Happy Halloween

Emma had her Halloween party at her preschool today. I thought I'd share a couple of pictures. I'm not sure why they're grainy - I think maybe I had the wrong setting on the camera.

But her costume was easy - we just dug into the dress up box and look what we found. At one point, it was complete with long gloves, a magic wand, and a bejeweled ring!

All of her class looked cute - I thought I'd share that photo as well!

Next stop: Daisy, Chip and Dale, Goofy ...

One day a few weeks back I was dropping kids somewhere - I don't even remember the context - and I said something to the effect of the title above. The kids chuckled but didn't quite know what I meant. I told them that the tram drivers at the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World when you were going out to the parking lots would say this to let you know what part of the parking lot you were approaching - all of them were named for Disney characters. For some reason, this memory has stuck in my mind from when we went to Disney World in high school.

Emma recently laughed and said she was remembering when I said this in the car.

But my kids are deprived - they have never had this experience. When we go to Disney with them, we stay on property and we don't rent a car. So, we don't park in the parking lots and we take the bus. So they have never had the experience of having the tram drivers announcing the names of the Disney character-named parking lots!

Smart Cat

I didn't really need any more evidence that we have a smart cat, but I got some today - daggone cat!

A few months ago we noticed that Cheney was losing weight. Through a bunch of checking and testing, they realized his thyroid was overactive - pretty common in a 16-year-old cat. So, they gave me some medication to slow down his thyroid. It was supposed to be 1/2 pill, twice a day. By the third day, Cheney would see me get up from the couch to go into the kitchen and he would go running - and the great chase had begun. I finally asked the vet if I could do a full pill once a day - not because I had trouble actually giving him the pill, but because the great chase was wearing me out! Smart Cat!

Well, for a couple of reasons, we have stopped the medication for a little while. But last week, we started giving him one package of moist cat food a day - in addition to his regular cat food. He's picky - he'll only eat Meow Mix dry cat food and it turns out he'll only eat Meow Mix moist cat food. I've been giving it to him usually around lunch time. We leave out his dry food all the time. After the first couple of days of shunning the dry in hopes of the moist cat food, he has finally settled in to eating both the dry and the moist.

I just came home from taking Michael to art class and I walked in the door to Cheney yelling at me - how DARE I leave this house around lunch time WITHOUT giving him the moist cat food first. You'd think I was starving him.

Smart Cat!

Summer, Fall, Winter, Fall, Huh?

The weather has been quite unusual recently. We went from really quite warm to outright cold last week - the high one day was in the 40s. And it was raining. A lot. It rained for 4 days straight! And the wind blew. It was miserable.

The high today is projected to be 72.

Can we please just pick a season and stick with it - my sinus pressure goes nuts when we change back and forth, because each one is a result of a changing weather front and each change wreaks havoc on my sinuses!

Travel Baseball - Fall 2009

Not long after the last summer tournament of 8U Eagles was over, Michael started right in with tryouts and then practices for the new 9U Eagles. New age group, a few new rules, a couple of new teams in our league, but a continued positive outlook.

We've had a pretty good season so far - we are 7-1 in the regular season and placed 3rd in the USSSA Fall State tournament in Petersburg, VA the first weekend in October.

Michael is doing a great job pitching - is pitching consistently more than 60% strikes, with a decent number of strikeouts each game and few long hits. The other thing we have noticed is that the Eagles defense seems to really work well together when Michael is pitching - it enables the coach to put each player where they play the best and we have the strongest outfield - so all in all, the team really plays their best with Michael pitching.

We have a tough opponent this weekend - the Manassas Generals who have been in our league since the first season. We look forward to strong competition this weekend (as long as the weather holds out).

I think the twin bed will come soon!

We have kept Emma in the toddler bed for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that its closer to the ground - and she still manages to find a way to come close to falling out of the bed, despite two bed rails.

But tonight as I tucked her in, with her head near the top of her pillow at one end, her toes are starting to hang off the end of the mattress. Of course, the mattress on a toddler bed is just a crib mattress, but I think she's getting to the point that she's getting too long for the toddler bed and we'll finally have to pull out the twin bed and upgrade her.

Who told these kids they were allowed to grow up?!

8 interim reports, 8 As

Samantha has adjusted pretty well to going back to middle school. For my part, I wish to see that she had a little MORE work so she isn't looking at school as "easier than home" (although it sure appears to be right now - guess my standards are just a lot higher)

Anyway, mid-way through the first grading period, each of her teachers gave her an interim report. It breaks down, assignment by assignment, what their grades are and what the overall grade is.

She has 8 classes - and has 8 As!

We're pretty proud of her!