Our Little Pieces of Heaven: The New Job, Rain, The Gideons, Teacher Conferences & Fall Decorations... A hodge podge of what we've been up to!

Was anybody tired of my complaining in the last couple of posts? If you weren't, then God Bless You! But, we have really had a crazy month or so.

I completed my first week on my new position at work. It went rather well. I think I'm finally getting the hand of some of the work! It was very busy, but because it was so busy, the week flew by.

My mom & I took the kids with us to Walmart on Saturday. While we were there, I let the kids pick out their Halloween costumes. Ladybug knew already what she wanted to be. She's a planner. She had been telling me for months now that she wants to be a vampire. She found a cute Vampire Queen costume. Stinkbug on the other hand, could not make up his mind and we were in the costume isle for-ev-er!!! He kept picking out outfits that didn't have his size, or it wasn't mom approved, or he got distracted with all the extra gadgets they had (swords, guns, etc) so I put my foot down and told him to pick something out already. Finally he made picked out a ninja costume. Alright! I can live with a ninja & vampire queen, both too cute to be scary.

When we came out, it was pouring rain. We were drenched! We celebrated getting caught in the rain by going through the drive through at Dairy Queen & had a mini pumpkin pie blizzard. Yum!

Mark & I were invited to a pastor appreciation dinner hosted by The Gideons International. It was such a great night! We had a great fancy schmancy dinner, sang some great hymns, heard a wonderful testimony from Duche' Bradley & met some wonderful people. It was great night & I'm glad Mark and I were able to attend.

We had both of the kids teacher conferences today. I was so nervous about Ethan's (because he got in trouble at school or his after school program 4 out of 5 days last week) so Mark told me he would take Ethan to his parent-teacher conference and I would take Emily to hers. They were 15 minutes apart. Emily is doing really well. She knows all her numbers, alphabet, sounds, shapes, & is working on her second list of sight words. However, her teacher said she likes to talk a lot. She gets that from her dad. She needs to work on counting to 100 & patterns.

Ethan's teacher said that he seems to like school and interacting with his peers & likes to play. OK. That's been established. He likes to play. A lot. I think she put it in a very nice way. How is he doing academically? He's not reading on his level. He's not organized. He has a hard time staying on task. He's unprepared. OK. Nothing new, but it's nothing we can't/don't work on with him. I know that Ethan can do the things he needs to do, but he needs to apply himself.

The kids made some Halloween jars this weekend.