Happy Birthday Grandma L!

Bean: I love you Grandma Linda I hope you have a very good time, Love Hannah. I hope you slide on the windowsill and do a chartwheel.

Moo: Hi Grandma Linda I am waiting and I really miss you, see you for Christmas when we come to you. And I am excited for you when you come for our Dad's birthday. I love you, Happy Birthday!

Mom: How old is Grandma Linda?

Bean: Sixteen!

Moo: Eighty seven!

Bean: Twenty-four!

We love you Mom and we hope you had a great one!

Happy Birthday Grandpa D!

Grandpa is turning 60! We love him very much and hope he had a great birthday in Africa. The girls sent him the following birthday greeting via email:

Hannah says: "Grandpa D I hope you have a wonderful time at your birthday and I hope you come to out house and bring back wonderful presents for me and Molly from your birthday. I hope you have a very wonderful time! Love Hannah"

Molly says: "Hi Grandpa D. I love you so much"

Hannah says: "I love you so much too from me"

Molly continues: "I hope that you have a great time til you see us next time. And Happy birthday to you!!"

Molly is now signing the birthday song :)

We love you Daddy and hope you have a GREAT birthday!

Moving On

This post is a little bit more about the Mom than the girls. After 12 years with the same office (minus one post-9/11 year helping out on something a little bit different) I have taken an instructor position and am off to try something different. Mom is highly resistant to change, so this is a pretty big step. The new job is in an out building much closer to home though, and I can keep my part time status, allowing me to pick up the girls right after school. Now that they are in the same location, this will a much easier process. I have been asked to make this type of move before and was interested, but passed on the opportunity. The timing just seemed right when I asked this time, however, and I love the idea of working with new officers and helping get them to where they need to be in order to succeed. The job does also involve daily, anonymous feedback from the students, however, so it looks like I will have to very quickly grow a thicker skin and process criticism in a constructive way regardless of how it is given.

The hours will also be much more predictable and more flexible, which will be enormously helpful since Mom has signed up to be a room rep for BOTH of the girls' rooms this school year: Hannah's I volunteered for because I was a room rep for Molly in PreK, and Molly's I volunteered for because nobody else did, and I did not want her room to suffer. We are also in the midst of cheerleading which involves two practices a week and games on Saturdays and Wednesdays. Hannah has swimming on Mondays and Molly has LCDS swim team on Fridays, and SNOW swimming Fridays after LCDS and Sundays, PLUS MOlly will start having swim meets on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays as well. Molly also has math club on Thursdays before cheering practice. We are, to put it mildly, a little bit overbooked.

So, lot of changes and lots of things to keep us too occupied to think too much about it. I am only hoping that I am able to transition to my job as well as the Bean has transitioned to her new school and Molly to her new grade. I am not sure it it is due to the excitement of the new campus or the wonderful teachers (both, probably) but neither the Moo nor the Bean has missed a beat this school year. The Bean has not once expressed a desire to go back to familiar surroundings at Beantree, and the Moo has shown none of the signs of stress that accompanied the start of the last two school years. We are so proud of them!!

How was your day at school?

Bean: It was great!
Mom: What did you do?
Bean: We had playdough! And we had snack and it was goldfish and apple juice and I really loved the apple juice that they have. And I went to the library and I got a book.
Mom: What kind of book did you get?
Bean: Pokemon!
Mom: Did you read a story?
Bean: Yes we read a story and it was about a hen and she went inside the school but she didn't know where the school was but she went inside the classroom and she thought the teacher was cow and there was things for the kids to sit on and she saw a pig and she thought that the trash can was the chicken food and she thought that the cubbies were the homes.
Mom: What else did you do?
Bean: Mom, can you please just talk to Dad now??

