Wishes

As I type this, I am listening to my 8-year old daughter scream. She is in her room stomping her feet, hitting things, crying, screaming, and occasionally yelling "Wishes don't come true!"

Would you like to know the reason why she is throwing such a temper tantrum?

Part of it is because she got a role in Mountain West Ballet's version of The Nutcracker. Can you believe it? Most kids would be very, very excited. At least, I think they would be.

Not so, for The Princess.

She is upset because she has been cast as a "Bon Bon" and she wants to be a "Baby Mouse". Frankly, I think that she got the better role. But she doesn't see it that way.

I've told her that she can back out. She doesn't have to be in The Nutcracker if she doesn't want to be. She hasn't taken me up on the offer yet. I really think she will come around. Eventually.

The Dragon will be in The Nutcracker too. She will be a Sugar Plum Paige (I think it's supposed to be PAGE, but that's how they spelled it on the cast list). I can't tell you what her reaction is, because she's asleep. All-day Kindergarten is wearing her out!

Happy Birthday!

The Princess turns 8 years old today.

We are very proud of her and love her very much.

Happy Birthday, kiddo!

Teacher Of The Day

I promised that I would tell all of you about The Princess' experience of being Teacher of the Day. The short explanation is that it all went really well. The Princess learned how to use "Google" and did quite a bit of research all on her own. I provided some additional research assistance, based mostly on what she had already discovered. For our main activity, we used a suggestion made by David. As I said, it went well.

We created a large map using this website (check it out, it is REALLY cool!) which showed Virginia and all of the surrounding states. We hung it up on the board, and The Princess told her class that they would be learning about Virginia today, told them where it was located and what it was surrounded by. We then started playing our first game.

We had printed a bunch of photos from the internet, and had found a matching photo or a "phrase" that went along with the photo. We let each child come up and pick one, and then instructed them to try and find the photo or the word that they thought went with theirs (another child had their match). We gave them two minutes to finish this task, and if they didn't have a partner by the time it finished, we just told them to buddy up with another partner-less kid!

At that point, The Princess called on one set of partners who stood up and showed their pictures to the class. The Princess told them if they were correct or not. If they were correct, they got to hang their pictures up on the board. If they weren't, The Princess asked one of them to sit back down, and then asked for the match that she was looking for. The two new partner-less kids became partners for the next round. While the kids were hanging up the pictures, The Princess told them what the significance of the pictures were. All the kids really liked this activity! I was surprised at how well we were able to hold their attention.

After we finished the matching game, we started our version of Jeopardy! The Princess and I had come up with a variety of questions about Virginia. Some were very easy, some, not so much. We played boys vs. girls, and the boys won by 5 points! It was a really close game.

I brought my crock-pot into the classroom about two hours before we were to teach, and started cooking cinnamon apples. OH MY GOODNESS... the room smelled SO good! We served the apples over ice cream. How does this relate to Virginia? Apples are a major produce in some areas of Virginia (Winchester), plus the recipe dated back to colonial times... not using a crock-pot of course! And Ice Cream? Well, the state beverage of Virginia is MILK, and you all know that you need milk to make ice cream, right?

Anyway, it was a pretty fun day, and her teacher was really impressed with our efforts. I was just exhausted after it was done!

We Have Snow!

The timing couldn't have been better. We woke up on Saturday morning (that would be December 1st) to a winter wonderland. Even better, the snow was still softly falling. I'm telling you, two of my favorite things in life are snow storms and the ocean. (Yes, I'm aware that they aren't exactly compatible!) Since I can't have the ocean, I'll take my snow storm any day!

Let me clarify, this does not exactly mean that I want snow on the ground all the time. Nor do I necessarily love going out in it. But to be inside my warm house and watch the snow slowly drift down from the sky? I'm in heaven. I wouldn't mind, however, to be sitting outside in the gently falling snow - sitting in a HOT TUB that is. Have you done that before? It's great because the snow NEVER lands on you. It gets close, but the heat from the hot tub melts it before it can give you freezer burn. Awesome.

But anyway, as I was saying, we woke up on Saturday to this snow storm. Unfortunately, I HAD to go out in it. It was the day for my Creative Memories Open House. The roads were slightly treacherous, but I was really more concerned about the morons who were flying along the highway at 70 miles per hour. Seriously. I'm not saying that people ought to creep along at 5 miles per hour (like the moron I had to follow down the on-ramp), but at least use a little bit of common sense and SLOW DOWN! It only takes a small pile of slush or a tiny patch of ice to send a vehicle spinning down the road, something that I witnessed plenty of that morning. My brother even told my Mom, "The roads weren't that bad - well, except for the time that I had to slow from 65 to 30 really fast." AGH!

