Life is a Great Adventure: Ordinary days

We have been pretty busy with basic ordinary days around here. This afternoon I will be headed to parent teacher conferences for a particular first grader. Her teacher is handing out pictures and report cards. I am going to guess, that due to CJ's enthusisam for first grade and general good reports I have gotten, that this conference will go pretty smoothly. Her progress report also indicated that academics are going well. In fact, I do know she has been selected for tricky team. This is a group of students who are ready for more of a challenge. In addition to their regular school work they get a tricky team folder of extra workmmjjfhrequired to also finish throughout the week. She is still taking piano lessons and will have a fall recital Oct 27th.

A morning of curls, ironically it began to rain as she got to school.

Her other main activity is gymnastics and she has figured out how to control her strong muscles allowing her to do more and more skills. Last night she rang the bell for her back handspring. Her coach is really excited for her and mentioned that she will be moving to the next step sooner than I was expecting to hear that news.

Sweetness has joined a preschool group music class and loves it! Wednesdays there is no issue with her getting her chores done, she will happily list all what she has to get done before going to music. In this regard, I love Wednesdays too! Without preschool 4 days a week, she gets in plenty of play time. We still work on academic skills at home, however we have time to focus on areas she is interested in. She recently mastered counting by 10s and enjoys doing more and more complicated mazes. She will even show her little brother how to get through a maze, after she is done with it.

I volunteered one day in CJ's classroom and took Sweetness along. She had a great time and even got to go to recess on the big playground. As we walked together I noticed that Sweetness was as tall as the first graders. Which then lead me to notice that CJ was the tallest in her class. I know this height business doesn't come from me!

Sweetness got moved up in gymnastics from the rec side to the "other" side. She is now in a 90 minute class called Hot Shots. The first couple of weeks were rocky, but she is loving it now! She has a gentle coach which Sweetness will do nearly anything for. Despite the photo above, Sweetness will tell you she does NOT like bars.

And this guy is just busy busy busy. He plays with his trains. I think he dreams about trains. He currently likes to play "ghost train" which I have learned, the hard way, is when one train hides in the tunnel, makes ghosts noises and chases away any other train that may try to go through the tunnel. He can also be a big help!

Yes of course each of the kids have chores to do. They also help out on tasks they find fun. Garbage duty is one of them for him. He is also wanting to give up his nap on certain days. When those days fall on gymnastic days, we run into issues. Like this day, he was upset that we were just sitting in the van and not going home. He made it very clear that he was ready to go home.

He also seems to be rather tall for his age. He was as tall as the other 4yr olds in Sweetness's music class, but since she was 3 or 4 inches taller than the other classmates, I had not realized how tall he was until they were all standing together after music class.