Moo: It was awesome, a-e-i-o-awesome.
Mom: What did you do?
Moo: We went to classes, gym, Spanish, music. We were the first class ever to use the new gym. We did exercises and played games. Coach Ross was good. In music, we listened to songs and learned different ways to say hello. In Spanish we learned some Spanish, we reviewed over what we did in Kindergarten so we could learn even more and we did some exercises. My favorite thing was math, we did easy patterns and hard patterns. We read a little bit, she called on people but I didn't raise my hand because I didn't know part of the words. The best thing about first grade so far is that we have this frog chart and if your frog is on yellow you were not listening and if it is on red you were not listening but if it's on pink you did a super-duper-ooper job and then it it's on grey you did even better, and if you do even better you go off the chart.

First Day of School!

Today was our first day back at LCDS, a wonderful school that the Moo has attended for the past three years. This was an especially banner day as the Bean started at LCDS in PreK this year, with Molly's former teacher whom we LOVE. Mom very crazily has promised to be a room mom again this year, as though starting a new job was not stressful enough. However, Mom did it when the Moo was in PreK, and if nothing else I strive for parity in all things with the girls. Not sure the Moo is going to see it that way when she sees me spending all kinds of time in the Bean's room, but we will cross that bridge when we get to it. The Moo is excited about being a first grader and anxious to be graded on a traditional A-F scale, for some reason. She says she wants to get straight As, like iCarly. The Bean, apparently, just wants to tell everyone about Fidel: she said she told the librarian, her teachers, and all her new classmates about her dog and that was pretty much the sum total of what I got out of her today.

The other very exciting thing about today was that the school has moved to their new campus, which is huge and state of the art. They did an amazing job putting the new school together, and it is going to be a wonderful place for the girls to go to school--assuming that the cost of the new school does not drive tuition up to the point where we get priced out. Mom is keeping her fingers crossed that the 10 percent increases we have seen over the past two years are over and done with. In the meantime, I am thrilled to have them both at the same great school and so excited to be starting another year at LCDS!!

Cheerleading

So, as you can tell from the last post, we have been started cheerleading this fall. The Moo really wanted to do it as many of her friends participated last year, and since the Moo wanted to do it, the Bean wanted to do it too! They seem to be enjoying themselves and they have wonderful coaches. True to their respective personalities--I call the Moo my OCD baby and the Bean my ADD baby--the Moo is very focused and reads over her cheers in her spare time, and the Bean will stop mid cheer and say things like "Look, a butterfly!" or get suddenly fascinated by a blade of grass.

Here is what the Moo thinks about cheerleading: "It's good. It's great for footballplaying. The pep rally was great and a great education. It made you think more about getting ready for games and more things. I like practicing because you learn more cheers."

I would tell you what the Bean thinks about cheerleading but she is sounds asleep right now. She had a terrible accident last week after her practice had finished up but before the Moo's had ended. Dad took over to play on the playground while Mom watched the Moo working on the pep rally dance all of the C league squads were performing together. Mom would periodically glance over to see how the Bean was doing, and the last time she did this she saw Dad yelling for her and the Bean lying on the ground crying. It turned out that Dad had been holding the Bean on the monkey bars, but she had suddenly let go when his grip had relaxed a little. The Bean fell about four feet, landing on her feet and then back. Dad picked her up to comfort him and the Bean started freaking out, saying "I can't feel my legs and I can't move my legs." That is when Dad started freaking out.

The Bean was a trooper, laying perfectly still on the grass while we called the paramedics and she was so brave as the put on the C collar and boarded her up to stabilize her. She was scared but excited to go in an ambulance! By the time we got underway to the hopsital feeling had returned to her legs and she had calmed down, but the ER doctor (whose son goes to the girls'school!) was concerned about possible kidney damage, so we had a CAT scan. In the end, all was fine, but it was a scary night!!

When she returned to practice two nights later, on the way to the field, the Bean asked me "When do I get to ride an ambulance again??!!!"

I told her never. Never never never never!!!

Pep Rally!

Posting so that Dad can see since he is on a business trip. Will write more about the Pep Rally later, as I have two tired cheerleaders (a Longhorn and a Dolphin) that need to go to bed!