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.