Birthday Party Times Two

This weekend we had two birthday parties to attend. The first one was Saturday night for our neighbor Madison. The kids (and adults) had a blast jumping around.

The second party was on Sunday at the gymnastics school for Morgan's daycare best friend Taralyn. This was the first time the girls got to see each other since they started their new (and different) kindergartens. Despite going to bed late the night before, Morgan awoke two hours earlier then normal on Sunday. To say she was excited to see Taralyn was an understatement. To add to the excitement, Ellie was also at the party. These three girls are exactly alike and despite being apart for so long, they were all three saying the same phrasing and using the same mannerisms.

The three moms agreed that we would have to get the girls together more often.

What I Did On My Fall Break: By Morgan

Each student got a chance to tell the class what they did over Fall Break. Did Morgan pick swimming in the ocean? Watching the Mayan's dance? Perhaps snorkling? Or feeding the fish off the pier? The winning answer:

"I went to Minnesota and drank Sprite"

Looks like we could have saved ourselves hundreds of dollars and ten hours of flying. Are you kidding me???!!

Mexico Recap

We had a wonderful time in Mexico staying at the Barcelo along the Mayan Riveria. The Barcelo is made up of five different resorts all in a row. While we were there, only two were open. Between the economy, the flu scare and the drug wars going on at the border, not many people were traveling to Mexico. It was dead. The bad thing about this was that two of the pools were closed as were most of the restuarants and buffets. The good thing was that there was no issue finding an empty chair on the beach, no lines at meal time and you could always find a desserted area to escape to.

We don't have many pictures of the trip since the days consisted of: eating, going to the kid's water park, eating, going to the beach, eating, going to the regular pool.

The kid's water park was great. There was lots for the kids to do, the water was shallow through out and Mark and I could relax along side it while Morgan made friends.

So it would only make sense that Morgan would prefer to the regular pool where she's unable to touch, can swim enough so that she's a danger to herself and needs to hang on one of us at all times. No relaxation here for the adults!

She tried snorkling for the first time and was a natural. The girl who can only swim a few feet and then frails around in a panick when she has to take a breath out of the water could swim the length of the pool with a snorkle in her mouth. It what a length it was! She would just slowly flutter along, as relaxed as could be.

We took a half day trip to Tulum. You can tell that Morgan was extremely excited to be here.





To her credit it was extremely hot and humid but still, she managed to put on the performance of her life time. After we had a Coming to Jesus talk with her and she calmed down, we stopped in the shade for a rest where there was another family having this conversation:

Father: I don't know why we bother trying to give them new experiences. They don't appreciate it and it's just a waste of money.

Mother: We should have just redone our kitchen instead. I mean look at them!

Mark and I exchange knowing glances and we moved on feeling a bit better knowing we weren't alone in our situation.

Morgan perked up a little bit when she got to get up close and personal with the local iguanas.

But it wasn't until we were back at the beach when Morgan really felt happy again.


Despite being pummetted by waves, she enjoyed Boogie boarding while Mark and I played goalie. One of stood between her and the ocean so she didn't get sweeped out and one of us stood between her and the beach so we could pick her up when she flounder around too much.


The grounds were beautiful with lots of lizards and igunana to see.



This is one of the many angels through out the courtyards outside the rooms.

Each afternoon Morgan was excited to discover what kind of towel animal the cleaning crew left behind.

We even got in a few rounds of putt-putt golf.


We made friends with a family from Mexico City who had two daughters 4 and 6 years old. Morgan asked the mom if she was Mexican. The mom said that she was half Mexican and half Chinesse, then asked Morgan what she was. Morgan shrugged her shoulders and stated "Regular". Looks like we'll be having to work on that one!

I think Morgan understood that she was in a different country and it was good for her to experience a different culture. She kept asking how to say different things in Spanish and wanted to know if they were going to celebrate Halloween. We explained to her about the Day of the Dead and was able to show her examples of what they did.

When we got home, we were faced with quite the climate change. Denver had received two feet of snow and was 20 degrees. Too bad Mark only packed flip-flops on the trip! We arrived home safely with our car stuck in snow, half in the driveway half in the street.

