is doing their shopping for me and finding something nice for me. I know what I want to get him and I'm just waiting for it to go on sale.

I feel better now that I've written that all down. Even if there are no details (no peeking!) I know what I got, am getting and this will just be one more place it is written down (think notebooks) so I can keep it all straight.

How Many Days Till Christmas?

So time is still speeding by. Which is overall a good thing. Yet I find myself incredibly surprised that Christmas is 2 weeks away. I need to finish up the shopping and wrap gifts that I already have. But what to get???

A fantastic PTC!

Don't you love going in to see the teacher and coming out with a good feeling? Even if you know you will be getting good information it is hard to go to a meeting about your child whether it is with the teacher or the prinicpal.

Philip and I meet with his teacher this morning before school started for his PTC. It was a good report card. He has some areas he needs to work on mainly in the area of self-control, but he has already started to show improvement in those areas. Which is nice to see and hear. I was happily surprised that he is doing well in writing. That was an area where he struggled last year. His hard work and practice is starting to pay off. I was also surprised to see an E for Performing Arts. His performing arts teacher is a great lady but she does not give out E's easily. If you get one from her it is well earned. He's earned all of his grades and with hard work will continue to do as well.

It has been nice having both kids doing so well at school. They both love it and their teachers and you can see it in their work and their attitudes towards school. yeah!

Where is the time going?

I thought things would calm down some now that the two big fund raisers are done. Well they have.

It's me, I think. I am finding things to do with my "free" time and then am losing track of time. Pretty much what the date is. I missed a planning meeting for my playgroup. It was the last full formal planning meeting of our group as we are going alumni at the end of the year. It is going to be weird not getting all the emails about the larger groups plans, the schedule of speakers, etc. But I digress. I forgot to go to the meeting because I forgot which day of the week I was on. I thought it was Saturday and it was Sunday (the day of the meeting). I forgot to go over to a friend's house because I thought I was doing that two days down the road rather than the actual date I'd actually told her. She just laughed at me. The sad thing is that these things were on my computer's calendar, I just didn't get any reminders. I need to check and see if I've accidently disabled the reminder emails.

This weekend we are doing things around the house. Saturday was the big neighborhood clean up day. So we got rid of the broken office chair, the broken patio umbrella, our old metal blinds, a broken cd player, a broken stroller and our broken shredder. We piled everything up and rolled it down the street to the big bins. It is nice when they have these because you get rid of some big trash items without having to pay extra.

Philip spent a few hours hanging out with a friend. Lindsay and I went to Michaels and got her some small notebooks for her stickers. She likes making stories using the stickers and then adding a few words and pictures.

Today I'm making spaghetti and meatballs for a friend (and for us too as the kids really like it). We are also going to be doing a bit more around the house. I'm trying to get things organized and ready for when my inlaws come.

Halloween

The kids had a fun Halloween. It rained that morning, which is very unusually for California in October. By that afternoon though it was dry. Lindsay was Ariel. Philip was a ninja Ice Wolf. They went out with their cousins. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of all four kids together yet so I can't share that. They had a fun time and didn't want to stop. But it was getting late, the wind was picking up so James convinced them to come in and pass out candy. They had fun doing that as they got to see a few friends they would have missed otherwise.

It has been a while......

It has been a while since I posted and I apologize for that.

Lets see what has been happening since my last post?

The windows are all finally in however we are not done with them. The family room window has a crack in the section that opens so they have ordered a new one and will be back to replace it once they get it from the factory. The front and back door still have two separate keys. Who knew it would take forever to get something so simple resolved. And they are now telling us that the factory says that they can only make windows that open at the top if it is a double hung. It would have been nice if they would have called us and told us that before they installed it. We could have made a different decision -- most likely we would have opted for double hung as we really wanted the windows to open at the top to allow for great air circulation. So now they are suppose to get back to us with a figure to make this up to us.

Philip is doing fantastic in the 4th grade. His teacher is wonderful. He has matured so much in the past few months since school started. It is wonderful to see and hear that others are seeing it too. He is learning the saxaphone and just loves it. He tried out for a soloist singing position for the grade level performing arts show which will be in December and told me yesterday he got it. The fact that he tried out for it impressed me but I can't wait to see him in it. We won front row seats to that performance so we will have a fantastic view. He has spacers in his mouth right now. He'll be getting an expander in the next couple of weeks. He is uncomfortable and they are giving him a headache along with making it hard for him to eat. Thankfully the tylenol is helping.