The snow is not all bad, however. The Princess and The Dragon had a great time playing in the snow. The King was kind enough to snap a few pictures for me, so I thought I'd share their happiness with you. By the way, every picture that The King took showed The Princess looking very eskimo-ish as you can hardly see her face, while The Dragon had a huge grin with her tongue hanging out. Every. Single. One. I find it rather amusing.

Couldn't Get Closer To The Truth If I Tried

I pointed out a sunbeam to The Princess. We watched in silence for a minute. Her only comment was, "When I see something like that, I just feel like something great is going to happen."

I full-heartedly agree.

What's The Point Of A Blog...

If You Don't Blog?

I have no idea. Hence, I decided that I should probably write something. Anything!

First, several of you commented about my "volunteer" hours at the school. I offer the following as some sort of explanation. When The Princess was accepted into this program, I was given my choice of two schools. One school required uniforms. I am not a fan of the uniform policy. The other school did not require uniforms, but I was told that they were "very pushy on co-oping." In fact, I was told that it was NOT required, but that the parents and teachers at this school would treat it like it WAS required. So I knew what I was getting in to. In addition, before The Princess was given this opportunity, I had her enrolled at a school that absolutely positively no-doubt-about-it required 3 hours of co-oping a week. Period. End of discussion. So I figured that it wouldn't be that bad. This year has been more difficult than others in working out my co-oping schedule, that's why I was so stressed. It just felt like I was never going to find a time that worked for me, and for the class. Honestly, I could've said, I can only be there on Mondays from 8:30 until 11:30, take it or leave it, and they would've had to take it because they can really only require so much. But I really wanted to be there at a time that worked for me AND for them -- and this year it was a real struggle to find it. But we've worked it out now. As tiring as co-oping can be, it really does make a difference in the classroom.

On sickness - we all seem to be doing better. For the most part, we were up and moving around the next day. The Dragon and I have had a lingering cough (I think she inherited my lungs), but no one is sick enough to stay home from school or work.

The King is working late tonight. He is hoping to install some new equipment that will hopefully let him sleep at night rather than staying up until 1 o'clock in the morning babysitting computers.

The Princess seems to be enjoying school. She says she LIKES math. Weird.

The Dragon cannot wait for her birthday on Wednesday. She is so excited to be FIVE.

Me? I think I'm loving this new Creative Memories job. I've got my first "Get Together" show scheduled for Tuesday the 18th. I'm slowly getting myself organized and trained, and becoming more familiar with the very new products that are being offered. It really is a lot of fun and I am enjoying it so far. I'm sure I will be really happy once I actually start getting paid! Seriously, getting paid for scrapbooking and playing on computers? This has got to be some kind of a dream. It's just AWESOME.

Exhaustion Finalized

You've heard it before, you'll hear it again, but nothing else expresses this past week as well as the following:

What a long strange trip it's been!

In an effort to explain what I've been going through, I have rewritten this post several times. In writing, my week sounds very boring and I can hear the chorus of "What's so difficult about that?" echoing throughout the blog comments.

All I can say is that this week was emotionally draining on me. And a simple call to my Mother made everything OK.

I am required to spend 3-hours (approximately) a week in The Princess' school class. I figured that this wouldn't be so difficult to do because The Dragon will be in preschool for 3-hours a day, 4 days a week. HA! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

The first attempt of scheduling resulted in the teacher wanting me to teach Science in the afternoon. This doesn't work for two reasons. One, I don't want to "teach" anything that requires me to come up with a lesson plan on my own. I want to simply "show up" and "do" whatever the teacher needs me to do. Sometimes this does require "teaching" but I NEVER have to come up with the lesson plan. Two, the afternoon won't work for me because The Dragon will not be in preschool at this time.

The second attempt of scheduling was better because they moved Science to the morning hours. This got rid of my second excuse, but I held strong to my first excuse in that I did not want to PLAN anything. They finally caught on, and now there are two parents who are willing to "teach" science, and I am their assistant. I will be there every week to help maintain order in the classroom and keep things running smoothly, and I will also assist in the "shopping" for supplies as needed. This I can do.