Lost in Translation

This weekend we leave for Mexico. Morgan hasn't been very excited about the whole thing even though we explained we would be at the beach and swimming pools most of the of the time. She loves the beach and she loves to swim so I was a little confused to why she wasn't more enthusiastic.

This morning, as we are on the way to school with snow on the ground, bundled up in winter jackets and hats, she makes a comment. I can't remember the specifics of the comment but it made me realize something. At that moment, I realized that she thought it was going to be snowy and cold in Mexico. And what fun is the beach going to be in the cold?

When I explained to her that it was still summer weather in Mexico, her level of enthusiasm shot straight up. She's now thrilled to be going and can't wait to hang out on the beach.

Parent Teacher Conferences

We had our first Parent Teacher Conference for Morgan and it went much better then expected. The teacher does notice that she has issues sitting still and she is annoying her classmates during circle time by sitting too close, poking them and hugging them too tightly. But the good news is that, despite these issues, she's learning and thriving. She is proficient or advance in all areas, excelling in the reading and writing department.

Unfortunately, for her report card, she did receive partially proficient in her writing. Nowadays, report cards are based on an assessment (test) given on a specific day, not on their overall ability that the teacher observes through out the weeks. So... if you have a stubborn little girl like we do, who decides on this particular day that she doesn't want to complete the assessment, you wind up with a partially proficient score. When she was writing her story, she drew herself and a lion but didn't not add details to show that she was at the zoo despite her teacher's coaxing. Below the picture she wrote "I WEN TO THE ZOO AD SW A LN" (I went to the zoo and saw a lion). Her writing is considered advanced but because she did not include details of the "where" in her picture (even though it was in her writing), she was marked down. The teacher told us that she usually completes the who/where/what requirement but since this was the assessment, there was nothing else she could do about the the report card score.

Welcome to the Public School System!

Silence - Wordless Wednesday

Since things have been so chaotic in our household the last few weeks, I thought we could all use a few rare moments of silence.

Blue

Morgan is always picking out things that are blue because "it's my dad's favorite color". She goes to the doctor and gets to pick out a sticker, she picks the one that is blue. She picks a blue swim noodle at swim class and proudly announces to the teacher her dad's favoritism. Blue M&Ms are put to the side to save for dad.

Some day she's going to be crushed when she finds out his favorite color is really green.

Mills Lake

Now that's Morgan is in school, I got to do something with my parents that I haven't done in five years - take an adults only outing. We went up to Rocky Mountain National Park and hiked to Mills Lake. I read the trail wrong and thought it was only 2.5 miles long. Turns out it's really 2.5 miles one way, plus they don't start counting the miles until you get to Alberta Falls. The whole trail ended up being 6 miles long. Whoops! But my folks were troopers and attacked the mountain without any problems. The view of Longs Peak at the top was definitely worth it.









Now they are ready to do Longs Peak. Well, maybe not quite.

Houseguests

I haven't had a chance to post much this week because I've been enjoying my parents visit. Pictures to come soon. Until then, enjoy this picture Mark took on our doorstep.

That's a spider eating a praying mantis. I asked Mark what happened to the spider and he said that it he just let it be. Great. Now there's a killer spider somewhere in our front yard just waiting to attack. And can I just add that's one messed up looking spider!

Shudder!

Spirit Week

This week has been Spirit Week at Morgan's school. Monday was Sport's Team Day and Morgan was sporting an orange Bronco shirt. Tuesday was PJ Day and Mom and Dad were only too happy to be able to send her off to school in her PJs. No changing involved!

Yesterday was Cowpoke day and Morgan wore a cute plaid dress with her hair in two braids. I wanted to get some pictures of her in her outfit, but she had some demands. First, I had to take a picture of her holding Tonka's paw print looking all pitiful.

And then, she wouldn't stay still, but had to take twirling pictures.


Anyway, you get the gist of how she looked.

After school, they had their first school dance - a country hoedown. All week Morgan was telling us she didn't want to go so we were going to skip it. When I went to pick her up from school, the dance was already in full-force and she didn't want to leave. Morgan hung out mostly with the older girls she knows, but also stayed close to one little girl in her class named Nicole. We stayed all the way until it ended. I was exhausted just watching all the kids "dance" which was more like run around wild. She was all wound up, but I was ready for bed!