Lindsay is doing fantastic as well. She loves her teacher and after that first month has been having mostly great days. Every now and then she gets frustrated and will shut down. But she is not yelling and throwing fits at school any longer. She is just refusing to do her work. She has been excused from buddies because she can't handle the increased noise level. She gets frustrated and then ends up lossing her cool. I really wish she would have told her teacher or me that it was bothering her rather than yelling in class for everyone to be quiet. We had things we could have done to help her. We could have moved her work area to one of the side tables, we could have had her and her buddy working outside where the noise level isn't as loud, etc. We've been talking to her about what she needs to say and do when she feels herself getting anxious or frustrated. This will be her third week missing it. She told me today that she think she needs one more day before she tries to make it through buddies with her principal. Her principal is wonderful. She comes down and picks her up during buddies and offerred to sit in the class room with her and act as her buddy when Lindsay is ready to give it a try. Academically she is doing fantastic. I just had her conference and got her report card. In every area they evaluated she was at or above grade level. Her teacher told me that even though they have not done formal reading level evaluations on the kindergarteners yet she can already tell me that she is above grade level. She is looking forward to challenging Lindsay with more advanced work and loves how Lindsay has a can do attitude so often. We just need to work on helping her to show it all the time and be more open to suggestions when she is frustrated by something.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm doing great. I chaired a wildly fantastic (I'm using that word a lot today!) successful fund raiser -- the Teacher Activity Raffle. We have a great group of teachers and staff at our school and the activities they offered up to do with the winner were perfect. We held the raffle on the day of our school's walk-a-thon which was so much fun for everyone involved. I've been busy with those things but they are over now and I'll have time to relax, have coffee with a couple of girl friends before we gear up for the holiday season.

They are here!

Our windows are finally being installed. Yeah! They have been here since 9:30am and they have the front door almost done and the livingroom picture window has been taking out. It is huge and was indivdual panes of glass between the grids. The guy who took out the livingroom window has just moved to the kitchen window. It looks like it will not take him as long to remove this one.

When they arrived I heard that they will need to come back. They can't locate our familyroom window. The lead man was not very happy about it. He also said because they have to lower the bedroom windows that they may not be able to get all of them done today. He is going to see how much he can get done because he would like to be able to come work in the morning and have the inspector out in the afternoon so we would be done the next time they come out.

I have taken before pictures and I'll take some when they are done today so I'll share later on.

My good friend is coming by to watch the house for about an hour while I go up to the school for a meeting. I am so lucky to have such nice friends.

Has it really been a week?

Apparently so.

In some ways we are still trying to find our way and in others it feels so good to be on a routine. LOL.


So far so good. Lindsay doesn't like having to get up to go to school each day and has already started complaining about that. On Tuesday she was out of sorts. She was falling apart over little things, snapped at her teacher (who she adores) and then got in a fight with a kid at the lunch tables. I couldn't get anything out of her other than she didn't like him, she was never going back to school again even though Mrs. P is wonderful. I emailed her teacher to find out what happened and was told that she got mad because the kid was sitting too close to her and wouldn't move. She yelled at him to move and when he yelled back she scratched him so he scratched her back. They both lost a star for not using their problem solving skills. Her teacher said we will work together to help her learn to use a nice tone when turning down help, learn to ask for help rather than falling apart (she does not believe adults really need help -- its all made up when we ask-- so she thinks only babies ask for help and she is not a baby), and learn to deal with different people without getting loud or physical when she is not getting her way.


Using what the teacher told me, I talked to Lindsay and she said he was sitting on her backpack so she asked him to move and he wouldn't. He didn't even say anything, so she asked him again and when he still didn't do anything she yelled at him. He just yelled back in a roar so she tried to make him move. Then she disolved into tears again. We spent some time talking about better ways to handle it when people aren't doing what you need them to/want them to. She doesn't want to be a tattle-tail but she needs to understand that sometimes if you can't work it out yourself you need to talk to the teacher or a parent. I think she was over-tired because she'd refused to go to bed the night before. We had a laid back afternoon and then I got her into bed earlier. Wednesday she had a great day. Today was an okay day. She and and another girl in the class thought it was funny to keep repeating "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom!" and then would giggle. Mrs. P asked the other girl to stop and then Lindsay kept going "because she didn't ask me to stop so I didn't know." I told her that just like at home if another person is asked to stop doing something it is not a good idea to do it. My mom says she is so much like my brother was at this age and to be prepared. LOL. Oh man, I think I'm in trouble if she is like he was. He was a handful.


