random thoughts

The spiders out front are getting started on the porch Halloween decorating for me

(I'm also happy to have found my canon camera which had been packed away in a box, the iphone and ipad do a pretty good job but I still like my camera).

The kids are getting settled into activities...the girls are enjoying their gymnastics and I'm looking for some art classes for them.  I need to find a farm for Jillian's riding, still on my todo list (it's a long list).  Kyle is really enjoying the 2 clubs at school he has joined, and has a math competition coming up soon.  He's decided to wait until Spring to get back into tennis (fine by me, one less thing to get organized), but would like to try parkour so I'm looking into that for him, it looks pretty cool.

We've had some great fall weather, it's nice to enjoy the playground and Jillian loved having one of her new friends over yesterday after school.  But the new ones don't replace the old ones, Jillian still talks about and wants to skype with her friends from home.  Leah received a piece of mail from one of her buddies at home and is very excited to write back (great way for them to keep in touch AND encourage Leah to work on her printing skills).


Despite the nice fall weather (no rain, nice sunny afternoons) we do have some serious foggy mornings...can't even see to the end of the street.

I've been able to get involved at both of the schools which is helping me feel somewhat back to normal.  The elementary school does magazine drive very similar to what I ran back at home which made it easy to jump in to help out.  At Kyle's school they need people to help with photocopying and getting things together for teachers, super easy and a great way to chat with Kyle's teachers as they walk through the copy room.  I had a chat with his Spanish teacher yesterday and she chuckled as she told me he has slipped into French for some answers by accident at times.  A little braggy mom moment here, she told me he got 100 on a test they did shortly after he arrived and included stuff he had missed entirely in September (I think the French definitely helps!).

Jillian is also doing well at school.  Partially because of her awesome teacher...here is a recent spelling test, note she got full credit for Septembre at the bottom even though it's in french.  And 2 other things from Jillian's recent schoolwork that made me smile, first her writing about moving to the USA being her challenge and seeing the positive in learning new things, and second her answer to the question of "which country is North of United States" where she included three exclamation points.

And finally, Jeff just got back from a short business trip to Phoenix, Arizona.  What does one bring back as a souvenir from Arizona?  Apparently a scorpion lollipop.  Yep, a real scorpion encased in banana flavoured, sugary goodness.  Kyle thinks it's cool, Jillian wants to just lick the outside for the sugar part, and Leah won't go near the darn thing even though we've told her the scorpion is quite dead (by the way, I'm with Leah...it grosses me out!).