You might think that this solved the problem, but it wasn't that simple. I still wasn't meeting the 3-hour a week requirement. So I offered to come in earlier during the day and spend the morning in the classroom every other week. The teacher was thrilled! I'd be helping out with math. I explained to the co-op coordinator that I wouldn't be able to be there at 8:30 due to dropping my child off at preschool at some unknown time, but I was assured that whenever I got there would be just fine.

Last night was "Back To School Night." Turns out that there is a new math program being implemented this year, and that 2 parents plus the teacher are essential to making this work. My coming in late is not ideal to the situation, though the teacher was very kind to me about my concerns.

At this point, I am stressing. Stressing is something I do very well - just ask The King.

So I broke down. And this morning I called my Mom. And I asked her if she would be willing to take The Dragon to preschool every other Thursday for me. And she said...

"YES."

I hate relying on somebody else, but at this point, I don't really have a choice. I think it will work (except for when my parents go out of town, etc), but at that point the teacher will just have to take what she can get... and I can't worry about it until it occurs... IF it occurs.

All I can do is get some sleep.

[ By the way, I was floored by how many responses I got to my whiny lack-of-sleep post and by how many of you are also 'Sleepless in Blog-land.' Wednesday night I was in bed before 1:45 - not a great improvement but it was a full hour earlier than the night before. But Thursday night? Yeah, last night I made it to bed before MIDNIGHT. Crazy, I know. Keep the comments coming, eh? You guys totally made my day! ]

Oi! Redux

You might think, that with school starting in LESS than TWO weeks, I might have our schedule arranged. You might think, that with school starting in LESS than TWO weeks, the SCHOOLS might have THEIR schedule arranged.

You might think that. But you would be wrong.

As it stands, other than knowing that my kids WILL attend school, I don't know much.

Fine. I'm exaggerating.

The Princess will be attending the same school that she has attended for the previous two years. School starts at 8:10 am and they release the monsters children at 2:45 pm. Most likely, The Princess will be transported to school by bus, at the oh-ouch-early hour of 7:00 am. Well, that's what happened last year anyway. The bus schedule has not been confirmed yet. Did I mention that school starts in LESS than TWO weeks?

The Dragon will be attending preschool.

[ Imagine me taking a very big breath here ]

I loved the preschool that The Dragon attended last year and originally thought that she would attend that preschool again except I realized that it would be a very long commute that I would have to make four days a week which I wasn't sure that I really wanted to do except I couldn't bear the thought of her attending a different school so I did what any sane person would do and registered her at TWO schools.

You followed all that, right? [ I am taking another very big breath ]

So all summer long I have been tormenting myself and anyone who would listen to how I didn't know which preschool she would attend but also telling myself that we were going to have to go to the old preschool rather than the new preschool because when I registered for the new preschool we were actually stuck on the waiting list - in position number eight - and so while there was a very good chance The Dragon would get in nothing was guaranteed and it was very frustrating because The Queen likes to have a plan and a plan was nowhere in sight besides which even if the school had guaranteed us a spot I might not have taken the spot because the old preschool was oh so good and what if the new preschool wasn't all that I expected it to be?

Still with me? [ Inhale ]

So on Tuesday I got a phone call from Lisa whose daughter was registered at the new preschool and she told me that there was going to be a new preschool teacher because her husband got a job in Las Vegas and she wanted to go with him - imagine that - so I thought to myself that maybe I should call the school and find out exactly what was going on and if our position on the waiting list had changed any since early June and so I called the school and left a message explaining what I wanted to know and they called me back today.

And guess what I found out...

You'll never guess...

No, no that...

The Dragon is not on the waiting list at all. There is NO paperwork indicating that she was ever on the waiting list. In their minds, she does not exist at all. But they would be happy to ADD her to the waiting list - in position number 14 - which means that she MIGHT get in - in JANUARY.

Um, no.

So, I guess my dilemma of not knowing which preschool my daughter should attend has been solved for me. I should be grateful - but I'm not exactly. I kind-of wanted to choose. At least I know it is a very good school and The Dragon loves her teacher VERY much.

But this brings me back to one very tiny point. School starts in LESS than TWO weeks - and guess what? The old preschool still don't know exactly when they are going to start - date wise OR time wise. Or stop. They have some rough dates in mind - but nothing is official. They should know NEXT Wednesday.

Oi!