Philip is doing great. He is adjusting, although slowly, to Mrs. T's high expectations of behavior. Yesterday he came home without a warning. Yeah! Last Thursday was a free day because it was the first day back and she was going over the rules. Friday he ended up losing Monday's recess because in the afternoon he got two warnings (the second one means you lose a recess, the third one means you have to write a note and your parents get called, the fourth means you go to the principal's office). Monday and Tuesday he got one warning. Monday's was for messing with his pencil sharpener and Tuesday was for not having all 4 legs of the chair on the floor. She gives general reminders and "class" reminders before she feels compelled to single out a child and have them write up the warning and sign it. He had such a great day yesterday and she saw a termendous jump in his behavior that she emailed me to tell me how good it was. She said to give it about another week and a half of issues at home before it clicks every where with him. She is going to be so good for him both academically and behaviorialy. Unfortunately today he got a warning -- for not pushing in his chair again. Ack! They start telling the kids in Kindergarten to push in chairs when they get up, you would think a 4th grader would already have that part down pat.

Their First Week of School

Can you call it the first week of school when they only went for 2 days?

Some of this I've pulled off posts I made on the age level boards I visit for both kids, so please excuse it if you've already read.

On Wednesday at 4pm we found out who the kids would have as teachers. Philip, 9 and now in 4th grade was thrilled to find out who his teacher was. He got his dream and Mrs. Taylor is teaching the combo class (4th/5th) and he's in it. He was/is over the moon about it. Lindsay, 5 and finally in Kindergarten, has Mrs. Phillips. I'm happy but then I would have been regardless of which teacher she got as we are incredibly lucky to have a wonderful kindergarten team. Heck the whole school is full of great teachers.

Their first day of school was a good one. Philip needs to work on talking. Mrs. Taylor said he's a chatty one, lol. His desk is right next to hers and instead of getting up to ask her questions he would just start talking to her. They got a time out form today that they need to go over with their parents and explain how the classroom discipline works. He's pretty impressed with how on top of things she is. I told him he needs to watch his talking and remember its important to listen to what she has to say and to follow directions. He doesn't have to have a comment about everything.

Lindsay was a bit nervous and put on her serious school face. She said she had fun and enjoyed school but didn't want to smile. The school secretary told her to smile then if she had a good day, lol. In the middle of telling me how her day was she forgot what they had done so she said that was it. You have to love their take on things. She also said "I got in trouble three times. Oh wait, not in trouble but the teacher said my name three different times. She went "Lindsay." and I stopped." I asked her what happened and she said she didn't know. I then asked if she had been talking and not paying attention. That was it, but I had a good time and she didn't even have to threaten to put me in time out. Then after dinner she was telling her dad about her day and said "maybe I didn't get introuble, maybe it was just my turn."

Friday, was another good one. That is despite the fact that Philip got in trouble and is missing recess on Monday. We went over some things for him to do when he can't remember what he was told and got another reminder not to talk so much. His teacher doesn't have time to go over the instructions multiple times and he shouldn't need it. Lindsay's class went on a tour of the school -- they chased the Gingerbreadman all over. The kindergarteners really enjoyed it.

A busy day ahead

Today we have so many things to get done that I think we will be falling into bed.

First up we have the annual summer bash from Lindsay's playgroup. This is the last summer party before they are all in school. I say that even though half of us have already started and the a handful of the group have elected to have their child start next school year. Not surprising considering our playgroup is for kids born between December 02 and December 03. Some kids in the group turn 5 after the cut-off date. The party is going to be fun. We are having it at a local park that is a working farm.

After that, this afternoon we head over to my niece's and nephew's joint birthday party. They are having it at a pool and it will be a blast.

Later it is back home for the regular bedtime routines. The kids are tired from school so adding in all this extra running around and excitement will have them beat.

Oh I should probably come back later today and post about the first few days of school. I'm going to get the hang of blogging and sharing my stuff soon enough. I hope.

Wow a blank slate.

hmmm. What should I post? I'm new at this so bare with me will I find my way around. I talk a lot or should I say I'm wordy in my posts? Any way, I hope I get the hang of this before I bore you all.

I have tons to say and as soon as I find my way around here I'll be posting more. I'll be looking to my friends for help.