KeishoZil

Nonna, you've been such an important part of my life. I'll miss you so much.

You have ice on the inside of your windows!



The temperature said -16 when I woke up this morning. Brrr. School was cancelled for the second day today, so the kids are loving this.

This post doesn't have any real theme. Mainly just some pictures I wanted to share.

First, a cute picture of the little kids at Christmas. Grandma gave Nadia and Avy the same dress and they had fun being twins! We had a nice time with Dave and Sandy and their kids.



Sophia and Nadia both joined Girl Scouts recently. I wasn't in Girl Scouts, so I don't know too much about it, but so far they've enjoyed it. I'm not the most enthusiastic cookie seller though, I have to admit. I was embarrassed about how few we sold, so I bought a ton from both Nadia and Sophia. Guess we'll be eating lots of cookies.



Also, Nadia lost her first tooth! It was hanging there for several days until finally it just fell out on its own. You can see the other tooth underneath if you look closely.



I also bought some new office furniture. I was so stressed about this purchase because I knew it was going to be huge, and I was afraid I measured wrong. I bought it online so I kind of wasn't sure what to expect. But, I'm really happy with it now. I think I got a pretty great deal compared to purchasing from a furniture store. My old stuff was literally falling apart, and since it's where I spend a huge part of my day it's been pleasant to have the room looking a little nicer. I also was able to put out our books for the first time in years. They've been packed away I think since we moved from Chicago.



That's all for now!

So I've been volunteering as a parent helper in Nadia's class. I don't want to post all of my reasons for doing that on a public blog, but if you're curious and want to have a long conversation ask me sometime. :)

But today, while I was there, the kids went to the "Holiday Shop". Now, I'm not a fan of holiday shops. Why in the heck are we having the kids spend money during school hours? I'll tell you why - Parent Teacher Association fundraising. But, my main reason for being against it is even though I hate it, I can't really feel good about sending my kids with no money. It would stink to be the only kid with nothing, the you have to stand there and watch all of the other kids buy things. It wouldn't be fun to be that kid.

So today, all the kids lined up with their money for the shop. One kid was crying. He had no money. He had to stand there and look at everything while all of the other kids were making their purchases. He was sobbing. I felt horrible for him. So, I snuck him a dollar and told him to find something he could buy with that.

Well, a few minutes later the teacher came over and made him give me back my dollar. She said came over to me frowning and shaking her head. She said, "We can't be giving him money. We don't know why his parents sent him with nothing. It could be he is being punished and we can't undermine that." She said she didn't know if he was being punished, but she wanted to assume that could be the reason, instead of maybe his parents didn't have the money or maybe they forgot. I was so taken aback!

Was I wrong to give the kid a dollar? I just found it really hard to see a kid sobbing becuase he was left out. What if he ws left out becuase his parents couldn't afford it? Or what if they just forgot. If I forgot to give my kid money for this and a parent gave my kid a dollar I would only feel grateful. I don't know. I feel pretty angry about what she did. I think it was just mean.

We had a fun Halloween. I think it was the warmest Halloween we've experienced since moving to Colorado. We only needed sweatshirts for trick-or-treating which was great! It was almost Arizona-like!

Dave, Sandy, Avy and Max came over and we had some pizza. Sandy brought over some very fancy carmel applies, ghost cookies and carmel corn. We ate a lot and the kids had fun trick-or-treating.

Nadia was a water fairy, Sophia was wearing a Greek costume with a mask and Andrea was Betty Crocker. I was the lady from the Progressive commercials.

Enjoy the pictures!

Nadia is not letting me do my usual procrastination thing. She wants me to post this now!

We had her birthday party yesterday. We ended up doing a dance party at the a local rec center. The dance teacher ended up being Avy's ballet teacher, so that was kind of fun. I think all of the girls had a really great time.

On Nadia's actual birthday she wanted to have a big decorated cookie instead of a cake. I ended up making too much frosting, but instead of throwing it out I decided to load up the cookies with tons of frosting - just the way Nadia likes it. It was pretty sickeningly sweet for my taste, but Nadia enjoyed them.

The cookies here are actually my second attempt. The first attempt I stupidly tried to bake on a foil covered pizza stone that I have, thinking that might work pretty well. But, instead the cookie grew over the sides of the pizza stone and leaked all over the bottom of the oven. Then that dough caught on fire. Dave and I had a heck of a time trying to put out the oven fire and all of the smoke alarms throughout the house were screaming. I had to send the kids out in the garage in the car to get away from the noise. That may have been my worst cooking distaster ever, maybe second to the time I let my mom's pressure cooker get too hot and it blew off the top and sprayed split pea soup all over the kitchen.

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted. I kind of figured I wouldn't be the best at this blogging thing.

So the kids all started school again. Andrea is a sophomore, Sophia is in 5th grade and Nadia is in 1st! So... yesterday was my very first day home all alone all day. I've been looking forward to it for years, thinking of how nice it would be to work uninterrupted, not having to stop every few minutes to get snacks, put toys together, etc, etc. But, I think I actually just felt kind of weird and lonely! In fact, I ended up going to meet Nadia for lunch to break up the day! She was happy to see me though, so that was fun.

Lunch with the first graders was so cute! They are all so little. My favorite quote from that was: "Hi Nadia's Mom! My name is Stephen, but you can call me Snake." Ha!! Where did that come from?

Anyway, even though I think it's going to take some getting used to, I think I will start to really like being able to get all my work done before everyone comes home in the afternoon. Yesterday kind of made me realize what a challenge it has actually been to work and take care of kids at the same time. I got accustomed to it, but it definitely isn't an easy thing.

Here's a video I've been meaning to upload since May:



It's from Nadia's kindergarten program. She had so much fun at this program. I think that's evident in the video.