I have a Boo Boo

On Monday, April 20th I got the scare of my life. During my last class of the day Zoe's school called and said that she had been hurt at school and needed to be taken to see a doctor. She fell out of her chair and stabbed her pencil into the palm of her hand.

I left school immediately and rushed her to the doctor's office. After many tears and lots of screaming she let the doctor see her hand. He cleaned her up and decided it was going to be just fine. He did put this awesome camo band-aid on it.

Everything turned out great in the end, but she did con her Grannie into letting me draw a blue mustache on her and she got to stay home from school on Tuesday. The things we do for our kids!!!

New Additions

We have two new additions to our family. They are eight week old puppies that are brothers. One came on the day before easter. He is the black and white cutie. His name is Patches and he lives with PaPaw. Little blondie is Hairy. He came on Easter Day and is Zoe's new best friend because he lives at Grannie's house. They sure are adding so fun in our daily routine :)

Presentation Night

Last Thursday was Presentation Night at Tutu's school. It is a night where the students teach their parents a lesson that they have learned this year at school. Zoe was so excited about this night...she's been talking about it for weeks. Of course they have been preparing for it for weeks too. We brought Grannie and Papaw with us and went out to dinner before heading back to school. When we arrived at school, we headed down to her classroom where the entire room was set up and each student had their own little work station labelled with a name plate that they made earlier in the week.

Zoe taught us "The Grand Layout". It is a project designed to teach them about numbers and their values. The first step uses several sets of tiles of numbers. It starts with the ones place, then progresses to the tens, hundreds, and thousands. The kids layout the tiles in the correct order starting with the ones and working across the mat to the thousands place.







After all the tiles are laid out, then the kids begin adding beads next to each tile. They are to count out the beads to equal the number on the tile. As they change from the ones to the tens and so on down the line things are simplified by using what are called units. The tens are 10 beads fused together to make one unit of ten beads. When you move from the tens to the hundreds the beads become blocks with dots on them to represent the beads. It really shows them the value of each number.





At the end of the night we only did up to number three for each number place. Her teachers said that if she does the entire thing during the school day it takes her about two hours. We saw pictures of her with the whole thing done displayed on the wall. It was really impressive. The blocks on the thousands place were stacked as tall as she is.


We also learned about how things work in her classroom because we saw her taking out supplies and putting them away. She even demonstrated to us the correct way to walk from one part of the room to the other. Her teacher said we better take a picture of that, because she never does it that way with a bubble in her mouth :)



It was a blast! I learned so much and was so impressed that she is learning so much. I cannot remember when I learned about numbers with a thousand place, but I'm certain that it was not when I was in preschool. It was an amazing sight to see!!!

Scary, but nice.....

While getting ready to practice the violin yesterday, Zoe found a rolly polly on the floor.  She decided that she would pick it up and take it outside.  On her way to the door, the little bug rolled in her hand.  All in one solid motion she froze, screamed (horror movie style), dropped the bug, and ran sobbing straight into Daddy's arms.  It was such a traumatic experience that I bet people two streets over heard her.  She cried for a good 2 or 3 minutes.  Once we got her settled down just a bit, her Dad told her to just step on a bug in the future if it scared her. Immediately she started screaming and crying again saying, "but they are nice!  I don't want to hurt them." So sweet.  Scared to death, but not going to hurt them :)

But, I wanna be like....

A few weeks ago they took spring pictures at Tutu's school. She wanted to wear a dress just like her friend Rhea. So we went dress shopping. One afternoon after school we headed over to Target to get a new dress. She picked out 6 dresses, took me in the dressing room, and tried on every one of them. That is an amazing feet in itself...she HATES shopping. She picked her favorite dress and then we went over and picked out some sandals to match before we headed home.  Picture day was a few days later.  We got up and dressed in our new dress...which is adorable!! After we are all dressed it is time to fix her hair.  I thought it would be cute to just pull up some of the front of it and let her curls show, but when I told her my plans she had other ideas.  She said, 

"But MOM, I wanna be like Princess Leia!"

 That was funny too, because she HATES to have her hair brushed.  It is a daily chore, and I do mean chore.  But I fixed it like she wanted through the tears and screaming so it would be just like Princess Leia...here are some pictures.  The school pictures weren't all that cute, but these are priceless!

Earth Hour

Earth Hour was on March 28th this year.  The purpose of Earth Hour is to raise environmental awareness.  It is on a Saturday Night at 8:30 pm.  To participate all you had to do was turn off your lights for one hour.  We participated as a family by shutting off the breaker to our home for the hour.  

During that hour we:

• lit the fireplace for the first time in our new house (we've lived here almost a year)
• had a candle light dinner 
• told ghost stories 
• played with flashlights
• sat around the fire and Grannie played the guitar while Zoe played the violin (of course!!)
• part of the time Pops played on the laptop (battery power only) and Papaw snoozed on the sofa 

Zoe's first reaction to turning off the lights for an hour was not great.  She was really whiny and pretty much a drama queen about being afraid of the dark, but after the first few minutes she was just peachy.  She really enjoyed the story telling and sitting around playing music.  When we got ready to turn the lights back on she even cried!  She didn't want it to be over.  Now she wants to have Earth Hour every week....we're gonna try!!!

Make a Smilebox photobook

The Sound of Music

Ever since Tutu had her first violin lesson we have been bombarded with violin everything. She has taught all of us the parts of the violin and all of the strings. We play a game with the violin called copy cat. In this game one person plays a set of strings in a certain order and then the other person copies it. It is kind of fun :) and since we have a whole family of violins (3 different sizes) it is pretty easy for everyone to get involved. Here are a few pictures of Zoe before her first lesson and then teaching her Uncle Lee the parts of the violin. Our next lesson should happen sometime this week, so hopefully we will be learning something new!!!

Spring Break Pictures

Make a Smilebox postcard

Here is a photo recap of Tutu's Spring Break.  Hope you enjoy :)

Rotten Applesauce

On Tuesday, Zoe got to sleep in because she went to the orchestra concert at my school on Monday night to see all the kids playing their violins.  This is a really big deal, because her Daddy aka Pops was taking her to school instead of me.  I got up and fixed her lunch as usual, but added in a special treat...flavored applesauce.  Well lets just say that didn't go over too well.  When she got her lunch at school, and the teacher opened her applesauce for her they decided it was expired.  Zoe told her teacher, 

"That's OK...It must have been fine when my Daddy put it in my lunch, but he had to drive to school really slow this morning because he got stuck in traffic.  It must have expired on the way here."

Her teacher was so impressed with her excuse and made sure to share it with us when we picked her up.  She's already looking out for us, and there will be no more flavored applesauce in the school lunch box!