Family News

November 5, 2009

Happy Birthday Wishes here in our house. Noelle celebrated her 7th birthday on October 29th. Her grandparents made the trip up from North Carolina to celebrate with her, and we took her out to dinner and had a small family gathering at the house. On Sunday she had a girls-only party (crashed a bit by her younger brother who insisted on staying) that was very nice. The girls all played Wii Sing, made some jewelry, and had lunch and cake and ice cream. Halloween was also Frank's birthday. We had planned to take him out to lunch but Noah wasn't feeling well at the time so we ended up having dinner at home instead. The kids did their trick-or-treating in our neighborhood and made out like bandits, and after trick-or-treating we did our traditional cake and ice cream for Frank's birthday. All in all it was a busy weekend.

School Update:  Last week was the big field trip day for the kids. Noah's class went to Camp Woodlands where they went out in a canoe and learned all kinds of other cool stuff about different areas of nature. Noelle's class went to a local "farm" of sorts where they saw many different animals and got to bring home pumpkins. Frank got to attend Noelle's field trip and I got to attend Noah's and this time, as an added bonus for the group of 6 that I had for the day, they gave me the Spanish-only speaking child...and nobody told me that at first! One of the other chaperones eventually clued me in and let me know that the child that he was paired with did speak both english and spanish, which was helpful. For the most part the group was good though, so it wasn't too bad and we were lucky to get some nice weather for the day instead of a rainy day.

Family Stuff:  We had a busy week last week with field trips and birthdays but it all went very well.   We celebrated Hallloween and had many birthday meals and lots of cake and ice cream.  Time to get back on the eating better bandwagon since Walt Disney World is now just one month away and that trip is always full of lots of good meals...as well as lots of walking.

Puppy Update:  Jasmine "Jazz" continues to settle into our household.  She is doing very well with her training and will "graduate" in a few weeks.

House Update:  Frank was quite busy last week in the basement getting some stuff prepared for my parents to arrive again.  He installed the handrail and the lower rail on the basement steps, which looks really great.  He also installed our closet door in the basement hallway and put up most of the trim as well.  Now all that's really left is to finish the painting, trim around the fireplace, and then we can install the floor.   Once that's done, we can put the kitchenette in place as well.  I still need to prime and paint the back of our front door.  It will hopefully be done this month.