Harry Potter Day

I think that today, barring the excited screams that occurred around midnight, is probably one of the quietest days that has occurred on earth in a very long time.

Everyone is reading.

Yes, the day has finally arrived - the day we have all been waiting for - the release of book 7 in the Harry Potter series - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

And yes, I am reading too. We were able to pick up The Princess' copy of the book from the library this morning. I've been reading since about 1:15 (for almost two hours), yet, I am only on page 93. And supposedly I'm a fast reader.

It's good. But don't worry, I'm not going to post any spoilers here.

Fun fact though - the back page of my copy of the book has all the printing information - you know, art work info, typeface used, stuff like that. And guess what else? Mine says it was printed and bound at R.R. Donnelly in Harrisonburg, Virginia! That is simply awesome. (For those of you that don't know, that's where we used to live and work for multiple years).

If this is true, Crawfordsville, IN, didn't get ALL the books.

I've got to go - I've still got about 660 pages left to read.

Are you reading too?

Congratulations, Princess!

What we loving refer to as "our branch" of the County Library System was holding a spell writing contest a few weeks ago. It was (like everything else these days) in honor of the impending release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. They encouraged children to submit their own rhyming spell, and in exchange, gave them a bracelet kit with beads that changed colors in sunlight. They also said that they would give a copy of "Deathly Hallows" to the person (ages 5-17) who wrote the best rhyming spell.

The Princess won for her spell "My Favorite Recipe." Basically, it was a recipe for spaghetti - her favorite food.

Unfortunately, I don't have a copy of it because it was a spur of a minute thing and we just handed the entire thing in, not thinking very much about it. But if I get a copy of it, I'll be sure to have her post it on her blog.

As a side note, I do feel a little bit guilty because I helped her write it. I did not write the whole thing. The idea was definitely hers. The idea(s) of what to put in it were hers. But I did help her rearrange it a little bit, and I helped her find some words that actually rhymed. :) It was such a spur of the moment activity - we just threw it together while sitting on the floor of the library. The kids REALLY wanted those bracelets. That's OK, isn't it?

One Year Ago Today...

... we moved into our house. Yes, the 10th of June was moving day. I am glad that is over... for lots of reasons. The bad news is, we still have stuff in boxes. Ugh. Some of the "stuff" is probably stuff that we can get rid of. But some of the "stuff" I really do want to keep, but we just have no place for it. So sad. I'm hoping to decrease the number of boxes over the summer. Wish me luck!

On Friday, Mom's School was pretty much a complete flop... we went to IKEA instead. I wasn't thrilled with the store. I've been to IKEA before, and I know what type of furniture, etc, they have to sell, so it wasn't that. But they also have a "kid care" center, and when we went to drop off our kids, they had FOUR (count 'em FOUR) kids in the center, and said we had to be put on a waiting list, a LONG waiting list. When we finally were called back, they did have more kids in the center, but still - FOUR!?! I don't know what the child care laws are, but one person is certainly capable of taking care of more than four kids. And there was more than one day care provider working. Whatever.

The food could've been better - like if they had actually had what was on the menu. And, note to self, next time, skip the "display" floor and just go the main floor where all the stuff that you actually want to buy is.

On the plus side, we went with one of my friends and her 3 kids, so it went a lot more smoothly than if I had just gone with my kids by myself. It wasn't a bad day - but it wasn't what I had hoped it would be.

Friday night, The King went gaming. That means that me and the girls get to spend a nice peaceful night at home. Yeah, right. The Princess tormented The Dragon which caused The Dragon to bite The Princess - and everything went downhill from there. This is not normal behavior for our family, this is just normal behavior for when Mommy's in charge and Daddy is nowhere to be found. *sigh*

Saturday was interesting. I finally found swimming lessons that fit with our schedule, and that I could afford. This month we are only doing Saturday lessons, which means we get 4, 45-minute lessons for $15. Anywhere else, the same thing would cost about $28. As a bonus, The Princess is the only one in her swimming class, and The Dragon only has one other little girl in her class. Wow! $4 (not quite) an hour for private (or almost) swimming lessons! That's a deal.

So anyway, we went to swimming lessons, and the girls seemed to have a good time. While there were some protests about what the teacher asked them to do, it really did go quite well. The kids were drenched when they returned to me (including their hair), so that makes it a success right?

