They Just Might Be Smart

Brace yourself, it's coming, you know we have to do it now and then, so just let us get it out of our system. Here it is: a brag post. Please feel free to skip this one and come back next week when we're less busy talking about how smarty-pants we think our kids are.

We went to Laine's first Kindergarten parent teacher conference today. Mrs. Moulder, her teacher, told us she was doing quite well, and that they had decided to postpone her expulsion by at least another week or two. She did quite well on her reading assessment, scoring up with the kids about to finish the first grade. First graders must have improved since I was there. Laine scored 191 out of 193 on the standardized test. She did miss one question so they'll probably make her repeat Kindergarten until she can tell a capital I from a lower-case l. I should probably get sent back there with her, since I've missed that before too.


We'll start the picture section of this post with some of Laine's school notebook drawings. Note that almost all the letters are pointed in the right direction. You can probably almost tell what everything in the pictures are, which is better than you'd do with any drawing I've ever done.


Here's the family going to cherch.


Here are the girls plaeing on the swing.

This is Laine when she wint to the bookfar.

Here she is playing sokr.

Here are the girls saying "Hy" to each other.

Eve likes to write notes to Mom, and slip them into her binder so she finds them at school. The first time this happened the notes were written on the backs of some photos that we couldn't find anywhere. Now she uses paper, which we appreciate.

"Mommy. I Love you. and. your. cute. I. AM. Are. you. GOOD. To: MOM. From EVE."

I am retarded and can't get the pictures going the right direction. At least the kids are smart.



Here is one from Laine (also delivered by binder-slipping to Mom):

Eve likes to draw good staff for Mom.

Laine did some great ghosts for Halloween. Pac-man is trembling in his boots right now.

One of the important parts about leaving a note for somebody is making sure that they read it. It helps to put a little line at the end of the note telling people to read it. Surveys show that adding this line can increase readership by up to 37%.

Finally, Christine is deeply, madly, and passionately in love with.... the fall.

Bet you thought it would be me. Nope. It's the fall.

This is the view from the kids' bedroom windows into the forest in the back yard. Note that there are trees. I think that's what Christine likes about the fall, maybe I should try growing leaves.

Making Cookies

After a simple meal of chicken quesadillas - that's pronounced "kay-sa-DILL-ee-ohs" for those who don't have toddlers mangling Spanish - we decided to make some cookies. Since all our cooking gear is still in our house in Sandy we opted for the pre-made dough variety augmented by our own M&M toppers. The girls were in charge of adding those. Eve was really confused for a bit trying to find where we kept the chocolate chips (she's the official chipper when she makes cookies with her Haboji - that's Grandpa for those who don't have toddlers mangling Korean), but she perked right up when she realized that there was candy involved.

We're planning to take a little road trip to upstate New York this week to share Thanksgiving with Uncle Michael, Aunt Mel, Sam, and Simon. The girls are pretty excited to see their cousins and I'm looking forward to the turkey and mashed potatoes.

In other news, James is growing his vocabulary, he's gone from just "mamamamama" to "babababa", "dadadadada", and "oooeaaeeoooeeaa". We'll have complete sentences any day now.

Chris