It's All in the Details

When you are searching for the Discover Kids show Peep to watch On Demand, you might want to verify which channel you are accepting or you might get more then you bargained for! I'm just saying...

2009 Version of Cliques

It used to be East side versus West side, nerds versus jocks but now there's a whole new division of cliques going on. That's right, it's vampires verses wizards at Morgan's school. According to Morgan there are several kids that are vampires. REAL vampires. For real. But I shouldn't worry because she's not a vampire. Nope. She's a wizard. For real. And it's a schoolyard fact that vampires are not allowed to play with wizards and that is precisely why she can not be friends with Ashely. Cause she's a vampire. For real.

Sickness

On Thursday Morgan and I got our flu shots. By Friday we were both sick. As of Sunday night, she still had a fever of 101 so Mark stayed home with her today.

She is not your typical sick child. She's always hated sleep. She fights it like nothing else. Being sick does not change this. Instead of sleeping the days away, she's moaning and tossing and turning, trying to stay awake with every last ounce of effort. Her eyes have been bloodshot and unfocused and still she doesn't give in. We've tried explaining that sleep will make her feel better, but she refuses to accept this.

She also has a terrible cough. When she does finally fall asleep at night, she is jarred awake by her coughing. Since OTC cough medicine has been banned for kids her age, we have tried giving her honey. While she would gladly slurp down any "real" medicine and goes so far as to request meds even when she is feeling fine, she will not swallow a teaspoon of honey. She is locked jawed, thrashing her head back and forth and crying that honey is too gross.

Oh, the oddities that are Morgan.

Lessons Learned

Even though we had cut down our dead tree flush to the ground, we still needed to dig up the root ball and remove it before the new tree was delivered and installed. There was an option to pay $65 for the nursery to do this, but we thought we could easily do this on our own. The tree was only four years old, how hard could it be? The answer: pretty dang hard.

Mark thought he could dig up the root ball and remove it with his hands. After digging a hole twice as big as we expected, he still wasn't able to get the ball out. So he hooked up his tow rope and decided to pull it out with the SUV. The tow rope broke. After a trip to Home Depot and dropping $50 on a metal chain, he was able to pull the ball out. There was one little catch. Without thinking, he had driven the SUV into the garage, not across the street. So now, the SUV is stuck in the garage with a giant root ball behind it and no where to go. We couldn't hook the chain up to my car either because part of the metal chain you would use to attach to the hitch also broke in the process. Mark was going to have to work at home the next day and then beg the workers to take away the root ball. Backed by $20 the workers were more then happy to take it away.

So... that's $25 for the old tow rope, $50 for the new chain with will also have to be replace at around $25 plus $20 for the workers. That's a grand total of $120. Plus the hard labor and time lost.

Moral of the story: If you are going to pay almost $500 for a tree and the installation, you might as well throw in the extra $65 to remove the current tree.

On a happier note, we now have a beautiful, more mature tree in front of the street and no homeowners fine.

Random Thoughts

1. Week 5 of Kindergarten and Morgan has finally stopped having melt downs after school. Hopefully typing this does not curse me.
2. Morgan is on a football kick. She LOVES the Broncos (sorry Mom and Dad, I tried) and she's a loud and boisterous fan. A commerical came on about being a fan and she started yelling at the tv "Hey! We are Bronco fans too! You got that?!" During last night's game, she drew a picture of a Bronco cheerleader. Mark is so happy, I think I might have caught him crying tears of joy.
3. This weekend we dropped almost $500 on a tree. For our street. Most likely because the builder did not plant them correctly since over 30% of the trees in our neighborhood are dead. I am bitter.
4. While looking at trees, there was one with a bird's nest in it. Morgan wanted that one. Badly. Because it came with a bird. Much to her disappointment, we did not get that one.
5. On Sunday we had a great time with Joann at our church picnic. Her and Morgan entered the three-legged race. It was the first time Morgan attempted this. She needs practice. But she did have fun.
6. We were supposed to go on our last camping trip of the season this coming up weekend but cancelled. It has turned way too cold for this to be enjoyable. I'm very sad it's time to winterize the camper already. Boo hoo.