Immediately after swimming lessons, I dropped The Dragon off at a friends birthday party. Thankfully she was willing to stay by herself, so I got to go home and relax for a little bit, during which time I accomplished nothing.

An hour and a half later, I picked up The Dragon, brought her home, and the kids had lunch. The King felt that the kids, The Princess in particular, were being a little bit bratty so he wanted them to take naps because we had an activity planned for later in the evening. He got them settled in bed, and they slept for THREE HOURS. Wow. The King chose to take a nap too - I picked up a few things, talked on the phone, and played computer games. It was a peaceful afternoon.

After everyone woke up, we got ready for our evening adventure - a Salt Lake Bees game! The first inning was really exciting! Then the Bees got, um, stung? Baseball is definitely more exciting when your team is winning. We were really happy with our seat selection (The Princess got tickets from her baseball team earlier this year so they were FREE), and it was 'Oreo Night' so the girls had a lot of fun watching a giant Oreo and Milk Carton dance around the field, with an occasional glimpse of the "Bee." We had a winning sticker in our program, so we got a free double scoop of ice cream, which was probably more like a quadruple scoop of ice cream - Bumble Bee Ripple flavor (Banana with Fudge 'Ripples'). The kids went nuts over this unexpected treat. After the game, there was a "Kids Run" where the kids got to run the bases, and then there was a photo op with the "Bee." And then, (we love freebies), they gave us multiple packages of Mini Oreos! Wow! What a night.

"Mom's School" Update

Day 2 of 'Mom's School' was draining. The Princess threw a fit very early on because the picture she tried to draw of a 'blue bird' looked like an 'eel.' She would not stop screaming. I decided that most of the catastrophe was because she had stayed up way too late the night before when she went to see the play... and of course she didn't sleep in. So I sent her to take a nap.

The nap helped a little bit, but the rest of the day was still challenging, and her "screaming fits" drain me. I find myself completely empty and useless for the rest of the day.

Day 3 of 'Mom's School' went a little bit better, though The Princess tried to have another screaming fit. This time I lost it and went off on a tirade about what mental hospitals were and how I was going to have to take her to one. This is NOT one of my proud parenting moments - OH NO... not even close. The good news is, she stopped screaming.

But life isn't meant to be easy. Shortly thereafter The Dragon decided to lock her bedroom door. And pull it shut. With everyone on the OUTSIDE of the door. And then we get the joyful (NOT!) discovery, that her bedroom door has a lock on it that requires a key. And we don't have the key. Long story short, eventually The King came home from work and struggled long and hard before he successfully jimmied the lock. There is no doorknob on her bedroom door at the moment. And that fact is not bothering me AT ALL.

We also had to venture out into the hurricane to go to Grandma's house for piano lessons. I told the girls they were "this close" to spending the rest of the afternoon in their bedrooms, or in the case of The Dragon, MY bedroom - and if they didn't want that to happen they would have to have excellent behavior at their piano lessons. No whining, no crying. They had two choices: Do exactly what Grandma told them to do, or ask nicely for more help to do what Grandma told them to do. Ironically, it worked. The piano lessons went off without a hitch. Success!

Day 4 of Mom's School is taking place as we speak. The Princess was doing math, she came to a review problem that upset her. She was told that "Megan had 15 marbles and two boxes. List all the ways that the 15 marbles can be put into two boxes." The Princess got a good start, until she got about half-way done.

"Oh noooooo!" she wailed. "How am I supposed to do this? Inverse Operations?!?"

I looked at the problem. She was upset because she head reached the point where you could put 8 marbles in 'blue' box and 7 in the 'red' box, but from then on out, you were using the same numbers -- just putting them in different boxes.

"Yes," I replied, "you need to use inverse operations."

Here's the thing: Inverse Operations? Before she started Kindergarten, I wouldn't have even know what 'Inverse Operations' were. Sure, I would've known how to do them if someone had stuck them in front of me, but the term 'Inverse Operations' meant absolutely nothing to me.

Now she's entering 2nd grade. Her workbook has a page entitled "Introduction to Algebra." I don't think I had ever heard of "algebra" until I was in 6th grade, which was when I had started "pre-algebra."

In a way, I think it's good that she's learning the terminology to go along with the math. In upper grades I was often frustrated because I didn't know what certain terms were, and didn't know how to do certain things until I had my "Duh!" moment and realized that what they were asking me to do was something I had been doing since 3rd or 4th grade. I just never knew what it was called.

