Reflections and Volunteering

Just a quick entry this week. For whatever reason, the themes of art and volunteering at the kids’ school emerged as the major themes of the week, so we’re running with it.

On Monday, Hallie helped out at the Principal’s Recess, a time once each month where Mrs. Walker does enrichment activities with students during an extra recess at the end of the day. Hallie surprised the kids by going to work in makeup. 

Mom and the kids went to McTeacher Night at McDonalds, another school fundraiser, Tuesday after gymnastics. Eliza got a kick out of seeing her teacher at McDonald’s wearing an apron and seeing her in a different environment other than school.

Both kids participated in an after school activity called the PTA Reflections arts program. Participants were asked to sketch then paint a picture on the theme of “What is Your Story?” Mom and Dad helped out. In addition, Mike showed one of the kids how to make an origami box. We have a good group of kids that have had a lot of fun getting creative.

Thursday brought Hallie’s five-month follow up with her surgeon. The appointment went well, and the R.N. was happy with Hallie’s progress up to now. Hallie has printed a squat challenge and a plank challenge to do this month. Hopefully with a bit of a change to her exercise activity she can kick some more of this weight loss into gear.

On Friday morning, Dad did an art project for groups in Eliza’s class on the four seasons. It worked out for the most part. Miss M had everything set up, so Mike just had to make sure the kids didn’t get paint, glue, and paper all over the place. Later he helped Landon’s class do a group math project solving word problems. He happened to catch this display with Landon's work in the office.

On Friday evening pizza and a movie night included a new little gem Hallie and the kids found on Netflix called A Monster in Paris. Landon loved the music and has asked us to buy it for his iPod. We love that our kids have eclectic taste in music.

Mike attended a conference Saturday morning, and we spent time cleaning the house in the afternoon. Woo hoo!

We had homemade slow cooker chili on Sunday.

Eliza took one of Mike’s Transformers to church, a micro cassette that transforms into a condor. She ended up losing the bird’s head and didn’t let anyone know. Just as she was getting ready to go to bed and lying down with Dad, she let him know what had happened. While Mike was disappointed that Eliza had lost the toy part, he was impressed with how brave she was to say something about it on her own.

She is learning about words and numbers. This week she shared how she had learned to read and write words such as “like” and how 3+3=6 and 5+5=10.

Landon built a giant flying LEGO robot (well, giant relative to a minifig).