Father Daughter Dance

Our school's Fathers' Club held their first annual Father Daughter Dance tonight. I was lucky enough to get roped into taking photos so I got to infiltrate the event. A great time was had by all and there were nearly 150 dolled-up little ladies enjoying the night with their daddies.

Of course I was a bit partial to 2 of them! They had so much fun dressing up and dancing the night away (mostly with their friends!!)

Report Cards and Conferences

You know things are going well when not one but two teachers tell you they would like to clone your daughter to create their class!

Molly has her teachers completely snowed into thinking she's an angel. Actually the teacher is completely on to her but loves her nonetheless. Miss Molly is doing well and there are no behavior issues or anything. Talk about a boring conference! :) We mostly laughed about what a mother hen she is. Molly can be a ring-leader one minute and a total follower the next. The teacher joked that if she ever wants to turn the class over, she could just let Molly teach. I think part of it is two of the boys have been with Molly for 3 years now and she's practically a wife to them. If they get in trouble, Molly will make eye contact with the teacher and roll her eyes as if to say "Can you believe they don't know better?" We've been assured she's no trouble at all though.

We met with Brenna's teacher later in the day and she pretty much shrugged as well. Brenna's report card grades were excellent, her conduct and effort scores were top-notch and her teacher couldn't think of anything we could suggest working on. She said she initially worried because Brenna started off very quiet and timid but quickly got her groove and now particpates well and isn't hesitant . This is when I'm so glad Brenna stays with the same group of kids each year. It's one more thing that is comfortable so, while she may start out shy with a new teacher, it quickly passes and she's ready to roll. Her teacher this year is a very young, fun-loving girl (I can call her that because I'm more than a dozen years older than she is!) and the kids just adore her. She's a great role-model for them and they relate well to her but still very much respect her position. It is Catholic school after all!

So overall just good reports all around for 1st quarter. Let's hope it continues!!

Visitor Day

God gave me little girls so I could spend my days in dance classes. It's so much fun to watch them dance!

My Girls

And a few reminders of years past . . .

Such talent!

One of Molly's teachers has been out for 2 days on a trip. Today she told me she was happy that Miss Gallagher was coming back tomorrow but she hoped her singing trip was fun. Now being in the school office makes me privy to a lot of information - one piece being the details of Miss Gallagher's trip - which does not involve singing at all. She's actually with her friends at a tv talk show taping. Hmmm . . . time to figure out what's going on in Molly's 5 year old brain . . .

Me: Why do you say Miss Gallagher is on a singing trip?
Molly: Because she told us that's what she was doing.
Me: What exactly did she tell you?
Molly: That she was going to sing opera. You know - sing -ing op-er-a! (she croons in her best opera-singing voice)
Me: (okay I didn't say anything because I was too busy laughing out loud!)

You see Miss Gallagher isn't away singing opera. She's away SEEING OPRAH!!!

Since Molly has no idea who Oprah is and obviously has never even heard her name, she heard the sentence "I'm going to see Oprah" as "I'm going to sing opera."

I just love this girl!!

Brenna's 8 year old pictures

I can't get over how big she is getting before my eyes!

Halloween Cuties

A few pictures from Halloween

We had a great time trick or treating with friends. Notice the twins next door are little frogs? Here are the original frogs - Molly and their older brother in 2003!

Oh and Molly the angel? That was originally . . . The Ballet Bride from recital 2005. Gotta love recycling!

Busy bees . . .

We left the house today at 8:15am to head to church. Brenna's Children's Choir was singing for the parish for the first time today. We left straight from Mass and took the Metro downtown. Today was the Marine Corps Marathon and my cousin Jeff was running it as his first marathon.

Go Jeff Go!! We knew he'd be wearing his Boston College shirt and sure enough . . .

How's this for a proud finisher? I was so impressed with him (and all the others) for taking part in such an amazing feat.

We zipped (okay we didn't quite zip. Given the crowds at the Metro, we opted to walk over an hour to another stop! It was a beautiful day and a long walk seemed like a good idea after watching the endurance of those runners!) back home just in time for our neighborhood Halloween party. I won't post a picture of the girls in their costumes just yet.

You'll have to come back on Weds. for those!

In the meantime, congratulations to Jeff on an awesome race. I hope he's feeling darn proud of himself!!

School Pictures

Granted no school pictures will every be as darling as those first ones from preschool . . .

Brenna Sept. 2002

Molly Sept. 2005

Here are this year's. Once again I agonize over whether to redo them. I don't like Molly's because that's just not her smile. Brenna's is more natural but does she have to look 14?! I just had her 8yo portraits done and they came out better so I think I'll leave this school one as is.

On the subject of her 8 yo pictures, that day she did a little extra posing for the photographer. He is trying to build up his portfolio by doing some of those "fantasy" type pictures. He had some little kids in fairy costumes and asked if Brenna with that long blonde hair would pose for some mermaid ones. She thought it was fun and he's giving me some copies in return for letting her pose. These are the proofs . . .

It's not something I would plan to do with a kid her age but she thought it was fun so who am I to complain!

