nov 2009, the rest of it:

Nov 2009, the rest of it: We had a great visit with Dan, Danielle, Natalie and Aiden, complete with a nice meal provided by Dan, and lots of fun in the pile of leaves. Aunt Danielle doesn’t like to get dirty, so as she was enjoying the play as an innocent bystander, Dan decided to sneak up behind her and toss her into the pile. The kids were only too happy to cover her up with leaves and complete her induction into the grungy fun.

The twins had a Thanksgiving celebration at school. Before the celebration one of their homework assignments was to tell me about the First Thanksgiving. I was really impressed by how much of the story they understood and could relate. For the celebration one of the kindergarten classes wore head bands to represent the American Indians and another class work pilgrim hats. Both classes were brought together for the celebration to symbolize the Indians and pilgrims coming together on the first Thanksgiving. Parents were invited to join the class I counted 18 parents for the approximately 36 students in the two classes. The kids were so excited about the simple pleasure of a special snack together. It was really heartwarming.

Chloe’s already starting worrying about Christmas. Well meaning adults everywhere ask the kids “have you been good? Is Santa going to bring you a lot of presents?” Now whenever Chloe realizes that she’s misbehaved she starts bawling and thinks that she’s ruined her Christmas. Casey and I have both given her pep-talks about how Santa doesn’t expect kids to be perfect and that everyone (even grownups) makes mistakes. I guess it is a hard lesson to learn that it is ok to be imperfect. About a week later Casey was showing Chloe how to play a song on the guitar and Chloe said to him (in her “don’t be silly” voice) “Daaaaddy! I’m only 6, I can’t do it right EVERY time!” I guess she’s getting the hang of it.