Busy, Busy, Busy

It's been a busy week for us.  We haven't seen much of Mike, I had to go into work, went to the church cannery, we had parent teacher conferences at school and Anna Elise had a concert (not to mention all the normal stuff that you do with 5 kids, church callings, a couple of business, full-time job, and everything else =)).  Our highlight of the week were the parent teacher conferences.  Calvin and Madeline were struggling a little bit after the first quarter but both are back on track and even surpassing where they need to be right now - both of their teachers had glowing reports.  I tell everyone that one advantage to going to a rougher school like we do - is that you stand out - everyone thinks that we are super stars!  We'd just be normal at a good school, sometimes it's nice to be noticed.  Mike was able to come home and watch the kids while I did parent teacher conferences but then had to leave unexpectedly.  I got home to find out that I no longer had a babysitter so everyone would be coming to Anna's school concert.  Lucky for us Grammie's valentines had come in the mail that day and she had sent everyone a McD's gift card!  Yeah!  I was so grateful!  I loaded everyone up and we went out for dinner and then back to the school.  Everyone was better behaved then I expected and Anna Elise did a good job singing with her class!

Potty training update - after a moderately good week with Celeste I wasn't seeing much progress and I was wondering if I just needed to give up and wait a little longer when on Friday we had a breakthrough!  She woke up dry and actually told us she needed to go potty!  She went the whole day without a single accident. We are definitely not there yet - it's still mom doing a lot of work - but  she is doing well enough that we are going to keep working on this!  I think she finally 'gets' it and it's just a  matter of practicing a bit more.

Today in sacrament meeting Lilah was 'helping' Mike pass the tray and she 'helped' dump almost all the bread on the floor.  Not good.  Calvin said the bishop was laughing.  I'm sure it was at the horrified expression on my face.  The poor deacon didn't know what to do when we handed the tray back to him with two pieces of bread  - we were sitting on the third row - he had a lot more people to pass to!  I'm not sure what he did - I was busy cleaning up bread off of the floor and then avoiding looking at anyone until my face went back to it's normal color.  But - we didn't have to take anyone out today and Mike did a good job on his talk.

Family Highlight of the week is Anna Elise.  Anna Elise is growing up so much!  She can be such a big help around the house - she takes good care of her baby sister (who she shares her room with), helps clean up the house, does well in school (she was recently tagged as gifted in reading/language arts) enjoys her activity days, and still loves to read.  She still enjoys dressing up and playing with the girls - they were all being cheerleaders this week and did such a good job cheering for Calvin while he played soccer in the front yard.  We need to find her some new books to read - she is a little bit picky about what she reads so it can be a challenge to find something she likes!