For Nana

Here are more of the many faces of Molly that you liked!

She's a clown.

Operator?

Molly was doing some work in a workbook and one page talked about using the telephone. The last line said "My telephone number is ____________" I read it to Molly and she said,"Oh I know! 301- . . . (she knew it but I'm not about to type it!)" The funny part was that as soon as she finished saying the number she immediately rattled off "please leave us a message and we'll get back to you!"

Okay. She didn't learn her phone number because we taught it to her - she learned it from listening to our answering machine pick up!

You see it picks up after 3 rings and I occasionally don't get to it fast enough and it starts to play before I switch it off. So I guess a series of oops moments on my part trying to find the cordless phone in time has actually turned out to be a good thing!

Rewind: Field Trip

Two quick photos from Molly's field trip to the farm that a chaperone mom sent me. I love the sea of navy blue sweatsuits! Her class is so darn cute!!

(Molly's in the middle with orange bows but you can't see her face)

(Molly's on the far left)

Pumpkin Pickers

Just another gorgeous day at the farm . . .

Astronaut

Brenna is up to her elbows in a science project. She's making a paper mache model of the moon complete with mountains and craters. Then she got the idea to spraypaint some mini army men for astronauts and give them a little paper flag.

She'll paint it this weekend so I'll post a photo of the finished project. She's really enjoying this assignment (the only thing that would have been better would be if it was about the Titanic. Now that's her passion!)

WAH!

Molly's class is going to the pumpkin patch and I'm not! Oh the photo ops I'll be missing!!!

I suppose it's not entirely tragic since we have to go back to the farm anyway because Brenna will still need a pumpkin. I'll just have to take my pictures then.

You'd think I'd be pictured out though since we spent the weekend in portrait places. On Sat. I had the girls' photos done together and then on Sun. I took Brenna back to get her 8 year old ones done alone. They'll be back on Nov. 1 so I'll have them to share after that!

Reading

Lately Molly has been much more interested in reading by herself rather than being read to. It's become evident though that as "poor, neglected subsequent child," I need to work more with her on such things. It became painfully obvious today.

We were out shopping and I suggested the girls look in the toy department for a birthday gift for their cousin.

Molly: "We should get this bouquet for him!"

Me: "A bouquet? Why?"

Molly: "Because it looks really interesting."

Me: "An interesting bouquet? Show it to me."

(She holds up an I Spy type of book)

Me: "I thought you said a bouquet?"

Molly: It is - see? B-O-O-K. Boo-K.

Followed immediately by the sound of my laughter.

It's Halloween. She knows the word Boo. She knows the letter K. I guess I follow the logic but I think this learning to read thing is going to take longer than I anticipated!!

Nailpolish

The girls are not allowed to wear nailpolish to school so tonight I was removing some that Molly had on over the long weekend. It reminded me of the last week before school started when they were still with my parents. My mom had painted Molly's nails a pretty dark shade of red and Molly was describing it to me over the phone.

"It's really cool Mom. It's really red and really shiny.

And Mom . . . (brief silence) . . .

(whispering) I think I might be a diva!"

I cracked up laughing at her. You see Molly's definitition of diva consists mostly of Bratz dolls and models in Victoria's Secret window displays. I'm not ready for her to be a diva!

Zoo Day

We took advantage of the awesome weather and spent a few hours at the National Zoo today. It's hands-down Molly's favorite place on earth (our little animal lover) and since Brenna is just happy to be out doing anything, all-in-all it was a perfect day.

Brenna has another trip there in early November with Girl Scouts. Since I know they are planning to do the "lower" part of the zoo (it's a huge hill!), we stuck to the "upper" part today. Conveniently the upper area is home to all of Molly's favorites - the elephants, the cheetahs, the pandas and her personal favorite these days, the hippos. We spent most of our time looking at this . . .

Yup . . . Nothing like whiling away time watching a huge creature submerged in murky water to get a person excited. Molly however was in heaven.

Ending the day with a dinner at McDonalds (including ice cream!) and boy oh boy do Dean and I now have these girls wrapper around our fingers!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our Canadian family and friends!!

Animal Lover

Thursday is the feast day for St. Francis and our church always holds a blessing of the animals in the evening.

Molly must have heard about this because she came home frantic yesterday. She ran in, dropped her bag and blurted, "I need a pet and I need it by Thursday! I need to get it baptized for St. Francis!"

She wasn't impressed by my suggestion to bring some of her stuffed animals.
Dean had better sleep with one eye open tonight! (see this story - again!)

Just Around the Riverbend

It's been a busy week of school, activities and homework but here's a glimpse of Molly from a few days ago. It was the first day we've been able to get together with her sweet friends Sarah and Lele since school started. We met at a nearby park that borders a creek ("my river" as Molly calls it) and naturally the playground there was soon abandoned in favor of wetter activities! Luckily the weather has been wonderful (although you can see from the water level that we really need some rain!)and we enjoyed an afternoon splashing and laughing with friends.

Now that makes for a great day!!