Happenings

Friday was a momentous day for us:

Danielle got ALL of her spelling words right on her spelling test! This is a first for her and she (and I) was so excited! Since Danielle has some pretty challenging memory issues, spelling is just a bear for her. After lots of discussion with Mark and how this would be handled in a "normal" school, I shortened her spelling lists from 21 words to ten. I try to choose words from her original (third grade) spelling list, but words that are important to know, that form base words for other, larger words, and that she has a reasonable chance of spelling. She does well with words that she can sound out but words that break a lot of phonics rules are really hard for her ("enough") or words with more than a couple of syllables ("grandparent") because she gets lost as she is sounding it out and writing down the letters. Hard to explain unless you've seen her do it. :)

And Tim lost a tooth at lunch! This was a surprise to all of us because he didn't even know his tooth was loose. It turns out it was a baby tooth, but I thought he had already lost that one. I think it came out really late because it was next to the front tooth that he had extracted last year and I think the permanent tooth wasn't able to get down to push that baby tooth out until now. 

We went and cut down a Christmas tree today. It's a family tradition but it was so cold today that it was the fastest we have ever chosen a tree. We had a couple of requests of "C-c-c-an we p-p-p-lay at the p-p-p-lay-g-g-g-round?" but by the time we got back to the playground everyone wanted to go inside and get warm! So we loaded up in the van (with the tree...inside...makes the van smell nice! ;)), grabbed dinner at McDonald's and drive through the Way of Lights at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows. That's also a tradition and the kids always ask me to read the Bible story on the boards as we drive through.

Tomorrow is our last concert of the year (band for Mark; my orchestra concert was Thursday) and then Monday is Emily's surgery--finally!