But still, it's strange hearing all of these "big words" coming out of your little one's mouth.

On another note, all of her teachers generally despise using the workbooks that they send home for "practice" and now I know why. (Which is why they send them home, because they use other stuff in school). You get math problems like this:

Jimmy has 9 stamps on his card. He gets 8 mores stamps. How many stamps will he have to carry over to a new card?

Well gosh, the answer could be just about anything since they don't bother to tell you how many stamps fit on the card in the first place! If you look at the rest of the page, your best guess would leave you to believe that 10 stamps are supposed to fit on a card, but there's no proof one way or the other. I tested The Princess by telling her a certain number of stamps could fit on the card, and each time she came up with the right answer, so the concept was sound. But the question sucked.

Anyway, all in all, I thought that Math would be the hardest part of 'Mom's School.' Ironically, that's been the easiest part so far. I've been pulling out pages from a variety of workbooks, and The Princess does 4 or 5 of them each day. I give her a mix - a review of stuff she learned in Kindergarten, to the stuff she will be learning in 2nd grade (3rd grade level). Counting, identifying patterns, simple addition, simple subtraction, telling time, counting money, interpreting graphs, simple fractions, place holders (ones, fives, tens, hundreds, thousands), adding two & three digit numbers, subtracting two & three digit numbers, plus a little bit of multiplication.

We're on a roll.

Honesty Is The Best Policy OR The Power Of Guilt

I went shopping at Kohl's a little over a week ago. They usually have a fun selection of t-shirts that are available for the wonderfully low price of $5. I like to stock up.

I get home, we get busy wearing t-shirts, days go by. Eventually I pull out the receipt to work on our finances, and I realized that we weren't charged for one of the t-shirts. I wondered why I hadn't caught the mistake at the store, and I think the reason was that I had done one of those general calculations of "this should cost me approximately $XX amount of dollars" and since the total was in that approximation, I never missed that it was $5 off. What to do? What to do? I could just keep the t-shirt, after all, I gave it to the cashier to ring up. It's not MY fault she missed one.

But, my conscience wouldn't allow me to do that, so I packed up the kids and headed to Kohl's. I'll be honest, this wasn't the only reason I headed to Kohl's - I had earned a $10 gift certificate during my t-shirt shopping spree and I wanted to spend it.

At the Customer Service department, I told them my story. The cashier was a little surprised, but rang me up for my $5 t-shirt AND let me use my gift certificate to pay for it. Bonus: when the t-shirt rang up, it didn't charge me tax. The cashier told me not to worry about it (Woohoo! Guilt free!).

So we finished our shopping trip by buying The Princess a new pair of tennis shoes. They are a very sparkly silver, with pink acccents, and a picture of Tinkerbell. And they light up. And they were on sale, so they only cost me $15 (with my coupon) instead of the normal $40 something.

And I am guilt free.

The First Day Of Summer Vacation

The Princess had her last day of school on Friday. She was very sad that school was out for the year. Sad that her teacher was leaving, sad that she wouldn't see her friends almost every day, sad that she wouldn't be doing math (HA! Fooled you! She wasn't sad about that at all!), sad that she couldn't have chocolate milk every day for lunch. You get the idea.

I've been determined to not waste the entire summer away. I started "Mom's School" today. It was an interesting experience, but basically I kept the kids involved with activities of my choosing from 8 am until noon. It was exhausting!

We all got dressed, ate breakfast, and did the various grooming needs such as brushing teeth and combing hair. We made beds (well, mine didn't get made), we did laundry, we did math, we had story time, we played a game, we even accomplished our piano practicing! At noon, "Mom's School" was officially over. I made lunch for the girls, and then they had a bit of free time. Around 2:30 we headed over to the library and signed up for the "Summer Reading Program." Now the kids are lying on the floor watching a TV show - the FIRST one of the day!!! - and it's 4:15 (approx).

It was very busy, and I'm tired. But, I managed to keep the TV off for the majority of the day, plus The Princess practiced her math, and they both practiced the piano! That alone made it worthwhile. I'm going to try to keep this up all summer but it ain't gonna be easy. I rebel against any kind of routine. :)

Tonight, The Princess will go see "Thoroughly Modern Millie" with Grandma and Grandpa, after eating dinner at their house.

The Dragon, The King and I are going to head to Wheeler Farm for the libraries "Summer Reading Program Kick-Off Party". It should be pretty fun too. I hope!