School, Potato Flakes, Babies & Mud

Ok so things have been a little busy here, but we are finally done with traveling for a little while, settled in school and life is good. The 3 older kids are doing well in school. The first parent teacher conferences are this Friday. We got their first interim reports this week and they all scored above the benchmark indicators for the "Vital Indicators of Progress" in Language Arts. That made me very happy! I have been a little worried about my Odie Podie, but it appears she is doing very well. One of Emily's tests was how many words they can read correctly in 1 minute. The benchmark for beginning 3rd grade is 77 she scored 138. I was not surprised, she is my daughter after all. I will give you all a more in depth update after conferences this weekend.

Meanwhile back at home it has been a little different. The first 2 weeks the younger kids didn't seem to know what to do with themselves, they got over that pretty quickly though. Preston has realized the role of oldest at home now belongs to him and he's loving it! Lyddie pretty much does what she's always done and will only wear dresses and and changes princess dress ups about 4 times a day. Adam has realized there aren't as many people to stop him when he tries to do things like climb into the kitchen sink and play in the water or climb the pantry shelves like a ladder. He's also figured out that the #10 cans that I usually keep on the lower pantry shelves, because of their size, are easy to open and not all are heavy. Like the newly opened oatmeal and potato flakes that he carried into the front room dumped onto the ottoman and then mixed with his hand. I walked in while he was directing a symphony (yes those kinds of arm movements) two handed through the pile he had made and had flakes and oats flying around the room. They covered the couch, piano, side table, chair... and the carpet you may ask. Oh boy... they keep resurfacing from the depths, just oozing towards the surface a little at a time. The first few days every day I would go in and find more where I could have sworn I had already cleaned. Oh well, at least he hadn't added water, yet.

In other news I had an ultrasound last week and we found out we're having a ..... wait for it..... girl!!! Yes, through absolutely no power of our own we are sticking with the alternating girl,boy pattern that, so far, has run in our family. We are very excited! We already have a couple of names in mind but for a multitude of reasons I am not sharing them until we're closer to actually having the baby.

Jason is still working out of town, but we try to make weekends as fun and memorable as possible. Like this past weekend. Jason's sister Mollie was on a team to run in the USMC Ft Jackson Mud Run. It is over 4 miles of military obstacle course with over 30 obstacles many of which involve water, and, you guessed it, MUD. Unfortunately two weeks ago she fell on the stairs and sprained her ankle and partially tore some tendons and is now in a brace and orthopedic walking boot. So a week before the race she called and begged Jason to take her place so her team would not have to forfeit. Jason has been running but not exactly training for this kind of race, however for the sake of family, and of course the chance to do something we crazy people call fun and adventure, he agreed. His teammates, all women, showed up in matching pink tank tops. Although he didn't wear the fourth matching tank top he did concede to write the name of the team on the back of his gray t-shirt which was once again "Dirty Blondes". It was a lot of fun! Nana and Poppa came down to watch and Mollie and her kids were there to cheer on her team. Of course our clan went. Jason did really well and afterwards said it wasn't as bad as he was afraid of and that with a little more prep time wants to do it again next year. The kids got to participate in the "Polllywog Mud Run". Ethan, Emily, Caitlin, Jonas and Adrianna each did it about half a dozen times or more and Preston and Lydia even joined in for a few runs. It was a blast! My laundry room screamed in terror when we got home (knowing the messes my kids can make and get into that's saying something!) but other than that it was a fun weekend!

If I can figure out how to get pictures off Mollie's facebook I'll try and put some mudrun pics up, but no guarantees.